So it’s official, I was scammed. It seems obvious now but it wasn’t at the time. Despite this, I feel pretty stoopid for trusting these scammers and believing their story. And the irony is that the nasty Scottish man at the bank helpline was legit and the friendly man from the Indian continent was a fraudster. Did I learn something? Well, hopefully not to mistrust people, not to presume people are liars, and not let one bad experience have me lose faith in humanity. It’s that terrible thing about projection, some people mistrust you because they know they can’t be trusted. Then there’s the jumping to conclusions thing, based on personal experiences. That’s not how it should work. People are different, that’s why racists are so dumb.

So after spending hours on the phone to O2 and the Royal Bank Of Scotland, we finally got to the station to buy our train tickets to London on Wednesday – £112 and it was only that price because we renewed our ‘couples discount card’. What happened with the price of postage, train tickets, and plumbers? I can never quite make out the relative price of things, like I said the other day, a pint of Guinness versus a secondhand album but even secondhand albums have become pricey. CDs are so cheap now, they have become hard to sell, great for me and filling gaps in the archive. Perhaps I should put my Songwriting & Guitar Guidance prices up? But I am actually trying to help people, I don’t want them to struggle to pay. Having said that when we get beyond the sessions into actually making a record the amount of hours we put in adds up. But the results…after working on 4 sessioneer projects in the studio, Jed (Space Summit), Ahad, Tony (Arctic Lake), and Craig, I feel like the vision I had of taking projects to a higher level has worked, long may it continue.

We took the camera with us down to the station to take a pic but the light was failing and we couldn’t find an appropriate location. We walked past the harbour up to the archive and studio. The moon was fuzzy in the clouds but it was still pushing out enough luminosity to send a shaft of white light across the width of the harbour, there were three beams colouring the surface, another orange light from lights on the harbour wall and a red light that lit up the black water. As we walked by the waterside a mother and her daughter were drying themselves off in the back of their car – they’d actually been in the water! I asked, “Wasn’t it freezing?”. The mum replied, “Only at first and getting out was the worst”. I told them they were brave and we walked on. We crossed the road and headed into town and there in the small inlet were two people, a man and a woman climbing into the water, they were so cheerful despite what they were about to do, I suppose you’d have to be.

It was my granddaughter’s second birthday today, for me that would have been 1960. Oh, how the world has changed in 60 years. What can she expect in the coming years, childhood, the teenage years, and early adulthood, and then her own inexorable race towards the future? We bought her a prezzie that we saw online that we could pick up from a local shop that was closed, but they would come to the door and give you the item if you paid online. But was this another scam? I bought it thinking it was five times bigger than it was. When I got it, it said on the box that it was for three years and over – it didn’t say that in the advert. Here it is again, the world we live in – Gimme Some Truth.

Last but not least we did two performances tonight, one for the Indiegogo MOAT Poison Stream campaign and another for the Betsey Trotwood venue in London who are doing a fundraiser. It’s a great place and it needs to stay open. There will be some kind of notification about it at some point and we’ll let you know where you can see it. That’s it for today but we are working on the Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics and yes I still managed French. We have 7 days left for the campaign and 5 days left before we leave for Portugal. Life is never boring.

 

Music today comes from Scottish pre-Alex Harvey band Tear Gas after Nicklas from Anekdoten sent me a message today talking about Alex Harvey. They made two albums, Piggy Go Getter (1971) and self-titled (1971). Guitarist Zal Cleminson and bassist Chris Glen were on the first album and were later joined by Ted McKenna on drums and Hugh McKenna on keyboards. When Tear Gas fell apart, these four met up with Alex Harvey and formed The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. I saw them twice in Liverpool in the seventies.

Tear Gas were one of those Progressive Hard Rock bands with Davey Batchelor on vocals who later went into production. Pre Hugh McKenna, the keyboard player was Eddie Campbell and pre Ted McKenna (cousins by the way), the drummer was Wullie Munroe. Zal was a great guitar player and you can hear that on these two early albums in his career (after Alex died he joined Nazareth, keeping it Scottish). His real name was Alistair and he was allegedly called Zal after he worked in the Izal toilet roll factory.

Song Of The Daze