Thanks to Ricardo Salazar for the Porto Pop Fest tonight that had us hanging out and listening to my old friend Vivien Goldman talk about her latest book, with Don Letts and Darryl Bullock also speaking. Darryl was talking about the subject of his new book, David Bowie Made Me Gay, about the LGBTQ+ community in music over the last 100 years. Don was talking about his new book To There And Black, growing up in England and entering the music scene in the seventies and beyond and Vivien was talking about her book Revenge Of The She-Punks, the fight for a balance of women artists and women generally holding equal sway in a predominantly patriarchal society. It was fascinating to hear these intellectuals speak on their subjects. After the talks, we were invited to dinner with everybody and got to hang out with some very cool people, Portuguese journalists Isilda and Pedro, musicians John Robb from The Membranes, and spent the evening discussing the universe and fixing all the holes. Organisers working with Ricardo, Fitz, Nancy, Ana, all people making this stimulating evening happen, thank you. Cream on the cake, a DJ set by Don Letts.

It’s not like us to be out in a club listening to a DJ but this was a special situation with Vivien in town and meeting and talking to a whole lot of cool and interesting people. It also gave us the opportunity to go to a club in Porto, something we haven’t done before. It was called Maus Hábitos, a very cool place and although our entourage included the older faces a lot of younger people were there too, plus the other rooms in the place populated with Porto’s night-lifers.

It was chilly tonight and I ended up wearing a big black coat and a scarf, jeans and a shirt before venturing out for what has turned into a very late night. An early morning and a long day of seshes tomorrow starting at 10 AM (it’s already 4.42 AM) is having me keep this short tonight otherwise Sunday will be a disaster.

Music today was Siouxsie and the Banshees‘ Tinderbox (1986) which was an album I bought when it came out. I immediately like this record more than Hyaena and when I look at the credits I see the band in the production role and Hugh Jones engineering, I guess I just have a problem with Mike Hedges’ take on sound as witnessed on Hyaena. All the sounds I don’t like about Hyaena I do like about Tinderbox. It’s still an eighties record but it isn’t lost in itself. I won’t go through the tracks on this one because it’s simply too late but you might remember the catchy first single Cities In Dust. Remind yourself about this album, enjoy this more mature version of Siouxsie and the Banshees, listen to some very nice guitar parts and wonder about the cover image, the same image used on Deep Purple’s Stormbringer (1974) and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew (1970) – how is that even possible? One wonders if they knew? Or cared? This from Wikipedia: The sleeve reproduced a picture of a tornado, taken by Lucille Handberg near the town of Jasper, Minnesota, on 8 July 1927.

Music Of The Daze