Guide to discography entries
The entries start with: "Album name" is an album by "Artist Name". The lede further contains data on the year of the release, the key musicians, and a subjective description of the music. The lede is followed by a track listing.
Track listing
The track listing contains the artist and album name. The heading of the table also contains a few shortcuts. (D brings the reader back to the main discography page. S) brings the user the solo album discography. ([youtube.com YT]) brings the user directly to the relevant YouTube page. Note that the YouTube links are not complete, and subject to changes beyond the control of this website. The track listing then lists the relevant tracks by index number, title, composer and length. A column for comments is sometimes also used.
| Track title | Composer | Length | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Track 1 | Composer | 0:00 | Guitar solo 1.00-1.30 |
The track listing is sometimes followed by a listing of the musicians. This information can in most cases easily be found on Discogs, so I have not done this for a lot of albums.
Summary of quotes on album
I have collected Allan's quotes on each album where available. These quotes are mainly taken from the interviews published in full on Press coverage. Sometimes I've also added a few quotes by others that are relevant. To make the content more easily accessible, I have used AI to write summaries of the quotes. This was done using ChatGPT 3.5 in October of 2023. Usually, I prompted the chatbot something like "Summarize in 50 words:" followed by the source material. This worked surprisingly well. Sometimes the prose comes off in a "typical AI" style (whatever that is), but the summaries are factually correct summaries of the source material, which was the main objective.
Quotes on album
The quotes are given with a reference to the source, such as in the following example, which is a quote related to the album "Velvet Darkness". Take note that as articles are added to the site, not all quotes on albums are collected. It's a good idea to use the search function too if you have a special interest in something.
Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)
"It’s just a jam. The sound is disgusting. I mean, I’m really particular about my guitar sound, especially over the last two or three years, cuz I reckon I’ve now got that part of it together. We got into the studio, and we never had what you might call a balance check. None of that happened, man. They set the mikes up, and they had two mikes for a double drum kit. Really crazy. We’d play the tunes once, and that was it. Finished. Next tune. We’d just let one tune run down even if it didn’t have an ending. And that’s literally how that album was made."
Links
The quotes are followed by a links section. This contains raw links to a few selected items. I tried to include the link to the YT (or other) playlist, as well as a Discogs entry for each album. I also tried to include links to Ed's wonderful "Thread Of Lunacy" blog, which gives comprehensive overviews of most of Allan's albums, often using the same source material as this site. The links will look something like this:
AH Archives: https://www.facebook.com/AllanHoldsworthArchives/posts/199075173599717
Ed's blog: http://threadoflunacy.blogspot.no/2017/06/6-velvet-darkness-and-million-dollar.html
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/Allan-Holdsworth-Velvet-Darkness/release/3875484
YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k2yntMRbGkZ6mbruDmNBPWNZnYXhr-Das
