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Well, the hottest news of today is Kamala Harris, despite ongoing wars, famine, nuclear threats, the street battles in Belarus, Lebanon, the plight of the Uyghurs, Yemen, Syria (notice how little you hear of Syria in the news these days), Hong Kong, imprisoned marijuana smokers, Burma, Tibet, Afghanistan, the whole of Africa, immigrants fleeing across the English channel, Venezuela, the Amazon, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, poverty, the lies of de Pfeffel, the lies of Blumpf, (sorry I’m out of touch about Australia), Israel and Palestine, Polish suppression of gay people, Erdogan, right-wing in Hungary, right-wing in Germany, right-wing in France, right-wing in Sweden, right-wing in the USA, right-wing in England, Farage, Patel, Raab, Gove, Rees-Mogg,Cumquat, Bannon, Billionaires, Moscow Mitch, Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, William Barr, Joe Arpaio, Roger Stone, nurses’ wages, ok I’ll stop now. Great news today about Kamala Harris, she’s going to be busy.

A strange mood outside today but we sneaked out of the front door so the guards didn’t see us, seriously though, wearing a mask in a shop is not suppression of freedom. Wearing a mask in a shop whilst not wearing a mask in a pub is open to policy ridicule. I’ve encountered the rational and the irrational today. Thanks to Richard Cawley promoter for the Acorn Theatre for a sensible talk about the current state of the world and good luck with the awareness project as theatres and venues around the country light up asking to be allowed to open before they all die. How the maskless pubs with no distancing (from what I can see when I walk past Wetherspoons in Penzance) can be open but a place to sit and listen to music can’t, doesn’t make sense.

We walked down to the sea to lament the removal of the recycling bins, go to the supermarket and walk on the beach where we found beautiful green algae, a small dead crab, a bigger dead crab leg, limpet shells, periwinkle and oyster shells, strange stones, feathers. I’m not sure if I know my fucus serratus from my pelvetia canaliculata but there’s many different types of seaweed. The sea was so calm, the waves hardly dribbled onto the shore. The sun one minute would be lost behind the clouds seemingly for the rest of the day and then it would recover and looking upwards there were signs of blue and breakthrough, but then it started to rain, large drops and then smaller ones and then nothing. There’s a kind of silence, not that anybody has stopped making their usual noise but sound had become muted, deadened, as if we were suddenly living under a sky of rags and cotton wool.

The hoover was charged and Olivia approached it with a cagey expectation. It looks so modern, mind you everything does at first and then we look back and laugh. We are the laughing stock of the future and only occasionally can we have the vision to impress our unborn future ancestors who in turn will be mocked for their primitive ideas. I was on the phone to Andy from All About Eve, fixing the world but I heard Olivia in the hallway with the hum of machinery as she tested our latest purchase. It worked and looks more like a futuristic guitar than a hoover but then that’s only my oblivious lack of knowledge about what the Rickenbacker Hoover guitar of 2099 will actually look like and will it sound as good as this?

I missed the first half of the football between Wolves and Sevilla and again the underdog lost 1-0, this time in the 87th minute. They missed a penalty in the first half. There’s something about the established giant teams that takes them over the line and whatever that is it makes all the difference. There’s something similar that happens in music, those that get there and those that don’t, what’s the difference? It’s not just talent and skills, it’s not just image and the act. It seems that in music, luck and timing can make the difference and even though those elements exist in football too, they might only take you through one game, in music, one break might give you traction for years.

Music today had to continue in the direction of “the other Dave Stewart” because I like the journey so much. The continuation was inspired by the arrival of a vinyl reissue of Egg’s The Polite Force from Sweden, but before I get to the other Hatfield and the North albums I have (The Rotters Club and Afters) I felt like listening to his next project first. After he left Hatfield and the North he formed National Health with another keyboardist, Alan Gowen from Gilgamesh, that also included Hatfield and the North and Matching Mole guitarist Phil Miller. Initially, Bill Bruford played drums but Pip Pyle joined for the debut album. Thus, three Hatfield and the North members were back together in a band with a different name. Neil Murray joined on bass (Whitesnake anybody?) and Amanda Parsons sang the wordless vocals. They released their debut album of progressive instrumentals in the heart of the Punk Rock craze in 1977. It’s so good because they simply ignore the world around them continuing with their own special vision of what music is, exploratory, experimental, structured, erudite, eccentric, skilled, passionate, fashion-free nerdom.

