Tonight we played in Porto, our first hometown show, and that means a lot of familiar faces in the crowd – it’s the people we have got to know over the three years of living here. So thank you for your friendship and for coming to see us play along with those we didn’t know, fans and the curious. Castro who put the show on was running around with a video camera, so there might be some footage at some time in the future. Such a great night although we hadn’t had any time to go through the set since the last show in Spain a week ago, but it’s in our blood, what makes the difference on the night is the performance, the vibe, the relationship between you, the songs and the audience. The sound is out of your hands, you just hope for good people in the crew and we had that tonight with Sarah and Rafa and Pedro and Filipe, thank you.

We started the day with a last-minute decision, which was, do we get dehumidifiers for the winter months? We decided yes, the dampness needs to be fought, especially if we will be having books and records in here. It’s not a problem for most of the year, but it’s been raining a lot and it’s beginning to penetrate the inside. It’s coming through those large windows at the front and through the walls at the back. It’s a no-brainer, I’m just hoping it doesn’t mean massive electricity bills. We decided to buy two and I carried one back from the shop (with breaks) and returned to the shop with a trolley for the other one. We put them on before we went to the show and when we came back, they were full, they are essential.

After that, we had to go to the record store because Jorge had told us he would wrap a record I was sending in plastic to stop it getting wet on its journey. Rui did it for us as Jorge wasn’t there. We bought some records too, Sarah bought two Morphine records and I bought Ancient Astronauts (2022) by Motorpsycho and picked up Wednesday – Rat Saw God (2023), possibly worth it for the title alone.

At the post office, there was a very nice lady who dealt with everything we had to send calmly. It’s so different at this post office than it was at the post office close to where we used to live. It shows that there’s a culture of pain in some places and a happy environment in others. We were back in time to get in a taxi sent by Castro to pick us up. Filipe, the world’s greatest plumber, had been around earlier to fix a cistern that had kept breaking with no mercy. We are getting things done so we can concentrate on the music, although it will be our last show for a good while.

Music today has been the other Maa Ilmasta album, Iso Yö (2021), instrumental Finnish rock music, really great. You have to hear both their records (see the blog from two days ago for the other one).

Music Of The Daze

Venturing out into the street today, it rained for five minutes and then stopped and then drizzled and then stopped and then rained harder and then stopped as we got in. It was a trip to the Chinese shop to buy some snopake for my guitar neck. It’s hard to know where you are when you have a capo on the third fret and the fret markings aren’t visible, especially when you are singing, so the white-out/snopake/liquid paper gets a splotch on the neck where the markings should be and hallelujah, safety, otherwise you can really go right off the rails and into jazz territory.

The day started earlyish with a sesh with Bob in Boston and that led to me sitting in a chair tired after a late night and I found myself napping already, head cocked on one side resting on my hand, eyes closed. It didn’t last for long, too much to do. Sarah and I went to the light bulb shop to speak to Margarida about the ordered bulbs. She has some fantastic long Portuguese name, I know there’s a Maria and an Almeida in there somewhere, but it was like seven separate words, it’s the opposite of Olivia’s mum (Siv Damm – so short). I know I’ve said this before, but Picasso is the best – Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Eno isn’t bad either – Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.

I was supposed to have a sesh with Fred, but there was a mix-up with the days, so I watched the game between Galatasaray and Man U (3-3) with Siv. Really great to watch, and then over dinner it was Bayern/Copenhagen (0-0) and quite dull after the previous match with the Turkish crowd going nuts. Next a sesh with Jeff in Ohio and packing prezzies for the Swedes. Emails, phone calls, music listening, filing records, and thinking about tomorrow’s gig in Porto. Olivia painted the floor and had a similar list, Sarah fixed ideas and got the oil on the wheels.

Music today has been 22-Pistepirkko – Kind Hearts Have A Run Run (2022). This is what led me to Maa Ilmasta and thanks to Mikko who came to the London show for finding this 22-Pistepirkko album for me, a tricky one and I pretty much have all their other albums, so this was a must and I wasn’t disappointed.

