Background to this site and the author

I discovered Mott rather late in their career. By 1972 I had noticed there was suddenly a lot of good music being played on the radio. The Faces grooved, Status Quo had finally found a winning formula, Slade could do no wrong, and Top of the Pops was essential viewing every week. But something was missing, and I started forming a vision of "the perfect rock band".

I remember in 1973 when Radio 1 DJ Johnnie Walker first played All The Way From Memphis on his lunch-time show. When it was over, he simply moved the stylus back to the start and played it all over again, saying "It's that good..." I went out and bought the Mott album. Something about it struck a chord, and I realised this was the band for me.

I soon bought All The Young Dudes, followed by The Hoople and Live when they came out. Getting the Island back catalogue required trips into London since local stores only stocked chart stuff. And I've been hooked ever since...

I got on-line some time late in 1994, and after surfing for a while decided to find out how web pages "worked". I threw a few pages together which sort of worked, but realised I needed a goal if I was to achieve anything more. I knew there were no Hunter/Mott web-sites, and in a flash I realised what I would do. Over the next few months (we are talking early 1995 now) I put a set of pages together which worked well and satisfied me enormously. My work took me out of the office a lot, but I returned to my project as time permitted.

I toyed with the idea of putting my pages on-line, but without a PC at home couldn't really justify it. Then, some time in the spring of 1996, I discovered I could have space on the server at work, and all I had to do was ask... I returned to my task with renewed vigour, sprucing up my pages and generally making them presentable. I thought that once I'd put them on-line my work would be over. Little did I know that it had only just begun.

Some time in 2000 I acquired the URL you probably used to access this site (which is a lot easier to remember than the old one). In late 2001 this site moved off the work server (as I was leaving the firm), and was initially hosted on my ISP's server. In the spring of 2004 I moved it to an independent server.

Maintaining a web-site takes a lot of time. Checking pages, updating pages, adding new pages, it is a lot of work. I soon realised that a site needs to be updated every week or two to keep it "fresh". A web-site which was last updated, say, three months ago is effectively saying "been there, done it, lost interest". I try to update or add new content at least once every two weeks. I do not always succeed, for which I apologise.

My philosophy behind this site is simple: to make it accessible to as many visitors as possible whilst accommodating the latest innovations of the web.

It simply does not matter what browser you use to access this site. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera - I don't mind. It does not matter what platform you use either: PC Windows, Macintosh, mobile phone - the choice is yours. I have tried to make this site accessible to all. Oh, I'm using CSS, but I no longer use Javascript (or Java, or Flash, or any other piddling c**p that is invisible to search engines). OK, there's a little bit of scripting on the 'feedback' page, but that's just down to the reCaptcha technology I'm using to try to foil the spammers.

This point is what many web authors miss - knowing how to use these technologies in such a way they degrade gracefully on older platforms which do not support them. It is about choice - choice on the part of you, the reader of these pages. Your choice of platform, your choice of browser, your choice of settings (screen size, colours, resolution, etc). I hope I have succeeded.