The second album Of Queues And Cures (1978) replaces Neil Murray with Henry Cow legend John Greaves, Gowen is gone but there’s an array of guests. Musically it’s more of the same, instrumental jazzy, progressive, like an explorer meandering around a jungle and discovering exotic plants in the undergrowth. All the Progressive bands from the seventies do something that neo-prog just can’t do and I don’t know why. I think I blame technology and terrible lyricists, not like that’s an issue here, although one track has some vocals but the print on the CD is so small, I can’t read it.

Playtime, released in 2001, is live recordings from 1979. I just love how they continued on ignoring the musical climate but Stewart had gone complaining of the freer elements of the band instead favouring a more structured version. But then Alan Gowen returned and this new incarnation of the band with Greaves, Miller, Pyle and Gowen committed to European and then American shows. The first half of this album is recorded on April 27th at L’ouest De La Grosne, Bresse-Sur-Grosne, France and includes French guitarist Alain Eckert, the other half was recorded at The Main Point, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in the USA on December 1st 1979 as a four-piece. It’s different without Stewart in the band, a different approach to the keys, but it’s the same madness that had them deliver this kind of thing in that period of time.

The last album D.S. al Coda (1982) is in tribute to Alan Gowen with the original band exclusively performing Gowen’s material. Some tracks had been recorded with Gilgamesh, others played with National Health and others rehearsed but unheard by the public. Gowen died on May 17th 1981 of leukaemia. He was just 34 years old.

Song Of The Day – National Health, “The Collapso” on The Old Grey Whistle Test 1979 from their then current album Of Queues And Cures. Phil Miller (guitar), Dave Stewart (keyboards), John Greaves (bass) and Pip Pyle (drums). The real rebellion by the real Punks.

Brave enough to take my T-shirt off and walk around the streets but not brave enough for a photo of that event. Lovely warm day, with the sky so blue it makes you wonder about how on a day like today the beauty of the Earth doesn’t make any impression on those who are hell-bent on destroying it. What’s the point of money and power, to be king of a decimated planet. How does a leader think that going to war and destroying cities and countries justifies that action when he parades through the ruins of his conquest. Ok, it’s a bit of a heavy start today but it was just so lovely out there and I was trying to imagine the mindset that didn’t witness the miracle of our wonderful planet and work to preserve it. Whilst I’m on one, who throws their rubbish down in the street, cans and bottles, chip paper, and take away containers? Who leaves their rubbish on a beach? Why wouldn’t everyone be educated to appreciate our world or just know? I suppose it’s a naive question.

I got into the habit of drinking a couple of tins of coke a day and now I’m on day 5 of stopping it. That’s 10 tins of coke I didn’t drink in just 5 days. Sugar, sugar, sugar and more sugar but apart from the difficulty in shaking off that addiction, there’s the caffeine withdrawal to deal with. You get headaches apparently because the caffeine constricts the blood vessels and when you stop the blood vessels widen and the brain has to get used to the new level of blood flow and whilst it does that the head aches. Nice. It is incredible how society has managed to make caffeine and sugar fun for all the family and marijuana criminal. They aren’t ‘alf clever them there leaders, pour me another beer, give me another whisky chaser and let’s take the kids to McDonald’s.

We just learned that the Anekdoten show in Stockholm in September and the Polish festival later in the same month have been unsurprisingly cancelled/postponed. I’m not sure whether like Canada they are being rescheduled for the same time next year or just whenever dates become possible again. Olivia and I are hoping to get into playing live shows Feb to May next year in Europe and hopefully the US in the autumn but it, of course, all depends on what we’re allowed to do based on the pandemic. As a musician, there’s an inside world and an outside world. It’s pretty hard writing whilst travelling and recording whilst travelling is impossible unless you have a staff of 300 people looking after your every whim. Getting out there to play is such a different experience to the one we have now, writing, recording and in my case, lots of sessions that I do actually hope to continue with in-between shows, I guess it depends on my staff of 300.

Olivia went on Gumtree and bought a hoover. We usually just have Dare bring down his hoover from the house but we needed an in-house hoover. So she found one, brand new, 50 quid, 100 quid retail, cordless, rechargeable, still in the packaging, bargain. The lady brought it around to our building, perfect. Now we can clean when it’s getting messy instead of when we absolutely have to do something about how horrendously awful it is. Regularity is the key.

Football today was cool, Man U vs Copenhagen in the quarter-finals of the Europa League. Underdogs, Copenhagen put up a great fight but they ultimately lost 1-0 (penalty). Just before the second half of extra time, the channel decided to tell me that I needed an upgrade so I missed the exciting end. Classic!

