We have brought Marty & Olivia T-shirts back from England. If you would like one, then contact Olivia at olivia@martywillson-piper.com and she can let you know what you have to do. We will be taking them with us for our two gigs in Spain and one in Portugal in November. But there are plenty and we might even be able to bring them to the US if that’s where you are, saving on postage and avoiding the customs. Let Olivia know your size and where you are in the world. This is the design:

We went to the second-hand store today to look for one of those tailor’s dummies, so we can put a T-shirt on it at the shows. There was actually one there, but it was child-size, still we did manage to come out of there with another older style mannequin, really kool, but this one only had one arm and no base, but the face and the style were great. You don’t ‘alf get funny looks when you are carrying a naked mannequin through the streets.

Across the road is the old stereo shop where I had taken the Marantz CD player that Boydie had given me a while ago. The display didn’t work, allegedly, but when I went to get it, the engineer said that it does work, you just have to engage it on the remote, who knew? They didn’t charge me anything, even though they took the time to investigate, super kool, that’s Portugal.

We took everything back to The Archive, Olivia went to the post office to post her book to the Library Of Congress to register for copyright. I went to the music store and bought three more brackets for the guitars I brought back and then on to the record store to collect the records that had arrived whilst we were away in England.

The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds (2023), Dot Allison – Consciousology (2023), Sufjan Stevens – Javelin (2023), LP – Love Lines (2023), Atomic Rooster – s/t (1970/2023) and In Hearing Of (1971/2023), and last but not least, The Teardrop Explodes 7 LP box set (2023). The Archive has to be fed, otherwise, it isn’t an Archive.

We went to the shop called Worten where we had to pick up an office chair that wasn’t there and buy RCA leads for the CD to NAD amp connection. That’s my next job.

Music today was Eric Burdon and the Animals – Love Is (1968), which not everyone will realise has Andy Summers from The Police on guitar. He was old, really, really old when he joined The Police in 1977, he was 35. He’d played with Zoot Money, Dantalian’s Chariot, and Soft Machine, the antithesis of punk. Love Is is a double album, and consists of all cover versions except one. It includes a rousing version of River Deep – Mountain High, Coloured Rain and To Love Somebody. Mostly overlooked, I like it a lot, especially when Eric Burdon sings Tina, Tina, Tina multiple times in River Deep – Mountain High. We used to play it with The Saints.

Music Of The Daze