Blog

Now and again I knock the piece of furniture that the turntable sits on, sometimes, the needle goes across the record, other times the lid drops too hard and the needle jumps like a drunken flea across the grooves. Sometimes I even drop the record. Once in the mid seventies, I went over to Liverpool to buy a new album. I took the F19 bus from Thingwall where I lived on The Wirral to Woodside in Birkenhead where the Liverpool ferry went from. To go by ‘Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey’ was a very regular occurrence for us and the famous song by Gerry & The Pacemakers never came up. (I don’t think pacemakers, as in for the heart, had been invented yet.) It was where we lived, The Beatles and all that, we took it all for granted. I remember the ferries were called The Woodchurch and The Overchurch (Woodchurch Sec was where I went to school). There was one called The Mountwood, too, which I don’t actually remember or do I, vaguely?

I walked from the Pier Head to Mathew Street where Aunty Twacky’s Bazaar was, Probe Records was just around the corner and there I bought Gong’s Camembert Electrique. It had originally been released on Byg Records in France in 1971, but with Virgin’s new found fame as Mike Oldfield’s record label they started signing odd bands and releasing underground records. This was a real deal, it was 59 pence. Back to the ferry, I got off at Woodside to find the F19 and dropped the record. It slid clean out of its sleeve onto the road and smashed. I remember that moment of horror well, but I also remember thinking well it was only 59 pence, so I turned around, got back on the ferry and went back via Mathew Street to Probe and bought another copy.

Funnily enough when I was in Liverpool in November working on The Wild Swans record, Gong were in town supporting and playing with Steve Hillage as his band, so we went to see them. Olivia and I have got to know them a bit through her hosting the Night Of The Prog festival in Germany so they put us on the guest list, and they were great. Leader Daevid Allen died in 2015, but he encouraged them to carry on before he passed away and now led by Kavus Torabi they have become another version of what was always an evolving concept.

My point with all this is that although I did actually destroy a record in the street I can’t believe the condition of a lot of secondhand records and I simply cannot imagine what people did to them to cause such destruction. I do have a record cleaning machine so that helps a lot by sucking dirt out of the grooves, but there’s not much you can do about a massive scratch.

Oh to have a time machine and go back and buy all those rare records brand new.

With CDs you may remember the infamous story from the new technology program Tomorrow’s World, that used to be on the tele, where they told us that CDs were indestructible. I especially love the moment when he rubs the stone on the disc. Watch it here for a real good laugh:

 
Or see the children’s TV show version with the honey and coffee version of indestructible:

 
After a couple of days off from the studio today Dare and I went in to do something different. I’d done some shows in America with Chuck Mauk playing drums and the other day he asked me if I could play a solo on a song from his daughter Gracie’s project. She sings and writes and plays the keys. So that’s how we started the day. It’s so amazing these days that you can do things like this. It shows that remote mixing and recording can really work. Later today Dare got on with preparing the next Space Summit track for me to play guitar and bass on tomorrow.

We did get a walk down to the sea today on this Easter Sunday, just to look at it. That’s all you need, five or ten minutes of contemplating the waves, looking out into the bay, seeing the line of the horizon, seeing what mood she’s in. We ran into our friend Jack. He used to live very close to the studio and used to come here as a little boy and hang out. He has fantastic curly hair and thankfully he hasn’t cut it as he’s got older. He’s 19 now, training to be a paramedic and working as a lifeguard on the summer beaches and also up at the leisure centre. He’s on call at the moment and was driving by when he saw a body lying on the stones. He stopped and came over to see what was wrong only to discover it was me messing around! Ha ha. I’d just seen a six year old doing exactly the same thing, lying on the stones playing with the ones near his head completely in his own world. He was so intoxicated by those stones that I had to try it, Jack came over to save me, he’s such a good lad. His dad Julian features in the lyric to In A Field Full Of Sheep.