We met an interesting man today, Sam from Belgium who was working on a building opposite to where we took the pics today. I thought he was Welsh. Haha! He’s building a bar, a brewery and a house for his family. Lots of work but it’s going to be great when it’s done. He spoke German so Olivia could talk to him in her native tongue and he spoke French so I could practice. He also spoke Flemish and his English was so good like Olivia’s, you just think they have some kind of regional accent. Maybe that’s why the UK voted for Brexit, the foreigners are so clever.

Music today started with some good old-fashioned British-based Folk music, excellently executed by the relatively unknown band The Druids who were based in Derby. They were formed in 1969 as a trio with John Adams on mandolin and bass, Keith Hendrick on guitar and banjo and Mick Hennessy on bass, but the key was that they could all sing. They were soon joined by fiddle player Dave Broughton and then added a female voice with Judi Longden. They were a contemporary of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention without the electricity. They sang songs from the British Isles and Ireland arranged for four voices. They released their first album Burnt Offering in 1971. If you like this kind of thing it’s a great example of the style and hard to find on vinyl (I have a CD). For more info here’s a couple of links:

The Druids

Next to listen to was the recently arrived unreleased Stackridge album The Original Mr. Mick (2000). It was originally conceived as a concept album but the record company didn’t buy the concept and took the tapes and rearranged it, added songs from other sessions and turned it into their idea of a Pop album (I actually like it despite the trouble). The record disappeared into obscurity and the band that had already been having problems with each other promptly broke up. Stackridge were one of the great eccentric unpigeonholeable British bands that deserved a lot more attention than they got based on the quality of their songs, the ideas, the singing, the lyrics. Mr. Mick (1976) has songs and an ongoing narrative that invites you into their vivid imaginations and musical storytelling. A bit of a dodgy cover on the CD but inside the music is both intriguing and engaging. Lovely West Country accents and catchy songs. I saw them live at The Liverpool Stadium in the mid-seventies. Andy Davis and James Warren went on to form The Korgis and had a big hit with Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime – No. 5 in the UK, No. 18 in the USA, No. 11 in Australia. Noctorum drummer Ed has also played with James Warren and Stackridge.

Delivery were a bit of an odd band that made one album, Fools Meeting, in 1970 released under the name of Carol Grimes and Delivery. They were an offshoot of the Canterbury scene that hooked up with Blues singer Carol Grimes (who incidentally didn’t want star billing but the label did it anyway). The band was formed in 1966 as Bruno’s Blues Band by Phil Miller on guitar with Steve Miller on keys, Pip Pyle on drums and Jack Monck on bass. Journeyman sax player Lol Coxhill joined in 1968 and they changed their name to Steve Miller’s Delivery. In 1969 Grimes joined and future Soft Machine bassist Roy Babbington replaced Monck. Soon after the release of the album, Pyle left for Gong and they broke up. But they had a short-lived new lineup without Grimes and including Caravan’s Richard Sinclair, Pyle returned, Phil Miller went on to form Matching Mole. Steve Miller left, replaced by Dave Sinclair who was on just one of the two studio Matching Mole albums. Phil Miller came back along with the other Dave Stewart and the band then changed its name to Hatfield and the North. Simple! Another great album the world’s never heard of.

Fuzzy Duck’s one and only album is one of those great rarities that record collectors talk about in hushed tones. The original pressing was just 500 copies. There’s one for sale on Discogs at the moment for £1,200 but there’s also one for £600 so I suppose that the record is worth what someone is prepared to pay. It was released in 1971 on MAM, Gordon Mills’ label. He was the man who renamed Arnold Dorsey (Engelbert Humperdinck) and Ray O’Sullivan (Gilbert O’Sullivan). Fuzzy Duck were quite a different planet to these middle of the road megastars and being on the wrong label is never good. But this is a period that confused lots of bands because the transition to the seventies from the sixties meant leaving a good thing behind for a new thing. Fuzzy Duck had one foot in the sixties and one foot in the seventies. But it’s a good record.

It didn’t help when guitarist/vocalist Graeme White left before the album was released. He was replaced by Garth Watt-Roy but he was also soon gone. He had been a member of The Greatest Show On Earth with brother Norman (Ian Dury) and sang on the last Steamhammer album Speech released in 1972. Other members, Mick Hawksworth (Andromeda) – bass, Roy Sharland (Crazy World Of Arthur Brown) – organ, and Paul Francis (Tucky Buzzard) – drums, knew it was over. Hawksworth joined Alvin Lee’s band, Francis joined Tranquility and worked with Maggie Bell, Mick Ronson and Chris Spedding.

