I still play live from time to time - to select audiences :)

It is a really wonderful thing to be able to share in a global community of creative people... music has never been more varied or more accessible...

Sure - perhaps - depends...

I am really a solo artist for the most part - or perhaps a one-man-band :) However I have played in bands occasionally.

When I lived in Mendocino, California - and that was from 1980 - 1984 - I was involved with a couple of bands, the Art Rock band Da-Da mainly - and another occasional band called the C Sharps.

The name Da-Da was chosen because it means 'Yes-Yes' in Russian ... and also 'Daddy'... and also because of the personal connection between Chris Diurni's Mum, Polyester Nation, and a latter-day Italian Dada artist called Cavellini. I never really got the whole story though... in the end it was a decision made by the band rather casually while rolling along Highway 1 one day.

Anyway Da-Da was one of the hottest bands on the California coast north of San Francisco during its brief life...

Sadly Da-Da can't be put together again since the wonderful lead guitarist, and key driver of the band, Chris Diurni, died some years ago. An unfortunate drug overdose. He was just on the edge of a breakthrough with a new band. Very sad. He was brilliant. The drummer, Tony Vito, bass player, John Bush, and keyboard and vocalist, Bonnie Kirkpatrick, were and are great talents also. I love you guys :)

I have put a few pictures on this site which capture a bit of the flavour of those times. There are also a few Da-Da tracks you can listen to or download. The live stuff is raw - but gives the best idea of what we were about. I prefer these recordings to the things we did in the studio.

I have always listened to a pretty wide spectrum of music ... for example I like Cole Porter, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), Harry Nilsson, Paul Simon, Tom Lehrer, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, James Taylor, Ray Davies, Joni Mitchell, the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison, Bob Marley... and.... and....

I liked the festival scene in the UK and Amsterdam in the 70s and caught acts like Gong, Steve Hillage, Here and Now, the Pink Fairies, Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, the Soft Machine and others - this was the 'psychedelic' period of my life :) I played at a couple of the festivals myself - notably at the Meigan Fayre in Wales in 1975. Daevid Allen was an inspiration - the Gong album "You" was a highlight of the time.

I also loved Elvis and Roy Orbison, all kinds of country music, The Who and the Stones, The Band, West Coast rock - Byrds, Eagles, Poco, Little Feat, Flying Burrito Brothers, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead. And I love the traditional music of the British Isles and Ireland - the Celtic folk tradition - The Chieftains, Planxty, Ralph McTell, Roy Harper, Nick Drake, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, John Martyn, Richard Thompson ... too many names to mention.

I have always liked well-crafted pop like the Bee Gees - Fleetwood Mac - Elton John - Kate Bush - Joan Armatrading - The Police - Sting - U2 - Dido - Radiohead - Coldplay... so many new bands now that I don't even try to keep up. I just hear what I hear - often what friends recommend - I like K.D Lang, 'ethnic' and 'chill' stuff, African and South American music, rap, Indian ragas etc. - and I have always loved Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, George Gershwin, Miles Davis and did I mention Cole Porter? And I love a lot of classical music too... naturally

I have waves of enthusiasm for certain musical styles. A few years ago I got pretty excited about the Indonesian style known as Dangdut - which is a blend of Arabic, Indian, Reggae, Hip-Hop and local Indo-Malay street music. It deserves a wider global audience. Check it out. It is one of the reasons I love Indonesia. The hypnotic sound of the Gamelan and the seductive smell of clove cigarettes are others :)

The older I get the less the distance in time or place or style between different pieces of music matters.......

Right now I am enjoying Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler's album - "Neck and Neck". It's a sheer delight!!

Sydney is a great place. I travel a lot for work and these days my favourite destination is coming home.

I mainly play a Washburn D 30 steel string guitar. I also occasionally play piano, electric keyboards and harmonica...

