Another interview appeared today, this time from Aaron Badgley at Spill Magazine in Canada and it made me wonder about the age-old question of how many more people would like the music you make if they knew about it. Sure, some people are so good, they just break through to a bigger audience but others, even people who are actually great, can’t get to enough people, can’t get to an audience that would like them. Why is that? Well, there’s a lot of competition for space out there and many reasons why some make it and others don’t (lots of luck). Somebody recently told me (I think I’ve mentioned this before) that when they asked The Wire magazine if they would be reviewing their album, the response was, “Will you be taking out any advertising?”. You’d think that a magazine that is so steeped in credibility wouldn’t work that way, but the reality is that print media is hurting. So if this is The Wire, how hard must it be to get into Mojo or Uncut in the UK and Rolling Stone in the US (although is that a music magazine anymore?)? In fact, the fall of Rolling Stone from at one time being possibly the most important music magazine in the world to just 10 album reviews on the online version is sad. It’s not like they have a space issue online, it’s just different priorities. So if you have fame or money or both because really they go hand in hand, you’re in, but if you have ideas, well, that doesn’t guarantee anything.

SPILL FEATURE: SEASONS CHANGE AND REARRANGE – A CONVERSATION WITH MARTY WILLSON-PIPER OF MOAT

I have no publicist in Australia because I don’t have a few grand to hire one, consequently, any albums that I’m involved in there get little attention. Luckily cool shops like Redeye in Sydney make an effort to stock any records I make and they are available to the public. They also do a good job of promoting them in the store but that’s just one shop. So what about an audience in The Netherlands and Hungary, Spain and Scandinavia? These days records sell so poorly and streaming pays so little that spending tens of thousands of dollars on publicity in the world simply isn’t worth it. All you can hope for is that enough people know about you and like you enough for you to be able to continue to do what you do as a labour of love. This might be a good moment to express my appreciation to everyone that reads this and supports me in my endeavours to write, release, produce and collaborate, unleashing projects onto the world! (Haha.) Writing blogs and stories, observing the universe, commenting on the world is all part of the creative process, singing, teaching, taking photos, reading, and learning languages is all part of the journey but it takes more time than there is.

Today I spoke a few words of German to Jerome in Berlin and Olivia at home, I spoke Spanish to Francisco in the post office as well as a little French, and in the Asian supermarket, I spoke Swedish to two Swedes we overheard chatting and surprised them with our Swedish knowledge. Olivia spoke Portuguese in the post office and did a Portuguese online lesson and studied vocabulary, I did a French lesson. It must be good for the brain, it must stop it from rotting, I wonder if this stimulating activity actually keeps you alive, even stopping your body from giving up. Could knowledge, education, interest in many subjects, and the taking in of information help you recover? I suppose it sounds ridiculous because professors die too but there must be something in having the will to live. I suppose it could be for other reasons, money, family or perhaps hanging on to achieve a final goal. They do say (them) that there’s something in the power of positive thinking.

Last but not least today, Benedikt, the man who sent me the badly packaged keyboard, just told me to keep it. I suppose that when I get into the home studio tutorial and I start pressing keys I’ll be able to see how badly damaged it is. Perhaps the functions I need work, so far I’ve only discovered that the octave buttons don’t work. Maybe I could take it somewhere and get it fixed. We’ll see how it fairs when I need an organ sound on a track or a drum pattern.

Music today took some interesting turns. I felt like listening to something Motown and discovered I had the Marvin Gaye ecological classic What’s Going On (1971) on my iPod but I felt it was a bit smooth and scrolled to Isaac Hayes and Hot Buttered Soul (1969), a double album, four tracks including the opening track, a version of the Bacharach/David classic Walk On By (Bacharach, by the way, is 92, David died at the age of 91 in 2012) and the closing track, Jimmy Webb’s By The Time I Get To Phoenix, originally recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1965 and famously covered by Glen Campbell, Frank Sinatra and why do I keep on thinking about Max Bygraves? (Deck Of Cards.) Hayes’ version runs for over 18 minutes. Two other tracks: One Woman and Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic (believe it or not). His version of Walk On By is over 12 minutes, it really is an album you have to own. Great music if you like this kind of thing.

How I got from here to Grateful Dead’s Live Dead (1969), well, that came from a conversation I was having with Jerome today. It was their first of many live albums and they were the first band to record a live 16 track album and you can probably thank their legendary soundman Owsley Stanley for that. This from Wikipedia:

The band’s soundman, Owsley “Bear” Stanley, asked electronics designer Ron Wickersham to invent a microphone splitter that fed both into the PA and the record inputs, with no loss in quality. The songs were recorded with an Ampex 16-track machine.

