The artwork on this page was created by Mysti Mayhem for her Diversity CD.

Interested in a good promotional tool for your band? Here's an example of one:

Mysti Mayhem's electronic press kit

A little while back I ran across an old snapshot, posted in My Photos, of myself with my friend and mentor Ian 'Sammy' Samwell. Ian was an internationally prominent record producer and songwriter, having written the very first rock hit song ever created in Britain, Cliff Richard's Move It, in 1958. Prior to that the rockers had been covering tunes made in the US.

Times and technology change in interesting ways. Ian once told me that, when Cliff and the Drifters originally recorded Move It, in Abbey Road Studio No. 2 (later made famous by the Beatles), "The record itself lasts for two minutes and twenty-one seconds; all in all, I doubt if recording it took more than twenty minutes from start to finish. These days it would be more like twenty hours." In actuality, when Cliff re-recorded it in 2006, in exactly the same studio, with Brian May of Queen playing Ian's guitar part, it took about twenty-four hours to record and mix.

Ian also wrote and produced the first single by Small Faces, Whatcha Gonna Do About It, and he produced the first (and multi platinum) album for the Grammy Award winning band America including the enduring monster hit single A Horse With No Name.

And those are just some of the highlights. As an independent producer and an artist liaison for Warner Bros London, Ian worked with people like John Mayall, Georgie Fame, the Shadows, Rod Stewart, Aynsley Dunbar, Linda Lewis, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead. I was privileged to spend more than twenty years in studios and clubs with Ian, later in his life, having a great time and learning much of what I now know about music and the business. The photo was taken in 1985 as we celebrated the signing by Island Records of a band we were working with in Sacramento, CA named Bourgeois Tagg. Ian passed on in 2003, but I maintain a website in his honour at iansamwell.com.

So, if I tell you on this page that someone is a world class talent, you'll know that it was largely my experience with Ian which makes me confident of that judgement. He knew what 'world class' is at first hand.

Still curious? I'm on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/1orb1

If anyone would like to actually talk . . . to speak with someone whith a human voice, I'm on skype, and I have my most valuable conversations there. Text or talk. Your option

You know my name. You can find me.