TO WHERE I AM NOW

Today was a sad day for Olivia’s family as they had to have the family cat put to sleep. Feline (pronounced Feh-lee-neh) had been in the family for 14 years. She was having trouble breathing and it was the only alternative to stop her suffering. When we first met she ran away from me but she eventually warmed to me as she realized that I was more likely to scratch her behind the ear than attack her. It’s so sad when you lose your pet, you become so attached to them. I have been attached to cats in the past, Blackie when I was just a boy, then Lee Chang (Siamese) when I was a teenager, Herman, Sherman and Rocket when I lived in Bondi Beach and then Mio (Burmese) when I lived in Stockholm. Dare’s cat Babs lived over 20 years and when she died Bootsy arrived, but then Bootsy went to meet his maker, too. Dare told me today that he’s going to get another cat and if Olivia and I weren’t travelling all the time we would have all kinds of pets. Having grown up with animals I’ve always loved them, but who can explain people that are cruel towards them? I guess you can prefer dogs or cats or fish, although fish make quiet companions. Of course if you are a bird, a cat is an assassin and in fact Feline killed a blue tit a couple of days ago. You need a lot of commitment to have a pet, walking the dog, feeding them, grooming, picking up their poop, and vet costs! Cat litter, diamond encrusted collars, pets are an expensive business but it’s a labour of love. Farewell Feline – we miss you.

We were in the studio today working on three different projects, all at different stages, we were sending a track to Jerome in Berlin for the Froese/Willson-Piper journey, listening to the Space Summit masters and starting a new record with another of the super sessioneers that I will tell you more about as it evolves. Outside you could see the rain trying to fall, but it was weak, it was struggling, the clouds wouldn’t let it go. About 6.30 we decided to chance it and go down to the sea, but it was cold, I was digging out the winter scarf, jeans and layers, what the hell happened? On the way down through the empty park, the man that feeds the squirrels was there and one of them was bouncing down the path with a nut in its mouth. He waved at us (the man, not the squirrel) and as we came to the gates at the other end of the gardens, crossing into the alleyway between the houses that lead to the sea, there was a strong aroma of creosote. (You probably remember Mr Creosote and his mint from Monty Python.) But what is creosote? This from Wikipedia:

Creosote is a category of carbonaceous chemicals formed by the distillation of various tars and pyrolysis of plant-derived material, such as wood or fossil fuel.

At the sea, the waves were almost non-existent. They barely lapped and by the sea wall it was more like an outdoor pool with no force at all. The water was so clear and in green and purple bands as the underwater undergrowth coloured the surface. There was a boat sitting in the bay slowly drifting and as I zoomed in on it there was someone on a surfboard on his knees pushing the water back on either side of the board. I couldn’t believe how fast he was moving with no waves and no wind, he must have been in a trough of current. He finally gave up with his arms and lay on the board. How or why he was out there on a board quite far from the shore with no waves was anyone’s guess.

There’s an amusement arcade at the seafront in Penzance housed in a building built just after the turn of the last century. At this point they were still ornamenting public buildings and this one has decaying statues of mythical figures, you can see the rusty rods in their arms where the sculpture has fallen away. Their worn out faces once austere are now crumbling to dust as no one has the will or the cash to repair them or protect them. There’s lots of talk of protecting the ownership of property but not its beauty, it’s no one else’s to destroy but yours. Don’t blame the pigeons, you are supposed to be smarter.

Last but not least, before we get to tonight’s album listening, we posted on FB earlier:

Hey All,
Bandcamp are waiving their fees again and this time we have some different things available. There is last year’s Record Store Day release, Hanging Out In Heaven on double blue vinyl with two extra tracks, there is also the Atlantaeum Flood instrumental album on vinyl and CD and the last couple of dozen MOAT albums on vinyl that include a CD with the purchase. We are also doing Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics, see the pics on Bandcamp. There are lots of other CDs including Noctorum’s Sparks Lane, Offer The Light, and The Afterlife on CD and vinyl. There’s various T-shirts and with every T-shirt sold you get a free Afterlife magnet. The waived fees are in operation from midnight to midnight, Friday June 5th – US West Coast time.

