Thanks to everybody who took us over the 50% threshold for the new MOAT album Poison Stream and I hope you got your early posting of the new song The Roadmap To My Soul. We will be releasing it to all planets on December 1st which will be a few days before the campaign ends. We’ve been working on Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics, sending out postcards and we are getting low on the first MOAT album which you might want to hear before the second one. When it sells out there’s no plan to repress it till the third moon of Jupiter rises from the dust. We’ve been sending out Mystery Boxes, Agatha Christie was very happy. We also have prints (that’s prints, not Prince). We are planning on having T-shirts soon and for the adventurous in you and when all the pandemic finally ends Olivia and I will be available for house concerts. Last but not least we will be sending out vinyl and CD copies of Poison Stream when they have been manufactured and that will be before the street date. Thanks for all the contributions and support for this project.

The Campaign

Nearly every day I wander into the greengrocers and marvel at what grows in the earth. Today it was Brussels sprouts day. They are so tasty, almost alien and when I discovered how they grew I knew immediately that they must have originated on another planet. But then again, as if strawberries are from this galaxy. A clue to this is what they are called in Swedish. Wait for it – jordgubbar. Literally translated – earthmen! Says it all.

Three seshes today, a preliminary with Chris 2 in countryside Victoria, Chris 1 in New Jersey and Jeff in Ohio. Lots of music talk today from Steve Hillage and Mike Oldfield to Pale Saints and The Pixies. Earlier in the day, I watched an interview with Annie Lennox:

It was then I realised that she is 65 years old and just how quickly time flies by. I saw her (and Dave) perform live in London in the late seventies with The Tourists. I loved their song The Loneliest Man In The World. In contrast to Dave and Annie, sadly main songwriter, co-singer and guitarist Peet Coombes (who is playing an electric 12 string in this clip) died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1997 at the age of 45.

Staying with the passing of musicians, it seems that so many musicians are dying these days, we’ve reached the age where we fall off our perch! It’s always strange when it’s the birthday of someone that died. Well today Glen Buxton, Alice Cooper’s guitarist who was born today in 1947 should have been 73. He died of pneumonia on the 19th October in 1997, he was just 49 years old. I was just writing about the album Billion Dollar Babies the other day. On the 10th November 1948, Greg Lake was born, I saw ELP live at the Liverpool Empire in the seventies on the Brain Salad Surgery tour. He died of cancer in 2016, he was 69. We have their music and that will last forever somewhere.

Today a box arrived with Record Store Day releases that my friend Magdalena Dos Santos queued up for on the three different days in The Buzzard at the dark circle. Exit North’s debut, Mellow Candle’s Swaddling Songs, Groundhogs’ Split, Tull at The Isle Of Wight, Rory Gallagher acoustic and Stevie Popstar Wilson’s Eminent Sleaze 12 inch. I managed to get Steven Wilson’s Roxy Music first album remix off the internet. Thanks to everybody that picked up a copy of Nightjar at this year’s Record Store Day. There are some copies left at Schoolkids Records if you missed out. There’s also a few copies of Hanging Out In Heaven which will disappear quickly as soon as we get back on the road. Spirit Level has sold out. Now there’s the next Record Store Day to think about.

Music today comes from PJ Harvey and her soundtrack to the play All About Eve directed by Ivo van Hove starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James. The original from 1950 was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz from a short story by Mary Orr, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter (and a small role for Marilyn Monroe). It won six Academy Awards. Here’s a review of the play with no mention of the music.

I suppose that in theatre the music is incidental and this is certainly that despite having Gillian Anderson sing one song (The Sandman) and Lily James another (The Moth), both included at the end of the album as PJ Harvey’s demos. The album is a keyboard affair, pianos and mellotrons, moody and like, well, soundtrack music, sometimes evoking Harold Budd. I’m not sure it’s Harvey’s forte and her reputation surely got her the gig but she does a fine job of supplying a soundtrack as a change of pace from her own work. And that’s partly what this is all about, her branching out again as she has done on her later records, exploring different styles and instrumentation. It’s a long way from Sheela-Na-Gig and why not?

Song Of The Daze