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The silence in the streets, the vast dome of spring blue above my head, the sun finally shining down on an Earth that seems to be so sparsely populated that it reminds me of the past. I remember in the sixties how the roads had fewer cars. I remember tan-coloured, string-backed driving gloves that had a press stud to close them and an oval designed cut out where you could see the back of your hand. No seatbelts, sturdy metal frames and large leather bench seats, doors that clunked in deep tones when you shut them. Chrome door handles and bumper bars, radiator grills and headlights with so much character they had faces, personalities. The Chevron on the Citroen and all the different bonnet ornaments. The Spirit Of Ecstasy on the Rolls Royce, the chrome plated leaping cat on a Jaguar. At some point they were banned as dangerous and then there were the morons that stole them, ripping them off the bonnets in the night. But the wonderful lines that cars had in those days…

One of my earliest memories was my Dad’s Ford Consul. Like me, my mum never drove (except once, but that’s another story). The car was cream coloured and it had an olive green roof but it disappears out of my memory when we made our first house move. My parents ran a pub called The Commercial in Compstall, it’s part of the borough of Stockport where I was born and I imagine that I lived there from birth till our next house close by outside Marple Bridge off the Glossop road. I have a terrible childhood memory of living there. As I remember the pub was next door to a graveyard and to this day I run past graveyards if I’m alone, all cocky and confident if I’m with someone else as if I’m fighting with my psyche trying to inhibit what I might imagine if I was left to myself. Scary stuff psychologically but not as scary as the nightmare I had as a very young child that I still remember. Wait for it, it’s terrible that a child went through this. All I remember is a moving severed hand on my bed. How awful is that for a kid of, I don’t know, about 4 years old? My only other memories are a vague recollection of a small girl whose name may have been Evelyn, a local playmate perhaps. Then there was my grandmother on my father’s side who I remember as being strict and somehow loveless (the opposite of my mother’s mother). I recall she was called Priscilla, she had what looked like dyed ginger hair and a stiff demeanour, I remember her perfume used to make me feel sick and I was uncomfortable in her presence. I remember that she always wore stockings and when she walked her thighs rubbed together so you could hear her coming.

My point with all this is that those days remind me of the stillness and silence of now. I even think the seagulls are quieter as if all that noise that they make was only because of the presence of humans, revving cars and the digital beeping of the doors on buses and their noisy engines as they pull away. Loud motorbikes and shouting children, skateboarders, buskers and the local silver band. As if to say ‘you make your noise and we make ours’. In my world it’s often quiet outside because I go to bed very late and get up very late. I miss the day and all the hoo-ha. I love the dead of night when I’m awake, alert, creative. I always think about starting something past midnight, a song, or writing. It seems that in recent times Olivia and I think about sleeping between 4-6AM and waking between midday and 2PM, eight hours, perfect, although Olivia needs a little more.

It’s been a strange day for music today, partly continuing with what Paul and I were talking about yesterday. I was at the Record And Tape Exchange in Notting Hill earlier this year and CDs have become so cheap there that I decided to buy a whole lot of things that I wouldn’t normally buy to see if there were any surprises. I mentioned Sunflower Bean the other day, I bought a couple of Squeeze CDs, Hendrix Live At Berkley and a whole lot more but one that I got was a Van Morrison album from 2016 called Keep Me Singing. I like to give records a chance and Paul and I were talking briefly about some of the older Van albums. This one though seemed very samey and middle of the road but then it sounded exactly like Van Morrison sounds. Maybe it’s just modern sounds versus older sounds with this kind of music. It’s as if he had recorded this same album in 1972 it would have been much better. Recording techniques, microphones, the sounds of older instruments, the attitude of engineers and producers and the musicians themselves, the whole digital world that we live in and what it has done to our souls or perhaps the block it has created in our souls. I need to go back and listen to a couple of older albums by him and see if I can pick why I like them more.

I was sad to find out that I have music by a musician who has died of the Corona virus, Manu Dibango. For some reason I only have the CD single here from the Wakafrica album (so I ordered it). It’s the Gabriel song Biko remixed with the second song, the title track. Afro Jazz, unique rhythms, he died in his adopted country of France at the age of 86. Originally from Cameroon he was essentially a sax player that played piano and vibraphone. I lived in London with a sax player from Cameroon called Yeb who I once saw play with the amazing Gil Scott-Heron at the Jazz cafe in Camden, but that’s another story. Dibango was famous for his song Soul Makossa from 1972. This led me to a collection from Nigerian Psychedelic, Soul, Rock, Funk koolistas, Blo. I have a compilation CD called Phases 1972-1982. It’s great at first but they stray into Disco territory later on and this reflects their lack of sales with their earlier and best music as they tried to gain some attention but the first few tracks are really worth the price of entry.

