So after yesterday, I slept for 13 hours and then spent the rest of today getting over the long sleep. It’s incredible how tired sleeping makes you. My head was hazy, headache from sleeping, dry throat, so thirsty and when I did finally get up it was 4 PM. I missed the Liverpool game that they won 7-0 against Crystal Palace away, what an unfortunate game to miss. I suppose that’s why once you’ve got your lottery numbers, you have to do it every week, just in case those numbers come up, you have to go with the disappointments or the misses and patiently wait for the success or the jackpot. You have to remember that nothing is impossible even if it’s unlikely such as Liverpool being 3-0 down to Barcelona and winning 4-3 in the next match. Or losing 3-0 in the first half to AC Milan in the Champions League final and scoring 3 goals in 10 minutes in the second half and going on to win on penalties. Or playing the guitar like millions of others do but somehow being one of the lucky ones who got to make records.

I almost thought that it was enough when I made my first demo in a proper studio in London in the late seventies. It was the True 100’s, named after a cigarette in an American magazine. Our mate Biggles who we knew from Ealing where he hung out had us go into the studio in Elephant And Castle where we recorded I’m Not Your Doctor, Judy Ludo, and Cliches. Dare and I wrote the first track, me the second and Dare the third. It was just a demo but it was a first step to greater things. I think we had Justin Webster on drums and was it, Del, on bass, hm, hazy after all these years. Anyway, nothing happened and then the opportunity came up to go to Sydney with my girlfriend at the time, Lucy.

In Sydney, I joined the ex-band soon after arriving there, did home-recorded demos, and got signed (this is the very short version of course). I remember the day I got that first 7-inch single on Parlophone. She Never Said and In A Heartbeat, that was it for me, all ambitions were satisfied, I’d made a record, I had no idea that this was the beginning of making records forever. I’d come from Liverpool and had a single out in Australia on Parlophone, The Beatles’ label. Although I do remember there being some disappointment because it was the orange label and not the black label, they finally agreed to let us use the black label although I think the first pressings of the second single The Unguarded Moment were still on orange.

Then it was albums. But if you want to read about my experiences of recording those albums up to Priest=Aura then go to my website and click on the sleeve notes page and you’ll find about 40,000 words that I wrote for CD reissues. I don’t have much more to say about all this here, right now, this is just me writing things that have come into my head on a day where I didn’t do much between the snooker, Everton vs Arsenal (Everton won and are now second) and contemplating this, the last day and night in the apartment in Ribeira by the River Douro before we move into the flat in the centre of town at 3.30 PM tomorrow.

It’s going to be a busy day as I have a sesh with Arctic Lake’s Tony at 11 AM. He is up in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney where they have just had a big Covid outbreak and they are returning to a lockdown after reporting no cases for weeks. Then it’s moving, then it’s Space Summit Jed in Minneapolis at 5 or 6 PM and then Doug in Wappingers Falls at 9.30 PM. Somewhere in there, I have to make sure I don’t lose my spot in the French Duolingo Diamond League as I approach 200 straight days of learning. Then it’s Christmas week with six sessions in the first two days and then the wedding anniversary. I should be happy to be kept busy, happy to have never been bored in my life, and might have been resistant to Punk Rock, not for the energy, the simplicity, the fashion, the great songs but for the message of boredom. How if you live on Planet Earth could you be bored?

Music today comes from David Crosby and his classic album If I Could Only Remember My Name released in 1971. It’s come up twice, once with MRB in the northeast of the USA and once by CM in the southeast of the USA and I felt the urge to listen to it all the way through as should you, another essential classic.

Music Of The Daze