In 1998, Dr Keith Halden, winner of two ‘Sony Radio Awards’ created for BBC 2 TV Scotland, a powerful visual montage based on the words of the song ‘Planet for $ale’. Over the next seven years ‘Planet for $ale’ became a full length album and a project.

The song is a series of questions, “Planet for $ale in need of renovation, who’ll give us two pence for a dead old globe” and “Why are the rich so bloody greedy, Why are governments so corrupt right to the core?”, and answers, “It needs a change of thinking, if we’re to go on living, bringing up our children on this planet green and blue, yes it needs a change of living, to keep the garden beautiful, we’re only the caretakers, and we’re only passing through”.

This album and project are independent of the music ‘biz’ and so of course any help with publicising them in any way is very welcome.
Nigel Mazlyn Jones ploughs an independent musical route. As a young man he worked with the great apes at Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust which was the vision of Gerald Durrell, the prescient and outspoken wildlife campaigner, ecologist and novelist. Durrell and John Muir ‘the first ecologist’ have something to say in the album sleeve notes. Those early days in Jersey influenced Maz all the way through his life and musical career. This new album reflects that journey.

“I compare the way animals behave with the way we humans behave both in relationship to this life-nurturing planet and to each other and draw my conclusions from there. I worked part-time for many years at Dudley Zoo and observed the behaviour of the people watching the animals in the zoo. Later I worked at the Jersey Trust where Durrell’s ethics impressed me and I learned to hate enclosures physical and mental. I realised that it’s humans not animals who have most to learn about how to live on this planet. I have been drawn to this subject many times and never more so than now when there is incontrovertible proof of human impact on our life support system. Part of the proceeds of this album will go to charities helping to solve environmental problems.
‘Planet for $ale’ was written unaccompanied with variations on the theme developed later in the studio. The BBC TV programme was a project that thrilled and challenged me and over the next seven years it became a full length album. Artist friends from other music genres heard sections of the developing album and got involved creating re-mixes drawn from the vast array of my recordings and original samples.
It took a lot of commitment to get to the finished results with many giving their time freely and without them this album and web site would not exist so I want to make that energy input work for others. The result is the new Planet for $ale album and the fund. I make no apologies for the aim of the lyric. Let’s have the truth on the table and really see what’s going down on this planet we all share. As John Lennon once said ‘all I want is the truth, just give me some truth!’ As spin was invented by bowlers we have to learn to bat better.”

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