As Paul and I were talking about Pilot last night, I jumped a long way from Africa to Scotland and listened to the two Pilot albums that didn’t have the hits. By the last album, Two’s A Crowd, the band was only David Paton on bass and vocals and Ian Bairnson on guitar. After Pilot they both played on the first two Kate Bush albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart and then joined The Alan Parsons Project (Two’s A Crowd was produced at Abbey Road by Parsons). When I listen to these old middle of the road seventies records I try to listen to them in the spirit of the era but in this case, you can hear the era being wiped out by Punk Rock on the passing of each easy mellow track. Despite their earlier hits and melodic sensibilities they didn’t have a chance – they looked wrong, too. It’s another example of everything Punk was out to destroy, they succeeded of course. But I always wondered why Punk wanted to destroy Progressive music, music that was also edgy, often experimental and annoying the parents – like Van Der Graaf Generator. I suppose it wasn’t simple and energetic enough, although when I saw Emerson, Lake & Palmer at the Liverpool Empire in the mid-seventies it was as aggressive as anything I’d ever seen with Keith Emerson thrusting a dagger into his Hammond Organ and rolling it around the stage like a lunatic removal man.

I had a preliminary sesh today with Tyler in Portland and have seshes with Stephen in Washington on Friday and Matt in Brooklyn on Saturday as well as six more seshes on Sunday. In between all this Dare and I are in the studio flitting between Noctorum writing sessions and Space Summit fixing and mixing. I’m looking forward to a day of putting records away, listening and filing, my idea of fun.

I hope that everyone out there is taking the opportunity to do the opposite of what the panicky vibe in the world is telling us to do. So, mellow out, listen to music, watch some amazing films, read, learn something, French, cooking, banjo, anything. You might not get another chance to be creative like this when time is stolen back from you. On another positive note think of the Earth’s relief as industry pauses and nature recovers. Dolphins in Venice and thousands of people and animals not being choked to death by pollution. The great dilemma, the workforce versus the Earth.

Okay I’m off to file and listen into the night, I’ll try and post the pictures of the records I listen to after Pilot, but hey let’s make it those first two amazing Kate Bush albums that Paton and Bairnson played on and beyond!

Today’s song is the recorded version of the appropriately titled Hopes And Fears from Noctorum’s second album Offer The Light. Olivia and I love playing this one live, we usually finish the set with it and it suits the 12 string acoustic and violin perfectly. Olivia’s final soaring solo every night always seems to leave a sense of satisfaction in the audience as it does in us.

 

HOPES AND FEARS

I stare out of my window at a grey Northern sky
On a Saturday
And the smoke in the distance that clings to the hills
From the factories
And people are gathering in droves in the street
‘Cause it’s market day
And I am in love with a girl who I met
Only yesterday

Summer has gone
Lights are on
The nights have grown long
Then the town’s
Looking down
As the rain hits the ground

Then the newspaper sellers are telling us all
What’s been happening
And women are hiding in shopkeeper’s doorways
And gossiping
And you and I meet in the café across from the hospital
And finding a cure for the lovelorn
Is proving impossible

Life tumbles on
Like this song
And the music plays on
And we kiss
Like a play
With our love on display

And the sirens still call
From the factory walls
As we pray to live in peace
With the future unknown
We slowly walk home
As our hopes and fears increase

With our fate in our hands
As we lay in the sand
Will our love and life survive
But I know this is bliss
You are all that I wish
With our hopes and fears alive

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – Offer The Light (2006)

