Martin Stephenson has a CD out called The Church And The MiniDisc. This album was recorded at 3 churches in the Scottish Highlands last year. There were no producers or sound engineers, purely a MiniDisc recorder capturing an acoustic set by Martin.

The interesting point is that Martin performs a cover version of Virginia’s song ‘A Long Time Ago’ – a song that Martin has been considering for inclusion on a studio album for some time. This is probably the only example of an artist covering Virginia Astley’s material so it’s worth checking out – even if Martin can’t quite match Virginia’s particularly high vocal range 😉

The CD is £12 (inc P+P) and is available via Martin’s website at www.martin-stephenson.co.ukand also by post from PO Box 5957, Invergordon.

Jools Holland has been working on a TV documentary on the career of Virginia’s father Edwin Astley. The programme, due to be shown on BBC2, is called Jools Meets The Saint. Although we have no further details at present, we’ll post up broadcast dates and information when we get them.

A slight error on the dates for the current Jocelyn Pook tour – the concert for this coming Tuesday 6th February is actually University Of Kent At Canterbury, not Cambridge. For anyone unsure of who Jocelyn Pook and Anne Stephenson are, they formed part of Virginia’s band during the 1980’s, both for recordings and live performances. See the FAQ for more details.

The Discography entry for ‘Le Song’ was looking a bit odd due to a page format problem. It’s now been fixed and should look OK.