Have you ever tried to get to know your home studio when everything is covered in dust and needs a good cleaning? Well since my mega learning sesh with Andreas from Sweden yesterday, I decided everything needed sorting out before I get down to staring at the screen for hours and trying to take in technical information. So the computer screen is freshly wiped, the keyboard is pristine, the desk has no teacup marks. Then I thought I should set up my guitar pedals and that took hours of removing English plugs and wiring up Portuguese plugs and generally getting organised with the pedalboards and the single flow, where they sit on the floor, are they in the way, are they out of reach? But now it’s as done as done can be and tomorrow I’ll be going over my lesson and getting to know how to work this equipment. It’s not like I’ve never written a song or made a record and it’s not like I’m attempting to record Bohemian Rhapsody – Part Two so I should be ok, especially now it’s all clean.

I’m one of those people that can’t sit down and concentrate on something if the kitchen’s a mess. I need to know that pressing domestic issues are under control before I can write another Reptile riff! Haha. It might not be very R’n’R but you never know, Keith Richards might need to iron his socks before going to the studio. I’m sure Jagger has all kinds of rituals. It’s like good luck charms, like a rabbit’s foot for example? Really? How does cutting the foot off a rabbit give you good luck? Lucky necklaces, lucky shoes, lucky coin. Who came up with luck? I imagine it’s more to do with attitude than anything else although, of course, random luck must exist in a random universe. It also depends on how you determine what luck is. I’m lucky to be alive because other people aren’t, that’s one way of looking at it. I won’t list the other ways or get too bogged down by the definition because it’s an indefinable phenomenon, and I’m lucky enough to be able to not expect to be unlucky. Hm, I think I just veered off the subject.

I watched Liverpool beat Arsenal tonight 0-2 to reach the final of the League Cup. Great timing just as the last pedal was plugged in. Great game, and it seems in sport you can win on a fluke and that is considered lucky for the victor and unlucky for the loser but depending on how you see the world, even if you lose you’re lucky to be there competing. (I’m talking about luck again.) I have a controversial theory about opposing fans. Why do they boo when the opposing team comes on the pitch or whistle when the opposing team gets the ball? They should be grateful that their team has someone to compete against, especially when it’s someone who can really give them a game. That’s why I like snooker, it’s so gentlemanly (what do you say if it’s women?) whilst being highly skilful and competitive at the same time. Be grateful there is an opposition to challenge and if they are really good and you beat them then that’s the greatest feeling of all for the team and the fans. No brainer really.

Music today has been the mysterious, evocative, inspired first album by Aldous Harding. My mate Boydy turned me on to it when it came out and I wasn’t sure, I’ve since grown to really like her and buy everything I can find. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the first album anywhere on vinyl, my own fault for not seeing how good it was right away. We met her in Stockholm and saw her do a showcase in the wrong venue but she’s really cool and really different and really out there and really great. Haha.

Music Of The Daze

My old friend Spant from The Wirral told me today that John Weaver from Skeleton Records in Birkenhead had died. The significance of that apart from the obvious loss of a fellow record collector and someone’s loved one was that Skeleton Records was the first place Spant and I bought second-hand records in the seventies. I can’t remember what mine was but he remembers his with meticulous detail, it was a Led Zeppelin bootleg called Mudslide on green vinyl and it cost him £2.25. When we were in Liverpool last, working with The Wild Swans, we went to Skeleton Records, saw John and I bought some records (as did Spant), one of the records I bought was Country Home by Bronco. You probably won’t know who that is. They were on Island Records, Jess Roden was the singer, who’d recently left The Alan Bown Set. The guitarist was Robbie Blunt who you may know from Silverhead or more likely from the first Robert Plant solo albums. It was a record I’d been looking for for a long time and it was a wonderful thing to find it at Skeleton Records all those years later. They were like a more country Free, warm and seventies. This would have been John Weaver’s 50th year at Skeleton, dedicated to the end. Thank you John for helping me love music. RIP.