Walking out into the street today it felt like a Sunday morning, less traffic, fewer people, shops closed, everyone at home. I managed to go and pick up a package from the post office, I haven’t opened it yet but I presume it is the Spirit – Model Shop soundtrack album from 1968 (reissued in 2005). It came from Germany, sent by a very nice Italian guy called Fabrizio who gave me a discount, thanking me for all the music. Nice. So the post office is open, deliveries are still happening. The guy at the package counter today told me ”We don’t want to be here, but we have to be”. Later as it got dark we decided to walk down to the sea, stop off at the supermarket which is across the road and see what they had on the shelves. There was some pasta for the first time in a long time, I guess people can’t fit any more in the cupboards, still no toilet rolls, they seem to be flying out the door like, well I won’t say. We stopped for a few minutes to look at the sea at night. There was moisture in the air, a hazy mist made the lamps in the street glow differently, struggling to be bright. The skate park was still illuminated but empty. Seagulls were awake but somewhere in the distance out at sea, there was that special whooshing sound of the waves washing against the shore, there was only the occasional car on the road, the supermarket car park was empty, everyone waits for the future.

We were in the studio today, it was finish off the mix for Space Summit song No.4. (I’m purposely not telling you any titles). By the time that was all done it was dinner time so no Noctorum today, we’ll get together Thursday for that. But on the subject of projects making progress, Jerome Froese from Loom and Tangerine Dream posted that he had been working on our project today, editing guitars for a new type of Krautrock, ha ha, can’t wait for the results.

Wild Swan’ Paul Simpson and I were talking today about music (imagine that). It all started because he posted a track from a Miles Davis album, Circle In The Round (1979). At the time it was a compilation of unreleased tracks and weirdly has a David Crosby song on there, Guinnevere, from the first CSN album. Somehow this led onto Clifford T. Ward, Pilot, Jigsaw, Jimmy Campbell, Rockin’ Horse, Liverpool Express and Van Morrison. So selections tonight are influenced by Paul. Some of these bands you will know, others you won’t. Jimmy Campbell was a Liverpool luminary who was in The Kirkbys that supported The Beatles and played regularly at The Cavern in the early days. He was also in The 23rd Turnoff, a Psychedelic band that you’ve never heard of, that are essential, their 7 inch single Michael Angelo on Deram is what I’ll be looking for forever, even the compilation CD is pricey. That’s where Spotify comes in handy, I was able to listen to it tonight. He was also in the great Rockin’ Horse with Billy Kinsley. Kinsley was also in The Merseybeats and later Liverpool Express. Lots of Liverpool connections here.

There’s some records out there that have no cred, no rarity value, they’re not weird, commercial hits brought them to the public eye, but their albums are forgotten and are often full of memorable songs. Pilot are remembered just for January and Magic but not for the albums Two’s A Crowd (appropriate today) and Morin Heights. Jigsaw are remembered for one hit, Sky High, but not their albums. They had a lot of hits outside England, Liverpool Express had three No.1 singles in Brazil.

This might be a good time to tell you about Seeing Stars. It was the end of All About Eve, we were in Herefordshire in a rented property jamming. It was me on guitar, Andy Cousin on bass and Mark Price on drums. I’m not sure if I remember this correctly but Phonogram had dropped the band after Touched By Jesus. We then got signed by MCA and made Ultraviolet which is incidentally the album that got me into Anekdoten because Nicklas Barker was a fan, he knew less about The Church. We then got dropped by MCA as the record was released, ha ha, nil points (French accent) for effort. So were we in Herefordshire after that I guess? Hm, not sure, but what I do know is that we had a whole lot of backing tracks and no-one to sing them so I stepped in. They were only ever demos really but by the time we’d finished all the tracks we figured we should put it out as an album. It had a certain spontaneous rough and ready quality to it that we liked and ultimately we really liked the songs we’d written. If we hadn’t put it out it would have been buried forever. I had a contact with Border Records in Sweden and they agreed to release it. I think they made 500 CD’s. They sold out a long time ago. I suppose one day we will release it limited edition on vinyl but if you haven’t heard it Salome was the opening track. Coincidentally the guitar sound (that I love) was my 1966 red broken in half butchered Rickenbacker that has been getting some mentions recently. I hope you like it. I guess over time I’ll post more tracks but you can listen to it on Spotify for now.

Another day of wondering what’s happening in the world. All we can do is carry on and be positive and hope things get better, be kind to each other and take the opportunity just for once to slow down and reflect and try and come out of this as better versions of ourselves. The music helps, that’s what it supposed to do.

