Already it is the month of May - and I am still finishing off some of the "goodies" that I received at Christmas! The days roll by and time marches on, relentlessly. However, with each passing day I am drawing nearer to the various personal goals that I have set, many of which include steps towards the production of even more new music for Sting and Snow. I am always working on new music and am happy to report that the pool of ideas seems to be virtually endless - many ideas for tunes are already under consideration for this year's new output; of course, I am always open to suggestions - so if there's a tune that you feel we should consider as for a Square Dance version, please let me know…

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE END OF A LONG, LONG ROAD…
This month I have achieved one of my targets, which I set for myself almost two years ago. In July 2004, I began to write "Record Histories" for each and every one of the Singing Calls that Sting and Snow have produced. This proved to be a gargantuan task that ranged from being "fairly simple" to "extremely difficult". Each month I attempted to cover eight old tunes plus the two newest, which - on average - took me around eight hours of PC time to achieve; not just the writing but also the research. So what does a "Record History" comprise?

The intention was to provide relevant and useful information about the song in question. Obviously the record number, recording artist and release dates for the Square Dance versions might be interesting, the chart position that was achieved on the Hanhurst's Best Seller listing was also relevant. A frequent request that we received was to provide the "additional lyrics" for each tune i.e. the lyrics that are not printed on the record sleeve; this I have done. Additionally, I felt that information about the original tune, as well as some information about our Square Dance version, might be of interest - so this was included.

The hope was that callers might be able to use this information in order to present the tune in a more exciting fashion. Whilst I believe that to simply play the music may be sufficient, taking a few moments to "introduce" the tune can add quite a lot to the caller's "show". I believe that Dancers are quite often interested to know who it was that recorded the original tune, when it was released, how successful it was and anything else that may be related to the music in question. Perhaps even a few words about the artist best associated with the tune could form the basis of an interesting introduction.

A good caller will do what they can to "sell" a song to the Dancers - i.e. to make them "look forward" to the experience of dancing to the music. Some songs are a little "unusual" and need some explanation, whilst many have an interesting story behind them. My hope is that anyone reading these Histories will find something that they can "use" to make the Square Dance experience, a little more enjoyable. Please take a moment to read through these pages, they contain a lot of information from a lot of sources and do tell a story that you might find interesting, perhaps even intriguing; when you have a moment, take-a-peek and see what I have done…

In addition to the Record Histories, this month I am pleased to be able to announce that the task of providing audio samples of every single record has been completed. So you can read all about the tune and listen to the song; this may sound like an obvious attempt to "sell" a few more records and I don't deny that but I hope that these Histories and Samples will be useful to callers everywhere - use them and enjoy them!

Here's the other "News":

BEST SELLER LISTING:
Our March Releases took both the No.2 and No.3 spots on the combined Hanhurst's/Palomino listing on the dosado.com web-site. The results were: No.2 for "Fly Me To The Moon" and No.3 for "Venus"; another great result for our output of tunes!

NEW RELEASES:
Our new vinyl releases for May are: - the Beatles tune, "All You Need Is Love" (vocal by Paul Bristow) and "Ship-Shape / Bristol-Fashion" (a double instrumental, hoedown/patter record)

Our May MP3 releases will be - "Lady Madonna" (vocal by Carsten Nielsen) and "Engine Of Love" (vocal by Uli Schingen) - visit the Listen To The Music link on the web-site, to hear and/or buy this on the Sting and Snow page at Hanhurst's Tape and Record Service.

INDIVIDUAL RECORD HISTORIES including ALL THE ADDITIONAL LYRICS:
This is our "Landmark Achievement"; after almost two years, Paul has finally written something about EVERY singing call that we have ever released! Read more about this on this month's News-Letter. As all the previously released records have now been covered, this month's history sheet features our newest singing call release: All You Need Is Love

The histories contain details about each original song, including it's production and provide the extra lyrics - as featured on the called side. You can access these by "clicking" on the open-book picture , on the Catalogue, Latest Releases and Future Releases pages.

Don't forget - you can also listen to a short part of any track that has a musical note symbol .

Remember - the Record histories don't just include the lyrics, each one contains the story of the song itself, as well as comments about it's production. So for some -hopefully "useful" and "useable" information about each of our songs - this is the part of our web-site to visit.

HOEDOWN / PATTER AUDIO TRACKS:
This month, the final eight Audio Samples of our extensive library of Hoedown / Patter music are:

• Boiled Beef / Carrots - SIR 516
  
• Footloose / Fancy Free - SIR 517
  
• Kettle Of Fish / Bucket Of Worms - SIR 518
  
• Jukebox Joe / Star Karta - SIR 519
  
• Bright / Breezy - SIR 520
  
• Kitt / Kaboodle - SNW 506
  
• Fab One / Firefly - SNW 507
  
• Tjälfe / Nimrod - SNW 508
  

So if you want to hear how these top-selling recordings sound, just click on the musical note symbol . For details of the titles featured in previous months, check out the News-Letter and - if there are any that you would particularly like to see added just let us know.

Our new Hoedown/Patter release is: "Ship-Shape / Bristol-Fashion" and an Audio Clip of this is featured this month; check out the Catalogue and Latest Releases pages, to hear this tune.

HI / LO KEY CD VERSIONS - OF PREVIOUS RELEASES: Since January, this year, all of the tunes that we are releasing in MP3 format, have also been made available in CD format; this includes the previously released tracks originally issued on Vinyl about eighteen months earlier.

This CD format, for ALL releases, comprises the original tracks - plus a one step higher / one-step-lower key version of the instrumental. So don't forget to check-out our CD and MP3 releases and see if there is a "more comfortable" key available on a tune that you may like to use.

Okay, now I don't have to write any more Record Histories, for older tunes, I have quite a bit more spare time on my hands - now let me see, what shall I do… ? Uh oh Hazel has a list of jobs that I have been neglecting; apparently I have been spending too much time on the computer… Next month will probably be a very short News-Letter - "speak" with you then!

Go Squareful! - Paul Bristow (Owner and Producer Sting and Snow Records)