A CD review, what's next? Well it is related to Amateur Radio.
The Ham Band is made up of Andrew Huddleston, G3WZZ/OZ1XJ/OZ5E, and his wife Lissa Ladefoged along with a group of Nashville session musicians. All the songs are related to the general life of a Ham and have a "Country" flavour (what would you expect from Nashville?).
Lissa Ladefoged has a lovely voice and sings the songs that give the views of a Hams' wife. She is an accomplished singer with some 10 LPs & CDs to her name. She is also a potter and dog lover. Take a look at her website.
I was first introduced to their music when I followed a link to a "promotional" music video (realmedia format, you may need Real Player (choose the free one) to play it, it is a large file but is is 4½ minutes long). Yes that is really a 100 foot tower that he's stood on top of, in top hat and tails, singing!
Well I decided, after listening to the promo snippets on their website, to purchase the electronic version (which includes the extra song that was used on the video) in MP3 format (a physical CD is available). I used PayPal (various payment methods are available but this was my preferred method) and within minutes I was given the link where I could download the CD. The whole CD is in a single ZIP file so WinZip or similar will be required to "unpack" the songs. Once everything was unpacked all it required was a double click on one of the songs to play it. I actually went one step further and set up a playlist for the songs so that they played in the order that they would if I had purchased the actual Disc, adding the extra track into the line up just before the final track.
Playing the tracks I was pleased at the general quality of the music, lyrics and presentation. One slight problem I found was that a couple of tracks had a "hiccup", the occurances are minor, the affected tracks being "Now It's Night", "The Trip to Dayton" and "Out into the Wild Blue Yonder", I hasten to add that these hiccups are very minor and does not detract from the listening pleasure much, if at all.
If you purchase the physical CD then a booklet accompanies the disc with the lyrics, photos, explainations of the mystery of contesting, DXpeditions, antennas and more.
I'm very happy with my purchase, well worth the 10 US Dollars price tag (PayPal sales are in USD). As an added bonus, once you have purchased the CD, you can request the location to download the "Join Us" video, which I did. The video is also contained in a ZIP and is nearly 49 Mb. It is worth the download as the quality is better than the "down the line" version.
For more information about the video, CD, artistes etc. and to order your copy, visit their website.
They have also added their new song/video which describes the whole process of building a modern amateur radio station and, at the same time, enables the listener/viewer to learn Morse code! The video lasts about 20 minutes and there are three different musical styles (French Musette, Viennese Waltz and German Oompah). The music changes key 24 times which means that it may get into the Guinness Book of World Records!
I have watched this new video a couple of times (thanks for the link Lissa and Andrew) and, I feel, it is up to the same quality as their previous work. You see the re-building of their shack from copper sheet in the ground to completion. The first 5 minutes or so are available free on their site (a low quality version to keep bandwidth down), the complete video will cost 5 USD (just over £3.00 at todays exchange (Oct 2008)) for the download.
Please do not ask me to send you a song, video, record them on CD for you etc. The originals are cheap enough so if you like the audio or video snippets, visit their site and buy for yourself.