After I finished writing last night I played another couple of albums. The first Dire Straits album (1978) and the second, Communiqué (1979). I always particularly liked these two records. I lived in London when they came out and I bought the first album before they were big and then of course, they exploded. It was the arrival of a unique guitar player, a very difficult thing to be. Mark Knopfler went on to be in the biggest band in the world for a while there. He went from nowhere to working with Bob Dylan. We supported them on their Australian tour in the early eighties. I think we did about 13 shows with them. I remember during one of the multiple shows in Sydney I fell through a hole in the stage. It was covered in gaffa tape, but I didn’t get the memo. I didn’t fall all the way through, just one leg, but I was playing and it was embarrassing and probably painful, could have been serious. We only met Knopfler once, first gig he put his head around our dressing room door, “Got enough drinks lads?”. The drink container was empty. Also on the subject of Dire Straits, it seems Brothers In Arms was one of the first CDs.

So after studio and after seshs tonight with the prolific Joanne in Portland and the evolving Doug in Wappinger Falls I played Gong’s memorable mad Camembert Electrique followed by the post Daevid Allen album, wonderfully titled Rejoice! I’m Dead!.

So keeping it eccentric, today’s Song Of The Day is In A Field Full Of Sheep from Noctorum’s The Afterlife, it seems appropriate in lots of different ways:

 

In A Field Full Of Sheep

Olivia sewed up her skirt again
By the time the morning came it had broken
And I dragged the sleep out of my eyes
And realized that I had awoken

Martin lost his cane last night
He wrote a poem on the kitchen table
And Dare let his coffee go cold
And he said that he just wasn’t able

I don’t know why why why I die so badly
I don’t know why I try so hard

I fell off the chair
Onto the floor
I trapped my fingers
Under the door

Hudley slept in his football kit
And dreamt he was top of the table
And Boydie woke up to the roar of the crowd
And realized it’s all just a fable

Julian parked his van outside
He loaded a grand piano
Duncan blew his flute like a gale force wind
Till he suddenly ran out of ammo

I don’t know why why why time moves so slowly
When I try try try so hard

I fell out of bed
Onto my back
Sometimes I feel
I’ve gone off the track

[Find a way, yeah]
[Find a way, yeah]

And I know why why why I love you all so madly
I don’t have to try try try so hard

I broke my pen
I ran out of ink
Wrote half a list
And started to think

Slumped in a chair
I fell asleep
Awoke with a start
In a field full of sheep

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – The Afterlife (2019)

Creativity, what is it? It has many forms, but I have always been interested in the aspect of creating something where nothing was. A lyric, a tune, a concept, a story. Characters that live and breathe, a melody that wasn’t there before. I remember reading somewhere that one of Paul McCartney’s special moments was hearing the milkman whistling Yesterday, a melody that came to him in a dream, something real from some unknown place. If you think about how much information you take in in a day, how you process it and what you do with it, there are choices. You can form an opinion, stimulate yourself, learn how to avoid trouble, find a new job, discover a new band, figure out how your mobile phone works or simply become aware, have an epiphany, change your life. Whatever it is that you get from your day you can use it to live and you can use it to create. All things that come into your consciousness are potential ideas for stories, songs, lyrics, paintings, poems and other creative mediums that need a narrative context. So, what do you need to unlock them from inside of you? First of all, you need your imagination. You need the will. You need to not give up if it doesn’t come to you quickly, so you need discipline and you need faith in the magic that makes it all happen. You are also allowed to fail. I once read a very important lesson on the back of a sugar packet – “You’re far better trying and failing than not trying and succeeding”. Wisdom comes in the oddest of places.

