Moore is less on iTunes

By Calvin Palmer

Guitarist Gary Moore’s death on Sunday in a hotel room in Spain has been attributed to a heart attack. Further toxicology tests are being conducted to establish the cause of the heart attack, although Spanish police are not treating the 58-year-old’s death as suspicious.

Moore entered my CD collection with the 1990 release of Still Got The Blues. I happened to see a promotional video, on some TV show or other, which featured Moore playing alongside blues legend Albert Collins on the track Too Tired. On buying the CD, I discovered that another blues great, Albert King, plays on Oh Pretty Woman.

Four years later, I happened to video tape a clip on TV featuring Moore with former Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. The track City of Gold, with its Crossroads-like riff, made an instant impression, particularly Moore’s guitar solo.

I later transferred the soundtrack from the video clip to an audio tape so I could listen to it in the car. That audio tape still exists somewhere in one of the many cardboard boxes that fill my office. I was going to instigate a search but then thought it might involve less hassle just to download the track from iTunes.

I logged into my account yesterday and could not find this City of Gold track listed. Switching to the UK version of iTunes, it was listed under BBM (Bruce-Baker-Moore) and the album Around The Next Dream. I attempted to log in to the UK iTunes store with a view to buying the track and was told that my iTunes account is only valid for purchases in the US iTunes Store.

I seem to recall a time when an iTunes account was universally accepted, allowing me to buy tracks such as Fire by Arthur Brown, For Your Love by The Yardbirds and Wonderful Land by The Shadows.

It would appear the global economy has become less global as far as iTunes is concerned.

I guess I will have to start looking through all those cardboard boxes.

To Gary, thanks for the music and memories. Sweet Dreams!

Bush focused on financial challenges

By Calvin Palmer

President George W. Bush has spoken today to justify the economic decisions of recent days that have so angered the free-market conservatives.
 
And he likely angered them further with his pledge of further help to the stricken financial markets.
 
President Bush said his administration had taken “extraordinary measures” in recent days that were “necessary and important” for the sake of the global economy.
 
Speaking after the U.S. Federal Reserve injected $180 billion into the global money markets and $55 billion into other U.S. markets, he said: “The American people are concerned about the situation in our financial markets and our economy and I share their concerns.”
 
He added: “Our financial markets continue to deal with serious challenges.  As our recent actions demonstrate, my administration is focused on meeting these challenges.”
 
His statement saw the leading Dow Jones Index on Wall Street climb 147 points but it later fell back to be up by 8.7 when the London FTSE 100 Index closed for the day down 32.4 at 4880.
 
Senior Republicans have been angered by the Bush administration’s intervention to bail out struggling financial companies.
 
“You cannot nationalize every failing business in America,” said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee.  “If government now becomes the safety net for private enterprise too big to fail, we are going to end up with an economy more like France than the United States.”

[Based on reports in The Daily Telegraph and The Washington Times.]