An old friend died today, Pete Hardy, I hadn’t seen him for 30 years but my mate Spant back home in Liverpool told me today that he had passed. We hung together a lot and he played some primitive bass in our little amateur band, tearing up the front room with our guitars as we all fell in love with music. He was a year older than me and a bit of a scoundrel, haha, but I spent many days around at his parents’ house as he did around my parents’ house. He had a strange relationship with his father who he called Herman although I believe it wasn’t his name. We listened to Hawkwind and covered Lord Of Light calling ourselves Opal Butterfly, which we later discovered was the name of Lemmy’s pre-Hawkwind band. We went to loads of gigs at the Liverpool Stadium together and I remember he had a cool Afghan coat that seemed to be continuously doused in patchouli oil. RIP Pete.

It was hot in Texas although I saw little of the day, we were locked inside the studio with the guitars and the amps working on sessioneer NJ Brian’s second album. Although the first one is still being mixed and we have no release date or label, Brian has written half of his next concept album for the Valley of Salt project and wanted to get started whilst the ideas are fresh and time is available. He played some beautiful guitar today and not just because we saw Al Di Meola last night, Brian composes pieces that involve many guitar parts and we spend a lot of time getting tones and recording through a series of interesting amps in the studio, a Fender Deluxe with all the wrong innards, an old Gibson amp, a Bad Cat, a Fender Super Reverb, a Fender Champ, and a Vox. A Strat, a Rickenbacker, a Les Paul, and a Gretsch, happy days.

I spoke to sessioneer Fred today in Minneapolis and sessioneer Jed – in Minneapolis, the first two projects we have worked on this trip, exciting stuff as Fred has been working on vocals which we’ll be looking at next week. Jed will be getting the drum tracks from the Space Summit sessions which we will be working on into the autumn. When Jed left the studio after no sleep he was stranded at Dallas airport for nine hours. The day before I’d told him about Hawkwind’s Hall Of The Mountain Grill, today he told me it got him through the day as it did for me, Pete, and Dare in the mid-seventies.

It’s June 1st, only 180 days till Christmas as my birthday month becomes the next one which I hope I reach so I can see the In Deep Music Archive come to life. The renovations have started with rendering and they should start painting next week. I’ll keep you posted as they make progress down there and hopefully, we’ll have some pictures to share as they get going. The record fascination, the love of music and collecting all started with those jams we had at my parents’ house (small flat) with Pete and Dare, then with Gazzer who came to see us after three decades at the Thornton Hough show, one of two Liverpool gigs. Luckily I’m still hanging in there.

Music today has been Hawkwind’s Hall Of The Mountain Grill (1974), obviously.

Music Of The Daze