Song Of The Daze features Stackridge on The Old Grey Whistle Test (1975/1976), plus interview (1973):

Can you have a sad farewell to recycling bins? It’s certainly goodbye to convenience. Down there by the beach today in the late summer air, the bins were overflowing because they are needed and they don’t empty them often enough. So what’s the thinking in taking them away? There’s some construction going on, sure, but there must be somewhere else in the town that they could be. Whilst I was shedding a tear, another dude was recycling and he told me that the Sainsbury’s (supermarket) recycling has been closed for a while. So what’s going on? Do councils/countries regret the invention of recycling? Are they thinking, ‘what a hassle’? This made me think about the sixties when there was the old-fashioned traditional metal dustbin. Everything went directly into it, there were no bin bags and food, glass, plastic, anything and everything went in there, can you imagine? There was a TV series called The Dustbinmen, who remembers that?

Later when rubbish disposal became more sophisticated the term dustbin men became un-pc and at some point, it became refuse collector or even sanitation engineer. Nowadays there’s all kinds of rules and they won’t take your rubbish unless it is properly prepared. In different countries, I’ve seen Neanderthal attitudes to recycling, especially in California, in homes and restaurants. Everything in the same bin. In a world where the oceans are heading to be populated by more plastic bags than fish, can we not take responsibility for this and attempt to preserve the planet, save nature, the seas and the animals and at least be horrified at what we are doing and consider 1000 years of landfill and its consequences.

It was beautiful by the sea today. Olivia and I walked along the shore where it’s just stones and there we found all kinds of weird and wonderful traces of nature. A stranded jellyfish, seaweed tentacles in the wash of the waves, giant stones worn by the incessant pummelling of the water, a fish head pecked clean by the gulls. There were so many of the young seagulls on the beach today with their speckled feathers and squeaking. Also sandpipers and newborn black-headed gulls that don’t have black heads yet (as the parents don’t) because the black head is the winter plumage – for some reason that only the bird god knows.

Leaving the beach we happened on Neil and Bex (coincidentally Bex was German). They were filling up their 1974 orange VW campervan in the garage. We didn’t know them they were down here from Bristol and we just got talking because of the V dub. They are such beautiful machines with souls. I can’t imagine that a horrible person could own one. They are only for the humble.

Walking up through the alleyways of the cats from the sea to the Archive/Studio there’s lovely lush summery trees and characterful houses, some overgrown with vines and hidden by vegetation. What is it about the houses that are less manicured that makes them more appealing? It’s as if that fresh lick of paint has brushed away the magic. There’s no authenticity in the new, no mystery, no legacy, there’s no story that has to be lived and the result imprinted on the walls, the windows and the doors like the lines on the face of an old wise wizard.

I’m not sure what’s going on with my fingers but today I trapped a finger in the studio door as I was leaving. It was so close to being serious, I just managed to pull it out before it closed completely, it freaked me out. It reminds me of the first few weeks I met Olivia, we were in Dublin and I played a show with Frank Kearns from Cactus World News, as we were talking after the show Frank closed the car door on Olivia’s fingers. The door was actually closed and she was trapped, how nothing was broken I don’t know. Frank was mortified.

Sessions today with Tony and Noel in Sydney and Surrey. Tony told me Melbourne is in curfew after 8PM and Noel told me that 78s (shellac) are made from secretions of an Asian bug. I hear crazy truths every day.

Music today has been the wonderful guitar playing of Derek Trucks and his band starting with his third album Joyful Noise (2002). He was just 23 when he made this album and he has said himself that it helps being the nephew of Butch Trucks, long time drummer in the Allman Brothers who he had joined in 1999. But he was there because of his skilful, emotional slide guitar playing, Duane would be proud. With the death of Butch Trucks and Greg Allman one imagines that the band is over unless tribute tours ensue.

His style seems to be a mixture of Jazz and Blues but he seems to live in some kind of mystical bubble. On this album, he repays the ‘nephew’ concept by having Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, nephew of Pakistani Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, guest and it’s the inclusion of material like this that takes Trucks into another world, his slide guitar fitting in as effortlessly with this as it does with tracks that feature Solomon Burke (considered by some to be the king of R&B/Soul), more in keeping with what you might think Trucks’ style is. But it simply works for both singers and the contrasts between the two might be as unlikely as the next track that features Panamanian Salsa and Latin Jazz star Rubén Blades. Susan Tedeschi, Blues singer and Trucks’ wife also appears on this album. I’m not sure if they were together at this point but the two have played together in the Tedeschi Trucks band for the last 10 years which has seen Derek Trucks band albums take a back seat. The last one was Roadsongs in 2010. Joyful Noise follows no known path, jumping from Fusion to Blues to Soul to World Music in the blink of an eye and it’s all the better for it.