 

Salome

(Salome, Salome)

Exquisite inspiration
On a tray that’s decorated
With that smile

Your beautiful creation
Set aloof in revelation
His capricious trial

Anything you like
All that you desire

I want to satisfy you
Salome, Salome

The head of John the Baptist
Is upon Salome’s wish list
Lips sick, dry

Nervously entrancing
And she’s sinfully enhancing
Her delight inside

Anything you like
All that you desire

I want to satisfy you
Salome, Salome

(Willson-Piper/Cousin/Price)
Seeing Stars (1997)

Oh what a beautiful day it was today. I just couldn’t wait to get down to the promenade and sit on a bench and gaze at the waves. The sea was two colours, a deep green near the shore and an electric blue further out. It was choppy, the wind was blowing across the surface, but the sun was keeping it warm. I’d already been to get my vege pasty and was looking forward to sitting there eating it. As I pulled it out of the bag Olivia said “Seal!”. And there, dancing in the waves, still mostly submerged was this wonderful creature. You couldn’t actually make out its whiskers but due to previous encounters you could still see them. Suddenly a little to the left, there were two more also submerged, never really popping their heads up, just rolling in the surf. Where we sat is actually called Wherrytown, a small strip between Penzance and Newlyn. It’s where the skateboard park is and there’s always skaters (lads mainly) from quite diverse age groups performing their tricks. The beach here is all stones and after the seals and the pasty I had the urge to go down towards the sea. Walking on piles of loose stones is quite difficult but lots of shaky, unstable fun.

As we sat on the bench, there were two people sitting to the left of us on the beach. It was a woman and a boy, she was wearing, wait for it, a mustard sweater! I’m not sure if it was THE woman in the mustard sweater. They were sitting on a large stone and they were throwing stones into the sea whilst simultaneously throwing an orange ball along the beach for the most energetic Springer Spaniel I have ever seen. The dog raced across the stones with a sure-footed expertise, retrieving the ball in seconds and demanding for it to be thrown again.

She eventually stood up and threw the ball using what is apparently called a ‘dog ball launcher’. You’ve seen them, it’s a long springy piece of coloured plastic that grabs a tennis ball and it whips the ball a much greater distance than you could throw it with your arm. I guess the woman was trying to send the dog running further away so she had more time between throws but he was so lightning quick it made little difference. How the dog didn’t damage his legs or paws running like this on this surface or break his teeth as he banged his snout onto the ball in the stones, I’ll never know.

Olivia took some photos of me on the beach from the bench. At one point I lay down across the stones a little too close to the waves’ reach and got hit from behind and drenched fully clothed. Time to go. The woman in the mustard sweater and her son eventually got up to move about the same time we did. I spoke to her. “Never get a Springer Spaniel”, she said.

So today was our last day of any kind of gathering as we have gone into lockdown for three weeks (at least). Exercise, shops, work, medical needs all ok, anything else not ok. What about the postmen and women, are they allowed to deliver the post? Luckily Olivia went to the post office today to send things. Not being able to gather in groups of more than two seems rather ridiculous when I saw the queues outside the doctor’s surgery and chemist today. The supermarkets are full and I read today that in London and Stockholm reducing the number of trains means that people who have been ordered to work by their employers are crushed together like sardines. How is that social distancing?

I guess Simeon won’t be able to come with the Citroen coffee truck, he is going to be so mad. Today at the truck I was talking to a guy who had seen Jimi Hendrix live at the Marquee in London, Bob Marley at Crystal Palace and Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett. My Queen – Sheer Heart Attack tour, Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon tour, Deep Purple – Machine Head tour and Black Sabbath – Vol. 4 tour paled into insignificance. Although it’s hard to compare, it’s just the age group and if you are a fan of sixties and seventies music and were a kid from the seventies onwards it’s all amazing, as seeing Jimi Hendrix is for me. I did visit his grave once in Renton, Washington…in fact I’ve visited a few graves, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from CAN in Cologne, Nick Drake in Tanworth-in-Arden, Tim Hardin in Turner, Oregon, Jim Morrison in Paris, Sandy Denny in London, Phil Lynott in Sutton, Dublin and Victor Jara in Santago, Chile. Then there’s Stanisław Lem who wrote Solaris in Krakow, Poland. The Grimm Brothers, Marlene Dietrich and Helmut Newton in Berlin, if you go to Père Lachaise in Paris it’s full of famous dead people, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, so many more. Then there’s Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery in London, Eva Peron in Buenos Aires. Depressing or respect? A moment by the grave of someone whose work you have admired or whose fame lives on after their death inspires some quite profound reflection.