After Olivia had gone to her Portuguese lesson, I walked out into the Marques square when the sky was electric blue. I looked up through the naked branches of the trees and saw a star revealing itself as the night swept in. It had the classic twinkle and I was surprised how noticeable it was with branches obscuring the view and the sky not yet black. I walked to the corner and bought a bag of chestnuts which come in one bag with the chestnuts and another bag connected which is empty for the discarded shells. Was it always like this or was it an ingenious plan to stop people throwing the shells on the ground or having to put them back in the bag with the unshelled nuts? I suppose the answer to this question won’t change the world but someone, somewhere thought there was a problem and solved it, malaria next.

In the square, I actually didn’t use the ingenious extra bag. I stood by the bin and threw the shells directly in as I devoured the centres. On the pathway between the kiosk and the other side of the square, there were about half a dozen teenagers chatting after school and sharing a joint. When I left the house outside was one of the ladies of the day becoming one of the ladies of the night. She didn’t see me because she was looking at her phone, usually, she’d wave. Later I thought to myself, prostitution, drugs, why do I feel so safe with these things in my orbit and less safe on accepted Saturday nights with ‘normal people letting off steam’ after alcohol and cigarette binges?

Tonight was the mega Logic Pro lesson with my friend Andreas in Sweden and tonight I recorded it so it didn’t go in one ear and out the other, well a lot of it did, purely because it’s so much information to take in all at once. But I was concentrating hard and I get it, I understood it all, it’s just remembering it and as Andreas said now you have to keep on using it until it becomes second nature. This is going to be so good for me and for the sessioneers and anybody else who wants to collaborate.

Last but not least Andreas came up with a solution for lava lamp bulb hunters, not for the big lava lamps but for the smaller ones. Don’t ask for lava lamp bulbs, ask for oven bulbs. He wanted them for his globe because the dastardly LEDs don’t exude the warm glow. How could this have happened? Christmas has lost its warm fairy lights, harsh LEDs are everywhere. All I can say is when electric light came into being and candles were no longer needed for light in the home, I wonder were people happy for the convenience or longing for the mood that candlelight gave?

Music today was, you guessed it, Country Home (1970) by Bronco.

Music Of The Daze

The day started with two burly young men at the door. Actually, they weren’t burly at all, I just expected them to be because they were here to pick up the dishwasher. Although, they did have a small trolley (a piece of wood with wheels). They unplugged it, removed it and disappeared back into the hallway as quickly as they arrived, leaving behind a nasty cocktail of gunk and a semi-flooded floor area in the kitchen. They also left a dripping connection pipe which might have been contributing to the leak in the first place. Apparently, they will examine it at their workshop and see if they can find the problem and hopefully bring it back – you get very used to having a dishwasher. It’s not exactly Marie Antoinette but it’s certainly one of life’s little luxuries.

Domestic bliss continued with a trip to IKEA looking for candles in what is actually an American style mall with all kinds of shops, fashion, supermarkets, sports but oddly no independent record store (oh wait, it’s 2022). There is a FNAC that does have vinyl but what I always wonder is does everything have to make immediate profit sense to stock it? There’s profit on lots of items and there would be profit on the less popular items too, it just takes longer for them to sell. Why does there have to be a rapid turnover on everything? Shelf space, agggh, these shops are already huge. Antique stores must take years to sell some of their items. In the shops like FNAC I suppose there was little vinyl if any when CDs took hold and now it’s the reverse with few CDs, the medium getting wiped out by streaming and vinyl returning to the racks. Oddly the vinyl in this kind of corporate chain is not as commercial as you’d expect. They do obviously have The Beatles‘ Let It Be, Beyoncé, and the popular bland pop R&B acts but they also have Nick Cave records. Nick Cave might not be as popular as a huge hip-hop-inspired dance-pop act but he’s big enough to have his records in a corporate chain, so the only conclusion is that Nick Cave is a commercial act and he certainly draws a substantial crowd wherever he plays. Whoever could have imagined that when they heard Nick The Stripper? I’ve told this story before, but I saw him in Sydney, I suppose it was in the eighties, sparsely attended and with a girl at the front able to grab as much attention as he was by making the humorous observation that he looked like a rodent. Oh, the heady days of the distinction between the underground and the commercial. The Cure, Depeche Mode, U2 were once just indie bands with no idea that they would one day be rubbing shoulders in corporate history with Van Halen, The Stones and Celine.