Music Of The Daze

Today was ‘catch up’ with the record store orders after being out of the country, across the border in Spain, playing, driving, getting back, finding shelving. A week away from the record store is a long time and orders are coming in. It was also Black Friday, which is a good weekend for discounts, handy if you buy a lot of records. Outside it was raining again, but we were waiting in for the arrival of Olivia’s Mamma anyway and Aussie Pete was coming too. Frustratingly, the doorbell doesn’t seem to work, it rings where you press it but not inside, quite useless.

We went via the lightbulb shop, but the lady (Margarida) with the perfect English wasn’t there. It was two older Portuguese guys who seemed to struggle with Spanish, and English was completely out. So I managed to explain to them that I think it best to wait till Margarida returns tomorrow to pick up my order of lightbulbs for The Archive. We did manage to drop off some old bulbs with them that they can dispose of, so it wasn’t a total language disaster. Olivia was with her mum at the Cat Café, Sarah and I carried on to the music store to get some strings for the Shergold that luthier Jorge will be setting up for me.

Next, the record store and the list – The Beatles Box, the expanded ‘Blue’ and ‘Red’ albums (1973). Then there was the EP compilation from Slowdive – Blue Day (1992), Khruangbin’s second album Con Todo El Mundo (2018), Norway’s Motorpsycho – The All is One (2020). I bought the 295th-anniversary issue of King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) for the In the Court of the Crimson King wall, except we probably won’t have much wall space when the records are here. So we have these strange windows at the top of the sectioned-off walls so they are living there at the moment.

Dylan at Budokan (1978) with unreleased performances, two ridiculously cheap Lemon Twigs albums – Go To School (2018) and Songs for the General Public (2020). Then there’s the classic Irish doom folkers Lankum whom I wrote about a few days ago and their album False Lankum (2023). Robin Trower’s new album Joyful Sky (2023) where he seems to have fallen in love with a new vocalist, Sari Schorr. Yes have released a Steven Wilson remix and box of The Yes Album (1971) and another Steven Wilson mix of songs from the War Child sessions (1974), War Child II by Jethro Tull – I saw that tour in Liverpool at The Empire in the seventies.

Wandering off into other places I ordered Yasmine Hamdan’s Jamilat Reprise, a remix album of her album Al Jamilat (2017), she is Lebanese and lives in Paris, I’ve written about her before here. I have also discovered Sevdaliza – Shabrang (2020), Night Colours in Persian. She is Iranian, living in The Netherlands, and reminds me of FKA Twigs with her experiments, it’s trip-hop electronics, strange ideas. Last but not least Nick Cave’s Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004). A Nick Cave album I particularly liked.

Music today has been Maa Ilmasta – Kaunis Kesäkaupunki (2023). Excellent Finnish instrumental music, guitar-heavy, with grooves and melodies, sounds like real songs. A great new discovery, finding a vinyl copy of this and the previous releases may be nigh on impossible outside Finland.

Music Of The Daze

Today we were up and leaving the house earlier than usual because we were off to Gaia. Gaia is across the Douro River from Porto and is where Jorge the luthier has his workshop. It’s also where the bank is and we had to go and sort out travel insurance (failed), the $70 US royalty cheque, deposited six weeks ago but not showing in the account (failed), and investigating other royalty money coming in (failed). One wonders how banks can justify their charges when they often can’t get it together. But it seems quite hard to live without a bank account, although I’ve managed to live my whole life without a credit card. Enough about banks, what is the matter with my guitar?

It seems unbelievable but some guitar cables struggle with some inputs because there is a slightly different shape in different brands and Jorge was telling us how the Fender leads are often trouble. We bought one new in Leon and it simply didn’t work. I was having trouble with my guitar right from the first song in León that continued in Lugo. It seems it was the cable not connecting properly with the socket. Some cable brands would connect, but others don’t. How are you supposed to know these things? Jorge isolated the problem, it was the cable and so he cleaned and adjusted the socket so we might just be okay to get through the Porto gig on Thursday without incident.