Visiting CAN

 

Visiting Phil Lynott

 
Today music was the end of Keith West. I simply couldn’t leave it with his last two weaker albums (solo and Moonrider). I had to listen to the Tomorrow album. There’s a cover of Strawberry Fields and as I mentioned yesterday (not so much in these words), but Tomorrow was the revolution of yesterday. This band was to Engelbert Humperdinck what The Clash were to Brotherhood Of Man. On this particular version of the Tomorrow album (a US reissue from 1976) they added the Keith West hit Excerpt From A Teenage Opera.

I was up earlyish today for a sesh with Stephen in Melbourne, but he cancelled (he’s a doctor, lots going on), but I didn’t go back to sleep. So was a little sleepy around 8.30PM. I thought I know Al Di Meola, so I listened to Elegant Gypsy (1977) and then Romantic Warrior (1976) by Return To Forever. That crazy Jazz Rock fusion certainly woke me up.

Alas there’s some new albums to catch up on, I recently bought the new Wire album, Mind Hive. I’ve always been a fan of their records since the seventies. There were three albums, Pink Flag (1977), Chairs Missing (1978) and 154 (1979). I Should Have Known Better on 154 continues to blow my mind. This new album seems to be everything I expect from them, solidly weird. This drove me to the album they put out before this in 2017, Silver/Lead. New records, old records, different styles, aren’t we lucky?

When I was in Liverpool in December working with The Wild Swans I found a couple of cool record stores and one of the albums I bought was the double vinyl version of McCartney and Youth’s Fireman project. It was their third album together (the other two were released anonymously) and the first two have vocals. It’s a real mixture of things and I’ve come to the conclusion that McCartney has his days when he tries and days when he just records what comes out. This project initially gave him some room to experiment, but by the time he reached this, the third album, he was ready to own up to the project and what do we get, an album of weaker songs mixed with cool experiments. It’s the Egypt Station problem, it’s so easy for him to write songs that he forgets that they also have to be good. Now and again he’ll make a cracking album and then he won’t. Let’s be glad of all the great things he’s done which is more than you think post Beatles.

The song from my catalogue today was going to be from the Seeing Stars album but I couldn’t get to the lyrics for that album on the website (fixing it) so let’s go with More Is Less from the upcoming vinyl release of Nightjar this Record Store Day, now set for June 20th 2020.

 

More Is Less

I heard a rumour God was coming back
I said I didn’t know he’d been
Then I was cursed, unloved for what I lacked
Faith in something I’d not felt or seen

Even the angels enjoy a good cigar, they say
Tone deaf drunks sing sweet songs
Parades of people marching for what they are
Convinced that there’s a right and wrong

Boasting of knowledge for all
Seems though we’re crouched at the wall

I suppose we’re clever we build and we create
But we’re a badly designed machine
Uncontrolled and trusting as a snake
Yet loving kind and serene
There’s something I noticed in every walk of life

That people share no policy
Distinguished peasants and lovable rogues
We all beg to disagree
I don’t feel safe in my heart
Where is the end or the start

Desperation, it poked me with its stick
Inspiration threw a feast of thoughts
Desecration the world has just been sick
Delegations kiss long before they talk
Chemical seems more complex
Teachings show me more is less

(Willson-Piper)
Nightjar (2008)

Sessions, sessions, sessions. It was sessions all day for me today. Sunday is usually a big sessions day for me. Tony in Sydney, Doug in Wappinger Falls, Brian in Florida and Mike in New Orleans. Just four today (it was six last Sunday and five so far for next Sunday). I guess Sunday is a day to do this if you work all week and have to deal with the commute, dinner, family, domestic stuff and then getting up early the next morning to do it all again. The weekends must be great! Ha ha, us musician types don’t see the weekends in the same way. If you’re on tour, Friday/Saturday are usually the biggest nights and when you’re not, the significance of the days is not as acute because routine is not the way of life. So for most people, Saturday/Sunday is the free time to get things done, have some fun, catch up with friends, hang with the family, indulge yourself in that secret project in the shed or perhaps speak to me. The sessions are great, communicating about music, analyzing what needs to be done, evolving, studying the creative process and then unleashing the results on the universe. Long may they continue and let me tell you watching the sessioneers progress is inspiring. Also let me tell you, it’s not a competition and if you do this with me and feel that you don’t have the time to put the work in then that’s fine. Loving music is enough, it’s supposed to be fun.

