Hej alle and warm global festive greetings to all you Ryanthians from the beautiful frozen city of Copenhagen!

As you will be aware, the Copenhagen Conference is currently in full swing and I am here to, yet again, represent Coathanger and Glen Iris in the anti-climatic struggle against the world's weather. You may recall that Coathanger has, for some time, been at the forefront of this movement; leading to Glen Iris signing (admittedly, in response to an insurance problem we were having) the Kyoto Protocol before either Australia or the U.S.
(See Nov 2007 newsletter)

Shortly after Kyoto, whilst on vacation, I also attended a couple of cocktail parties at the Bali Summit.

Since my arrival in Denmark, I have been in direct negotiations with most of the world's major polluters in an effort to add to the eventual international agreement, a scheme whereby carbon emissions could be exchanged for Ross Ryan albums.

To support this proposal, Coathanger has just released the Danish "carbon" edition of Ross's 'Difficult Third Compilation', featuring the recently recorded new single, 'Greenland'. The album will also, for the duration of the conference, be bundled with 'Stuffed' - a bonus "global themed" CD of Ryan rarities.

Original cassette cover
(Illustration: Chris Kelly)

'Trust Me' album info (pdf)

In 1988, Ross recorded a series of solo gigs at the Troubadour in Melbourne. Shortly afterwards, a limited release live cassette album emerged entitled 'You Can Trust Me (I'm a Musician)' - essentially a collection of Ross's live comedy material with a few of the songs using, on stage, (now) ancient synths, Atari and Commodore computers and even a dot matrix printer. Ah - ever the pioneer!

Over the years, we've had many enquiries as to whether we were planning to re-release the album on CD. After much soul searching, and especially after the tape masters were kindly restored by the album's original engineer, Roger Campbell - we've decided to make it available to our loyal mailing list folks as a FREE download.

Eventually we'll try to make the process a tad more elegant and universal, but to get it out before Christmas, we're using the site, YouSendIt.

So here's the deal.

The first 100 of you have until Dec 25 2009 to grab your copy of 'Trust Me' as a 66 MB zip file. If you have any problems, let us know. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!!!

** UPDATE ** Within hours, and much to our surprise, the 100 limit was reached and our inbox overflowing with Christmas disappointment. The file has been again posted to this link.
** UPDATE 2 ** This Christmas offer has now expired. Thanks for the feedback!

For the final leg of Spring Tour 2009, Ross was joined, in Western Australia, by Glen Combo sideman and pal Ken Stephenson.

First they played Friends Restaurant in Perth - one of Ross's favorite gigs - and then headed down to Albany for a slightly surreal, though nostalgic, revisiting of Ross's youth.

However, the biggest surprise was the final gig of the tour - the gala Harvey Dickson Country Music Festival in Boyup Brook where Ross performed with headliner James Blundell. A totally charming festival at a venue that is a secret national treasure.

For the full story of the WA tour, check out Ross's
heavily annotated travel snaps:

 RR's WA Tour Pix 2009

 

See also:  RR's Papua New Guinea Tour Pix 2009

Ross in Boyup Brook

MATT ZARB

Australian country artist Matt Zarb has recorded and just released as a single, Ross's signature tune 'I Am Pegasus'.

But this isn't his first crack at the song.

Long one of his favorite live covers, Matt featured 'Pegasus' on his recent album, 'Rose Matilda'. The guy even has several videos of the track on YouTube.

The new single is however, an entirely new version - recorded in Tamworth by producer and long time Ryan friend, Steve Newton. Steve produced and recorded, many years ago, 'Both Kinds Of Music' - a sadly never released country album by Ross and the very talented Paul Wookey. That reminds me - we should do something about that album ...

Anyway, Matt has kindly made the track available, for your listening pleasure.

Web site: www.mattzarb.com

Coathanger and Ross obviously wish Matt much success!!!

'1PQ' now on iTunes

For all you fans of digital music downloads, Coathanger is pleased to announce that Ross's 'One Person Queue' album is now available through iTunes. Our thanks to Alan Griffith and Alecia Dunham for making this possible.

iTunes - Ross Ryan / One Person Queue

'Stuff' cover notes online

It's only taken him a year, but Ross has finally finished the cover notes to 'Stuff' - the bonus CD of Ryan rarities that comes, exclusively through Coathanger Merchandising, with all purchases of 'The Difficult Third Compilation' . Ross apologies for the delay.

         'Stuff' notes online       'Stuff' notes pdf

By the way. Due to popular demand, we've also done a pdf version of the 'D3C' cover notes.

         'D3C' notes pdf

Hosre competition winner belatedly announced

Speaking of things that are running behind schedule; it gives us great pleasure to announce that we have a winner of our Hosre Competition. You remember! When was it? 18 months ago? Maybe longer? Here's a link to refresh your memories: How many mistakes can you find?

And our official grand prize winner is Ms Lesley Daniels of Perth Western Australia. We asked for nitpicking and boy did she nit and pick. Our congratulations Lesley!

In our next newsletter we will reveal the full list of mistakes that were found by all our contestants, the prizes won and Aztec's reaction. Thanks to all participants!