This led to high-quality live multi-track recording (Ron Wickersham was also part of the Alembic bass company). Stanley was arrested in 1967 after being found in possession of 350,000 hits of acid in his LSD lab. He said it was for personal use and was imprisoned for three years. Stanley died in a car accident in Queensland in 2011. An interesting fellow, should you choose to read his Wikipedia page.

Music Of The Daze

It’s light outside, it’s warm outside, it’s nearly 8 PM and the window is wide open. The summer is really here now. Two seagulls sit, still like ornaments, on a roof across the way. Below us in the building opposite the paint has peeled with years of neglect, a lady is hanging her washing. She’s straightening her young daughter’s jacket who is popping out onto the balcony in between playing video games, the computer desk is by the balcony door. There are other signs of life in this block of flats with its corrugated roof and ugly facade. More washing being hung, generally out of the window on a precarious line as is popular in these parts. The building gets the sun in the mid-afternoon and you often see residents sitting and enjoying it with a glass of wine. They can’t see the outside of their own building – it’s better to live in the ugly building looking over the beautiful one than the other way ‘round.

I didn’t make it out today as I had three sessions with Tony in Sydney, Brian in Florida and Doug in upstate New York. In between, there was the Sunday relaxing sports, England vs Albania, although it’s never relaxing watching England play. Spain vs Georgia and the snooker final Ronnie vs Robbo. Classic disaster, the ITV hub didn’t work so I missed the England game (they won 2-0) and had to watch the snooker after midnight, Ronnie was hammered. French was good, dinner was great, Deep Space 9 was ok. Life takes up so much time, you just have to plan every second especially when you’re older, you could wake up at 75 and have seen a lot of Netflix. The entertainment choices are so big, you can understand why old hobbies like stamp collecting have fallen by the wayside, who can compete with the visuals that today’s entertainment has created? From the balcony, I saw the lady’s daughter playing some crazy colourful game with bangs and crashes. It wouldn’t occur to her to pick up Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Voltaire’s Candide maybe she might like to listen to Dua Lipa or Beyoncé and that’s actually ok, she’s 9, she’s not going to be looking for Amon Düül’s Yeti album. It’s just that times have changed so much and to think that I didn’t have a computer or a mobile phone till I was way into my thirties, what a different life we have led – that’s Led Zeppelin not L.E.D.

As someone who likes to watch football, snooker and other sports sometimes, I wonder at the silent concentration and respect the audience has for the snooker players, it’s a sophisticated and skilful sport but so is music and when you think of those gigs where people talk through your sophisticated set, it’s frustrating. It’s obvious that some gigs are snooker competitions and others are football matches (I despair at the racist element) but then I despair at the lack of sportsmanship in the crowd. Today, nearly every time the Spanish players got the ball the Georgia crowd (yes there was a crowd) booed and whistled. If that’s how it’s going to be I don’t look forward to the crowds returning. Why can’t they be civilised as well as excited and supportive of their team, must they antagonise the opposition?

I wonder about fashion. We had ridiculous tight pants and colourful shirts, although I never really wore the paisley, on the cover of Heyday my shirt is more of a Western shirt. In the seventies, I had brush denim loons and a scoop neck T-shirt with flared sleeves and tassels. I started to worry when sports clothing became the hip music wear (they were probably worried about the tight pants). Baseball caps and introspective music don’t really go, tracksuits and Pink Floyd? Nike and The Beatles? But I bet there’s some sports clothing at an FKA Twigs gig but her music doesn’t sound very sporty to me. Every week all those people at sporting events, imagine if the crowd was as excited about the performance of the songs of their musical heroes as they are about the performance and the goals of their sports stars – so excited that they went to see them play every week, home and away. But for some reason when the team is bad the fans keep coming back, when the band is bad they rarely return.

Music today has been that old classic, Super Session with Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. Those were the days.

Music Of The Daze

I just did a rather extensive interview with the double-barrelled Naomi Dryden-Smith for the Louder Than War website. We sent it out on Mailchimp yesterday but we’re posting a link to it here today in case you are not on the mailing list (if you would like to be just click here and sign up). Naomi is based in London and the site seems to focus on what happens in England but I suppose it gets looked at by the same people that might buy Mojo and Uncut as the English music scene has had such a huge influence on the world. The power of the NME back in the seventies and then there was Melody Maker, Sounds and Record Mirror. I used to like Sounds because they didn’t destroy people’s lives with their reviews but I suppose that was the sneering punk years before the successful ones moved to Los Angeles.