My recent home recordings have been made on something called a 'Zoom'. Nice and easy to use :)

Anything else? Well - um - I hope some of my songs survive for a little while after I am gone. Ars longa - vita brevis and all that. Don't all artists hope the same for their work? Then again perhaps all moments are eternal.. and perhaps time is not real at all... and in the end, as someone said, trying to achieve fame and immortality is like scratching your name on an ice cube on a hot day... when the sun finally expands and fries this little planet... well, what was it all for?

I occasionally write satirical songs - some of which which may offend some people. I do like to have a laugh at things that strike me as daft. I mean - well - really :) I have written several satirical songs for example which poke fun at extremist religious views.

I am not religious, although I studied comparative religion at uni and I have acquired over many years a large and diverse library of philosophical, religious and mystical literature. Bertrand Russell, Alan Watts, Chuang Tzu, Kabir, Rumi and Ramana Maharshi are just a few of my favourites . I am not an atheist. I prefer to call myself a freethinker. And a mystic. At the same time.

As a freethinker I feel it is important to challenge religious views of the world. Faith, in my view, can be a dangerous thing! Especially when followers of different faiths clash violently with each other - which is almost inevitable given the nature of faith. I am generally against violence - although I draw the line at insects invading my house. They are likely to face instant eviction if not instant annihilation and could even become subject to chemical warfare if they get out of control.

Do I believe in God? Hmmm. That is such a loaded word! Got to be careful answering that one. I don't like the word 'believe' for one thing - smacks of accepting something without evidence. I don't believe in 'God' as most religious people use the term - e.g. as a revelation-giving, rule-making, all-seeing, spying-on-what-you-do, must-be-feared-and-obeyed-and-bowed-down-to kind of 'God'. But in another sense I see nothing but 'God'. All is One.

I am OK with using the word 'God' in this 'All is One' sense - not in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic sense, but instead in the Einsteinian sense - as a word to describe the awesome structure and the deep mystery of the universe. Read Carl Sagan on this topic - he puts it beautifully in the book of his Gifford lectures "The varieties of scientific experience".

What is this universe we find ourselves in - and why is there anything at all? I don't think there are answers to questions like this, However I do not think it is depressing not to know the 'answer' - instead for me it is a position of great humility and awe even... and for me the only responsible position to take .. the natural position.. the honest position. People who think they have 'the answer' frighten me... I am much more comfortable with people who are not afraid to say they don't know.. Socrates is one of my heroes...

There are other questions like the one I ask in 'River' - a very old question this - 'What is it that stays the same in all this changing?' The ground of Being? Brahman? The true Self? - 'God'?

The best answer I know to the question of 'Why the universe?' is 'Lila' - it is play... a way for 'God' to explore 'his' options - to become many rather than one - to see 'himself' perhaps.

I don't see any 'God' sitting somewhere separate from 'creation' - no designer separate from a design. 'Intelligent design' is a nonsense theory.

A better way to think about it is that the design itself is intelligent - e.g. the visible universe is just the visible manifestation of 'God' ... this view - the way I see it at least - sits entirely comfortably with evolution, physics, science...

Mysticism - when the word refers to the search for direct insight into the nature of reality - is not something ultimately in opposition to science. Science does however have all kinds of problems with many of the claims of religion.

In my view there is no such thing as death. Isn't the distinction between something 'alive' and something 'dead' faintly ridiculous given our present understanding of physics? We use these words in everyday speech of course and they fit our purposes on the biological level for most normal conversations. My heart stops and I die - sure.

But what do life and death mean on the level of chemistry - of physics - and when we consider what we know so far about the structure of matter itself?

Is matter not all 'alive' in some fundamental sense? And is there actually anything 'solid' at all underneath everything we can see? I don't pretend to understand this stuff like a physicist - but perhaps at the end of all our investigations of the atoms - the protons - neutrons - electrons - the quark and charm and whatever - we will find that it IS all just an illusion ... Maya.... there is nothing really 'here' at all... If so then who the hell is thinking this stu