Today was the day that Noel was bringing down the eight boxes of records that once belonged to his late friend Norman Armstrong as a much-appreciated donation to the In Deep Music Archive. It sounds a little maudlin but more than one person has left their collections to the archive in their will. We are trying to preserve the music as a cultural library and the idea of a collection being split up, sold on, thrown away, or the gems cherry-picked and the rest discarded, seems rather sad. Records I already have from donated collections go into the dupes boxes and I intend to use them to swap for albums I don’t have. That’s the plan and one hopes that in a donated collection there’s different versions of albums I already have, different pressings and even better condition albums of records I already have that I can upgrade. So thank you Noel and thank you Norman wherever you are for your generosity and contributing to this amazing library of music.

My wrists are hurting from moving records around in the shelves, grabbing a pile of records and moving them somewhere else, making space. I noticed yesterday working on Ahad’s album that when I was playing some bar chords on my Fender Telecaster, the angle I needed to have my wrist was painful. I managed, my guitar playing days aren’t over yet. In fact today I was back in the studio again, Dare and I had worked till latish and Dare got too tired to carry on so we continued today to make as much progress as possible, also because Dare is about to go away for a week. So Dare did some rough mixing, some technical stuff that we mere mortals don’t understand. I played a little extra guitar and we both sang some backing vocals. It’s actually song 9 that we are up to, 4 to go with all kinds of musical bits and pieces to add to the songs we’ve already worked on. We’re making an album, we go back, we look, we add things.

I had a session with Tyler in Portland tonight. He’s another sessioneer with tons of talent, lots of ideas and has just finished with his latest self-financed project. I’ve been giving him some guidance on a project where he writes and sings and plays all the instruments. I’ll be letting everyone know about where to get it when it comes out. So many talented people out there and so difficult to get their music to an audience that would love it if they knew about it, if they had time to know about it, if they could get through the mess of the relentless bombardment of the senses.

Yesterday, I donated a measly £5 to Wikipedia. It’s an amazing resource and it’s free, it’s the least I could do and they ask for support now and again and I never get around to it. They do have a way of making you feel guilty about using the service though. When you donate they then start to ask about donating more, I suppose they have to be pushy to keep it going. It is an amazing free service and although there’s lots of room for error, you get the feeling that the basic information is about right. I think a lot of people use it and consequently, you’d think that the musicians might keep their info up to date. For example, there’s a cursory note that the Gong album has been released but nothing else, no link, no picture. If I was 1000 people I would fix every page and get all the information right so nerds like me could check out discographies, release years and any other factual information, band members, their instruments and their history. But Wikipedia isn’t just about music, it’s about the world, it’s an encyclopaedia of knowledge compiled by the people, it’s a bold project, we should be supporting it.

And yes, I did also swim today. 1PM at the pool, 50 minutes and I hit 1 mile again, 64 lengths, I really had to push to make it. I got into the water a little later, just by a couple of minutes and I finished exactly at stop time. My body feels good, better than I expected but getting into shape is like learning French, it takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight and it seems like a hell of a lot of effort for little result, you just have to remember it’s the long game, most things are. Patience, concerted effort, belief, discipline and before you know it you have the body of a 25-year-old and you’re speaking fluent French.

Music today had me craving Cream’s Disraeli Gears (November 1967). What kind of music is it? Sixties? Psychedelic? Blues? Well, it’s Sixties Psychedelic Blues, with real songs and words and excellent sounds. It opens with Strange Brew, written by Eric Clapton and the late Felix Pappalardi, lyrics by the late Gail Collins and what I realise is that this music doesn’t suffer from the chains of Blues tradition or the loose risk of Psychedelia despite its legacy and influence. Even the second track, Sunshine Of Your Love, which should be oozing safety in the Blues genre, doesn’t dominate when you put together the personalities, the talents and the visions of these three unique individuals – Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. It’s such a great album, I recently bought a brand new copy (because it was so cheap) when I already had multiple original copies, to have a copy in pristine condition is essential. I did the same with T.Rex’ Electric Warrior.