The other lesson here is that you don’t need many skills to create something great. You just need your unique voice. Only you can do things the way that you do them. You also need to finish what you started, create a body of work, worry about its worth later and then improve upon it if you must. It’s so easy to waste time, use your time instead. Now is the time to realize that with so many people stuck at home wondering what to do, Netflix isn’t the answer, at least not 24/7. After you’ve fixed the garden fence, caught up on sleep and replaced the garage lightbulb then pick up an instrument (that also means a pen). The world is so amazing, there’s so much to observe and contemplate, so much to discover, so much to say, so say it. There’s love and there’s loss, there’s beauty and there’s turmoil and there’s absolute fantasy, tap into the thing that suits you best and write. Write about your beautiful cat or your budgie or your partner’s smile or the rain or how the right wing makes you mad. Write nonsense, write without thinking or think hard and write something deeply personal, then erase it, or don’t. Make it rhyme, or don’t. Everything is relevant. There’s only one trick and that is that you just have to get started. There’s no genius secret, put in some effort, find the will, nurture your talent, use your imagination, try some experimentation and you’re off, see you in artistic heaven. Your biggest hurdle is your good self and time. You need a little confidence and some time management, mix it with desire and then the images will appear in front of you, you just have to capture them before they fly away and fly away they will, you just need to coax them in your direction.

I went up to Dare’s today, we had a studio day off, he was pulling the brambles out of the wall opposite his house in the hot summer sun. Nothing like a bit of domestic life to re-inspire you for the studio. I don’t really take any time off from music, it’s either studio, sessions, tours or listening to records. I’m trying to figure out how to read and watch classic films, too. There must be a way. It’s hard to get away from your stereo when it sounds so good. Perhaps people would sit and listen to records all the way through and get excited and inspired by them if they had a decent stereo system. I realize that the computer station has become the centre of the universe, but even if you don’t want physical records or CDs in your front room at least invest in an amp and speakers, because your computer is so easy to plug into a system like that and everything will sound better. Surely you want better sound if you are into music or film. Investigate this, you deserve it.

Today I have been listening to a wide selection of music. Right now I’m listening to LoveLaws (2018) by TT. It’s the solo album by Theresa Wayman from LA band Warpaint. I’m a bit of a fan of hers/them (the song Love Is To Die is what caught me). I’ll be playing their 2014 self-titled album next. As well as Wayman, there’s Jenny Lee Lindberg on bass and vocals and Emily Kokal on vocals and guitar as well as Australian Stella Mozgawa on drums (I love her feel).

I also went all Post Punk and listened to Playing With A Different Sex (1981) by Au Pairs, it’s been a while since I heard that. It takes you straight back to the energy of the era. Then there was Sulk (1982) by The Associates, what a record, what a singer. Tragically Billy Mackenzie committed suicide at the age of 39.

I started off with a hangover (not the kind you think) from the early hours by playing the only Pure Food And Drug Act album from 1972. Just one album recorded live in Seattle, they were essentially violinist Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris’ group from what I understand, but apparently he was quite unreliable and they didn’t last. The reason I played this album was because of guitar player Harvey Mandel (Canned Heat and John Mayall bass player, Larry Taylor was also originally in the band before they made the album). Mandel contributes some great moments and after this I played his great debut solo album Cristo Redentor (1968) – file under essential! (By the way, he played on The Stones’ Black And Blue.)

Somewhere between all this and perusing the letter ‘A’ as I try to sort my collection out I chanced on Harvey Andrews. A singer-songwriter that not many seem to remember. But I was thoroughly enjoying his first solo album Places And Faces from 1970 tonight. Then I followed it with his second album Writer Of Songs. These records have some luminaries on them, too: Rick Wakeman, Cozy Powell, Dave Pegg, Ralph McTell. If you are in the mood for a late sixties, early seventies singer-songwriter then check him out.

Song Of The Day is Too Round To Be Square from Art Attack (1988). I had two seshes today, one with Marc in Annapolis and one with Paul in New Orleans and we started talking about round pyramids, hm? Oh yeah and seventeen minute Bob Dylan single, isn’t life exciting?

PS: There’s a clip on the Space Summit Facebook page from the studio sessions and there may be more so if you like that kind of thing like & follow the page.

