Twelve hours and nearly 200€ in fuel later, we made it to the hotel, plus Spain is an hour ahead so that’s 5 AM arrival time after leaving at 4.15 PM. Sure, we got a late start but Ariel can’t swim fast and it’s a long way, three fuel stops, one off the main road somewhere and a food stop. We had a plate of french fries after I chased some sheep through a gate, what? That’s the adventure of being on the road, strange random occurrences, unforeseen and bizarre meetings, in this case with the locals in a little village. Opposite the restaurant, a man and a woman were herding sheep across the road, I had my camera and followed. By the time I got to the gate, the sheep were already gone, scurrying down into the fields. But the couple beckoned to me to come through and started calling the sheep back before emptying a big bag of potato peel on the ground down the pathway away from the road. The sheep were nowhere to be seen, disappearing somewhere down the hill but the potato peel and the calling were impossible for them to resist and they were back in a flash, munching away, friendly sheep, friendly people.

The restaurant had a friendly waitress and a noisy barmaid. She had a really abrasive voice and another older couple was also bothered by her. What an annoying voice she had, shrill, loud, unaware. The customers at the bar were locals, friends I suppose, it’s all fine, have fun, but the place was echoey and we actually ate outside with the chill because inside it was unbearable. Just before we left I thought I’ll bring the plates back, as I did I dropped one of them on the floor and it smashed into pieces, throwing aioli everywhere and echoing around the room. I apologised profusely to everyone, funnily enough, they had also dropped and smashed a bottle just ten minutes before, they all laughed at the mishap, perhaps quieter people would have been more annoyed. No carpets in Spain, you drop something, it’s done.

On the way through the Portuguese countryside into Spain, you could see the devastation of drought and fires, burnt ground and dead trees. Apparently, the ‘needle trees’ (coniferous trees) need a lot of water otherwise they die and the landscape was littered with dead brown bodies, starved to death. It became markedly colder as we drove north, of course, it was also later in the day, but our southern European habit of T-shirts was becoming insufficient as autumn slinked down from the north. But it was great to be heading out for a nearly three-week excursion, starting with the Anekdoten show and travelling through France to England and back again, hopefully with some more things from the storage, we’ll see if we get killed by the customs on the way back.

Today, the day we left, I finally got an email from immigration, telling me I have an appointment to get my residency card, on the day I’m leaving, can you believe it? As it happened I was able to get an appointment for October 14th so we need to be back before then. One of the reasons we are going is because I need a stamp out of the EU, due to Portuguese/German red tape, long story but when I get this residency card, this won’t happen again and I’ll be free to travel through Europe (I think) as an EU resident without restrictions, or at least without stamps.

So here we are hitting the sack at 5.30 AM in Olite in Spain and that will do for tonight, big day tomorrow.

Music today on our new radio/CD/AUX/USB player has been a struggle because Ariel is loud but we managed to fill in the gaps on Revolver (1966), Pet Sounds (1966), Abbey Road (1969), Best Of Bee Gees (1969), The Definitive Monkees (2001), After the Gold Rush and the Best of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (1967), who I realised today are the sixties Duran Duran. But the album of the day was most definitely Badfinger’s Straight Up (1971), I love that record.

Music Of The Daze

Agggh, last day before the road trip and not enough time to get everything done including stringing my Strat, rehearsing properly, answering all the pressing emails, hitting the bank to put a US cheque in (for a really small amount from some US royalties), but it still has to be done. Then there’s Ariel, getting the rundown on everything that’s fixed and making sure she’s ready for a drive to Spain, France and England and back again. New tyres (the spare was flat too), brakes, exhaust, new heater, radiator, radio, shock absorbers on the back. Jorge was over today, too, helping me with the load box and taking away my Rick 6 to have the electronics sorted out. Sesh with Brian, Duolingo, blog, oh yeah and breathing.

We leave for Peralta tomorrow, it’s near Pamplona in Spain and about an eight-hour drive. It’s close to where they have the running of the bulls. I hitchhiked through there once in the seventies. It must have been when I was on my way to Lerida to do the peach and pear picking with Dare. Ah, those were the days, sleeping in a shed and waking up in the morning, covered in flies. As I remember, we got the job by being in the Lerida market and trying to talk to the farmers. I found a 1000 peseta note on the ground and asked a group of old men if they had dropped it, one of them saw me pick it up and immediately hired us, seemingly impressed with the honesty. The work was tough, getting the fruit off the trees before it was ripe, it didn’t take long before your thumbnail was raw, breaking the fruit off the trees. I imagine there was also a tool but in the case of the pear trees, we were up tall ladders and you had to keep your balance. There’s a lot to write about this time, I hope one day I get to do it.

