Friday, 24 July 2009

Free Download Friday #19: John Wesley

I think I first heard about John Wesley through his connection with Porcupine Tree. He has toured (or is touring?) with Porcupine Tree and has also worked with Fish and co-wrote a good chunk of at least one of Fish's albums.


John Wesley
Originally uploaded by Paul Henman
The reason he features on a Free Download Friday post is that you can download all his solo albums, from his website, for free. Yes, all! His website says:
"John Wesley's entire back catalog of music is available as MP3 downloads at no cost. To access the download page, please enter your email address below so we can let you know about new music releases, downloads, and live performances by John Wesley."
Brilliant! His entire solo back catalogue.

Go to the download page, enter your name and email address and Flo's your aunty - you'll have access to all his solo stuff for free (although he does provide links where you can make a contribution via Paypal if you want).

With so much to choose from, where do you start? I would suggest his 2005 album Shiver (mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree) and if you want a recommended track, I would start with Pretty Lives - the opening track. He clearly has impressive Prog Rock credentials, and although some proginess can be detected in this album, don't let that put you off if you are not a prog fan. He is a good rock guitarist and this is a great rock album... and it's free!

Let me know what you think of John and tell me what your favourite tracks are.

P.S. Sorry for the long gap between posts but I was at a conference last week and out of Internet contact and since then I've been too tired or too busy!

4 comments:

JT said...

Wait, what? Is this the same John Wesley that I used to read so much about on the Marillion mailing list? Judging by the Fish connection, I'm guessing it is. Thank you for such a brilliant find! I can't wait to dig into it.

David said...

Hello Jeff

I would guess it is. He seems to have worked with a few of the Marillion guys.

Glad you liked it.

JT said...

Listening to Shiver right now - it's amazing! I also downloaded the "Thanksgiving Day" single and the collection of live tracks he has there, but I'm sure I'll be back for the rest eventually.

David said...

Hello again Jeff

That's slightly scary because that's exactly the order I started downloading his stuff. I started with Shiver (because of the Porcupine Tree connection), then Thanksgiving Day track (because it was at the top of the download page) and then I went looking for live tracks (to see how he sounded out of the studio)! Creepy!

Let me know where you go next. :-0