 

Too Round To Be Square

The desperate angel sits in the dark
Wings in a fold, arrow through her heart
The tepid stream runs for a medal
Silver beats gold and gives her a start

Too fine to be smooth
Too greedy to share
Too blue to be colour
Too round to be square

The perspex heath melts in the sun
The liquid slips to a room at the front
The merry house has a girl’s name
A plastic fox, drunk at the hunt

Too fine to be smooth
Too greedy to share
Too blue to be colour
Too round to be square

Too fine to be smooth
Too greedy to share
Too blue to be colour
Too round to be square

[Spoken]
Too fine to be smooth
Too greedy to share
Too blue to be colour
Too round to be square

(Willson-Piper)
Art Attack (1988)

Today over dinner Olivia and I watched Episode 5 of the original Star Trek, she’s never seen it. Can you imagine experiencing Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Dr. McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura, Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Janice Rand (Chekov isn’t in it yet) for the first time? Revisiting the series is interesting because I remember story lines and some of the creatures, but of course I can’t remember every scene and because it’s a sixties show every scene is an experience in itself. Just the colours alone are striking, the models they used for the Starship Enterprise, the sets with the painted backgrounds, the hairdos, all this along with the imaginative story lines and Olivia is hooked (me too). I’m wondering is there an episode I haven’t seen? There’s three seasons and seventy nine episodes, we’ll see. In the meantime the other day before all the shops closed I got the ‘I Am Spock’ book, Leonard Nimoy’s autobiography, for 33 pence, I couldn’t resist it. You may remember Mr. Spock in the very silly Bangles video (that reminds me of all the silly videos I was in during the same era) for the great Kimberly Rew (from The Soft Boys) song, Going Down To Liverpool, sung by drummer Debbi Peterson.

 
I remember how much I used to read, it’s so hard these days to find the time. I guess that’s an excuse, you have to make time, prioritize. It’s all this mobile phone and internet business that’s filled life up. It’s not just being in a band that stops you. I remember reading Lord Of The Rings and Don Quixote in the eighties and nineties, I mention these two books because they are both so long and there wasn’t the distraction of digital devices to interrupt the flow. I read so many books in between and it wasn’t only records I bought on tour, I was always in bookshops, especially in America, looking for English translations of August Strindberg, Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet and others. I still love going to The Strand book store in New York, I always find some amazing book in there or a different translation of a Camus book or Bulgakov and probably in a different cover. I’m always buying Camus books I have and have already read because the cover art is different, I do the same with albums, but I suppose an album might not be released in a different cover as often as say, The Stranger by Camus.

Both Olivia and I were in the studio today with Dare, playing on a Space Summit song, this one’s a real cracker! Ha ha! I keep on telling you how great it is, I hope you agree. I feel like I should be giving you titles, but for some reason I want to wait for it to be all done and then present it as a finished thing. Nicklas from Anekdoten called me from Stockholm today and I asked him if he could play some ‘real’ mellotron on it? So we’ll be looking forward to hearing that. You may want to read up on what’s happening in Sweden with their approach to the virus, they are taking a different route. Although gatherings of over 50 are not allowed, the schools are open, bars and restaurants are open and life goes on despite the rising death toll. The theory is that when we undo the lockdown the virus is still coming in anyway, so destroying the economy is worse for the world and the consequences of unemployment, lack of support for the developing countries and general recession is only bad. Dying is not good, hospitals that can’t cope is also not good and England seems to be a hotspot along with New York, Spain, Italy and Iran, but Simeon from the Citroen coffee truck tells me (with graphs) that deaths are no higher than previous years, so can someone tell me what the hell is going on?

I had two sessions today, one with Daniel in Arkansas and another with Mark in Tucson. They are both working on releasing their own interesting albums. That’s what we all want to do, make something we are proud of and share it. It’s both easier and harder these days. It’s like there’s more opportunity to do it and a bigger audience to access, but the money is short and the competition is huge! Then there’s the free music, what can you do about that? If you don’t play live it’s hard. Traditionally it’s not always the dead certs that make it, how could Another Girl Another Planet not have been a hit for The Only Ones when they were signed to a major label in that era with a song as good as that? How could Big Star have been missed? All musicians and artists have to remember it’s not just about the quality of the work. I always wonder if Hip Hop will ever end its reign, it’s been around for 40 years now, it must be time for a new generation of hipsters to condemn it as music that the parents like.

