Late night last night, in bed at 6 AM, up at 1 PM but after about a quarter of an hour, I got my “eye thing” and had to lie on the couch eyes closed waiting till the distortion dissipated and my vision returned to normal. It’s so debilitating and always leads to a hazy day and a dull headache – I’m so tired of it happening. At least it’s not like the bad old days when it turned into a week of awful migraine hell. Whilst we’re on the subject of health, I just got a notification that I have a booster appointment at 10.30 AM on Sunday. Good timing I suppose, not least because we had an early dinner out on the top floor of the mall in the main street (Wok to Walk) and they were asking for my vaccination proof before I could sit down on the 5th-floor balcony overlooking the shops and as it was six months ago, they were a little hesitant to let me stay – they did let me stay but I need that new certificate. I’m hoping that I don’t feel bad on Sunday, I have seshes that day and I’ll have to start early with Arktik Lake Tony before the jab and hope I’ll be okay for John and Paul later – not the John and Paul.

So I lay down, Olivia got up and before it was dark at 4 PM we took an Uber to the office to secure document number XB9992400BBCITVDDTOKBABY for the removal company to do the job of bringing the archive, the amps and the red sofa (amongst millions of other things) to Portugal. The driver was from Brazil and I asked him what music he liked, he played us two songs by Oficina G3, a Christian metal band from São Paolo, phew. We arrived at the offices and took the lift up to the first floor to find lots of ladies sitting behind desks with those now-familiar plastic screens and terrible fluorescent lighting. Oddly, a grandfather clock (which one of the ladies told us was more than 100 years old) stood dignified with a large round brass pendulum, a slow meditative reminder of our lot. We got the paperwork we needed and headed to Trindade station office to get issued with permanent subway cards, plastic instead of paper, when does the retina technology come in?

From there to the record store, I bought the remasters of the first four Bunnymen albums (they were super reasonably priced). I was a biggg fan of these records and was thrilled to tour with them on the Songs To Learn And Sing tour. We never saw McCulloch for the whole tour, he just appeared on stage from nowhere, beamed. Later I became phone mates with Les Pattinson (helping him emigrate to Oz) as I have with Paul from Liverpool band The Wild Swans, after playing guitar on their next album. Paul is old friends with The Bunnymen, the loss of Pete de Freitas was a terrible blow for the Liverpool music community and the world. I’ll be getting these remastered albums on the stereo very soon. But there’s always a queue.

From there to the guitar shop, I’ve been communicating with Carlos there about the possibility of buying an Orange amp or a Fender Hot Rod Deville but he told me today it’s hard to find them or even get them in Portugal. If I’m going to be in the studio in January, I’m going to need my amps, my Voxes or something I like. I use a 4×10 Fender with Anekdoten and I like it but I usually pair it with a Vox. I need to get into the routine of being in the studio here soon for projects of my own, imminently Arktik Lake and more.

Music today was Love and Rockets‘ seventh and final album Lift (1998) which doesn’t seem to be on Spotify or Apple Music – where’s the In Deep Music Archive when you need it? It is on YouTube so I’m listening there. It’s back to the Hot Trip To Heaven vibe as if that album rather than being a detour would be the direction of the band, leaving the more traditional sound (for them) of Sweet F.A. behind. In the end, it was to be their last album and the return to this sound for what was to be their final release makes you think that they felt they had exhausted their creative ideas for this entity and this trendy sound was more what was happening outside of them rather than inside of them. I still like it though, Holy Fool is pretty cool. I imagine John Lennon singing Too Much Choice. Pink Flamingo and Delicious Ocean sound like Jah Wobble dropped in. Bad For You sounds like a song from a mini modern opera starring David Bowie. It gets very clubby later with Resurrection Hex and My Drug, with Deep Deep Down machine-grooving its way to the finale of Party’s Not Over (when it is) and the title track. Sounds like some nice tremolo six-string bass on Party’s Not Over, another very likeable tune, possibly a hidden album track on Portishead and 10cc‘s post-cryogenic collaboration album from 2170. An odd multi-continent oriental, sequenced Tangerine Dream instrumental is their final offering and what a worthy journey across the heavens it was. Farewell Daniel, David and Kevin, it really was very cool.

Music Of The Daze