On the subject of IKEA, I was watching the snooker player interviews in between matches and noticed that backstage at Alexandra Palace where the tournament was being played, the green room had exactly the same cushions as we have here in our furnished flat. I didn’t see the design in the cushion section of IKEA today although a lot of the items in here are from there. The point is this, in the olden days and when I say olden days, I mean the seventies, you didn’t see the same things in France as you did in England, there were French clothes shops and English clothes shops, Belgium was different to Germany and Switzerland different to Spain. Now, we see the same things everywhere, globalism has brought what was once different, exotic, unusual to your local shop. What the pop stars wear in America, the kids wear in Oostende.

Music today was an odd album that can only be described as ambient country, an odd mix indeed. Casualties of Cool (2014) is a project by Canadian guitarist, singer-songwriter Devin Townsend featuring fellow Canadian Ché Aimee Dorval on vocals, with Swedish drummer Morgan Ågren. It’s really something, please give it a proper listen.

Music Of The Daze

I decided today to take the opportunity to lie in because Sunday was such a tough day, physically, mentally. I had a headache all day, my body was creaking and I hadn’t had enough sleep. I’m not complaining, I had three great seshes and I wouldn’t change a thing, but how you feel is hard to ignore. I had so much to do and although taking two hours out to swim may have actually helped, time is a thief. After getting up my plan immediately started to fall apart, I ate breakfast, time flew by, I cleaned the place, I cleaned myself, I ate late lunch and before I knew it, it was forty minutes before my first sesh. I’d intended to get an hour and a half into sessioneer Fred’s songs but by the time I was ready it was too late and that was without the swim. So I thought, how do I get a half an hour injection of stimulation to counteract the frustrating running away of time in the process of hoovering impacting on listening, showering impacting on playing and generally straightening everything up impacting on any productive aspirations?

So, I looked down at the recycling and the garbage and thought, I’ll finish the cleaning up by taking these bags out and go and stand in the square for 30 minutes. I’ll take my camera and experience the city dusk and that’s what I did. As I walked across the road to drop off the bags, a lot of teenagers were spilling out onto the streets, it seemed late for them to be doing so, it was 5.30 and I wondered if it was a special day or I hadn’t noticed that they usually filled the pavement at this time. I walked with them to the traffic light and waited for the cars to stop before I walked past the kiosk and up towards the fountain in the centre of the square. What is it about running water, mesmerising, calming, captivating?

I walked past the pigeon trees and noticed that they were sparsely populated with less than a dozen birds, where were they? And why hadn’t the last dozen birds gone with them?

The light was fading and I had little time, I thought I might go to the bakery but I realised I’d forgotten my wallet and I didn’t have enough time to go back and get it. So I snapped away at some familiar sites and wondered if I could get a different slant on them by capturing a different mood, the dimming of the day. The giant church, the palm tree, the cafe, the square with the lights on as the dusk descended, the traffic light with the street lamp, electric cousins. The Portugal flag and Porto scarf in the kiosk display, the chestnut stand, the street lamp illuminating the skeleton tree. But to simply stand there and see everything change from day to night, to watch the atmosphere change, to see the streets busy with traffic as simple and normal as it all was, gave me a feeling of satisfaction because I was aware, sensitive to it all.

I got back to a very clean home, put the kettle on and had two seshes in a row, one with Abby and Nick in Philadelphia and one with Craig in Atlanta, both fruitful. Olivia came home from her Portuguese lesson and after the seshes, we ate dinner and watched the first two episodes of After Life – Season 3 with the excruciating tales as told by Ricky Gervais. Oh, and by the way, Episode 2 of David Attenborough’s The Green Planet at the weekend was as brilliant as the first. After After Life I spoke with Salim in Texas and we discussed the planet, the record we made and how hard it still is to plan to get together. Day 591 of language lessons followed, I’m on Spanish at the moment because time won’t let me concentrate on the complexities of French. The idea is that doing something understandable is better than waltzing through sessions that need more attention than I can give at the moment.

