Rain, hooray, bring it on. It doesn’t last long here and by late afternoon the sky was showing strips of blue. The umbrella that was essential on leaving, was barely needed on return. I went with Olivia and Rohan down to the music store to buy four more brackets for the guitar wall, check in at the record store and see about getting some acoustic foam. Only the brackets were a success, but then I went to the electronics shop to buy a USB hub because suddenly mine doesn’t work. It’s intermittent, what could be wrong with such a simple device? By the time I’d got back to the computer, the old hub that hadn’t worked for weeks was working perfectly again. Electronics, aggh, so frustrating. See what tomorrow brings.

I had a sesh with Sarah at 3 PM and Andreas at 7 PM, discussions about the ongoing projects; mixing, editing, mastering, manufacturing, there’s so much to think about apart from the actual songs, playing them, singing them, producing them and, oh yeah, writing them. The journey from idea to blistering solo on the top of a PA stack, from observation to warbled emotional expression in a football stadium. From Slipknot to Nick Drake, the same basic principles apply.

The painting is getting close to being completed, finally. Every day there’s someone here doing an amazing job of transforming this bland, beige, abandoned ex-lab into the In Deep Music Archive. Phase 2 is almost complete and we are only €487 from the goal. This is about half of the total cost of the job at hand and these donations are the only reason we were able to do this. We could not have done it without everyone’s help and you are formally invited to the opening party. We are in the process of trying to budget the actual amount we need to raise to get everything over here from England and that will be Phase 3.

Ultimately, The Archive will outlive me and that’s the point. My job is to get it all in order and live with it for as many years as the aliens allow before they take me to the great flying saucer in the sky. From there, I’ll be looking down and making sure that Jethro Tull is filed under J, Danny Wilson under D, and Alice Cooper under A.

Music today has been CAN – Soundtracks (1970), “She Brings The Rain, oh yeah, She Brings The Rain”. It’s a compilation album of tracks from various films and features their inimitable groove and both singers, the earlier Malcolm Mooney and the later Damo Suzuki.

Music Of The Daze