Today’s music listening was quite diverse (or not, there was no Hip Hop). I was telling Daniel about Wire and afterwards decided to play 154 (1979) as my first album of the night. Then I thought what could I possibly play next as it’s an album I particularly like and have had since the seventies, so hard to follow. So I went completely the other way and went backwards ten years and played the first Allman Brothers album from 1969. When in doubt change eras. After that it was Ancient Grease’ Women And Children First from 1970, a mostly unknown Welsh band produced by John Weathers who would later find himself as the drummer in Gentle Giant. The singer Morty would find fame in Racing Cars with the hit They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Next was another band I mentioned to Daniel, the band from the Gothic fields of Worcestershire, And Also The Trees, and the first album I ever bought by them, The Millpond Years, from 1988. Apparently they always did well in France, but perhaps not that well-known otherwise despite fourteen studio albums. Next was Quiet Sun (1975), a project that starred Phil Manzanera, guitarist from Roxy Music, a jazzy progtastic sensation. A record I haven’t played for years came next, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and the debut album, also 1975 with Ronnie James Dio singing. I never tire of Blackmore’s guitar playing.

Song Of The Day is Melancholy God from Rhyme because today in the universe even the alien creators are confused:

 

Melancholy God

So confused
It’s going ’round again
The world’s abused
But is it just by men
If I even try to imagine
I see a melancholy god

Who believes today
Whoever is to blame
I’m really not quite sure anymore
I see a melancholy god

(Willson-Piper)
Rhyme (1989)

The sky was so blue today, the sun was warm on my back, I came out with my coat on and walked a few yards then turned back and left it in the hallway. I saw a goldfinch in a garden, exploding with colour, red and yellow flashes. The world might have been perfect, but what are we to do even beyond the present situation, because when it’s all over all those other problems we were living with, angry about, disillusioned with, will return with a whole lot of new issues to navigate. There are many injustices to be fought for and there are many imminent situations that need our attention, but it all seems so hopeless. Do we take action or do we concentrate on our personal improvement? Not all of us are warriors despite our concern. There was a time when I was sending a small amount of money every month from my bank to Amnesty International. I guess a lot of us pick a cause we believe in and try to contribute something. At some point I was disturbed to find that they had just simply stopped taking the money and I thought if they can’t get it together to take free money, how good can they be at fairly distributing it?

Today I was wondering if my contribution to the world was enough. Making music is certainly a privilege, especially if you are getting paid to do it. Writing and having someone out there read your words or teaching which in my case is simply sharing ideas collected from experience. Others aren’t so lucky, I could say I’ve made sacrifices, but most people don’t even get the opportunity to make the sacrifices and then there’s the world outside our little world of affluence and freedom that we have here in the West. I was thinking that for us privileged Europeans that maybe travel should be compulsory. Three months in a country that speaks a different language, three months in America, three months in China, three months in a developing country somewhere in Africa, three months in a different political system to our own, three months in the desert, three months by the sea, three months in the mountains. Two years of worldly experience. It couldn’t hurt and Americans, Australians, the Japanese, all peoples could have their equivalent so that everyone in the world was aware of everyone else and how it was. But even this is elitist and privileged, because the developing countries could never see the West and then go home to an uncertain future with little opportunity. So when all this lockdown is over, all the other troubles, ignorance and prejudices will still be there. What happened to the news of Syria, Israel and Palestine, the Catalan separatists, the new Labour leader, Greta Thunberg’s rallying cry to save the planet, Iran, Iraq, peace in Afghanistan, terrorist threats, Putin and Russia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, all these things are still there, you’d never know it. Racism will continue, the nutty far right will be continuing their message of hate, gay people will be persecuted, women will still be fighting for equal pay – maybe now nurses might get that pay rise that austerity wouldn’t allow.