Music today has been the third album by Richard and Linda Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver (1975). I could have picked more recognised albums by the duo than this one but this one has Dimming Of The Day. It also has For Shame Of Doing Wrong, The Poor Boy Is Taken Away, Night Comes In and Beat The Retreat. Restrained, contemplative and recorded during the couple’s Sufi period under restrictions that make you wonder how it may not have happened and could have been the end of Richard Thompson’s musical career. It might be best explained by reading the Wikipedia page. I’m a big fan of most anything by Richard Thompson, singer, songwriter, lyricist and amazing guitar player. Unfortunately, with so many great albums I wouldn’t have a clue as to tell you where to start.

Music Of The Daze

Every Sunday I’m up early for a sesh with Tony in Sydney and by midnight on Sunday night I’m shot. There are usually multiple seshes on Sundays and today was no exception with Arktik Lake Tony, John in Brooklyn and Space Summit Jed in Minneapolis – I was also listening to a mix of one of Brian in Indiana’s songs. On Space Summit, you may have read that the vinyl version album isn’t going to be available till August because of the backlog at the pressing plant and it makes you wonder why someone doesn’t open up a new pressing plant. What happened to all the machines from the old pressing plants? Were they just abandoned as CDs, the alleged future, took hold? Are they lying in an abandoned building rusting to death beyond repair? Is the business not profitable enough for someone to start a new vinyl factory? Will we ever know? All I do know is that waiting a year to get your vinyl pressed is ridiculous. Anekdoten Nicklas told me that the pressing plant he uses is fully booked for 2022 and we are only halfway through January. What happened to entrepreneurs recognising opportunities based on demand? In the music biz, the issues are always multi-layered and complicated, there’s never an easy path and as if it isn’t hard enough to be able to even get to the stage where these kinds of problems begin.

Everything is relative to your situation and yesterday walking into town I walked past a homeless guy sitting on a step in a doorway in the busiest street with a whole lot of bags. He was lining up two-cent euro coins in a row, neatly aligned at least twenty of them. It struck me that in the chaos of his life he was trying to put something in order. It also struck me that they weren’t euros, they were cents, twenty coins don’t even add up to half a euro, the only value was in the exercise. I can relate to lining things up, I always want to symmetrically organise the table when I’m in a restaurant, I guess it’s a condition.

The most famous Australian that the Australians (mostly) haven’t heard of, Neil Robertson, won The Masters snooker this afternoon, beating Barry Hawkins 10-4 and picking up a check for £250,000. Liverpool beat Brentford 3-0 but it wasn’t televised, I kept half an eye on the West Ham – Leeds game which they lost 2-3. Everton sacked Benitez after losing to bottom club Norwich. Dare will be freaking out over his team’s performance of late. With that and losing the Ashes so badly and Australia doing it again in the snooker I think it’s time to talk some Australians into the benefits of living amongst England’s lush greenery although it couldn’t keep me there for all the obvious reasons. Perhaps if the Australians could get British citizenship but live in Portugal in a warmer climate they’d be more open to the idea.

Back onto the subject of Space Summit, Jed and I started writing our third album today. The demos for the second album are done nine months before the vinyl for the first album is ready. I suppose being prepared can’t be a bad thing although one might change their mind about the material as it becomes old before you record it. Having said that if you watched Part One of Get Back you may have noticed McCartney playing Another Day, Harrison playing Isn’t It A Pity and Lennon playing Gimme Some Truth. As I have the home studio on the way to working it means that we can write different kinds of songs. Before we would write on acoustics and turn them into electric songs. Today I had my Strat through my Focusrite and Ibanez UE405 effects rack with the chorus, the delay and the compressor on and that meant that different songs were lurking in the long grass or floating like butterflies above the flowers. Which reminds me, did you know that butterflies feed through their feet, have transparent wings and can’t fly when it’s cold?

Music today has been Neil Young and Crazy Horse‘s Barn (2021). On first listen only the penultimate track Welcome Back at 8.27 took my fancy. I’ll give it another go but I’m after a certain something from Neil and the lads and Welcome Back is it. The band sees Nils Lofgren returning to Crazy Horse after the retirement of Frank Sampedro with Ralph Molina on drums and Billy Talbot on bass who have both been there since 1968. I’ll listen again.

Music Of The Daze