As the lockdown bites and we hit the end of the third rainy week with at least another week to go I had this brilliant idea for an adventure – walk to the supermarket by a different route. So we did, walking beyond the Marquês square and to the street parallel to the one we usually walk down. It was another street full of amazing buildings, some in ruin, some ornate with tiled facades and some sitting at odd angles on intriguing corners. It was spitting rain and as we came out of the house, the hookers were in full force, standing optimistic under umbrellas in the late afternoon light, slowly fading. We didn’t make it out of the house at all yesterday and two days inside is too much, so any excuse to go to the supermarket we take just to see something of the sky and feel the ground beneath our feet. We don’t have to need anything, we can just go there for its own sake to admire the cauliflowers or buy six bottles of sparkling water and keep on putting them in the pantry till you can no longer get in the door. It’s neat having a pantry, the fridge is in there as is the freezer and shelves for dry food, extra tea and cereal. Every time I go in there I see my dwindling stock of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea and wonder how I will find it here when it runs out and will I have reason to live without it?

On a positive note, we got a message today that the MOAT album covers have cleared customs. We didn’t get them today but they must now be imminent on our doorstep. We can get on with signing them and sending them back to Schoolkids Records in North Carolina quick sharp so they can get them out to you. Also, remember that today is Bandcamp fees waiving day so you can score a T-shirt, the first MOAT record, personal online concert or other things till midnight PST without them taking a percentage – very nice of them I think, helping out musicians this way.

Other news is that we have two reviews already for the new album, one in the super cool Shindig! magazine (print only) and the other on The Afterword website (you can read the review here) that is actually the continuation of the now non-print version of Word Magazine which I always used to buy. If you remember it, it always had these lovely designs for the free CD. Anyway, both are positive and this is what you hope for. There will always be someone out there that doesn’t like what you do, but that’s life, you can’t please everybody and so far the feedback on the singles and these two reviews have been really positive. I’ve read terrible reviews for fantastic records over the years. I think it’s about listening in the spirit of the project like listening to records in the spirit of the times whether they be old or new. A record doesn’t have to be timeless to be great. Also, a Go-Betweens fan doesn’t really need a Judas Priest album arriving on his or her desk.

I was wondering how much the video helps for the single. It was really nice to be able to release a video with Helpless You and we thank Seg in Morocco for putting it together as well as Olivia for finding all the cool images. In reality, we should try and find the budget for a video for every song we put out. The visual element seems to help a lot in this world of distractions and the need for visual stimulation. It’s another area where creativity sprouts but who has the time to explore that planet. I love watching films, I don’t do enough of it, the history of cinema is a goldmine of inspiration. I once collected all the names of all the Oscar-nominated foreign films from the fifties to the present. Winners are remembered but not the brilliant film that came second. Somehow I’ve lost the list and need to find those titles again. And in reality who remembers the Best Foreign Film of 1962? It was Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s brilliant Through A Glass Darkly the other nominees were Denmark’s Harry And The Butler, Japan’s Immortal Love, Mexico’s The Important Man, and Spain’s Plácido, I now have a great desire to see all these films. And by the way, the Best Original Song was awarded to Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini for Moon River from Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Although Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) was the name of The Rolling Stones collection from 1969, music today went somewhere else completely as I listened to the early seventies forgotten mellow proggers, Cressida. They made two albums, self-titled (1970) and Asylum (1971), both released on Vertigo and sought-after collectors’ albums these days. Lots of organ and instrumental parts with melodic vocals. Drummer Iain Clark briefly joined Uriah Heep when they broke up. Great stuff – if you like that kind of thing.

Song Of The Daze