Sad to hear Kenny Rogers died. When I was a kid he sang one of my favourite songs, Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town. Before he became a mega country star sensation he was in a band called The First Edition. This song reached No.6 in the USA and No.2 in the UK in 1969, I was 11 at the time. Younger folks may remember the version by ex Heavy Metal Kids singer Gary Holton and Norwegian Casino Steel, released in 1981, a No.1 single in Norway in 1982. Like his super famous hit, Lucille, Rogers knew how to pick a song with a heartbreaking lyric. Ruby deals with a Vietnam vet returning paralyzed trying to convince his wife not to go out on the town to look for a lover, like Lucille, really tragic. The song was written by Country legend Mel Tillis and recorded initially by another country legend, Waylon Jennings. A slew of other country stars have recorded it. Oddly it was also recorded by Leonard Nimoy and German Synth Pop duo Wolfsheim. Then there’s the other language versions – Nana Mouskouri anyone (one of my dad’s faves)? RIP Kenny, I hear you were a good man.

Our friend and local folky singer-songwriter Libby came into the studio today. She’s been trying to get in here for weeks and today it finally happened. She had a lovely song called In This Game. Olivia played violin on it and I ran in between sessions with half an hour to spare and put a solo on it using Dare’s Gibson. Libby is a gem, when she’s not being creative and spreading kindness, she’s raising money for the less fortunate. You can download the song here and check her out on her bandcamp page that Olivia just set up for her.

I’ve been trying to avoid the news today and trying to forget that there’s an outside. I was thinking about the pharaohs and that when they died they were often buried in sealed rooms with their handmaidens and slaves to accompany them as they journeyed into the afterlife. I wondered if they actually had to be dead, too, to do that or they were allowed to accompany them when they were still alive? I guess the concept of we’re all equal in death if not in life had little meaning in those barbaric times when some were gods and others were slaves. Nowadays some people out there still believe this bullshit.

I was playing records tonight by Freedom (good segue). I guess they became little too Hard Rock for some as 1971 approached with their Through The Years album, but initially they sounded a bit more like a cross between a Beat group and Creedence. On the Freedom At Last album (1970) there’s a cool version of The Beatles’ Cry Baby Cry and The Zombies’ Time Of The Season. Drummer Bobby Harrison was the singer and leader of the group, Ray Royer initially played guitar, they were both members of Procol Harum (Royer played guitar on A Whiter Shade Of Pale). They made one soundtrack album in 1969 for an Italian Movie, Nero Su Bianco (Black On White) directed by avant-garde director Tinto Brass before Harrison completely changed the line-up to Roger Saunders on guitar and Walter Monaghan on bass. By some miracle I have Roger Saunders’ album from 1972. I only ever saw it once. According to the sleeve notes Freedom were still together when the solo album was released but they broke up the same year and Harrison went on to form Snafu with ex Juicy Lucy guitarist Mick Moody, who ended up in Whitesnake would you believe.

In the sixties Keith West was in a band called Tomorrow with Steve Howe who would later join the classic Yes line-up and Twink from The Pretty Things who would later join Pink Fairies. After Tomorrow West had a solo hit with the sixties classic Excerpt From A Teenage Opera. What happened next? Well, he made an album, Wherever My Love Goes (1974), for the German label Kuckuck and then formed the band Moonrider in 1975 before disappearing from commercial sight. The solo album is pretty tame and why Punk Rock was necessary but once he was what Punk Rock was but ten years earlier as a Psychedelic hipster with his finger on the pulse of the vital music of the day. The old people were once the young people.

I also played two albums by Jess Roden’s Bronco, Country Home (1970) and Ace Of Sunlight (1971). Roden had left The Alan Bown Set and after these two albums would go solo. They were some kind of English country version of Free, not as consistently Bluesy. The guitarist was Robbie Blunt who showed up with Michael Des Barres in Silverhead and later played with Robert Plant on those initial post Zep solo albums. What I love about the post sixties and pre-Punk seventies albums is the Rock warmth. Especially the drum sounds and somehow even the shrieking and screaming sounded cosy.