World Of Pain swirls around like a wind (Collins’ lyrics again), Dance The Night Away features Clapton on electric 12 string and the side ends with Baker’s slightly strange Blue Condition. Side 2 opens with the amazing Tales Of Brave Ulysses and its surreal lyrics, Bruce’s voice, that Clapton wah-wah and Baker’s tom-heavy drum beat. The song was a collaboration between Australian Martin Sharp and Eric Clapton. Sharp not only wrote the lyrics to this song but was also responsible for the Disraeli Gears artwork as well as for the next double album, Wheels Of Fire.

Tales Of Brave Ulysses

(Lyrics by Martin Sharp)

You thought the leaden winter
Would bring you down forever
But you rode upon a steamer
To the violence of the sun
And the colours of the sea
Blind your eyes with trembling mermaids
And you touch the distant beaches
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing
For the sparkling waves are calling you
To touch their white laced lips
And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea
And when your fingers find her
She drowns you in her body
Carving deep blue ripples
In the tissues of your mind
The tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter
Her name is Aphrodite
And she rides a crimson shell
You know you cannot leave her
For you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing
Yeah
The tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
You want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter

AllMusic’s Matthew Greenwald calls it, “One of a few overtly psychedelic songs to have aged gracefully…Lyrically, it’s a relatively factual and colourful rendering of the great Greek tragedy Ulysses”.

She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow or SWLABR is next, with lyrics by poet Pete Brown who was a lyrical collaborator with Bruce on Dance The Night Away and Take It Back and with Bruce and Clapton on Sunshine Of Your Love. Outside Woman Blues was written by Blind Joe Reynolds, despite the solos and the Blues riffs it still sounds like something beyond the genre, that’s Cream’s genius and if you want humour then final track Mother’s Lament somehow manages to justify its existence too.

Gong’s The Universe Also Collapses (2019) carries on the tradition of this bizarre group which when it formed in the sixties might have been seen as more of a lifestyle, a philosophy, rather than just a purely musical endeavour. In the wake of Daevid Allen’s (Gong guru) death in 2015, the responsibility for the world of Gong has been handed to singer-guitarist Kavus Torabi and his merry men – Fabio Golfetti on lead guitar, Dave Sturt on bass, Ian East on sax and Cheb Nettles on drums. You can see Daevid Allen smiling down on its unlikely success without him, although it was with his blessing, he knew it would work with these people. It’s Progressive Rock with a twist, spacey stories and cosmic vibes permeate the music. Olivia and I have seen them live twice and they are a cosmic inspiration. Fabio even sent us CDs of his Brazilian band Violeta de Outono, highly recommended.

Steven Wilson’s collaboration with Israeli musician Aviv Geffen began in 2004 with the Blackfield project. It’s perhaps the strongest project outside his Porcupine Tree and solo output that has now grown to five albums although his involvement has been sporadic in the middle period. It’s that classic thing he does, Progressive but with real songs, melodic, memorable, beautifully produced. If you have not yet discovered Blackfield, the first two albums are gems. Both Wilson and Geffen sing and write. Geffen is a big star in his own country (Israel), Wilson is married to an Israeli girl. This album is Blackfield II (2007), Olivia’s favourite Blackfield album – and she knows everything about Steven Wilson’s output.

Last but not least one of the great song-orientated Porcupine Tree albums, Steven Wilson’s vehicle that has catapulted him to the solo success that he now enjoys. Lightbulb Sun was released in 2000 and is packed full of catchy melodies, memorable lyrics and great sounds. Ideas galore, it’s that fine mixture of instrumental sections in songs.

The band features ex Japan keyboard player Richard Barbieri, with Colin Edwin on bass and Chris Maitland on drums. One of my favourite albums of the period.