The fourth, Soul Serenade (2003), is actually the third album, made before Joyful Noise but held up in legalities. Jazzy and Bluesy with some Reggae nods to Bob Marley in the opening track and featuring Greg Allman on Drown In My Own Tears. Cuban Mongo Santamaría’s Afro Blue keeps up the connection to Latin Jazz as Trucks determinedly refuses to be seen or pigeon-holed purely as a Blues artist, yet.

Next album was Live At Georgia Theatre (2004) where his guitar playing virtuosity shines. It was followed by perhaps his most famous solo album, Songlines (2006). Although it has the usual high-quality guitar playing it also features Mike Mattison on lead vocal and he is really good but something has started to happen. There’s another Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song on this album where Trucks’ guitar takes on a voice all of its own, it’s special but there’s not enough of it. The inclusion of Chevrolet credited to Ed Young and Lonnie Young is confusing because it’s the same song as Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness) on Donovan’s Sunshine Superman credited to him. Explanations anyone? If you don’t want those genre tangents this album is altogether more accessible, fitting in with an audience that’s less adventurous, but although I like this record, gimme tangents, always.

Already Free (2009) won a Grammy for best Blues album which is always a worry because it seems to mean mainstream Blues, there’s less probing the new ideas and less messing with the genre’s minds. Tedeschi Trucks won the Grammy for Revelator in 2012. I once went to see a Blues package in Sydney and it suffered the same issues. It was Shuggie Otis who I really like from his albums, Taj Mahal and Robert Cray. Robert Cray was so middle of the road, Taj Mahal wasn’t very Bluesy and Shuggie didn’t seem to have the magic anymore. On a side note, Eric Clapton seems to have made both amazing and terrible records, how come? The fact is if you are going to play the Blues you have to be amazing otherwise it’s just old hat. Already Free is a really good mainstream Blues album if you like that kind of thing. His guitar playing is always special but I wish he would just go on mad tangents with that inimitable style of his but it seems there’s little chance of getting Grammy-winning bands to make experimental Blues, at one point he was almost doing it and that’s what I loved about him.

Song Of The Day is Sahib Teri Bandi / Makki Madni – NFAK (The Derek Trucks Band – live at Crossroads 2007. Derek Trucks talks about it with his guitar:

 
Derek Trucks talks about it with his words in 2006:

Today I woke up thinking about yesterday’s post and the fragility of humans. I was thinking about babies and how helpless they are in comparison with animals. The other week I was talking about the seagull chicks, now they are flying around. Then there’s foals, they are able to stand one hour after they are born. If a baby did that you’d freak out! It’s the ultimate evolutionary proof of the nanny state argument. Despite this, I’m all for a universal income and free health care. Then there’s mental fragility which begs the question do animals get depressed? I’m sure there’s the possibility of madness for all creatures as that chemical mix can go very wrong but are there suicidal ants or vicious pigeons, insane butterflies and mellow tigers? One probably can’t blame upbringing on a lazy trout and one wonders if monkeys have favourite offspring? Down on the prom those now quite large, squeaking and flying seagull chicks surely hassle the patience out of the parents as they expect to be fed. An ornithologist would know this but there must be a time when they learn to fend for themselves but does a bird remember its parents after that transition? Food for thought.

Dare and I were in the studio today on the Ahad project, working on a new track. Bass and drums done, figuring out the guitars. I started with acoustic today and I was worried that the two cuts on both my thumbs might hinder my playing but soon discovered that there was only a mild irritation and discomfort and I don’t know about other guitarists but the pad of my thumb isn’t really in play. But still, exercising a skill with your fingers when there’s damage isn’t the most ideal situation. It proved not to be a problem and I wonder more about the onset of other debilitating problems as one gets older. Peter Frampton was about to embark on his last tour before the pandemic because he has a progressive muscle disorder. Can you imagine being able to play an instrument your whole life and then your body won’t let you do it anymore, terrible.

So today my guitarist hands are still up to it and after the acoustic, I was onto the Strat, the wah-wah and then the Rickenbacker 12 string. Playing accurate arpeggios with no fluffs on a guitar with 12 strings and a very thin neck is a skill in itself. When you look at my hands and then the guitar neck it seems like it isn’t going to work and a lot of guitarists don’t play a guitar like this for this very reason. Well, I have a friend called Percy Vere and he taught me that you can do it. I also think there’s a style involved that the guitar suggests that you either like it or you don’t, in my case I started playing the 12 string guitar in different ways, not only sweet arpeggios but also fast fuzzy solos and heavy chords with quick frantic rhythms. You just have to find your own thing, someone has to play the tuba.

