Today was trumpet and trombone day with Steve the regretful trumpeter. He told us that he ended up playing the trumpet but wasn’t particularly enamoured by his choice. He thought Miles Davis played a lot of wrong notes, haha, fair enough, I like a lot of music but when I hear Mariah Carey sing Badfinger’s Without You I break out in a rash. I wonder how Sonic Youth sound to Mariah Carey or what Bob Dylan thought of Chicory Tip. It doesn’t really matter, does it? We like what we like and what we don’t like we ignore or turn off, thank you for the volume knob and the channel changer, live and let live, we can’t all like the same things but those of us who do some musical digging wonder at what many people put up with.

After trumpet/trombone, we had Camille come in to do backing vocals, a lovely lady with a lovely voice who I hope to turn on to Mary Hopkin singing Paul McCartney’s Goodbye and others. Next, we were scheduling as we realise we have to add more days to the project and will be in the studio Friday, Sunday, and Saturday afternoon when we will have Cherish Love and her two friends, Texan gospel singers, hallelujah. Saturday afternoon will be a shorter day in the studio as we will be playing a house concert for our hosts Carron and Ed with whom we had brekkie today. I just got my guitar back from the luthier this evening, he was putting a pickup in it and I thought he would be setting it up, maybe he did but the action is a little high and although my hands didn’t hurt today, the day before they did and I wonder about pressing all those strings down on the neck, we’ll see, it’s probably too late to do anything about it by Saturday.

Strangely the performance will most likely be for people who don’t know who we are, always a challenge because there’s no connection with your history, the melodies of your songs, or your fascinating persona, haha, we just have to sell ourselves cold. With Olivia as my secret weapon, we should be ok but one of the biggest issues in playing acoustic is the problem of people not knowing how to listen. We won’t have a PA so the pickup will be useless, we’ll just be standing in front of the fireplace and hoping. The guitar is naturally loud and singing over it may be difficult but without any rehearsal, we will be playing it all spontaneously anyway, we’ve done it enough times and know enough songs to just turn up and play.

The extra days in the studio will not just be this weekend, they will also be next weekend. Brian will be flying back home to New Jersey on Monday to spend Thanksgiving with his family and flying back on Friday to spend Saturday, Sunday, and Monday finishing the project, well, most of it, there’s still percussion and then the mix, another stage, and another country as we send the album to Andreas in Gävle in Sweden.

That’s it for now, I have an early morning as we have a cellist coming in at 10 AM and it’s already 2 AM, goodnight.

Music today was native Welsh speaker Mary Hopkin’s Post Card (1969), a lovely album with the famous song Those Were The Days, a bonus digital track is McCartney’s Goodbye. Who knew that she would go from Wales to Opportunity Knocks (a British TV talent show) to being signed to The Beatles‘ Apple label and having Paul McCartney write for her, to be making albums, to marrying T. Rex and Bowie producer Tony Visconti and singing on Bowie’s Low (1977). She sang Knock, Knock Who’s There at the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest and came second (to Dana). She was also in a band called Oasis with Peter Skellern and Julian Lloyd Webber).

Music Of The Daze