We came back for an evening in with me putting all the records and CDs in order. I also had to go and get my CD player from the repair shop around the corner. I was hoping it was fixable as it seemed to just be a problem with the drawer. I got there to find Paulo working on it. It’s a Cambridge Audio player and a good quality machine but the rubber band that opens and closes the drawer through a series of wheels had stretched. Where do you find a specific small rubber band for a particular type of English CD player in Portugal? Well, you don’t, you find something that might work instead and they did just that, so far so good.

Sarah put the shelves together that we bought at IKEA, Olivia painted the floor in one of the rooms, I sorted out the records, and then had a sesh with NJ Brian at 7 PM. We worked into the night, cleaning, fixing, sorting, making things, and standing back and admiring our work. We’re all so busy here growing The Archive. It was nice to get more shelves and spread the records out, they were too firmly packed and hard to look through, not anymore. The Archive is yearning for the major part of the collection.

Sarah and I took the opportunity of a deserted street on a Monday night to take all the packaging out to the recycling. Two ladies of the night were still in the street, but business was slow, Monday night at 1 AM is a bad time for this.

Music today has been Grant Lee Buffalo and the classic album Fuzzy (1993), released on vinyl this year, I imagine for the first time. I haven’t seen it before, it’s long overdue. A great album that I played to death when it came out. Jupiter and Teardrop was the first track that I heard followed by the title track and that wonderful falsetto melody.

Music Of The Daze

In bed by 4 AM, up at 8.30 AM for a sesh with Arktik Lake Tony an hour earlier than usual. It’s been tough finding time to sleep the last few days and even though we are now back in Porto, the pattern continues. We are in the process of preparing for the big move, Phase 3, and the getting of the collection here from England. So we have been finding shelving, painting floors, and closing our eyes and imagining how it will be. At some point in January, we will start a Phase 3 campaign and hope we can raise the funds to make this happen between support for The Archive and me working on projects. Then in the spring, we will have a big opening day with clowns, tightrope walkers, and cannons full of confetti. But back to getting up so early with little sleep, why would I do that? The answer is The Planets.

Olivia had bought tickets for an orchestra at the Coliseu for a performance of Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1918). The only problem was that it started at 11 AM. It wasn’t something to miss, so I had to have the usual Sunday morning sesh with Tony an hour earlier, so we could make it in time. It’s close to here, so leaving ten minutes to eleven had us standing outside the auditorium soon after. It’s the first time we’ve been inside the place and it was exciting knowing what we were about to hear. We walked in and there was Jorge from the record shop. He was with Ana whose son was playing in the orchestra. It was the ESMAE Conservatory Orchestra. How can they be so good? Somebody’s been practising.

There was a bit of an introduction and then a silly video with a funny synthesized voice that happened before each of the seven pieces (at this point, Pluto hadn’t been discovered).

Mars: The Bringer of War
Venus: The Bringer of Peace
Mercury: The Winged Messenger
Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity
Saturn: The Bringer of Old Age
Uranus: The Magician
Neptune: The Mystic

My dad used to play this extremely loud on Sunday mornings, he loved it, and Mars: The Bringer of War was truly amazing live. Olivia’s favourite is Jupiter – The Bringer of Jollity. Somehow all three of us were in the second row, more by chance than choice. The time of day was soon forgotten and the whole concert was mind-blowingly brilliant.

Lunch in a nearby café and then I went back to bed, getting up for Everton-Man U (0-3) and back to writing before a sesh with Rajan at 7 PM. Back on track ahead of a busy week.

Music today has been Gustav Holst (The Planets, 1918). The album cover is random, I can’t see the copy we had, but Olivia tells me I have eleven different versions in The Archive, all with their different nuances and interpretations.

Music Of The Daze