I had an idea tonight that I could add a song to the blog that I’ve either co-written with a project or a song of my own. There’s so many recorded songs out there that it’s hard to know where to start, for me or for you. The saving of the environment will continue to be high on the priority list once we get through the virus fight, as we will, we must, we really have to change the world.

 

Running Through Your Fingers

I believe in wondrous things
I can hear the planets sing
And they glow in reds and blues
And they’re mad at their abuse

And we limp to the future
Bandaged and bleeding

Challenged by the need for sacrifice
Responsibility and such
But when you look at what we’ve got
Is it really that much

Can’t you see
It’s running through your fingers
Running through your fingers
Just take your hands and stop it
Running through your fingers

If I must, I’ll spell it out
Who on Earth could harbour doubt
Can’t you see that just one soul
Is a piece in the crucial whole

I can’t make a difference
Someone else will fix it

When simple acts of habit
Are all you need to change
Just rein in a little bit
Is that so hard to arrange

Can’t you see
It’s running through your fingers
Running through your fingers
Just take your hands and stop it
Running through your fingers

(Willson-Piper/Mason)
Noctorum – Honey Mink Forever (2011)

I feel like I’m in a Specials film clip. Not only is it a Ghost Town out there but it’s also eerie. Walking past closed pubs on a Saturday night is just weird. To make it worse, it’s cold, a strong biting wind that reddens your cheek and rattles your bones. We opened the big front door in the studio building today, opened all the doors in the archive and the studio and opened the windows and had the wind blow the dust out, freshening the cellar with oxygen. At one point I thought, ooh it’s getting chilly in here, but I didn’t mind. That is, I didn’t mind sitting inside knowing that I could close up at any time. Out there it was more a feeling of let me get back. But it wasn’t just the chill, at 3 o’clock the shops were empty or shut, the streets were empty, Simeon and the Citroen coffee truck had gone before I even got to him. I got my vege pasty from Doreen at Rowe’s bakery and noticed that after days and days of empty bread shelves, there were suddenly 20 unsold loaves. Is that how it’s going to be? Panic buy, buy nothing, run low, panic buy again?

Stupidly, later on I went around the corner to the supermarket to see if I could get some…bread, I found some rolls but that was it. The shelf was empty except for hot cross buns and tortillas. I’m presuming that everyone is freezing the pre-packaged bread. There was just me and another man in the shop at 9PM on a Saturday night. At the till I was talking to Ryan, one of the lads that works there, when a woman who had also ventured in came up to pay, I beckoned her to come and be served. “I didn’t want to get too close”, she said. Ryan said that it was nice to be quiet, not hearing the kerfuffle at the pub across the road, “There’s always an argument”.

We were in the studio with Space Summit again today. Jed found the right drum files and sent them over. I asked him to send them to all three of us, Dare, Olivia and me. WeTransfer just doesn’t seem to want to allow us to download the files here in the studio because of some security protocol. Both Olivia and I tried to no avail so Dare had to go back to his house to download them there. Sometimes the amazing convenient internet is such an inconvenience and it might take a tech to figure out why, not me. Still, can you imagine being able to do this in 1969? It didn’t matter though, did it? The saying is ”Necessity is the mother of invention”. You don’t need much apart from a soul and an imagination.

After sorting out the drums it was time to add extra guitars. Yay! Always an exciting phase in the process (if you’re a guitarist). I’d been playing this soft upstroke on the acoustic (I mentioned it before). I also said that I’d used the same technique on Hotel Womb from Starfish. It felt like this rhythm part needed a little more so I pulled out the same guitar I used all those years ago (my 1966 Rickenbacker 6 string, the one that was broken in half) and I plugged it into a 1962 Vox amp, perfect! I also added a little more Rick Bass and then did some lead guitar using Dare’s AMAZING Gibson ES 345. (Not that my Rick 6 isn’t amazing, too, even if it was broken in half.)

After that I left Dare with it to piece it all together and came into the archive to try and catch up on some emails. What was the musical soundtrack going to be? At 5AM this morning drifting off I’d put on a CD, Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, you know the one with the classic album cover of Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking down the street together. It was appropriate for today. So in the archive I thought I’d put on the vinyl version and listen to it again. Dylan albums of the sixties and seventies don’t really get old, the lyrics alone are inspiring, then there’s his unique voice and that part of him that not many seem to mention, his incredible ear for a melody. Like The Beatles, none of the cover versions would exist if it wasn’t for the melody. What an album! You’d know Blowin’ In The Wind (granted way overplayed) but Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright doesn’t get old for me, there’s no point listing them all, but this is also the album with A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.