THE INTERVIEW

Today was the exciting ‘The Picture Of Dorian Gray’ day. We got up, went to the Psychedelic Psupermarket where I bought mangos and papaya and eyed up the kiwi fruit. It had threatened to be 73/23 but it wasn’t – a slight breeze, a cloudy sky but still warm. We walked past the wall with the elephant graffiti and it had been painted over, forever preserved in this blog. You have to be quick, I caught a dog on a balcony spectacularly barking but only because of the speed at which I got the zoom onto the camera, two clicks and it was gone. All those doors and old buildings I take pictures of, in 20 years they’ll all be renovated faceless apartments with manicured outer walls and freshly painted doorways.

Back home in time for Dorian, what could go wrong, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, and some hot new actors who would wow us with their intense portrayals. It was an hour and a half, it was 12 quid, we lasted 30 minutes and that was being brave. It was ‘modern’, using a social media platform as the premise for the selling of Dorian’s soul. We hated it. No problem, we’ll watch the snooker semi-final between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Barry Hawkins 4-4 at the break. 7 PM start, perfect, first frame – ITV wouldn’t work. So French it was before dinner, day 296, probably a blessing in disguise as it’s a tricky lesson at the moment. We watched two awful episodes of Deep Space 9 over dinner and here we are.

As I type I’m listening to the album that I’ve made with Jerome Froese, something quite different. I love these collaborations, they just take you to places you wouldn’t go or at least they take what you do and add what you wouldn’t do, creating something that neither of you would do on your own. I’m not sure when this one is coming out and what we should call it. It may just come out under our names unless of course, someone comes up with a brilliant name like Tangerine Dream, The Teardrop Explodes, or Atlantaeum Flood. More about what it sounds like as we get closer to release, cover art, band name.

The clocks go forward tonight so I’ll be losing an hour’s sleep and I have to be up in the morning for an Arktik Lake session with Tony in Sydney. That’s ok, it means a long day between two other sessions with Brian in Florida and Doug in upstate New York, snooker finals, world cup qualifiers. Next week I hope to get into the studio manual, and as the summer comes bursting through the windows, get creative on the waft of Portuguese air, the seagulls’ call, and the sound of the church bells in the distance. The blissful shouting of the children from the nearby school and I will be wondering how to keep all that background noise from any recordings, haha – or not.

Music today has been the odd mixture of Osibisa’s Woyaya (1971), Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet’s The Apocalypse Inside Of An Orange (2007), and Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits (1978) – Haha.

Music Of The Daze

Today Benedict, the man who sent me the keyboard that arrived damaged from Germany, sent me a full refund. Thank you, Benedict, that’s very honourable of you. But I suppose it doesn’t solve the issue of having a working keyboard/midi controller in my home studio. As yet I don’t know if he wants to have it sent back, that’s going to cost him too because I’d have to buy proper packaging and mail it. Or, it stays with me and I take it to a tech to fix it if it can be fixed and at a reasonable price. Whatever happens, it’s a hassle and I just wanted to get all the gear together so I can start working in my studio. I’ve been so mad busy the last two weeks, haven’t had a second between seshes, translating the Swedish, French, Psychedelic Psupermarket and blog (note the extra P, thanks MRB). I’ve been so busy that I haven’t been able to listen to the tracks that Jerome Froese has sent me for our collaboration but tomorrow is Saturday and I am sesh free. But also tomorrow is the day that we will be watching The Picture of Dorian Gray from The Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, Yorkshire. Now that sounds like a wonderful alternative cultural distraction, can’t wait.

I went to draw the curtains yesterday and ended up pulling the whole array down onto the couch, luckily it’s not so cold here because when it is those curtains make a difference even with the shutters down. I was thinking about Pete Way who I mentioned yesterday, the bassist from UFO who died last year after suffering an accident at home. I never found out what the accident was but I was thinking about ridiculous deaths, you know tripping over the cat and head butting the wall, slipping on a potato peel, and catching the sharp corner of the granite benchtop, leaning too far out of the window. Then there’s the story of Yardbirds singer Keith Relf, electrocuted playing electric guitar in his basement, the myth told us he was playing it in the bath. I was hoping for dying in my sleep at 111 with all my faculties. Apparently, Aldous Huxley asked for and was given LSD on his deathbed.

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t been getting out much and haven’t been able to do any more exploring of the city. Soon things will be opening up here as the covid is very low, 25th March was 423 daily cases with a 7-day average of 451 but France and Italy have gone nuts again and any travellers from France into Germany have to quarantine for 10 days. It’s good to know that we are in the spring and coming into the summer. I’m so looking forward to getting our Fiat Doblo Maxi, although they are looking a little more expensive than we wanted. But having a vehicle here will be so great, Spain an hour away and all the sites of Portugal to discover. It’s not going to happen for a while anyway because Olivia’s Dad is going to get it in Germany and drive it here and that is not going to be soon.

