It seemed odd that they would finally come and switch the electricity on on Easter Monday but they did. A man came and replaced the old classic spinning disc meter with a brand new digital one and suddenly there was light and a fridge, and a microwave and, and, and – no, still no water, the plumber said he’d be here Saturday afternoon and that’s the last we heard from him. Still, electricity is a start, it means we don’t have to abandon the place early evening and retire to be squeezed into our new hotel room which is so small that I saw an angry wafer at reception with the same complaint.

Electricity means I could happily wire up the stereo and the studio. It’s fiddly getting all those wires into the back of the amp and then into the components. The studio is actually a little easier, running it not so much, but plugging it all in is relatively simple. So I was able to listen to some records and get Logic working on the iMac. This means I can listen to all the songs that I need to hear right now from Jed, Rajan and Craig and I’ll soon have an Arktik Lake edit from Andreas. It’s so much harder to get perspective on so many songs on headphones or little speakers that don’t really give you the whole sonic picture, I need the studio monitors set up for proper listening.

So what did I listen to? I decided to go ROCK and as it happened the first record on the shelf was AC/DC – High Voltage (1975), the next I listened to was the new Def Leppard – Diamond Star Halos (2022), both albums have a nod to glam. Next was Blue Cheer – Outsideinside (1968) and then Focus – Moving Waves (1971) followed by Genesis – Trespass (1970) but I also listened to CDs, Beirut’s No No No (2015) and The Black Crowes‘ Croweology, so mainly ROCK although that last Black Crowes record is mellower reimagined versions of older songs. I’ll have a mellower day tomorrow – maybe, but that Black Crowes album was great, maybe tomorrow’s album of the day if I listen to it again.

So because I had light I built another record shelf, not that I have anything to put in it yet. The more the place gets sorted, the more frustrating it is to not have the Archive records here. Now Easter is over we have to follow up with the lawyer because we have a nice letter from the mayor’s office declaring the collection something of cultural significance. But we sent the letter to the lawyer ages ago and he hasn’t responded, so maybe time to find someone else. Everything is about finding the right people – like the plumber for example.

I took some more ornamental skulls out of their boxes and found the Bowie Barbie. There’s not really enough shelf space for the artefacts and lamps and candlesticks etc at the moment but I‘d rather have them out than hidden away in a cardboard box, they could be there for years, hope not.

Music today has been that rather basic and odd AC/DC debut album, the Australia-only release High Voltage (1975), it somehow reminded me of Alex Harvey in attitude and sound despite being more of a hard rock album rather than the vision in Alex’s theatrical mind, they’d definitely heard glam rock!

Music Of The Daze