I’m taking my pedalboard to the gig, I had to dig the road case out of the cupboard, it was of course right at the back. I’ve got into the habit of making a list of what to take away, sometime before we actually leave (I went to Australia without my computer speakers). This time I’m hoping to remember everything, I don’t need to forget an essential plug or lead I might need for the show, oh no, no plectrum and I certainly can’t use a spare one from Nicklas because mine are soft and flexible and his are made of concrete.

We leave for France and our friends’ house on Sunday after the gig and I will leave my guitar and pedalboard with them and pick them up on the way back. The trip to England’s raison d’etre has changed and the records and all my life have to stay there until I can find a way to bring it all to my adopted home, safely, practically. Now we hope we can bring back some things inside Ariel’s belly, like more amps and guitars, some more English books, more lava lamps and skulls but are we going to be hit again with the customs in France? Brexit, what a joke, although it’s what drove us here, unfortunately, because it coincided with Covid and the borders were closed, I arrived without most of my belongings.

T-shirt alert today, another Slipknot, two days in a row! Another Pink Floyd, a teenage girl sitting on the stairs in our building with her boyfriend. We bonded on liking The Floyd.

Music today has been Anekdoten’s Until All The Ghosts Are Gone as I’m playing songs from that album live on Saturday. I hope Nicklas is up for a rehearsal before the gig, it’s the first time I’ve played with the band without being in the rehearsal room with them for a couple of days. These songs are not three chords, tricky timings, tricky parts and lots of them. Wish me luck.

Music Of The Daze

A disappointing day of letdowns and a wild goose chase. The idea was that after playing in Spain with Anekdoten, we would continue north, drive through France, go and see our friends Arno, Virginie and Tim, then head to England, go see AAE Andy and Lisa in Folkestone, seventies friend Biggles and his wife Colleen in London, meet up with Mohamad for dinner with him and his wife Zeinab in Soho, see sessioneer Noel and possibly even see Dare and Nicky in Somerset, Boydy and Trish in Bristol and possibly even drummer Ed. All this seeing and hanging and chatting and catching up with friends would all revolve around us getting to the storage house and having a truck arrive from Portugal and have us supervise the load, next stop Porto. 36 hours before we leave for Spain, the trucking company who haven’t been in touch for eight days, told us they couldn’t do it. Everything remains where it was in England until we can come up with some sensible cost-effective way to move everything here. The VAT into Portugal was going to be huge, plus the shipping cost, perhaps it was dumb to agree to pay out a lot of money anyway, perhaps we need another plan.

So today I went for my last swim before we leave which I took earlier and happily had a lane to myself for the whole 72 lengths. Afterwards, I went to the psychedelic psupermarket where I met Olivia who showed up with Ariel fresh from her health resort. New shockers, tyres, a new exhaust, a radio and various engine parts changed, the list was long and it wasn’t cheap but we are now MOT’d and have a reliable vehicle. Now with these reliable wheels, we were able to go on our wild goose chase. In lieu of bringing everything archive, musical and personal from the Somerset storage house we were driving to Matosinhos by the harbour today to see premises. At this point, we didn’t know there was no point. Not that it mattered, when we got there we were told that we wouldn’t be able to have music there because the woman upstairs didn’t like noise! Haha. So we never actually saw the premises, we just met Fernanda, a lady in her eighties who owned it and her younger friend Elisabete. They had a sweet shop in a deserted street, it was all very bizarre but they were nice enough and they had a friend there from Mexico who we spoke with (in Spanish) who was really nice (their kids were playing together). At least we gave Ariel a bit of a run.

Back home I wallowed in disappointment for an hour until I eventually snapped out of it and we watched Elementary over dinner and plotted. We are still going to make the journey and we are going to try and rearrange the storehouse so we take up less space and bring the monthly bill down, I hope to be able to bring back some things, amps, guitars, books, lava lamps, skulls, anything that might be tricky to move in a big truck. Plus going to England will mean I get a stamp in my passport showing I have exited the EU/Germany which I don’t have at the moment. Portugal still hasn’t given me my resident card which means Germany treats me like a non-EU resident. On the way into Germany from Australia, they gave me an entry stamp as an alien, on the way out to Portugal there’s no exit stamp because both the countries are EU. This means it looks like I‘ve overstayed my time in the EU in German eyes. I haven’t because I’m allowed to be in Portugal for as long as I like as a resident, but that doesn’t matter in the world of bureaucracy.