Song Of The Daze is Cream’s Mother’s Lament, also two live performances by Blackfield and Porcupine Tree (with Gavin Harrison on drums and John Wesley on additional guitars and backing vocals):

It must sound most peculiar to most people when I say I was up bright and early today at a quarter to midday! Well, it’s all relative, we go to bed in the early hours, we get up in the afternoon, we are night people. But sometimes night people have to get up early in this case for a session with Rohan in Sydney and what a complex web he weaves, a great talent at 22, I so hope he can take it further. I was doing the session in the studio control room and had agreed with Dare that he should leave home at 1PM so I can get my sesh with Rohan finished before he arrives, but he forgot and arrived early. So he went for a walk around town for half an hour and when he got back I was finishing up and we soon got started on sessioneer Ahad’s next track. Is it really song 10 we are up to? I was thinking we might work on the last Jerome Froese/me project track first (I need to play the bass on a song) but Dare thought we could do that next week. We are in Ahad headspace and we want to get the guitars recorded so we can finish the music and get Ahad over here from Istanbul to sing, presuming he will be able to travel from Turkey to England at the end of September. When will we know we are in the clear, will we ever be in the clear, is there something else around the corner and why are there so many horrible people in power in the world?

I was playing all kinds of guitars today starting with the Rick 340 6 (1966) playing some special ‘sprangs’ that can only come out of this guitar. Rohan mentioned the Sing Songs EP today and this was the guitar I used on The Night Is Very Soft and Ancient History. I also used it for some chunky chords but there’s chunky…and there’s this guitar’s chunky – it’s growling, edgy and chunky, it’s hard to explain, it sounds like something you would hear on a Small Faces record, The Who or The Beatles. I needed Dare’s ’62 Gibson 345 for the next part, an arpeggio and I added this wonderful guitar to those chunky Rickenbacker tones and the blend between these two beautiful beasts was something special. For the solo, I used my late seventies Strat with the wah-wah and I doubled the original guitar riff with the Fender 6 string bass. I tried my three available acoustics but ended up keeping the main demo version and adding a Takamine 6 string rhythm part. The lesson here is that when you are doing your demos, make sure it’s in tune and you do a decent job of recording it because your unique feel might be the missing link to a song’s magic and it’s very very hard to get it back into a song when it’s gone.

They say making records is a curse because it makes you aware of other people’s misdeeds, haha, but you can also appreciate someone’s great work. Often it’s just a taste thing, when we were mixing the Space Summit album we wondered about the bass levels so we played some CDs in the archive and compared bass levels between contemporary releases and the difference, wow! Jeff Lynne’s latest records, no bass. The Hip Hop gods were furious. But it’s taste, heavy bass, simple songs, little bass, complex songs, great melodies, stoopid lyrics, great lyrics, out of tune singing. Everyone sees it differently.

Last day in the archive, getting ready for Noel to arrive with eight boxes of records tomorrow, trying to get the letter ‘s’ sorted, so many bands and artists’ surnames come under ‘s’.

What else:
French was short and sweet today but it was day 90, I must have learnt something but I wouldn’t let me loose in a St Germain café just yet. Pasty shop was surreal today as we discussed tomorrow and what we don’t know about it. Weather went from chilly to mizzle and Olivia went out dry and came back wet. It was all just a normal day in Penzance.

We watched the first episode of Humans – Season 3 over dinner, it’s now been cancelled because the ratings have obviously gone down. But Coronation Street prevails. I don’t get sick of a show, I get more into it. I get into the characters. But it seems that the audience gets excited about a show and then their interest wanes and it’s gone. I didn’t watch the last couple of seasons of Game Of Thrones or the last few Walking Dead seasons because I just got so sick of mutilation, decapitation and all kinds of horrible violence over dinner. I would have continued if there had been less blood but I guess the blood and the gore and the death is the point. Are there happy shows and I don’t mean comedy or romcoms but just stimulating shows where no one dies and no one is humiliated? Or don’t we humans do that as entertainment? That’s why music is amazing because it creates happiness and stimulation, wonder and love and doesn’t need violence to blow your mind.

Music today comes from the talented A.A. Williams. Cellist, pianist, guitarist, singer-songwriter and another Bella Union signing. Heavy, sensitive, thoughtful, brave, dark, her debut album Forever Blue (2019) is really something. Too new for a Wikipedia page whilst being reviewed in the Guardian and the Financial Times? What can you say about an artist whose debut album’s opening track is entitled All I Ask (Is To End It All). Have a look at the links to see what people say.

