My monthly copy of Mojo arrived today and coincidentally had Bowie on the cover and a major article about Ziggy. But I’m too busy to read it, I’m leaving for Germany on Saturday. The last few days before you leave to go somewhere are always days of madness. Tying up the loose ends, and in our case having friends come and stay and look after our place, so there’s a list! All the things you need to know, where everything is, where to put the recycling, where’s the fuse box? Clean sheets, sorting out the keys and feeding the plant, I miss home already and I haven’t left yet.

On the way to the gym today I walked past a young girl wearing an Aaliyah T-shirt. I stopped, and asked her if she was a fan, she was. I always liked Aaliyah, she was one of those modern R&B stars that innovated within the genre. She tragically died in a plane crash after an overloaded small plane crashed on takeoff after she had completed filming the Rock The Boat video in the Bahamas. She was just 22 years old.

It’s been a terrible day for losing musicians. Andy Fletcher, founding member of Depeche Mode, has died today at the age of 60 and Yes drummer Alan White, the drummer who replaced Bill Bruford in Yes as well as played with John Lennon and George Harrison has died aged 72. I don’t know how either of these two musicians died but when your number’s up you have to heed the call. If there’s a way to live long and be healthy then I’m looking for that road. I can’t do anything about losing my life in an absurd way, you may have heard how Mike Edwards from ELO died. He played on the studio albums, ELO 2 (1973), On The Third Day (1973) and Eldorado (1974). He was driving a van on the A381 in Devon when a round hay bale rolled down the hill, colliding with his vehicle and killing him. The timing is ridiculous.

Bob Neuwirth also died this week, possibly his greatest claim to fame was contributing lyrics to Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz. He road-managed Dylan in the sixties and was a singer-songwriter in his own right. Hearthrob Bobby Rydell who had 14 US Top 40 singles, Funk Brother Joe Messina who played guitar on the Motown greats. San Francisco’s Re Styles from The Tubes and David Freel from Swell. C.W. McCall had a hit with Convoy in the seventies and Con Cluskey from The Bachelors was on the middle of the road dial in the sixties. These are all people I grew up hearing, liking or just being aware of, all gone.

These people lived rich musical lives and left their music behind for us to enjoy but all those who died in the last couple of days in Texas, in Ukraine, and countless other places, dying before they had a chance to live their lives, it’s just so tragic. For all our joy we are surrounded by meaningless loss. We seem to live in a world where a happy life is a privilege when it should be a given.

Music today has been the free Glam Nuggets CD that came with Mojo. One classic I’d never heard, Dana Gillespie’s Andy Warhol, produced by Bowie and Ronson and one classic, most people haven’t heard Brett Smiley’s Space Ace.

Music Of The Daze

Olivia has gone to Germany, she left at an ungodly hour and flew to Cologne. So it’s weird her not being here tonight. Still, the day unravelled as it usually does, or did it? With Olivia gone I thought the walk to the pool would mean Bellyman is on his bench, Dogman by the fountain, the usual suspects. But Dogman wasn’t there, not so strange, Bellyman wasn’t exposing his belly yet, I guess he waits till high summer, so pretty normal. But then there’s the black dude, groovy guy he is too, I haven’t seen him for a while but today he was out and about being his normal self, gold suit and bow tie, black mask and dark visor over his eyes, wearing a crown, just another normal day in Porto.

All three of us regular swimmers, Francisco, Hugo and me were simultaneous later at the pool today, but it’s actually a good time, with the least amount of people. I swam 64 lengths freestyle non-stop but in the last few lengths felt weak. I made it, but I wondered what was different today, usually, I feel fine. In fact, I was ravenously hungry and then I realised that last night I’d missed dinner and eaten just salads and fruits, and some toast. If you’re going to spend five days a week in the gym and the pool – you need fuel.

Yesterday, I was at the music store where Jorge was helping me wire up my pedalboard. I’m so relieved. It’s just not in my skill set, all the connections, the order of pedals, the power distribution. I need technically-minded people. Olivia’s dad can fix anything, I’m hopeless, barely lightbulb able, plug changing, computer solutions or phone issues. Is it interest or ability? Some people can draw, others can’t, I don’t drive, I’ve never had a license. I wouldn’t feel competent as a driver, one lapse in concentration and you could be in an accident, every driver has to live with that pressure. I suppose it becomes a routine and experience is the key but you can’t protect yourself if someone else is reckless or simply makes a mistake. Then there’s air traffic controllers, one slip.

With Olivia gone already, I am also in preparation for going to Germany and have a suitcase half full in the middle of the kitchen floor. I leave on Saturday. I was telling Filipe, one of the teachers at the pool today about my trip and he said, “You are always travelling, the only travel I do is from the couch to the fridge”.

