Last day of the month, a beautiful day and out into the town to search out the Nag Champa. My man is out but I think I’ll be able to hold out till next week when it’s coming in. The streets are busy but it isn’t just because it’s Saturday, it’s because it’s Porto, as the summer revellers, the kids and the parents got back home in time for school, work and another ‘head down’ till Christmas. But then as Christmas nears, the emptied streets fill up again, not that it takes much because, in actual fact, the tourists never really leave, it’s just that they’re here en masse in the summer months.

Tubitek, the record store, sent me a text to tell me that my Curve album had arrived. They have released all their CD EPs on vinyl and I’ve been collecting them. I’m sure they’re very limited and if you don’t get them now they won’t be back. Whilst I was in the shop there were three young girls, two shy ones and one confident one, somehow I was asked about Greta Van Fleet between Jorge and José in the store and the girl looking for the CD. She told me she was into rock but her friends weren’t, haha, and she had a dad who was 56 who got her into rock music instead of contemporary pop and R&B like her friends.

I was back in time for the ridiculous Liverpool game, luckily the officials don’t fly aeroplanes. The night creeps up on you and before I knew it, Olivia’s new hatter friend Sven and his wife Paula arrived for chats about film and music into the early hours. It was warm and we sat sometimes in the front room and sometimes on the front steps. The street was busy with Saturday night noise, the ladies of the night and the revving of motorbikes – did I rev my motorbike when I had one? Not like this, surely not, it sounds like they’re slicing the skin off a doomed creature, tortured and paraded in death.

We got to bed late, it was a warm night and the street calmed down, eventually emptying completely as it usually does around 4 AM, that’s the quiet time, my favourite time. People have either retired to bed or they’re not up yet, that’s when the invisible dancing muses slip out of their hidden holes in the air and slowly float down to the Earth.

Music today was Curve’s Doppelgänger (1992), their debut album, all cheekbones and dry ice, a marriage between electronics and roaring guitars. I bought all the EPs and CD albums that I could find when they were released. I could never easily find Toni Halliday’s latter-day groups, Scylla or Chatelaine. It’s been way too long waiting for Halliday and Dean Garcia to make music together again. Toni and Dean, sound like an ice skating couple. The actual couple is Halliday and Alan Moulder who was responsible very much for their sound – them amongst many others.

Music Of The Daze