Weyes Blood released Titanic Rising in 2019, it’s her fourth album and the first on Subpop. Her first two EPs were self-released and are very hard to find and expensive. I have the last three albums and her voice and retro mood make her a contender for the “if she’d been around in the seventies she’d be a legend” prize. My only criticism of her work is that the drums are the feel and sometimes they don’t make it, I don’t want them loud, I just want them to have that feel that the legends of the seventies had, where’s Kenny Buttrey when you need him? She tries to keep the drums low in the mix but machines can’t hide. Often compared to The Carpenters’ Soft Rock, the difference – Karen Carpenter was a drummer, she knew things.

Nadine Shah’s latest album Kitchen Sink, her fourth, was released on June 26th and I’ve followed her from her first album, this is the first chance I’ve had to listen to it where it felt right. She’s an intriguing mix of cultures and ideas. A Pakistani father, an English mother with Norwegian blood and growing up in South Shields in the North East. All that can only give you a unique perspective on the norms of the universe. I like her voice, the urgency in her music, the lyrics are smart and observant and with her collaborator Ben Hillier she makes original albums that make me think she’s a younger distant cousin of Johnette Napolitano.

I’m such a fan of Anna Calvi, I even interviewed her once in Stockholm and saw her play there. Olivia and I saw her twice in Germany (Frankfurt and Cologne). Her voice is incredible, the story is that she hid herself away until she could really sing and wow can she sing! She plays a mean Fender Telecaster but people are more excited about her going nuts with the guitar and thrashing at it than her actual skills. She also plays the violin but not anymore, she’s on another trip at the moment and I like it. Her latest album is called Hunter (2018). There’s also Hunted which is some kind of remix with guests. Citing Bowie, Scott Walker and Nina Simone as influences…what are you waiting for?

Song Of The Day

This is the only video that I didn’t find distracting. I like music, not videos.

I went to bed at 4AM, I couldn’t sleep on my right side because when I lay my head on the pillow my neck hurt into my shoulder, so I swapped sides of the bed and turned onto my left side but that was just weird. But I think I fell asleep because I woke up and looked at the clock, it was 5.40AM, Olivia was still not in bed so I moved myself back to the original position and in a drowsy haze, I fell asleep again. I had to be up at 10.45AM for my swimming appointment. I wanted to be there early to make sure all the paperwork was in order. So I dragged myself out of bed, had some cereal and a cup of tea, and prepared myself to leave. This was weird, I had to put on my swimmers under my shorts, I wasn’t allowed to get changed into them there. It felt strange walking up to the leisure centre not just because of the awkward feeling of the swimmers but because I was actually going there and it was the first time in 6 months but it was a beautiful day and my mind drifted towards the fluffy clouds and the large blocks of blue sky.

Inside the leisure centre, it was the first day that the pool was open for 6 months. There weren’t many people either in the pool or in the reception area, but then I was a little early. I talked to some members of staff and waited and then I was given the green light and in I went. I had to go to the ‘blue lockers’ after first taking off my shoes and socks. I got changed quickly because I didn’t have that long and made my way towards the water. And then I was in, what a feeling! Immersing yourself in water, that strange creature, heavy and yet it runs through your fingers, a wet street to a deep ocean, the realm of marine animals that live inside it like we live in the air, they don’t think about it, like we don’t think about it, gills, lungs, strange breathing apparatus for our specific environments. Liquid, we drink it, we swim in it, we’re made of it, we sail on it, we surf on it, we explore in it, it falls from the sky. Sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s angry whether it be in the form of sea, river or rain and whatever face it chooses it’s all beautiful, sparkling life.

So I was in, I was actually in the pool, a short stretch before I began, looking at the clock, it was just before midday and I was off. I had till ten to one and I had no idea if I would be able to even do this it’d been so long. There were three lanes, fast, medium and slow, you had to choose and I chose the middle. There was another lady in there with me who was a little slower but she sped up when she saw me catching her up and once or twice she moved over, not like the man with the caravan. Another two people came into the lane during the period but it was very easy to swim at your pace. My arms felt heavy, spiralling into the water, freestyle, a consistent circle of strokes, pushing the water behind me, head buried in the water, breathing to one side, legs kicking, trying to remember the technique I’d been taught, stretching my arms forward, reaching out with the tips of my fingers, keeping my body square and straight cutting through the water, if I was 25 I’d be fast, but I’m 62 so I’m slow, no longer streamlined, my body no longer lithe and bendy, more a block with arms and legs, like a van versus a sports car.