Two seshes today, one with Matt in Brooklyn. I’m trying to get the backing track down on a song for him to write his cool words and melodies but we’re back to the technical side of things again. I’m not an engineer and I have a long way to go before knowing how to get a decent acoustic guitar sound and find all the right buttons to record it. Later on, I had Rohan in Sydney with his fascinating compositions which come from his abilities as a guitarist, bass player, and keyboardist.

All the sessioneers these days are making private Soundcloud pages. The idea is to have an easily accessible place for all the written pieces. It’s the body of work that you have so far, it gives you perspective on your work and makes you aware of where you are at and what needs work. Every time you write something you add it to the page. You’d be surprised how quickly you have a potential album’s worth of material. You are constantly adding to it, improving it, analysing it, accessing your music in a quick and simple way and seeing where you are at.

Music today has been Bowie’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972) because today in the sesh we were talking about songwriting and Matt brought up Five Years, the opening track on the album. I played it for him and showed him how simple it was and how the second part has the same chords and a different melody, how the chorus is at the end of the song and that you don’t need lots of gear, or complex writing, you just need great ideas. Your imagination is your most valuable tool.

Music Of The Daze

It’s Bob Dylan’s birthday. He was born on May 24th 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota and today he is 81 years old. Dylan’s paternal grandparents were from Odesa in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, not any more. I thought today as Olivia is leaving at 7 AM for Germany, I’d just write a couple of reminisces of Dylan over the years of seeing him live. Here goes:

The first time I saw him was at Earls Court in London on the Desire tour in June 1978. Dare and I had come down from Liverpool on one of our first trips to the south and to tell you the truth I don’t remember that much about it. I think there are some mad pictures of us somewhere larking about in the hotel room. I do remember the gig and at this moment I’m listening to Desire (1976), One More Cup Of Coffee and I have a memory of him playing a reggae version of it. It’s all a bit of a blur, it was 44 years ago.

The next time I saw him was when he played in Sydney with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers as his band on the True Confessions tour. I was in the support band for two nights at the Sydney Entertainment Centre Feb 24th and 25th 1986. I was moonlighting with James Griffin and The Subterraneans which meant I got to see him twice. As a Petty fan too I remember it was exciting to be on the bill, although I was there for soundchecks and hanging around for two nights, I never saw Dylan in the flesh backstage.

The next time was at Anaheim Stadium on the Dylan and The Dead tour on July 26th 1987. The Dead played and then Dylan with The Dead as his backing band. It was a massive stadium and I remember being quite away from the stage. I think we got tickets from Arista Records because the ex-band and The Dead were signed to the label.

The last time I saw him was in Sydney again at the Sydney Entertainment on the Never Ending tour in August 2007 (I think). It was the tour where it was hard to recognise which song he was playing even though you’d heard it a million times. He played the keyboards and looked like a train conductor from 1930. Charlie Sexton was playing guitar, I mention that because I once wrote a song that Charlie Sexton recorded (I Can’t Cry).

I’ve been collecting the Definitive Vinyl collection with some help from sessioneer Noel in Surrey, so I have brand new copies of the sixties and seventies albums so far. I also collected the Bootleg Series collections and have a whole lot of Dylan bootlegs. I think the first album I loved by him was Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and it grew from there. There are certainly some dodgy records but there are so many amazing records, where to start?

So goodnight from me, Olivia is trying to get to bed for an early morning flight.

Music Of The Daze

A kaleidoscope of images and colours, sun, rain, pigeons, dogs, sparrows, and seagulls in the square. I was amazed to discover the dogs didn’t have wings considering the company they kept. But no cats, mice and no insects, only the occasional mosquito, bee, and house fly inside but where are they on the outside? Maybe the invisible winged dogs are snapping them up. But seriously, butterflies, moths, bees and wasps are in decline. At this rate, more than 40% of insect species will be gone in the coming decades. Anyone who was in a car in the seventies remembers the insects on the windscreen and the radiator, the bonnet and the headlights and then there’s now.

Swimming left me tired out today, not sure why. I couldn’t get much done because of it. Sometimes you need to recover your strength and the idea that you have to exert yourself in order to not feel like you have exerted yourself next time is odd. Swimming buddy Hugo came over, we dropped off at his place too, we righted the world’s wrongs, maybe that’s why I was so tired, saving the world takes it out of you.

I always remember that in Los Angeles sunny days often cloud over but here in recent days, it’s the opposite, I leave at midday in a grey drizzle and come home to a sunny blue sky. I’m busy with the sessioneer projects right now. My responsibilities at this time are lots of listening to songs and sessions and sorting out everyone’s work. Someone asked me how can you work on so many different projects at the same time? Well, the answer is variety and a broad palette make each project new and interesting. Each session has new questions, different songs and styles and with a producer hat on you can make sense of many different projects simultaneously. The big-name producers don’t just work on one group’s records in preparation and in some cases, they really do produce more than one major album at the same time – although tonight, I can’t think of an example.

