A nice surprise yesterday with the announcement that my friend Edward Rogers has released his latest album, Catch A Cloud (his eighth). It’s sometimes psychedelic, sometimes observational slices of life, sometimes sixties, and sometimes narratives with lofty visions and labyrinthine quests and conclusions. I play on two tracks, Too Far From The Candle and Last Of The Summer Wine. I recorded my parts in a studio in New York in 2018. You can listen and see the Imaginary Man video here and if you’d like to listen to the album you can do so on Bandcamp and the various streaming services. In other music news, another gig has been added for Anekdoten, July 9th in Borlänge, west of Stockholm in a region called Dalarna where the band grew up (except me of course). If you’ve ever seen the traditional Swedish wooden horse, well this is where it comes from, the famous Dalahäst.

Back here in Porto, the world seems a long way away, and playing with Ed in New York or Anekdoten in Sweden seems like a fantasy. It also seems that borders are remaining closed and travel is still not happening with even Sydney locking down. Winter in the northern hemisphere is only weeks away and I wonder where we will be in October as it’s going to be getting colder. There are no tourists here in tourist land and although we haven’t experienced Portugal in proper tourist season you still feel like you’re in a holiday resort in winter. For example, we went to the bakery today and arrived as they were closing, they just can’t justify staying open at the weekends with no tourists to cater for.

The vaccination age here now is down to 35 plus. Where will it end? When will it end? Will it ever end?

Olivia went off to the music shop today to find a power pack for her little amplifier. Her dad sent her her effects pedals so she can now make strange sounds with her violin. Perhaps she can anonymously accompany the Hindu chanters across the road, haha. I imagine them looking up, looking all around them and wondering where those psychedelic sounds were coming from and thinking, finally, an answer!

Big sesh day tomorrow and so relaxation day today with the football, Wales got hammered 4-0 by Denmark and Italy nearly lost to Austria, Italy coming through with a 2-1 win in extra time. Portugal – Belgium tomorrow and the Netherlands – Czech Republic. For football fans, I have come up with some new rules, seriously. The first is that the ball is only out of play when it touches the ground and not when it swings beyond the lines. That’s the serious one. Here’s one, I can’t understand why it’s not always a foul when you pull on someone’s shirt, so I’ve hired a futuristic garment manufacturing company to make football shirts that are comfortable to wear but they are ungrabbable. Then there’s my system of fines. If you are getting 300,000 quid a week, you don’t get to turn away when someone shoots the ball at the goal when you are supposed to be defending it. At the other end on such high wages, every time you shoot over the bar because you didn’t get the technique right to keep the ball down, it’s a £1000 fine. Seems fair to me. Oh yeah and also, after today, VAR gets to review red cards automatically in case the ref got it wrong – like he did today.

Music today has been Ed’s album and Colin Blunstone’s album Ennismore (1972). Colin is one of my favourite singers and the two albums he made, Ennismore and One Year (1971), are two of my favourite seventies albums. The Russ Ballard penned single I Don’t Believe In Miracles and Ennismore’s opening track reached No. 31 in the UK charts. These days Colin tours with the reformed Zombies with whom he was the original lead singer. The band also features original member and keyboardist Rod Argent. She’s Not There and Time Of The Season are timeless sixties classics.

Music Of The Daze