Thank you to everybody for all the messages of condolence, we’ll be sure to pass them on to Lynne, Steve’s wife. Steve and Lynne lived in Scotland outside Paisley near Glasgow although they were Merseysiders, I’m not sure what arrangements are being made for the funeral although I do have the date for my Aunty Gwen’s funeral, it will be at Aberystwyth crematorium on May 27th at 11 AM, the music will be The Blue Danube, Over The Rainbow and Gone By Noon. I won’t be there, I have my vaccination the day before and I don’t want to travel because of that and until I’m fully vaccinated. Plus, I’m still waiting for my Portuguese residency card. Today we went about moving into the future because it careers inexorably toward you whether you acknowledge it or not. You can’t stop it, nor should you want to. Our lives are full of hopes and fears, memories and aspirations, we should embrace them all, life is an extremely large concept, we should take full advantage of it.

So today we set about thinking about the next stage of musical projects. Everything from the MOAT campaign has now been sent out, vinyl, CDs, illustrated lyrics, mystery boxes, postcards, T-shirts. If you haven’t received what you requested by the end of the month let us know so we can investigate. All the interviews are done, the reviews are in, and if you’d like to check out all the reviews, they are all here. Great reviews and reactions to the record but now, we move on. The next record that will be coming out will be the RSD Drops vinyl LP of the first Noctorum album Sparks Lane and that will be available at your local record store on June 12th, should they have happened to order it.

Otherwise this week I’ve spoken to Tony from Arktik Lake, Jed from Space Summit, Jerome Froese, and Brix Smith and all these records are on various runways at various stages of production completion. I’ll be announcing some solid dates very soon.

In the gym today there was a horrible man grunting, flicking his fingers, and being an annoying semi-human. This is the type that people who don’t go to gyms have as their reason for not going to gyms – I get it, generally though unless you go to a macho muscle man gym it’s a whole lot of normal people, the problem is that they don’t hate the music. I’ve talked before about my chain of gothic gyms, my idea is that you could have two-hour spots where there are certain kinds of music – you could have the metal period, the progressive rock period, the folk period, the sixties period, etc, etc and finally, of course, the gothic period for all the people who want to wear black. On that subject (nothing to do with gyms), I went to see The Cure at Madison Square Garden a few years ago – three nights, huge, no one was in black. I guess those pop tunes, lipstick, and teased hair are their image in America but minus the gothic element. Back in the gym, I also thought that instead of stoopid game shows, Judge Rinder, and the news you could have arty films, engaging TV series, and documentaries instead of the dross that usually inhabits the screen. Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee in vampire movies and Edgar Allan Poe films – perfect.

Football today was the crucial Chelsea-Leicester match that Leicester lost 2-1, that is taking the Champions League qualification down to the last game. If Liverpool beat Burnley tomorrow then the final day’s result could determine who qualifies and who doesn’t. Very exciting, if you like that kind of thing.

Music today was Brian Davison’s Every Which Way, the self-titled debut (1970). The band was formed from the ashes of The Nice after Keith Emerson left to join ELP. Davison was the drummer in The Nice. He recruited Skip Bifferty vocalist Graham Bell with bass guitarist Alan Cartwright, guitarist John Hedley, and saxophonist/flautist Geoffrey Peach. They only made one album, a jazzy progressive rock. Davison went on to join Refugee with ex-The Nice bassist Lee Jackson and Swiss keyboard player Patrick Moraz who would later join The Moody Blues and Yes. Alan Cartwright joined Procol Harum and Graham Bell made the Bell & Arc album, a reunion with his former Skip Bifferty bandmates who had since changed their name to Arc. John Hedley was in Last Exit with Sting, the jazz fusion band Sting was in before he formed The Police. Great, if you like this kind of thing.

Brian Davison’s Every Which Way – Every Which Way (Remastered 50th Anniversary Edition)

Music Of The Daze