So out of nowhere, Instagram cancelled my personal and my In Deep accounts. What’s going on? Is it a robot with a grudge? Did I not autograph a circuit board when I was playing in hyperspace? The machine asked for authenticity, we sent it, they cancelled and then went on to the In Deep account and cancelled that too. How can a machine ask if you are real? We are wondering if Olivia’s account will be next. It was the same with PayPal in Portugal, we couldn’t get a PayPal account here (we still use the English one), with no explanation. The problem is that a machine can’t be reasoned with, especially if it made a mistake because it’s programmed to think if a decision has been made then it can’t be a mistake. No one to discuss the issue with, no one to help, no one to sort it out, Welcome To My Nightmare, welcome to the future.

It was a busy day of seshes today, four booked – three happened. Fred had to cancel because a tree fell down in his garden, but I started the day with Bob in Boston and later spoke to Blueburst Craig and listened to the tracks I’d recently played (and sung) on in Texas, sounding great. I will let you know when the music is released. After that, it was Brian in Indiana with another great project, The Simpletons. The day was really full and Brian kindly started half an hour later, so I could eat. I’ll also be posting music from this project when it is finally mixed, but there was one song that had a magnificent chord change that blew me away, they’re great. I’ll keep you posted on release dates.

In between all this, I went down to see Carlos and Vítor at Garage & Stage to find out about wall brackets for the guitars. Looks like 12€ each, but I have a few guitars, haha. We have to draw some kind of template on the wall, so we get the symmetry right. It’s all about space-saving. When we finally get The Archive here, we are going to need every inch of the place. On that note, with Olivia coming back on Sunday, I have been doing my best to tidy up and make the finished renovations look lived-in. There are still two rooms to fix almost from scratch and the trims in three other rooms. It’s been a big job and it takes time. We will do a walk-through as it’s done and as we prepare for Phase 3, the mega move.

Music today has been Alice Cooper’s first album without the band, Welcome To My Nightmare (1975), which must have been a real nightmare for them. They were so great as a band and although there have been some good post-band albums (From The Inside, a collaboration with Bernie Taupin being one), it’s hard to beat their material from 1970-1973. The album was cut with Lou Reed’s R ’n’ R band Dick Wagner, Steve Hunter, Prakash John and Pentti Glan and if that’s not enough, it might be worth a listen just for the Vincent Price monologue.

Music Of The Daze