If you go on to Wikipedia there’s a whole interesting story about the album. I won’t spoil it all for you here but I will share two interesting things about it. Unusually for the sixties this album, Dylan’s second, was recorded over a year-long period. His first album (self-titled and released in 1962) was a rather trad Folk record (I played this last tonight), but his prolificacy and his songwriting skills were evolving at such a rate that the tracks that were going to be on the album were constantly changing. Dylan’s first album had only sold 5,000 copies, not a lot by the standards of those days and Dylan’s A&R man and producer John Hammond was always positive because he saw his genius. At that time Dylan was referred to in the company as ‘Hammond’s folly’. That was soon to change. The track choice was changing so much that when the album initially came out there were four tracks that were hastily changed for the second pressing. The first pressing was recalled to the factory and mostly destroyed but some of them got out. Early copies have no suggestion of the original four tracks. The sleeve and the labels have the newer titles. There is also a controversy about Dylan and the Ed Sullivan show and not being allowed to play one of the songs from the album, censored he walked out on the show and that was one of the tracks that was removed from the album (Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues). The original album is considered to be America’s most valuable, one selling for $35,000. But unless you know the record and play it, you’d never know there was something different about it. The irony is that the songs that were left off were more in the spirit of the first album and the ones added, his more recent compositions, the beginning of his importance as a writer and commentator in his own right, the rest is history. Shortly after the release in 1963, Peter, Paul & Mary covered Blowin’ In The Wind, it became a major hit, selling over a million copies.

The night took some unexpected musical turns and I was playing some records that were a long way from Dylan and not on vinyl, CD or Spotify or on YouTube. It happened because I was trying to find Group 1850’s rare and weird third album Polyandri (1975), made 6 years after their rare and weird second album Agemmo’s Trip To Mother Earth (1968). The only place I could find it was on YouTube. It’s kind of Progressive mad Space Rock. When it finished there were a whole lot of other weird lost albums listed, Farm 1971, Universe, a Welsh band also from 1971 and Pugh’s Place, a Dutch band from 1969. The first two were patchy but had some moments and the third was great all the way through but it led me to listening to one of my super odd 1969 reissues: Morgen, a band named after singer/guitarist Steve Morgen from Long Island, New York. They made this one Psych album and disappeared. The cover is Munch’s The Scream (or The Shriek as it says on the cover art). Essential record for any madman or woman out there.

I followed it with Spooky Two (1969), Spooky Tooth’s second. The classic line-up, Wright, Harrison, Ridley, Grosvenor, Kellie. Mike Kellie found himself in The Only Ones in 1978. I met him when I was a night porter in Manchester, lovely man, sadly he died not too long ago (2017). Greg Ridley went on to Humble Pie (died in 2003). Wright and Harrison had solo careers and Luther Grosvenor became Ariel Bender and joined Mott The Hoople and then Widowmaker. Spooky Two was Heavy Rock of the day, reviewed not so favourably then as “Overwrought”, just how I like it. I seem to have no problem playing Dylan’s first after Spooky Tooth. I hate to state the bleeding obvious, but some music might not be your cup of tea, but all music is talking to someone.

I had a nice phone call tonight from my old mad friend Andy Cousin, bassist and co-writer from All About Eve. We spoke for an hour about this, that and the virus. It made me think about how talking on the phone was something my parents were always hassling me about – “Get off that phone!”. Ha ha, I can still hear it now. I guess in those days the charging system was quite different to now. The worst was on tour when you were in a hotel, it was actually too expensive to call home. That was their criminal rates, but in the seventies calling your mate was considered something to be careful with. You got in big trouble when the bill came and you’d been using the phone when your parents were out.

Finishing off here with Dylan’s really different and trad first solo album, but I have to go to bed, it’s already 3.15AM and I have a sesh with Tony in Sydney at 10AM. Then our friend Libby is in the studio at 12.30PM and Olivia or I might have to play. More seshes, 3.30PM Doug, 5.30PM Brian, 7PM Mike. So stay busy like me, record your thoughts in a diary or do what I do, talk to the people of the world, somebody is listening, it doesn’t matter how many, same as music.