In my lucky life I played guitar and six string bass on another Space Summit song today and I will be continuing to do this tomorrow. Dare and I were commenting that the acoustic guitar we recorded today (my Fender El Rio) we can’t remember ever actually recording before. It’s been more of a ‘lying around’ guitar. It’s the guitar I wrote Spark on and today we thought its rather special sound was perfect for the song we were working on. I also used the Fender 6 string bass, I guess that was the bass instrument used on Priest=Aura. I can’t quite remember when that was first introduced and then retired. If you would like to look at the guitar collection or these guitars in particular you can check out the gear page here.

If you’re going to collect something you’d better be prepared to get it organized and tonight after the studio I decided to sort out all the records that needed filing away. So I put the records that were out of the shelves in alphabetical order so I could see how much space I needed for each letter. Then out of the main shelf I moved all the Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Genesis and Kate Bush albums into another place to free up space for bands I have fewer albums by. I have also done this with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, CAN, The Moody Blues, Miles Davis, The Who, The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Elton John, and Scott Walker. I need that warehouse.

Tonight’s music has been thrilling to say the least. Two far out CAN albums, Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Landed (1975), two amazing Dylan albums, Highway 61 and Bringing It All Back Home, both released in 1965, and then a record you might not know but have to hear, Talk To The People by the soulful jazzy pianist and singer Les McCann (1972). I think it was Barton Price from The Models that turned me on to this fantastic record. The last record of the night is the outstanding Struttin’ (1970) by those Funk kings, The Meters.

Today’s Song Of The Day is Questions Without Answers and it needs little explanation. There’s even a video:

 

Questions Without Answers

Is it true
I can’t believe this hatred
What do you do
The world is so ill fated
But when you’re sitting
On a quiet afternoon
With the sunlight
Pouring like gold into your room
You can’t believe that the world will end soon
The world will end soon

You sometimes feel
You’re not doing enough
But what is real
You never know who to trust
It seems that people
Sit in jail without a crime
And ruthless leaders
Seem to lead us all the time
There’s too much crying, people dying
Who can see the light
Who can see the light

Questions without answers
Questions without answers

So I sing
It doesn’t seem to make a difference
Should I give in
That’s not a point of reference
But the passive masses
Being eaten by TV
Ignoring cruelty
And saying it’s not me
When will they realize
Soon it’s going to be
Soon it’s going to be

Questions without answers
Questions without answers

Questions (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah) without answers (soon it’s going to be)
Questions (look out, look out) without answers (here it comes)

(Willson-Piper)
Rhyme (1989)

When you get out of the centre of Penzance and away from the harbour and the sea, when you find the back streets of Penzance in certain parts of the town there are rows and rows of what used to be workers’ cottages. They are all pressed together in typical English style with no front gardens. There are also the bigger houses where the rich lived and the houses in between where those half way up the ladder lived. All very nice. Cornwall is in fact one of the poorest counties in England, despite its beauty. The VIP Lounge studio and the In Deep Music Archive are housed in what was apparently an old sea captain’s home, plus there’s two accountants and a Pilates studio. The reason I’m talking about houses is because I don’t want to live in one. Whether it be big or small. I want to live on the floor of a warehouse, a place with no traditional doors. A place where you partition off your own areas as you decide where you sleep, where the library is, where the records are, where the kitchen is. Big windows, wooden floorboards, industrial lift, high ceilings, lots of light. I want to live in an old factory with no neighbours and so does Olivia.

Travelling has traditionally taken my mind off the fact that I don’t live like that, just a dream, to live between the aisles of audio and written history, to return from exotic lands with piles of books and records, artefacts and experiences, beautiful guitars and brightly painted plates. To make an intriguing museum of all these things to leave to future aesthetes. If one were very rich one might have a Picasso or two, a Kandinsky or three and a Max Ernst, a Miro and a…oh the list goes on…darrrling. Is it that we dream in times of despair? Or in the present circumstances, do we just want our old normal lives back?

