After getting to bed at quarter to eight in the morning after Noel’s sesh, intense Arktik Lake ‘analyse the mix listening session’ and then an intense discussion with Andreas who is mixing the songs, followed by the blog, one might have expected me to stay in bed till late as if I’d just flown back from New York overnight, messed up my time clock and landed in the morning. Well, today I wasn’t extended that luxury as I had to be up to get to Gaia to luthier Jorge to hand him my baritone guitar for a proper adjustment and set-up. But it wasn’t only that, it was also the day I was picking up my Roland 301 Chorus/Echo and my Electro Harmonix Tape Reverse Simulator. Vintage gear that has been in disrepair for a long time, till now. That three months in the USA has given Jorge some months to figure out the problems and with the help of other electronic fixers, I now have them both in perfect working order. It took four people to fix the pedal and a lot of searching for the problem to fix the 301, happily persevering before falling for the plug-ins. Thanks, Jorge.

I took the train from Marquês to Gaia, over the Dom Luis I bridge, where the sun obscured the view of beautiful Porto by shining directly through the train window into my eyes. A little boy was next to me, he was standing on the seat looking the other way, his mother beside him, his face was glowing not with the sun but with the wonder of what he saw from the bridge in the other direction as the river Douro disappeared into the distance.

Jorge and his partner Telma greeted me in their home, Telma making me a cup of rooibos tea. Their cat, black as coal, approached me trustingly for a scratch behind the ear. As I showed Jorge the baritone, he immediately started sticking tools in the pick-up and the (Liz) truss rod and it was already better than when I brought it to him. We had a quick listen to the fixed effects and then he graciously gave me a lift home (Home? Not for long). I had to be there by 7 PM for two seshes, one with Paul in New Orleans and one with Johnathon in San Diego.

Yesterday I was so focused on the house hunt that I didn’t manage to tell that we’d had a quick skip through the market, talked to Emanuel, and picked some old Wire magazines as well as finding two pewter fighting fowl, haha, to add to the pewter beast collection (truly). We also found two more mermaids for the mermaid collection, but no skulls for the skull collection, no books for the book collection, no stamps for the stamp collection, no guitars for the guitar collection, and no records for the record collection – but there’s always another day.

Music today has been one of two albums that Tom released on the same day in 2006, his second instrumental outing, Around. I just like to hear his fingers on any fretboard in any form.

Music Of The Daze