I was bored one evening, one weekend a few weeks back and I happened to stumble upon my dear friend Hussein’s now abandonded web log. He is perhaps one of those people, whom I wish had never stopped blogging because he always has a project on the go, an amazing jaw dropping adventure on the cards and desires to take over the world from his living room (or workshop). I spent a good half an hour or so reading some old entries (I feature in a few, but this was not an ego inflating trip – honest!) I discovered the only post from June 2005. The Summer Burn sounded interesting, so I headed over to the official site and thought, let me take a punt on this. On 2nd June, I registered via e-mail. Although in an old school ploy, to test your integrity, the organiser / founder Taz asked for a code to be sent via a postcode to an address in Bristol. I complied, with a postcard I had bought from my trip up Mount Snowdon in August. It sounded like a very good concept, burn a copy of my favourite relaxed, summer care free songs and in exchange receive a similar themed album from some random person from somewhere on the planet (most likely Western Europe or Stateside). I had a good idea of the songs I was going to put onto my album, but as usual was extremely disorganised when it came to the first day of Summer. I received details of my album receipents on the morning of the Summer solitice. I needed to get my act together, so e-mailed both ladies to let them know the album would be with them soon, I just needed to burn and post. Reality was, I still had a few songs to select. Would they make the cut? My main aim with my album was variety, as I listen to a range of music, but I wanted to keep the carefree feel the warm weather can bring at the heart. I chose a mixture of modern songs, two covers, one foreign song, mainly pop but some college radio friendly rock (pop-rock if you will) as well as some dancehall, UK grime and ending with a very well done mashup (but at the time way back in 2003, we called them remixes!). The full details of the tracklisting (all eighteen tracks) will be released once my fellow Summer Burn participants have received their albums. For the record, I am yet to receive their albums, so hopefully in the next few days I can put up a post in review for both Jenny and Laura.

After spending perhaps the majority of the last five months, listening exclusively to BBC Radio 2 on the drive to and from work (Chris Evans and Simon Mayo respectively) I have decided to spend more time finding music to listen to! I have not burnt a CD for a long time even if the terminology itself sounds very 1999! I am really keen to get back into my music and it may mean hogging the television for some much needed channel hopping on the music video channels (350 onwards people!). Yes I know, I am going to be a really annoying person to live with!