Hi all.

It's been a while, no?

OK, here's the BIG news. There's been talk for a while of a songbook, a compendium of tabbed and musically notated versions of Jeffsongs, in actual paper-and-ink format. And now it's on the way.

(This is not the book that was advertised earlier this year that some of you wrote me about. That was not authorised, and as far as I know, is now out of circulation.)

This will be produced in conjunction with Hal Leonard, a US book publisher that specialises in tab/music books. They've sent me a couple of samples, and these people do a good job. I'm also in contact with the estate, and with Fun Palace, about the project. We will try and make this as good a book as we can. (We want people to buy it; we want people to like it; we want people to use it!)

The proposed songlist for the book contains all his original songs from the two albums, plus a few songs that will first be heard (as official releases) on the upcoming live LP.

So, yes, I have been busy tabbing songs from Sketches that have so far been avoided, ignored, or left in the too-hard basket. With some luck, and the help of Jack at Fun Palace, I may be able to liaise with Michael Tighe regarding some of the tricky songs. These things are still being organised.

This website will continue in operation. There are no plans to pull anything at all from it -- which means we have to make the book BETTER in order to persuade people that it is worth shelling out for. (The cover songs present copyright issues that mean it is easier all round to just keep those tabs up here, while the original songs can exist happily in both book and web form.)

Ages ago, I started re-designing the site from scratch -- as you can all see, if you've been coming here a while, I haven't done anything about getting the re-design up online. Well, this will now happen as part of the whole book/site launch/re-vamp project. New design, more tabs, corrections of old tabs (yes, I am looking through lots of old mails to check up on the notes and suggestions I have been sent!), the whole works.

When the book is available you will hear it here (and elsewhere). I will post updates, meanwhile, as new and exciting developments occur.

I hope when it's released, you like what you see. Because, of course, I want you to buy it, right??

Last thing -- Tripod, where this site has been hosted since its inception, have some advertising program they use to make their webmasters some spare change. I finally buckled and signed up, because I could use some spare change (until this book makes me rich, hahahahahaha ...um ...sorry), and because I'm finally attending to it again and updating and improving it and so on. So I hope you don't mind. I've long been a member of CD Now's promotions program (Cosmic Credit), but that link is hidden away on my links page and rarely used. I think I got myself one free CD from that deal so far (Tim Buckley, from memory). I may decide to, um, HIGHLIGHT this service a little more in the re-design. Again, I won't get rich by any of this, and I hope it won't be too intrusive. I never did this for money, but a few perks are welcome.

regards, michael

PS: I hope your back buttons work on your browsers. I have left no escape hatches from this page heh heh heh.