T-shirt watch complied with the rule and exposed two more Pink Floyd T-shirts but there was also the first Slipknot shirt. It makes you realise that people generally want noise, hip or epics to be represented on their chests. Not so many contemporary artists and why do I never see a Nick Drake shirt? I must see if I can buy one, or what about a Tim Hardin shirt, a Roy Harper shirt, a Robert Wyatt shirt, a CAN shirt or even a Bob Dylan shirt, or is Dylan too intellectual for a T-shirt? What about a Nick Cave shirt? I’m looking forward to seeing what Londoners are wearing, I bet it’s not Suede shirts or FKA Twigs shirts if such a thing exists.

Music today has been an odd mixture, a lot of noise shared with some subtler titles, Cream – Disraeli Gears (1967), Steven Wilson’s The Raven That Refused To Sing (2013), Pink Floyd – Meddle (1971), Muse – Will Of The People (2022), Moody Blues – Seventh Sojourn (1972), and Def Leppard – Diamond Star Halos (2022). Cream was the first today and I never tire of Disraeli Gears.

Music Of The Daze

Today the hot weather made you head for the shade the moment you got outside. It was up to 30/86 in the city, and that’s towards the end of September. After living in Australia I do my best to avoid the sun for fear of permanent skin damage, although I don’t think that the damage is as severe here in Europe. Still, it’s hot and the shade is a welcome relief from the relentless spears of heat. One of the best things about living in Porto is that it doesn’t stay blisteringly hot for weeks on end in the summer and it doesn’t get limb-numbingly cold in the winter.

So I was up and out of the house and at the gym at 11.20 this morning because I needed to be leaving for the city by 1 PM. So I had just twenty minutes in the gym, but the walk there and back and the little I did was worth the trouble because just going and keeping it up however little you do is the road to progress. I went past ‘the dodgy café’ where a man has recently appeared regularly with a powerful JBL portable music player, sitting outside and banging out a good sound with some mainstream rock music. I stopped and asked him if he spoke English or Spanish. Spanish worked but he was a little taken aback by being approached, looking away from me, intimidatingly toothless and a little annoyed as I asked him how much it cost. “300 euros,” he seemed to think that I thought it was cheap for the quality, cheap being the offensive word when he’d obviously really splashed out for this thing. I just wanted to know because we talked about having something more powerful in Ariel’s belly.

Back home in time to leave, Olivia and I made a detour for some printer ink and Olivia’s seamstress work before we headed down earlier than usual into the city. Leaving earlier than usual, we discovered there was no real shade on either side of the street, the ladies of the day were hiding on the steps of their building. We were in two minds about whether to hurry down to get into some air-conditioned shops, causing immediate overheating or whether to move slower for less exposure to overexertion. All I know is that everyone seemed to be moving slower than I wanted to.

We were off to Garage & Stage, the music shop, to talk to Vitor to see if he had anything to report on his call to the hipster shopping centre about shop or storage space availability for The Archive. Unfortunately, they hadn’t returned his call yet so we may have to investigate that one ourselves, we have a name and a number. Whilst we were there two American women and a man came in to buy the green plastic recorders that were in the window. They were from Saratoga and having a jolly old time with their party of 12 and 17 days in Portugal, tourist heaven on a hot day. We left for the record store where I finally bought Bowie’s Toy album which I’ve been avoiding because the cover is so ugly.

Olivia left for a violin lesson and I went to Chico’s secondhand store that he shares with a skateboard seller. He always has interesting records in there and I found some reasonably priced rarities that The Archive will love. The Herd – Lookin Thru You (1968), The Troggs – Trogglodynamite (1967) and Contrats (1970), Kensington Market – Avenue Road (1968) and Tim Hardin – Suite for Susan Moore and Damion: We Are One, One, All in One (1969), covering the sixties, Noel Redding Band – Blowin’ (1976) featuring Eric Bell on lead guitar and Steve Hillage – Aura (1979), covering the seventies, Ian Dury – 4,000 Weeks’ Holiday (1983), covering the eighties and Joe Jackson – Laughter & Lust (1991), covering the nineties. Plus a double sixties compilation album, Undersound/Uppersoul (1971).

