Sleep! What a weird thing it is, how easily we accept it, how much we enjoy it, but really it’s the ultimate lockdown. If the aliens came down and learned about our civilization, they might be very surprised to hear (if they have ears) that we spend a third of our lives unconscious.

That means that in my case I’ve been asleep for over 20 years. Actually, in my case it’s longer because I have always been a big sleeper. Friends used to come around to my house on Saturday afternoons and bang loudly on my bedroom window. They knew I was in there, but I just didn’t wake up. Anyone that knows me knows that throughout my life I have been a serious migraine sufferer. When I was a kid I had a specialist who told my parents that he’d never seen it so bad. My symptoms were distorted vision, followed by slurred speech or aphasia, a blinding headache, vomiting, high sensitivity to light, noise and touch. A door handle squeak, a blade of light through the curtains, the sheet on my skin was unbearable. Other times there would be numbness in my fingers, arms or face and sometimes my arms just locked. This went on for many years from childhood through school into playing music.

There’s been a lot of talk about the cause of migraine and there’s been a lot of misunderstanding from those that don’t get it. It’s way more than a headache, it’s way more than a really, really bad headache. It’s incapacitating, it’s terrible pain and with the vomiting it’s dehydrating, making the headache worse and it’s generally exhausting. I could be sick for a week. Keeping food down is initially impossible, even keeping water down didn’t work. Causes have been attributed to red wine, cocoa, bananas, MSG, orange juice, chemicals in food, bright light in the eyes, strobes, stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, too much sleep, tight muscles in the neck, changes in air pressure.

At the age of twelve I was prescribed to two different tablets before I went to bed. The first was a little blue pill called Dixarit which contains clonidine. Clonidine is often used for sleep disorders in children and is used to treat ADD (attention deficit disorder). It’s also supposed to work on widening the blood vessels to create a better blood flow. Side effects include dry mouth, headache, nausea and fatigue. I had to take two of these every night, when I wasn’t sick. I also had to take a Valium – at twelve. No wonder I had problems waking up. To add insult to injury as I was unable to easily wake up my father would call me for school and when I didn’t get out of bed he would throw a glass of water in my face.

This went on for many years. I don’t remember when I stopped with the tablets, but I would get the attacks sporadically. When I left England for Australia in my early twenties I found myself in a country where it seemed like everyone I met smoked grass. I joined in and religiously smoked marijuana for at least ten years. In that time I never got a migraine, when I stopped they came back. And I can assure you my abilities to function were far better stoned than they ever were living with the fear of when the next migraine was coming.

These days I’m a drug, alcohol, cigarette, meat and fish free zone. I find all those things to be unnecessary, the only thing I would possibly do would be smoke some grass, not that I have more than once or twice for years, but it’s not out of the question. Cigarette and alcohol damage versus marijuana damage in the world – please, gimme a break!

Later on in life, working through the migraine problem, I tried acupuncture and it felt good, I thought it helped as did yoga, swimming and a generally healthy lifestyle. In the event of an attack I began using a drug called Sumatripan that you could take in a nasal spray or tablet form. The idea was that it widened the blood vessels and worked as a sedative. So for years I never went anywhere without this plastic one shot disposable nasal shot. I carried tablets as well. This worked as well as working after the event could. I could usually sleep it off, but the strength of the attack varied. As the years went by it seemed the attacks would be regular, but less nasty. One time I forgot my nasal spray and didn’t have any tablets. I lost my vision and got a dull headache, but it didn’t develop any more than that, apart from feeling a bit weak and hazy. So next time it happened I didn’t take the drugs and nowadays I just try to ride it out. It usually starts with the distorted vision, only able to see half of things. That goes away in about half an hour. It starts in one eye like diamonds growing and then makes it’s way across from one side of my eye to the other and then dissipates. It’s followed by that uncomfortable dull headache and feeling like crap for the rest of the day. A can of coke, sunglasses and Pink Floyd quietly in the background usually helps.

Luckily it only happened once on stage with the ex band when I had to immediately stop and the band had to carry on without me. But strobes were a problem, we used them rarely and when we did have them I had to close my eyes tight. I could never go and see a band that used strobes. I remember once walking off stage at the Town And Country Club in London, second night with All About Eve as a migraine hit. The last time it happened was on Olivia and my last tour in Germany where I continued to play and sing although I couldn’t see properly. I’m sure I gave some kind of intense performance. This was a real result, years ago I would never have been able to do that. In fact on a couple of occasions I tried to ignore it, to work through it with varying results. Sometimes I felt really bad but managed and other times I got a particularly serious attack.

I suppose that anyone with any kind of affliction or disability just has to find a way to live with it and that’s what I have done. Happily it’s all calmed down now and is nowhere near the problem it was, but as I approach my 62nd birthday on Thursday (hint) this affliction has been replaced by others such as bad knees whether standing up, sitting down or trying to rest on them, failing eyesight, probable hearing damage and hearing loss and aches and pains galore. Ha ha, those aliens told me recently that being human seems tricky.

So I am determined to be positive and happy, nothing else is acceptable. Staying busy, making music, being generally creative, try and help others out with their creative issues through the sessions and keep on spreading the word about music (books and films too if I ever get the time). Friends, family, wherever you are, I love you.

Music today has gone determinedly early eighties starting with the great and mostly forgotten Comsat Angels from Sheffield and their second album, Sleep No More (1981). It was the only album to (almost) crack the top 50 in the UK (No. 51), the following two albums, Fiction and Land, hit the nineties. But that was it. They reached No. 44 with this album in New Zealand. Such a great band and hearing them back in the same breath as these other early eighties bands it’s hard to determine what went wrong commercially – I guess they were too serious, too good, wrong hair maybe.

Talking of great hair I went for Crocodiles by Liverpool heroes, Echo & the Bunnymen, and I have to say it’s a wonderful album, the songs, the words, the mood, McCulloch’s voice and the band with Will Sergeant on guitar and that fantastic rhythm section of Les Pattinson on bass and Pete de Freitas on drums. How sad that we lost him. The Bunnymen were of course the most successful of this quartet of bands with lots of well deserved acclaim.

We toured America with Wolverhampton’s Mighty Lemon Drops. I played their debut Happy Head (1986) tonight. I’m distant mates with Dave Newton, the guitarist. Very much a Bunnymen sound, but Dave played these weird Italian guitars that gave him his own sound. They managed an album in the UK Top 40, their second album World Without End reaching No. 34, the debut No. 58.

Following this I had to play The Sound from London. One of the great underrated bands of the eighties. It’s the saddest story of all as singer Adrian Borland left us prematurely. We covered I Can’t Escape Myself from their first album Jeopardy (1980) on last year’s Afterdeath EP by Noctorum and that will be today’s Song Of The Day. It’s time for bed, a busy week ahead unwrapping all of those presents.

The song isn’t available on YouTube, but you can listen to it on Bandcamp here:

I CAN’T ESCAPE MYSELF

 So many feelings
Pent up in here
Left all alone, I’m with
The one I most fear
I’m sick and I’m tired
Of reasoning
Just want to break out
Shake off this skin

I, I can’t
Escape myself

All my problems
Loom larger than life
I can’t swallow
Another slice
Seems like my shadow
Mocks every stride
Can I learn to live with
What’s trapped inside?

I, I can’t
Escape myself

So many feelings
Pent up in here
Left all alone, I’m with
The one I most fear
I’m sick and I’m tired
Of reasoning
Just wanna break out
Shake off this skin

I, I can’t
Escape myself
I, I can’t
Escape myself
I, I, I can’t
Escape myself

(Adrian Borland)
Jeopardy (1980)