I soon realised that I was getting into a groove, or was I just happy to be in there, an observer might think what’s that sack of skin doing in the water but in my mind, I was Mark Spitz. At lap 38 I really was in a groove and the arms were no longer heavy, windmilling with ease, cutting through the water like a life through Buddha. I hadn’t imagined I could swim my usual mile, 64 lengths and once I was in there I found out that I hadn’t completely forgotten how to swim, that I wasn’t going to die of a heart attack and I hoped that I might make 40 lengths. But I soon realised that if I kept up this pace, this rhythm, I may make 50 or perhaps a few more, short of that magic number ’64’ but still a grand effort. I glanced at the clock, I was in the fifties and I still had 15 minutes to go, could I possibly reach that unreachable target? I’d felt myself speed up as I got more tired, putting in a little more effort to fight the heavy arms. The lane was mine, I was alone and with just one objective, to reach 64! I was pushing, trying not to splash my hands onto the surface in a desperate bid to hit the magic number before the clock hit 50. I hit 60 with minutes to go and I knew I was going to make it, I was trying to calculate how long a length takes, taking into consideration my flagging body, but I still felt strong and instead of relaxing I sped up, swam as fast as I could like a bullet (ok, a dart), and I rammed the wall at the start and the finish, lap 64, I made it with two minutes to spare.

I thought I might do 30 or at least die trying, it’s been 6 months! I didn’t dream of making a mile. I took a shower, got half-dressed and walked out of the centre around the corner of the building near to what used to be the football pitch, all overgrown, except the goalmouth. I was thinking someone should have seeded the goalmouth. I put my bag down and brushed my hair in the sunlight. It was warm and the sun on my body felt wonderful. I threw my T-shirt over one shoulder and my bag over the other and walked through the glade at the back of the leisure centre and through to the houses. The sun was penetrating the trees and leaving patches of light on the earth, it was beautiful to see the patterns on the ground, flickering as the leaves gently swayed with the branches in the treetops. I said hello to a guy I didn’t know but who I always see because he has the corner house where the footpath connects to the glade that leads to the centre. I walked into town, put my T-shirt on before I hit the shops. I went to the bakers to get my pasty, I was ravenous. Amy apologised profusely for giving me the wrong time for the previous day. I headed to the studio where Olivia was waiting.

It was such a lovely day, we went down to look at the sea, there were strange boats in the bay and we sat and watched the people walk by with their dogs, all kinds of shapes and sizes (the dogs and the people). On the way down we took a picture in the park with the sunlight shining on an exotic tree. On the way back my body was asking me if we could please stop moving today. At the archive, I did some more record sorting and then had a long interesting sesh with Chris in New Jersey where we talked music, and music and music and music. We had spaghetti for dinner and watched the last episode of Humans (Season 2). I listened to Salim’s EP and then realised that my neck really hurt and it was making my head hurt and then I realised that the best thing about the swim was that it was loosening me up and the worst thing about the swim was that it was tightening me up. So I took two Ibuprofen and Olivia massaged my neck and pain, pain, pain. But I wrote all this somehow and later took two Paracetamol, changing up the pain killers. Let’s face it, my body will never forgive me for today.

Music today started with some Spotify surfing, I listened to Alanis Morissette’s new album Such Pretty Forks In The Road, optimistic, and it started well but I was disappointed and won’t buy it for the archive until I can find a second-hand copy in the coming months. It sounded more like pretty forks in the middle of the road. I pressed on Made For You on Spotify and Julian Cope, Kate Bush, The Frazier Chorus, The Waterboys, Bill Nelson and Phil Manzanera came up. What usually happens is one track comes up that makes you want to listen to a whole album but this time, no, so I wondered what new albums or reissues had come through the door and then I knew.