T-shirt alert today was Pink Floyd, Guns N’ Roses, Rolling Stones and Tupac, Tupac is now officially added to the list that is a recurring Top 11 of constant recurring bands. I collapsed in front of the fan, the only fan you need on a day like today. I’d exercised, talked, inquired, shopped, bought a new nose clip, hit the coffee shop, the new record store, the old record store and now I was back in time to rehearse with Anekdoten Nicklas for the Spain gig on Saturday. Never stop.

Music today was the new album by Suede, Autofiction (2022), that I bought today.

Music Of The Daze

Hot in Porto this week, 28 today and in the mid to high twenties for the rest of the week. We’ll be leaving for Spain as it dips but it’s still Spain, it’ll probably be warm there too. Summer is ending but not here, it’s one of the perks of living here along with the fact that the coming energy crisis won’t be affecting our heating bills because we don’t have any heating. Bellyman probably doesn’t have any heating either, he was out in his usual spot in the Marquês square today and I think he has found a way to store heat in his stomach. He then takes it back to his flat and offloads it into an organic storage system that he has developed himself using the husks of various fruits. It’s unclear whether he will share any excess with his neighbours over the winter or whether he plans to turn his belly storage into a commercial business and we are yet to know if he is patenting the process. As yet, there have been no other examples of the human belly-heat storage transfer technology, otherwise known as HBHSTT, sometimes referred to as bs**t.

The pool water was cold today, one imagines that it’s because it was hot outside, although I’m not convinced I’ve got the science right there, if it’s science I usually glaze over. But it was nice to immerse yourself in this strange cool liquid, that envelops your body, lets you run your fingers through it, float in it, exercise your limbs in it. I don’t think the concept of water as an entity is new, if you’ve ever seen Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), you may have perceived the ocean on the planet below as an entity. I never saw the remake, I was scared.

Nuno was in the pool again today but swimming buddy Hugo seems to have disappeared. In the changing rooms was João Paolo who is a gym goer and I often see him there. As we left the pool/gym together we walked together to the Marquês square and philosophised about the human spirit all the way home. I was supposed to be rehearsing with Nicklas for the Anekdoten show in Spain on Saturday but had to take a hastily set up meeting with our accountant as we try and figure out how to bring the archive into Portugal with as little pain as possible. Perhaps it will be a private collection that people can visit like an exclusive library, perhaps it could be for the world to wander through and marvel at the CAN albums or admire Robert Whitaker’s ‘butcher cover’ with a sugar-free blueberry muffin in hand, but what’s important is it exists, how the future treats it might be out of my control.

Afterwards, I went straight into a sesh with Mike in New Orleans, trouble with his Skype that eventually worked itself out and then we listened to his songs and set about working them out too. Songs can sometimes be problem-solved mathematically, other times conceptually and other times they write themselves, it’s a fascinating ‘science’.

During the day I listen to lots of music and I used to post all the cover art from the albums I listened to. Nowadays I pick the one that worked best for me that day. I try to listen to different things and today I started by leaving the house whilst listening to Here Comes The Sun, leaving Spotify on ‘random Beatles’ for Olivia to wake up to. After Mike, I listened to Dr. John’s In The Right Place (1973) followed by the two U2 albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017), the former, the far better record in my opinion although I’ve really lost it with U2. I listened today because Mike and I were discussing what happened. Songs of Experience sounds like the songs that weren’t good enough for Songs of Innocence and one wonders if with all their skills and money they could ever do anything truly great ever again. The Unforgettable Fire (1984) is my favourite album by them. Stylistically Dr. John’s New Orleans thang isn’t really my thang, but I love his voice and also dig it when he gets his groove on. The sound of In The Right Place album is really something and I found myself listening to that as much as I was the songs. But I chose Anathema’s Weather Systems (2012) as Album Of The Daze. I saw them once in Stockholm and also in Germany at Olivia’s festival. We met Lee Douglas who was super cool with a great voice and a great accent (hello, Lee). Anathema were from Liverpool, sadly they broke up in 2020 after 12 albums.

As today was the Queen’s funeral, Jed and I thought it might be appropriate to post the video and song for Queen Elizabeth’s Keys from the Space Summit album Life This Way. The album was released on Schoolkids Records in September 2021, the vinyl will be available next month, welcome to the future.

 

Music Of The Daze