Up for a midday sesh with Bob in Boston and then waited for Raúl the piano tuner to arrive, so I could go out to the ‘farmácia’ to find something for the cough and find a COVID test. I waited by the gate, Raúl went driving by looking for a parking spot, he eventually came in with the new strings and their larger loops to attach inside the piano which allowed me out. It was hot, hotter than it has been and I coughed my way down the street till I got to the farmácia. I got something for the cough and the test, English written on the front but inside no English and a whole lot of steps and accoutrements that seemed confusing to follow. So, no test, I’ll take it back tomorrow, cough my way back down there, and see if I can get some English instructions.

I was reading today that pubs in England are charging more for a pint in the evenings and at weekends. I also saw that the average price of a pint of lager is 4.37 – that’s what I pay for a CD, how can it be the same price? If you went out at 6 on a Saturday (by yourself) and had a pint an hour and bought nothing else, you’d be over 20 quid down. Add in your partner, food, getting there, a packet of ciggies, crisps, buying an expensive round, with some wanting double whisky and a mixer, a late-night Indian, and a taxi home, and you’ve spent a fortune. You didn’t even pay for entertainment, a band, a film, a show of some kind, if you did that the following night and got the T-shirt you’d have to have a pretty decent wage to go out for one weekend.

I got back in time for a sesh with Artoush in Atlanta via Austin and was straight back into computer land going through second mixes of two different projects – one was quite simple to check, the other always tricky because of the nature of the music – yes, it was NJ Brian’s Valley of Salt project. I listened long and hard, haha, and I see that we are getting there, soon we will be done and ready for mastering and then trying to figure out how to release this amazing project that I will tell you all about when it’s cooked.

Seems there is a leak in the bathroom – not from anything in there, but something is coming down the wall and leaving brown water on the bathroom floor. Can you imagine if something like that happened and a burst pipe upstairs drenched the collection, ruined it? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Suddenly, in this moment, I realised that people less lucky than me are in the news right now – the Moroccans and the Libyans.

Music today was a great German Jack Bruce compilation, Once Upon A Time, released in 1970. It’s a double gatefold and part of a series from the era. Collect them all!

Music Of The Daze