I suppose that people have a flair for certain things. I like to think I have a flair for languages and with some study and discipline, I could be fluent in a few. Starting with the study and discipline angle might have been more helpful at 16 rather than 60 but we do what we must. I’m amazed at Olivia’s Dad and how he can just fix things, I can’t do that. How can you be good at being a doctor or a dentist? How do dentists practice? Who are their victims? Some people seem to be good drivers and others terrible drivers. It’s frightening to think that this might also apply to commercial pilots. Then there’s cooks, athletes, architects, what skills exactly do politicians have?

As it’s been hot in the studio I cleaned the fan and it made a big difference to the airflow but I cleaned the metal cover in the sink and all the collected dust washed down the sink and blocked it so Olivia had to unscrew the pipe under the sink and de-gunk it. Horrible jobs, we are so lucky here in music land but then we also suffer pain! Haha, really we do. The reason I mention this is because Olivia went to the laundromat today where she’s got to know the owner and he told her that he was one of the people who has to remove the bodies in accident sites. It’s unbelievable what some people do in life. When we’re lucky, do we know?

Music today is first by the band people thought were The Beatles incognito but weren’t! Klaatu were initially two Canadians, John Woloschuk (lead vocal, keys, bass, acoustic guitar, percussion) and Dee Long (electric guitar, keys) and joined by Terry Draper on the drums. They are a strange mixture of The Beatles meets Queen at a children’s party with machines that occasionally go ping. Most famous for the song Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft which is better known as covered by The Carpenters. A rumour was started that it was actually a secret Beatles reunion based on various hazy clues that included the fact that the album had no credits, they were on Capitol Records, they had a Beatlesque sound and Ringo had appeared as Klaatu from sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still on the cover of his Goodnight Vienna album. All this made the album sell much better than it would have done. There are certainly some great moments but also some dodgy ones. The album is some kind of Progressive Pop, a symphonic catchiness pervades. They went on to make 5 albums between 1976 and 1981 but the main one is their first, 3:47 EST, named after the time Klaatu arrives from outer space in Washington DC. Worth a listen.

Gryphon released their first album on Transatlantic Records in 1973 with its striking cover and odd blend of Medieval, Renaissance, Progressive, and Folk – a unique combination. Two members, Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland, graduated from the Royal College of Music in London playing all kinds of strange instruments such as the crumhorn, the trombone, the bassoon, the recorder, the mandolin and keyboards. They were joined by guitarist Graeme Taylor and drummer Dave Oberlé who became the lead singer. They were once described as Henry VIII in a R’n’R band. Sounds terrible but I’m a big fan and have all their records of which they made five between 1973 and 1977 and one in 2016. When they split up in 1977 Harvey and their third seventies bass player Jonathan Davie formed Punk Rock group The Banned which was a long way from the original Gryphon being hired to write the music from Shakespeare’s The Tempest for a production at The National Theatre – those intellectuals are so unpredictable.

The prolific Steven Wilson has managed success beyond his wildest dreams and even beyond the wildest dreams of people that like the kind of music that he makes. But apart from that mega story, he is also a respected engineer and remix guru of classic albums from the Prog era (and XTC). So when we heard about Three Piece Suite, remixes of the first three Gentle Giant albums, we here in Prog land were overjoyed. Problem is that most of the master tapes are lost so what we got was nine tracks from the first three albums, Gentle Giant, Acquiring The Taste, and Three Friends. These first three albums starred the three Shulman brothers Derek, Ray and Phil on a million instruments and vocals, Kerry Minnear on keys and cello and Gary Green on guitar with Martin Smith on drums for the first two replaced by Malcolm Mortimore on Three Friends. If you are trying to find your way into the world of Gentle Giant I generally advise people to start with Octopus because that’s where I started, going forwards and backwards accordingly. But this might be a good place to start if you’d like to investigate a spruced-up version of tracks from those first three gems. For me, calling myself a mega fan doesn’t really cover it, I can’t believe I never saw them live back in the day. How did I miss them? They were there in Liverpool, I was there, I must have been broke or in trouble.

Last but not least today the madmen that formed Hatfield And The North made this fantastic complex, tricky and beautiful debut album in 1974. Dave Stewart on keys, Richard Sinclair on bass and vocals, Phil Miller on guitar and Pip Pyle on drums with guests, one of which is that great man, Robert Wyatt. The Canterbury Scene claims responsibility for music like this and you can thank Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Caravan, Gong, Steve Hillage and I shall never tire of it. I’ll never forget the day when I saw the sign at the beginning of the Motorway M1 in North London that inspired the name.

