Today Olivia released her first poetry book, Sleep for Dessert, which is now available in all the right places. I’m sure there will be many more books in the future, but this is the first, and I’m also sure you can appreciate that this is unique in that it is written in English, not her native tongue. This gives it a different flavour, guaranteed to stimulate your mind in ways you could not imagine. Believe me, get your copy now. More info here.

I started with an early sesh with Alain in Cyprus today, the first thing of what was going to be the beginning of a busy day. Except the next thing was cancelled, a meeting with two American theatre actors who were in town looking to live here. We had briefly spoken to them in town, but they think they might have Covid, so that was that. I got on with listening to mixes throughout the afternoon. My sesh with NJ Brian was postponed till next week, so we went out into town where I needed more incense, who doesn’t? It was take-away Asian night, ‘Wok to Walk’ preceded by a futile attempt to find a laptop to HDMI cable.

I got to watch most of the Liverpool game but missed the last goal as we had to leave for the Hard Rock Café where Castro the booker had put us on the list for the show there tonight. It was Alain Johannes, what’s the chances of two ‘Alains’ in one day, I wondered if Alain Delon was in town too. Johannes has been involved with a lot of projects in many different roles, perhaps most notably Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, but his collaborations run deep, click on his Wikipedia page. He played an acoustic show, and you could hear from his voice and melodies how he fit into QOTSA, but he is also a producer and an engineer, he plays lots of roles, multi-skilled.

The real reason we were there was to see the venue with an act performing – where the stage was, what the PA sounded like, how it all looked with the lights and people inside the room. Do we want seats, or standing, how long should we play? It was good to get an idea of what to expect. We will be playing there on November 30th and at this point, we will have two and possibly three other shows in Spain the week before.

Music today has been Steven Wilson’s The Raven That Refused to Sing (2013), I heard the track Drive Home today and thought it was such a beautiful melody.

Music Of The Daze