So Arktik Lake, Minneapolis Fred, Space Summit Jed, New Jersey Brian, New Jersey Chris, Atlanta Craig, Brooklyn Matt, Brooklyn John, Chicago Mike, Ohio Jeff, New Orleans Paul and Mike, Brooklyn Rajan, Surrey Noel, Montreal Noelle, Philadelphia Abby and Nick are all exploding with ideas. Afridi/Willson-Piper is imminent as a digital album and I’ll be writing something about Indiana Brian who has also just released some material for your listening pleasure when I get a tick. Busy.

Tomorrow I’m taking my pedalboard to Jorge the fixer to have him help me wire it up without it looking like a mess. It’s a fiddly job and once you’ve decided which pedal goes where you have to connect them to the power pack and then to each other for the signal flow. You also have to think about how pedals suck the signal out of your guitar in a bad way, losing tone when everything is off, which defeats the object of using pedals/effects to enhance your sound. But when you think about the delay, phase, fuzz, distortion boost, chorus, wah-wah, compressor, and tuner that’s a lot of interrupted signal path and when you take your guitar lead out of the first pedal and plug it directly into the amp, you might be shocked at the amount of general tone your guitar is losing. In the good old days Hendrix, Page, and Blackmore weren’t using multi-pedal pedalboards.

Music today has been The Move’s four albums, Move (1968), Shazam (1970), Looking On (1970) and Message From The Country (1971). It’s an interesting history that went from a slew of Top 20 singles in the sixties, Night Of Fear, I Can Hear The Grass Grow, Flowers In The Rain, Fire Brigade, Blackberry Way, Curly, and Tonight, Chinatown and California Man in the early seventies. They left behind the sixties sound for a harder sound on the seventies albums. Songwriter, singer and original member, Roy Wood, went on to form ELO with later member Jeff Lynne before forming glam band Wizzard. Drummer and original member Bev Bevan went with Jeff Lynne and ELO when The Move broke up. Original member and singer Carl Wayne left after two albums and eventually took over from Allan Clarke in The Hollies when he retired in 2000 but sadly died of cancer in 2004. Bassist Ace Kefford and guitarist Trevor Burton only made it to the first album, Rick Price came in for the middle two and followed Wood to Wizzard.

Music Of The Daze

Last day of the football season, if you watch, you know what happened, if you don’t you won’t be interested anyway. Liverpool slotted nicely between Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney and John in Brooklyn, then recording guitars for sessioneer Matt, also in Brooklyn, dinner then Space Summit Jed in Minneapolis. Sundays are always full days, sesh-heavy and they disappear quickly which I like because Sundays are strange and it’s good not to think about them too much, haha. The clouds were visiting today so I was surprised when Olivia said she was going to see the chapel on the beach with a friend, but apparently, it was sunny there, so close but with completely different weather. I was thinking about the Seeing Stars song, Where The Rainstorm Ends.

Busy as I was I looked longingly at the vinyl I’d bought recently wondering when I’d have the chance to play it, Jack White, Aldous Harding, Sharon Van Etten, Envy Of None. The problem with having music as an interest is how multi-faceted it is: Writing songs, playing in bands, singing, seeing bands, live shows, being in the studio, producing, sessions, buying records, listening to records, it takes up so much time, your whole life.

Last night at 6.30 AM Olivia and I were woken up by a very loud argument with a man and a woman screaming. I was half asleep, Olivia more awakened by the fracas but we both thought we heard gunshots. I’m not sure exactly what gunshots sound like and we haven’t found anything in the Portuguese news. But it was scary, it was intense but all we could do was go back to sleep, we don’t even know where it was coming from, the street, a house, all we heard was the anger.

No dogs howling tonight but last night at 1 AM it was a canine soloist. The howling symphony is a regular occurrence here in Portugal. It doesn’t bother me but I can’t understand how it doesn’t bother the owners of the dogs for their own sake and for the dog’s sake. Up here on the fifth floor and some distance away, it’s the sad sound of the night but living next door to this cacophony must surely torment your soul listening to the animal’s anxiety, the owners must be wearing earplugs or have no empathy.

Olivia is heading to Germany on Wednesday. She is going to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of an old school friend. Lonely dinners. It won’t be her only trip to Germany this year. In July the festival she hosts, the festival where we met whilst I was playing with Anekdoten, is on again, post-pandemic. Headliners this year are Renaissance, Steve Hackett and the Italian band PFM which stands for Premiata Forneria Marconi, which means, award-winning Marconi Bakery, and why not?

Music today was Neil Young’s After The Goldrush, his third album, released in 1970. It has the classic title track covered by Patti Smith, K.d. Lang, Thom Yorke, Billy Corgan, Natalie Merchant, Dolly, Emmylou and Linda, and Prelude who famously had a worldwide hit with it a cappella in the seventies.

Music Of The Daze