https://martywillsonpiper.bandcamp.com/merch

Start Times:
LOS ANGELES – Friday, 12am
NEW YORK – Friday, 3am
UNITED KINGDOM – Friday, 8am
CENTRAL EU – Friday, 9am
PERTH – Friday, 3pm
SYDNEY – Friday, 5pm

Thanks for all your support!
Marty & Olivia

Music today has some bearing on the Amoeba Hollywood closure as the first album I played was Dave Mason’s first solo album after leaving Traffic, Alone Together (1970). I noticed when I was looking at some different copies of the album on different labels, that one of the copies had an Amoeba $1.00 sticker. I’ve bought a lot of records from Amoeba over the years and the dollar bins often had some unfashionable gems and this was one of them. I imagine that an album like this would be more expensive these days as vinyl has become more popular, but when I bought this the bins were full of great albums for little money. The album was also released on marble vinyl which is quite unusual for 1970. It’s a warm breezy record with some nice guitar work and at this point Dave Mason was lauded for writing Feelin’ Alright recorded by Traffic in 1968 and a hit for Joe Cocker in 1969. He also wrote the Psychedelic classic Hole In My Shoe, parodied by Neil from The Young Ones, remember? I hadn’t realized that I liked this album as much as I do, every day in the In Deep Music Archive is a lovely surprise. Another surprise tonight is that coincidentally all four albums are debut solo albums by musicians who were previously in bands.

Picking albums today was based on a feeling for a certain something that I don’t hear a lot in newer records. What is that? Is it warmth, a feeling, a sincerity or maybe just a longing for an era where there seemed to be an underground of music lovers who weren’t hip, they were just music lovers. So with that in mind I picked Ronnie Lane’s debut solo album Anymore For Anymore from 1974. There’s some lovely songs on this mostly forgotten record including an absolute classic in The Poacher as the last track on Side 1. We played it live at one of our shows last time in the US. I sometimes hear a similarity between Ronnie and George Harrison’s voice. Sadly Ronnie died at the age of 51 (he’d suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for years). You can hear some of his greatest work as a member of the Small Faces and the Faces.

Nils Lofgren is another one of those well-known artists that nobody knows. You might recognize him from playing guitar with the E Street Band, but before that he was in a great band called Grin and then in 1975 he released his debut solo album. He’s a pretty great guitar player and singer and has a three-piece band on this album that features Wornell Jones on bass and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. Lofgren also played with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. He appears on After The Goldrush and also on Tonight’s The Night. I highly recommend listening to the Grin records, too, which I will probably pull out to play at some point in the future.

Last album of the night is Rory Gallagher’s debut and this particular copy I bought in Japan when I was there with Anekdoten. It’s not hard to dig Rory’s thing, his vibe, his guitar playing. I saw him live twice in the seventies, once at Reading Festival and once at Liverpool Stadium. When I was pulling out my copy tonight I noticed there was something extra in the sleeve that I hadn’t noticed before. When I pulled it out it was a piece of card from the record label with Rory’s autograph. Yay! If you haven’t discovered Rory yet start here and keep going. Rory Gallagher died in 1995 aged 47 of liver failure.

I just heard that Steve Priest from The Sweet had died. RIP Feline, Rory Gallagher, Ronnie Lane, Steve Priest, and George Floyd.

Song Of The Day is All Those Wires from Hanging Out In Heaven (2000), because some people’s wires don’t seem to be connected.

 

All Those Wires

Life’s a rolling stone
Are you prepared to be alone
To go to battle with your mind
But can your head put up a fight

All those wires coming out of you
Don’t confuse them
Yellow, pink and blue

Gracious, turn you inside out
Chasing all your demons out
Just knowing disconnects their hold
You warm up as they die in the cold

All those wires crossed inside of you
Thoughts don’t tire
Don’t tangle yellow, pink and blue

All those wires coming out of you
Don’t confuse them
Yellow, pink and blue

Hair hanging loose in grief
Come turn over your new leaf
Put your money on your self
Let me suck on all your wealth

Heaven’s upstairs
First door on the right
Don’t stay under
Just make sure your grip is tight

All those wires coming out of you
Don’t confuse them
Yellow, pink and blue

(Willson-Piper)
Hanging Out In Heaven (2000)