Songs Of The Daze

Gryphon play the 3rd Movement of Midnight Mushrumps at The Union Chapel on Friday 29th May 2015:

Gentle Giant – The BBC Sight & Sound concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, January 5th 1978. A Progressive Rock band fighting Punk and holding their own:

 
1. Two Weeks In Spain 0:22
2. Free Hand 3:33
3. On Reflection 11:10
4. I’m Turning Around 16:57
5. Just The Same 21:06
6. Playing the Game 26:03
7. Memories Of Old Days 30:50
8. Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It 38:14
9. JP Weathers presents 40:53
10. Funny Ways 42:40
11. For Nobody 51:23
12. Mountain Time 56:00

Hatfield And The North – Live At Rainbow Theatre, 1975 (Rock Masters, Japanese TV).

MC: Seisoku Ito (Masa-Ito)

Richard Sinclair (b, vo)
David Stewart (kbd)
Pip Pyle (br)
Phil Miller (g)

Carpenters – Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft taken from their 1978 television special Space Encounters:

Have you ever cut yourself and don’t know when it happened? The other day I cut my right thumb on broken glass from the cafétiere that I knocked off the table in the studio. It bled and bled and left a small cut, ok I saw it happen. Well, today, I felt something on my other thumb and looked and there was another cut in the same place. It hurt but wasn’t bleeding and I have no idea when or how I did it. It must have not quite drawn blood but feels the same as the cut that did. So that got me thinking about how confidently we walk around when we are so fragile. That soft flesh, rips and tears so easily, we are so quickly damaged in an accident, it’s a wonder we risk leaving the house at all. In 2019, 38,800 people in the US lost their lives in road accidents because they are made of flesh. It’s easy to lose concentration for a moment and get damaged and you don’t have to be in a car, you can simply trip and bang your head. I have a new theory, seeing that masks are in, I think we should all start wearing helmets too. Imagine how many lives would be saved if people wore helmets in cars or even on the street. We are way too prone to bodily catastrophe to be out in the world in our soft skin, waiting to be punctured, slit, ruptured, at any moment.

It was hot out there today and the British beaches are freaking out over the number of people they expect on this coming weekend. Masks in the shops but not on the beaches or the bars. The recent pictures of busy weekends have been horrendous with thousands of people crammed together, I guess they must miss each other. I always imagined that a crowded beach was a must to avoid at the best of times (see what I did there?). By the late afternoon it had cooled down and that made me think about clouds and how the sun’s heat is so restricted by them. How long can this burning ball go on for anyway?

I was also thinking about radiation and shouldn’t we do everything to protect ourselves from radiation bombarding us from space? I was reading about it and we are protected by a bubble that is called our magnetosphere. Does damage to the environment damage the magnetosphere? This is not my field of expertise, I’m the most unscientific person you’ve ever met but I do get the feeling that creatures as fragile as us may want to be more careful about how we treat ourselves and our planet. Duh!

Today Olivia went out of town (what a concept) to pick up my (now hers) boysenberry suede fringed jacket that I bought in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco from Aardvarks in the eighties. It had fossilised and needed to be softened and cleaned. I used to wear it, there are some clips, here’s a photo of me wearing it. I presume it’s authentic because of when I bought it and where I bought it and how it looks. It’s quite heavy and I’d hate to wear it in the rain but David Crosby 1969 – look out. I had a cool leather jacket that I used to wear too, I think I gave that to my daughter Signe. By the way, it’s my granddaughter Ines’ name day today. Lovely.

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in the same place for so long. Not leaving town once, no trips to the storage house or to London or travelling at all. It’s very weird. I’m so used to moving around, being in different places, going on tour, playing shows all over the place and sleeping in different beds, waking up in the morning and not knowing which side of the bed has the wall. I’ll be very happy to see that road ahead in the future, travelling from town to town from country to country, from language to language, presuming we can get to Portugal and I don’t need all kinds of paperwork to get around in Europe. Well, I guess we could move to a future Scotland, member of the EU and a separate country from England.

I watched the Man City/Real Madrid game and it really needed the crowd. A lot of great players, two stupid mistakes from Real Madrid and Man City are through to play Lyon who surprisingly beat Juventus on away goals. Tomorrow Chelsea play Bayern Munich and Barcelona play Napoli. Something to watch after the studio. I’m just hoping it’s not hot so the complainer from across the way doesn’t have his windows open.

It’s obvious that we need a building and when I look at the story of the woman whose husband passed and left 50,000 records, we really need to establish the In Deep Music Archive complex before I pop my clogs.