Still, all this gives me time to learn as much as I can about the home studio and I may even be able to get things working sooner rather than later. I’ve been thinking about the short stories too and wondering if I could have Olivia illustrate them, that sounds like a lovely little book of the macabre. At some point I’m going to have to learn some Portuguese, Olivia is streaking ahead with online lessons but it’s a tricky language, it’s one of those languages that you don’t hear often and I’m still at the stage where I can’t hear where one word ends and the next word starts. When I saw those kids in the street yesterday I was thinking how the human brain works, they’re all so young and they all speak fluent Portuguese, if only our old brains would allow us to learn like that.

Music today started in the shower with Led Zep II (1969) and later with the American Yes and Starcastle’s third album Citadel (1977) and then the latest album by The Pretty Reckless, Death By Rock And Roll (2021), and that got me all fuzzed up so I listened to The Cult’s, Sonic Temple (1989).

Music Of The Daze

It was odd to walk out of the house today into the Marquês square and find myself walking behind twenty ten-year-olds holding hands and singing the tune (not the words) to Jingle Bells. It’s March and it’s Porto, we’re not seeing a lot of snow here. It always amused me when I spent those Christmases in Australia, how people would spray fake snow on the windows, so there’s an affection for it even if it doesn’t actually snow. I had a friend in Australia, Lynda, who had never seen snowfall. Well, I’d never tasted avocado until I went to Australia and I certainly hadn’t tasted mango or papaya or a range of exotic fruits – kiwi, custard apple, and others. I also never had a shower as a kid. A shower? What’s that? We had baths and however disgusting this may sound by today’s standards, this was the sixties and it was once a week and we had to share the bathwater. I don’t think we were particularly poor, I just think that was the way it was done in those days. How times change, how our expectations change, our demands, the world has changed so much socially in my lifetime. People were old at 40 and kids were kids, not entrepreneurs at 14.

Into the modern world, we go with digital friends, digital pets, digital music and one wonders if the holo-suites on Star Trek will make actually knowing anyone relevant. This whole thing about working from home has been a huge success, the narrow-minded corporations couldn’t imagine such a thing could be a success, thinking the workers would not take the responsibility to do the work efficiently with the distractions of the cat, the internet, and the fridge. How wrong they were. It seems that people are more efficient and not as depressed by the awful commute and its cost. A better environment, more efficiency for the company, and more money in your pocket. No more horrible fluorescent lights, sexism, and expensive sandwiches for lunch. No more sitting on a train with sick people, no more being crunched into a carriage, no more getting home exhausted from the travelling alone, and no more dealing with the cynical bully workmate that won’t leave you alone, no more dress code. Of course, there’s the team, the camaraderie, and getting out of the house, not everyone wants it this new way – shouldn’t you just be able to choose?

All this may turn those city office blocks into city accommodation meaning you don’t have to live in the suburbs anymore if you don’t want to, suddenly there’s so much living availability in the city it becomes cheaper than the suburbs and brings the cities to life at night, not just areas like Soho in London but everywhere. The world has to change, it’s unavoidable, common sense prevails. They are legalizing marijuana in New York because they can’t ignore both the fact that alcohol causes more death, more violence, and more strain on the health service, plus it’s a billion-dollar industry waiting in the wings. Morality is subjective and the association drugs have with lowlife is a worn-out idea. People mistrust the suits, the leaders, more than ever before, it wasn’t always like that.

I’m actually not into defending anything overall because polarisation makes rational argument impossible these days, I just know that sweeping opinions are not relevant anymore, standards don’t mean much, there’s good and there’s bad and it’s generally pretty obvious which is which – depending which side you’re on. On religion, apparently 85% of the world’s population believe in God and it is fascinating that faith has so successfully prevailed over proof. Conspiracy theories run amok, who knows what is right and what is wrong and I was hearing that the technology that allows the manipulation of videos (Deepfake) is becoming so sophisticated that in the future it will be impossible to prove that it wasn’t you that made all those outrageous comments. It’s why we have to die when we’ve been on the planet for a few decades, we just can’t handle new world values.

Music today has been New Values (1979) by Iggy Pop obviously, plus The Man Who (1999) by Travis, Jason Falkner’s All Quiet On The Noise Floor (2009), and his collaboration with R. Stevie Moore – Make It Be (2017). I also played the Stephen Stills – Manassas album (1972).

Music Of The Daze