I read once that The Face, a very popular style magazine in the eighties, was at its peak when Britain was in its most troubled economic state. It was escapism, a fantasy to aspire to, style, good looks, credibility, the respect reserved for the better off and the famous. And what about celebrity admiration? It comes not just from respecting the skill, the acting, the musicianship, but there seems to be something about admiring the fame itself. But surely one would be embarrassed to be famous without any real skills, but then what are skills? Is manipulation of the media a skill? Is a massive personality a skill? Some people can dance beautifully, some people can talk beautifully. Sadly there seems to be little desire or any sexiness in being a writer. I suppose there used to be. Ernest Hemingway was pretty glamorous, as was Aldous Huxley. Oscar Wilde was infamous, but don’t people think that Stephen King is just a weird guy despite his success, do people aspire to be him, skills aside, I don’t think so. I think they’re happy to let him be him.

Who is a glamorous modern or contemporary writer? I love Ian McEwan but he’s hardly glamorous. He’s not very weird although there’s been some troubling stories. (I’ve read eleven of his books, I think.) Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac might tickle the fancy of the well read, the explorers of modern literature, but do the masses really care? Dorothy Parker, Daphne Du Maurier, Jean Cocteau, James Joyce? What about Agatha Christie? What about Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Colette or Henry Miller, Truman Capote? Will Self or Michel Houellebecq? My point is that in the end fame is attractive and an aspiration to many and desired without a skill set rather than the acquisition of a skill set as a way to make you famous. In the good old days you had to be able to dance, sing AND act to even stand a chance, nowadays fame seems cheaper.

I went to the grocery store today. They’ve changed how you get into the shop for some reason, I can’t see that it’s safer. Inside there’s tape all over the floor separating everyone. When you get to the counter there’s screens and signs saying “place vegetable on the counter and then take a step back behind the line”. When I approach the counter to pay, the lady behind the counter steps back, too. People will never shake hands or hug each other again and what about the cultures like France where they kinda or actually kiss when they greet? The world has already changed.

Todd Rundgren is back tonight, a man that can do just about anything in his field. I’m hearing that despite his reputation for being difficult with musicians he is nice to his fans – and Liv Tyler.

His productions that I have played tonight and will continue into the morrow are Patti Smith’s Wave (1979), XTC’s Skylarking (1986), Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now (1982), Halfnelson’s debut, later Sparks (1971), Grand Funk Railroad’s Shinin’ On (1974) and We’re An American Band (1973), The Tubes’ Remote Control (1979) and Love Bomb (1985), and Cheap Trick’s Next Position Please (1983).

We finalized a mix for Space Summit and started listening to the next track and tomorrow I will be in the studio all day playing guitar and bass. Talking of playing guitar and bass and in celebration of seeing the last episode of Better Than Us (Russian Netflix series) and as people are having no meaningful friendly contact with anyone, the Song Of The Day is A Girl With No Love. It must be hard for people these days who live alone, no personal contact with friends, no physical contact with a partner. I hope they have pets.

 

A Girl With No Love

I wanna know you
I wanna show you
I wanna mistletoe you
While you just stare

I don’t wanna switch you
I don’t wanna flick you
I don’t wanna stick to
How the book depicts you

So I turn another page
To see what to expect from you
Your skin feels like a real girl
As I love you again

Having you’s expensive
The benefits extensive
You don’t get defensive
And I don’t lose

I can choose your clothing
There’s no more self-loathing
I can do my own thing
Without you opposing

It says here that you were made for me
In a town somewhere outside Tokyo
You saved me from emotional despair
In a world with no love
With a girl with no love

I don’t wanna bait you
It’s difficult to hate you
It’s so easy to date you
So easy to make you

All my fears are washed away
As I lie right here beside you
In the darkness, with the heavy curtains drawn
The difference is so small

And I know should anything go wrong
I can call and simply just replace you
You will always be the same
‘Cause I have, I have your model number

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – The Afterlife (2019)