Music today is some instrumental albums from Herbie Hancock starting in 1969 with Fat Albert Rotunda (1969), his eighth, and first album for Warner Brothers after leaving Blue Note. It signalled a change in direction from Jazz to instrumental Soul, in this case made for a TV special which might have demanded a change from where he was musically with Blue Note. It’s more middle of the road, it had to be.

But then for the next three albums, he began searching, starting with Mwandishi (1971), then Crossings (1972), and Sextant (1973), and then the Jazz Fusion defining classic Head Hunters (1973). I don’t have Sextant or any of the earlier albums but do have sporadic records into the seventies and eighties. Herbie Hancock is a legend in his genre and famously played with Miles Davis as well as creating his own bands with the cream of Jazz musicians of whichever era he was in. (His first solo record was 1961.)

Mwandishi is something of a left turn. When you consider the Jazz of his earlier sixties albums this is a jump. Each member of the sextet adopted a Swahili name, Hancock’s was Mwandishi which means composer. But if you liked In A Silent Way (1969) by Miles Davis you are probably going to like this. Surprisingly Ronnie Montrose plays on the opening track but the core sextet of Buster Williams (Mchezaji) – bass, Billy Hart (Jabali) – drums, Eddie Henderson (Mganga) – trumpet and flugelhorn, Bennie Maupin (Mwile) – flute and bass clarinet, and Julian Priester (Pepo Mtoto) – trombone was the starting point for Hancock’s journey into these three experimental albums that must have been inspired by making In A Silent Way in February of the same year.

It’s always the experimental albums that I like (by anybody) and I just ordered Sextant (£2.99) – bargain. Tonight I can listen to it on Spotify. Each of the three exploratory albums has three long tracks and takes you on an exotic journey of rhythms, sounds and grooves with pianos and percussion, trumpets and saxophones, busy basses and soundscapes. I love these kinds of musical journeys.

On Crossings, the track Water Torture really sounds like soundtrack music to a sci-fi movie. It’s a long way from middle of the road or Be-Bop Jazz. On this track and the second track Quasar, you can thank Moog player/synth pioneer Patrick Gleeson who was brought in to set Hancock up with the new-fangled machines but Hancock was so impressed with Gleeson he had him join the group. He’s kinda like what Eno was to Roxy Music except Roxy Music sound like Herman’s Hermits next to this. These last two songs are credited to Bennie Maupin, the sax/flute/clarinet player. I can never figure out how jazzers’ credits work, it sounds like one big crazy space-age jam to me and if this is all written out then they have very special brains.

Sextant carries on opening with electronic weirdness galore mixed with trumpet as it glides its way into groove land. I can’t recommend these three experimental albums enough but you do of course have to like the idea. If you are still with us by the time you get to track 3 on Sextant, the 20 minute Hornets, then I guess you like it.

Head Hunters was a different thing altogether, a different band, a different vibe, a funky groove that made the jazzers, the Blues guys, the Rock people and the funkers happy. It was the biggest selling Jazz album to date (till 1976 when George Benson took over with Breezin’). Only Bennie Maupin survived from the sextet, Hancock played all the synths. Paul Jackson played bass, Harvey Mason played drums with Bill Summers on percussion. To give you an idea of just how funky it was, track 3 is called Sly.

There are so many albums to investigate it’s hard to know where to start, like anything, it just depends on what kind of thing you like but if you are a fan of Joni Mitchell you might like River: The Joni Letters from 2007 where he covers her songs. He played with her on Mingus in 1979 and has been friends since. The album won a Grammy in 2008. In 2014 he played on You’re Dead by Flying Lotus, I’m a fan and have the albums and one day I’ll break them out. The problem with all these artists is that they are deep or have deep catalogues or both, you could write volumes about them and listen to them for weeks, so please do.

Songs Of The Daze – Herbie Hancock and the band live in Molde, Norway, 1970. Those crazy Norwegians, they understand this stuff! I know, I’ve played there with Anekdoten!

TV performance for “Jazz Harmonie”, probably recorded around March 23rd 1972 at Studio de Joinville le Pont in Paris, France.

Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi with:

Herbie Hancock – k
Bennie Maupin – ss, fl, bcl
Julian Priester – tb
Ed Henderson – tp
Buster Williams – b
Billy Hart – dr

Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters – Butterfly (November 1974, Bremen, Germany @ Musikladen).

Herbie Hancock – keyboards
Bennie Maupin – reeds
Paul Jackson – bass
Mike Clark – drums
Bill Summers – percussion