Neil Young’s Homegrown was released on June 19th 2020 but it was recorded between June 1974 and January 1975. It might have been released except the material was backing up and Tonight’s The Night recorded in 1973 was in the can and unreleased. This from Wikipedia:

It was so near to being released that a cover had been created. At the last moment, however, Young chose to drop Homegrown and release instead Tonight’s The Night, an unreleased album recorded in 1973. Young stated that he had a playback party for Homegrown and Tonight’s The Night happened to be on the same reel. He decided to release Tonight’s The Night after that listening because of “its overall strength in performance and feeling” and because Homegrown “was just a very down album”.

If you are a fan of the early to mid-seventies Neil Young this is for you – another snippet from Wikipedia:

Young has said that “Homegrown is the missing link between Harvest, Comes A Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon”. The songs are quite personal and reveal much of his feelings on his failing relationship at the time with actress Carrie Snodgress. “It was a little too personal…it scared me”.

It’s been hyped up as a classic missing record but it’s no Harvest or After The Goldrush but still, great to hear some original material from then with the same vibe.

And then there’s Hitchhiker recorded on August 11th 1976, acoustic, and released on September 8th 2017. A lot of these songs found their way onto different albums in different mostly electric forms, including Rust Never Sleeps, American Stars ‘n Bars, Le Noise, Comes A Time and Hawks And Doves. Again, if you’re a fan of his mid-seventies acousticy side you have to have this but at the same time they’re interesting, sometimes great but unlikely to blow your mind like Harvest or After The Goldrush did.

But if you want to find a couple of early Neil Young records that are really great, go for Live At Massey Hall 1971 and Sugar Mountain, Live At Canterbury House in 1968. They both come with DVDs. Great acoustic performances that have all the magic you need.

Song Of The Day is Neil Young – Live In Concert 1971 (BBC):

It’s the last day of August, I believe that means Autumn Soon then Winter Splinter Bay. After 6 months of not leaving the town I’m hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel, that long dark tunnel, that never seems to end, it’s like driving through Norway where the tunnels can be twenty-five miles long, you know there’s an end but the longer you are in there the more the anxiety builds. What I find difficult is the range of people’s opinions about it all, it’s nothing, it’s dangerous, it’s not dangerous, be careful, you don’t need to be careful, it’s fake, there’s thousands of people dying, it’s like the flu, it’s not like the flu, the number of deaths is like any year, the number of deaths is much higher than other years, masks in the shops but not in the pubs. So many messages, I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong, I just can’t stand the guessing and committing to the answer that suits you. Can’t we just get it all into perspective? It’s either an overreaction or an underreaction and for some reason, people are taking sides. The reason, politicians have made the people either not trust them at all or support them whatever they say. It’s mad. Dear world, leave me alone, go away, come back when you are being fair and rational.

In my little world down here in Penzance, the day started with going to the bakery earlier on this August bank holiday Monday because Amy told me it was closing at 2.30PM, an hour earlier than usual, I got there and Wendy told me I was too late and they had already thrown my pasty away because they closed at 2PM. Deary me, things were going so well in pasty land. I went to the Co-op and bought a pre-packaged one, not quite the same quality. But it gave me an excuse to be outside longer on what seemed to be a beautiful day, a day I couldn’t take advantage of because I had to work in the archive getting ready for Noel’s visit on Thursday with the eight boxes of donated records from his friend Norman who sadly passed away in recent years. So that’s what I did, dug in, sorted out as much as I could in the short time I had. It makes such a difference when it’s tidy and organised.

I had a pending visit at 6PM from fan Stephen who was on holiday in Penzance with his family. He’d been to the gig Olivia and I did in London at the Betsey Trotwood last year. He came down with his daughter Megan and I showed them the archive and the studio. We all had a good chat and I signed some CDs. It’s nice to show people the archive and the studio, the place we’ve made all the recent records. After they left I continued with the task at hand. Olivia did the washing and suddenly it was dinnertime. We ate over an episode of Humans on Netflix and then carried on until 10PM when we had a surprise zoom call with New York. It was our friend Jeanne’s birthday and this was a surprise for her, a load of friends in different locations wishing her Happy Birthday, nice!

