Today was the first day of sessioneer NJ Brian’s Valley of Salt project and the commencement of his second album whilst the first one is still being mixed. It was a bit of a late start as Brian wasn’t landing till late morning and had to make his way from Dallas airport (which is miles away) in an Uber, get all his gear in a car, get to the hotel, pick up a hire car in town and then make it to the studio. So we had some time before he arrived which meant I could watch Everton survive whilst Leicester and Leeds didn’t. It also meant that we could see our friend William who arrived from Houston with a very special item, a dark blue Rickenbacker 370 12-string which I’ll be using with Salim in June, more on that guitar as we head towards our goal in the In Deep Music Archive – Phase 2 and think about Phase 3 at the beginning of next year.

On the way to the studio, we saw a sixties Ferrari 250 GT, a beautiful piece of auto design, it just made all the other posh cars in the posh car park look less stylish. With the top down on a hot day in Texas, it might have been more suited to the French Riviera and Gina Lollobrigida who as it happens died in January this year at the age of 95. I can only imagine her stories from the Ferraris of her heyday.

A friend of John’s and Jason’s, Andrea, a masseuse came to visit from St. Louis as she was doing a special course here in Dallas. She offered her hands and I volunteered, never saying no to a massage from a professional. I’m sure she sorted something out, including my ocular nerve issue, the massage gave me an aura and it seems that it might be caused by a muscle in my neck that needed treatment.

Brian arrived, William left, and John and Kevin stepped in and out of the engineering seat, Sarah observed, I did what I do and we found ourselves with three and nearly four drum tracks before we left. The last one being a tricky timing issue for which Brian is famous. In the end, it was solved and we left Jason and Kevin to finish off as Brian who had been up since 4 AM was falling into the darkness.

Music today has randomly been the first Fox album (1975) that featured two UK hits pre-S-S-S-Single Bed (1976), Only You Can (No. 3) and Imagine Me Imagine You (No. 15). S-S-S-Single Bed reached No. 4 in the UK and No. 1 in Australia. The band was the brainchild of producer/songwriter Kenny Young (aka Shalom Giskan) who had written Under The Boardwalk with Arthur “Yummy Yummy Yummy” Resnick for The Drifters. He also wrote Come Back and Shake Me (No. 3 in the UK in 1969) for Clodagh Rodgers and with Ben Yarley, Captain Of Your Ship for Reparata and the Delrons, a No. 13 in the UK in 1968. Australian singer Noosha Fox (aka, Susan Traynor) originally in the band Wooden Horse, was the secret weapon.

Music Of The Daze