“Hello, hooray, let the show begin, I’m ready”. Thanks, Alice, today we enter that wonderland, that great moment, the day when you release your latest album. MOAT’s Poison Stream was released today, Friday, February 12th, despite delays at the pressing plant, the customs, the snowstorms, Brexit, lockdowns, and the continuing pandemic. We will endeavour to get the vinyl/CD you ordered to you as quickly as possible and today despite the impossible shops being closed, Olivia managed to step off the train at Lapa and found tubes so we can now finish and send the remaining Illustrated Lyrics. We are waiting for flat mailers to come from Germany so we can send the flat box version of the Mystery Boxes as most had ordered prints too. Getting actual boxes is proving difficult at this point but I’m sure that mysteries stay mysterious whatever their shape. I will also send the remaining postcards and between us here and Schoolkids Records we will gratefully honour your pre-orders, and your support and hope that you enjoy this record that comes eight years after the debut. Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

On Saturday, February 20th, there will be a Listening Party at discord.com where the album will be streamed, and afterwards, there will be a Q&A with me, Niko, Dare, Ed, and Olivia. It’s apparently a cool thing, the streaming site gives you quality sound, we get to listen to the record all the way through, like the good old days, and at the end, you can ask some appropriate questions about it. How the world of promoting your music has changed but it’s not just that, I would very much appreciate everyone who likes it buys the vinyl or the CD but from today the album is available for streaming on Spotify. If you would like to know how I use Spotify, I listen to a record I don’t know and if I like it I buy it, presuming I have food, rent, and tea secured.

The reviews have been coming in and lots of positive words have been written which is really nice to hear. Shindig (print), Backstreet Mafia, Jammerzine, The Big Takeover, El Santo Del Rock, The Afterword, have all had nice things to say. I’m afraid we’re not hip or well known enough to get a good review in Mojo, Uncut or Pitchfork which seem to be the leading review journals these days. But that’s cool, we are only really interested in the people who like what we do, we’re not here to convince everybody, it’s just about the exposure in these places and giving people the chance to know we exist, listen and maybe like it. Really though, there are simply too many people doing it but you can’t blame them for wanting to make music. Having said that, I suppose different people do it for different reasons – for some people, it’s about entertainment as well as the writing and recording of the songs, there’s the recorded performance and the live performance. I get it, I used to like playing live too in those glorious days before the virus. I suppose some people do it to get famous and others to prove their parents wrong. Then there’s sex, attention, winning, comfort, and last but not least having a meaningful life. You don’t need to be a musician to do that but some people feel the need to be creative. Jeff Beck likes to collect cars, I like the idea of building the In Deep Music Archive into a culture centre for posterity, I don’t mind playing the guitar either.

I had seshes today with Fred in Minneapolis and Noel in Surrey, England, yesterday was Brian in New Jersey and Orlando in Cornwall, England but I couldn’t mention them yesterday as I was writing some kind of horror story off the top of my decapitated head. I’m working on the theory that my brain is the boss and if I get inspired to write some kind of fictional story, then that’s probably the right thing to do. Perhaps a book of short stories in the future, perhaps a book of sleeve notes, perhaps a book of The Virus Diaries or something, it’s all about time, focus, desire, inspiration, and the one thing about being made to stay home, there’s more time to write.

Music today comes due to the sad loss of Chick Corea on Tuesday. The virtuoso Jazz-Rock keyboard player who played with anyone who mattered from Miles Davis to Return To Forever and a whole lot of fascinating mad Jazz and Fusion collaborations in between. I first became aware of him with the Return To Forever album Romantic Warrior (1976) that featured Stanley Clarke on bass, Lenny White on drums, and Al Di Meola on guitar. If you collect all Chick Corea’s records there would be more music there than most people’s whole record collections. Incredible music – if you like this kind of thing. RIP Chick Corea who has died at the age of 79.

Music Of The Daze