Dec 15 2005
icteeside
Dave Robson, Evening Gazette
Singer Alistair Griffin must feel like singing the blues after a thief stole a dictating machine containing snippets of his work.
The Castleton singer-songwriter hopes to showcase his latest songs on a new album next year.
But when someone broke into a friend's car, they took Alistair's dictating machine, which he uses to record song ideas on.
The car was parked in York, where Alistair will play his quirkily titled Summer Spectacular at Temple Hall, St John College, on Sunday.
He said the voice recorder "had lots of bits and pieces on it - lyrics, whole songs, things that you can't easily recreate
"You record a million things and forget about them. Then you come back to them and think 'you know what, I can use that'.
"Fortunately, the weekend before I'd copied a few things onto CD, but it looks like some stuff will be lost in the mists of time."
Boro fan Alistair, who last week told the Gazette of his backing for X Factor finalists Journey South, has considerable songwriting experience.
As well as penning many songs on his hit debut album, including title track Bring It On, three of his compositions were hits in Holland after being recorded by Dutch artists.
He has recently been writing in Liverpool with Chris and Tony Griffiths, whose band The Real People were cited by Oasis as a major influence.
And Alistair won't let the theft of his "Al's Good Ideas" tape put him off as, if all goes well, he hopes to release a single and album next May or June.
He said: "I've got a distributor in place and we're getting close to the point where we can start recording."
