Happy to announce today: the second single Supernova from sessioneer Craig Douglas Miller’s project Blueburst. I went to Atlanta to play guitar on this and other tracks and Supernova follows the first single Vanish which you can also listen to here. Lots of positive reviews and I know there’s too much music out there to listen to everything but if you like some upbeat indie guitar-orientated, melodic music then you’ll like this.

I have this peculiar habit of waking up two or three minutes before the alarm goes off. Today the gate people were coming at 8.30 AM so I set my alarm for 8 AM and at 7.57 AM I was awake. Perhaps my brain is attempting to save me from the intrusion of digital bleeps so early in the morning. I opened the gate (the one that was to be replaced) at 8.15 AM and the guys were already there waiting outside. They got straight to work with the drills, removing the rusty old beast. It was awkward at first, didn’t want to go but finally, they pulled it out and you could see the extent of the rust and that it hadn’t been opened for five years – it was relieved to be taken away.

We had to leave them with the work as we had our first connection with the NHS Portuguese style, we saw a doctor and a nurse and they checked us out and confirmed that we are still alive, but there are tests to be had and they may tell a different story. Bloodwork, X-rays, prescriptions – next month I will be 65 years old, it seems the last period of your life is testing till you fall off your perch anyway.

I had a sesh with NJ Brian at 6 PM and we had a lot to go over with his project but I also had a new Arktik Lake edit to listen to that was actually a vocal tweak to an edit already confirmed and a mix of sessioneer Brooklyn John who had a mix of a song that I played guitar when I was in Brooklyn earlier in the year. After that, I talked with Salim in Texas about projects and I listened to the latest Blueburst single. Music everywhere.

It didn’t stop there, I also went to Tubitek to pick up the new Bowie – Aladdin Sane (1973) 50th anniversary remaster, Matthew Sweet’s Catspaw (2021) and Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori (2023) which I liked more than I expected after listening to it on Spotify – the testing ground. I also found some CDs that were cheap enough to buy despite having the vinyl albums already. Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails over the Country Club (2021), Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush (2020) and Temples’ Sun Structures (2014). There was also a Willy DeVille two for one, Crow Jane Alley (2004) and Pistola (2008), oh yeah, and Pearl Jam’s Gigaton (2020) where Vedder sounds like an ill Bruce Springsteen, and believe it or not, that isn’t a criticism. It’s like singing when you have a sore throat, it gives you a cool tone but the album despite the good press and talk of experimentation, sounds (like U2) like better songs have been written in the past – may be unfair after just one listen but you have to really want to listen to a record again, it’s a commitment, concentration, time and there’s so much music out there to discover, old and new.

Music today was U2’s Songs of Surrender, I just had to hear the acoustic versions of songs I’ve heard so many times in electric versions, some work, some are great, some not so much, just what I expected really but what I really noticed is how short they have been on material on their last albums when you hear a cherry-picked catalogue like this.

Music Of The Daze