This week we hope to be making more progress with the moving of the records, musical equipment and anything else left in England. It’s hard to get anything done without jumping through a whole lot of hoops – the second moving company in England has said they can’t move everything because they don’t have a customs agent in Portugal. Whatever that means exactly. Why is it so hard to move my own things to the country where I live and am a resident? We hope to get a Portuguese mover to do it but first, there’s paperwork. It takes so long to even find out what you need. Then there’s the difficulty of doing anything on Covid Earth. Now with the new variant, it seems new lockdowns are coming and in some European locations they have already begun. Here’s some cool video footage of the storage with me and Fred and Gerri Ann from Minneapolis who were over helping us. We didn’t manage to get any footage with Aram, Hud and anybody else helping pack in Penzance because we were simply so wrapped up in it all. Thank you to everybody who has contributed in any way to making this happen and let’s hope it does – happen that is.

 
Sunday seshes today with Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney, Paul in New Orleans, Brian in Indiana and Abby and Nick in Philadelphia. The great thing about all the sessions is that they are all quite different and whereas one project is close to making a record, another is about the guitar or early stages of writing songs or singing or mixing, arranging or simply listening to ideas. The other thing is talking to people in cities all over the world, it’s incredible that you can even do that. I don’t even understand how television works.

On the subject of technology, isn’t it interesting how easily we get used to it, how we can be driven mad when something isn’t functioning properly – the internet dropping out, a computer fault. Who remembers the pre-digital age? I always wonder what the ‘on the pulse populace of today’ will grow old without and miss from the future, the next generation after them commenting, “Can you imagine that in 2080 people still hadn’t figured out how to…”

I saw a fascinating thing on the subway yesterday, we were in a train carriage reasonably full and there were two people reading books and only one person looking at their phone. I don’t think I’ve seen that in a train carriage for years. On the way to catch the train, the Marquês square was getting deep with fallen leaves. What is it about kicking through the leaves that feels so good? I was wearing my long Italian coat, scarf, hands in pockets, checking my gloves were there, expecting a chilly late night, but by the time I got home at 2 AM in the morning I was ripping my clothes off, I was so hot and desperate to cool down – that’s Porto at 2 AM in late November.

I’m looking forward to the Get Back marathon. I held onto Disney+ after the McCartney/Rubin six-parter – surely, there’s more where that came from? It was so interesting to break the songs down in this way. I’ve had four different people tell me how great Get Back is already as they have dived into it, deep as the leaves. I won’t be able to do that for a few days but I’m so looking forward to it. I saw there was one amazing review and one bad review in the newspapers and I was wondering about the necessity of balance in the modern world – something we don’t seem to have overall. Vivien was talking about it in relation to women in music. I had an interesting thought whilst considering this – were there any bad reviews for the Mona Lisa? Is there a need nowadays for someone to love something and someone else to hate it? For the sake of balance? Or have there always been dissenting voices that were never heard at Rembrandt’s house or da Vinci’s place? “Have you seen that Mona Lisa?” – “It’s bloody awful!” – “Morning Ruud” – “Morning Henk” – “Have you seen that new Hieronymous Bosch The Garden Of Earthly Delights yet?” – “It’s ‘orrible!”

Music today was the Siouxsie and the Banshees covers album that shows how broad their tastes actually were, dispelling the myth that all the punk bands hated the indulgent past. It’s great to see unlikely songs like Roxy Music’s Sea Breezes (1972) in there and Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity‘s This Wheel’s On Fire (1968), Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (1939), The Doors’ You’re Lost Little Girl (1967), Kraftwerk’s Hall Of Mirrors (1977), Sparks’ This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us (1974), and even Trust In Me from The Jungle Book (1967).

Music Of The Daze