Then it was time to listen to the Salim tracks he’s sent me but the link didn’t work (it worked the other day). He just sent me new artwork so I’ve asked him to send it to me again and I’m waiting to hear back so I can listen to these EP tracks. The EP is coming out on September 9th, the same day as we will release a song from the new MOAT album. Will keep you posted.

Record Store Day Drops happened over the weekend, not sure how it went as I wasn’t able to get to a shop. My release this year is a red vinyl Nightjar but not until the September Record Store Day Drops although it seems that some copies have got out early in Australia, thanks for getting it and getting it earlier too, it wasn’t supposed to be that way but it will sound the same whatever the month. I’m still hoping to get the Cradle album (the Quatro sisters), the Groundhogs album (Split) and the Exit North album (coloured vinyl) and possibly Mellow Candle, we’ll see, I don’t want to pay twice the price that they were supposed to be on the day.

Music today has had me finally approaching the newer records I’ve recently bought but because I don’t know them yet it’s hard to say much about them. So all I can do is draw your attention to them and give you first impressions, like “great” and “really good” and “cool”. So the first album I opened up was the collaboration between Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, a band that they’ve called Better Oblivion Community Center (American spelling) released in 2019. I’m a Phoebe Bridgers fan and like Oberst too (Bright Eyes) and first impressions of this album were “great” and “really good” and “cool”. Haha. I played it twice and I like the atmosphere a lot and the lyrics and will be playing it again soon.

I followed it with Phoebe Bridgers’ latest album Punisher (2020) which I also played twice and it was…ok, I’m not going to say it! I’m a fan of her voice, her words, she has sensuality about her, a fragility, there’s something very thoughtful about her records and I’m looking forward to getting to know this one better. I have the first one, Stranger In The Alps (2017). I liked it so much that I bought it first on CD and then had to have a vinyl copy too.

Next is Laura Marling’s new album, Song For Our Daughter (2020), here we go. If she’d been around in the early seventies, she’d be a legend by now. Her beautiful voice, sophisticated songs, stories and feelings from the inside expressed so succinctly. I’m just on the second listen but this first track Alexandra is really lovely. At the age of 30, she has already released 7 solo albums plus the LUMP album collaboration. The wonderful thing about her not being around in the early seventies is we have decades left to appreciate her, if only I did. The second track sounds like Bread, yes Bread. “Great” and “really good” and “cool”. Sorry.

Well, one Laura Marling album simply isn’t enough, so I’m going back to her second album, I Speak Because I Can, released in 2010. This was the album for which she won the Brit Award for British Solo Artist. So please investigate her, I can’t tell you any more, I have to go and find a place to sleep because tomorrow is the first swimming day in 6 months and for me, it’s an early rise. Enjoy.

Songs Of The Daze

So as Dylan Thomas got married in the building next door, Better Oblivion Community Center’s Dylan Thomas might just be the track:

 
Phoebe Bridgers has this odd long video for the last track on her album, I Know The End. It sounds like the last track on an album, more enjoyable if you’ve heard the other tracks first:

 
Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter short film:

Don’t you hate it when you make plans and then end up not feeling well enough to see them through? Well, today I had a sesh with Tony in Sydney at midday and straight after had the ‘eye thing’ and went to bed and didn’t wake up till 4PM, the plan was to go straight out, didn’t happen. Sleeping off this affliction doesn’t really work, it just means you’re asleep when you feel like crap, nothing changes when you wake except that you can see. So I got up and attempted to rescue the day and with a hazy head and a dull headache, I sorted out the recycling at Dare’s house, checked on the space caterpillars and their progress with the nasturtiums and went across the road to the last day of the funfair. Not exactly the kind of place you want to be when you are carrying a dull headache, a parched dryness in the mouth and a sense of not really being connected to reality but still standing and realising it’s now or never because the fair will be packing up and leaving tomorrow. In the olden days I’d be down for a few days in awful pain but these days, it’s just uncomfortable and just uncomfortable enough to be annoying but not to stop me living.

So as I’m alive, I thought, let’s go and pretend to be 100% and into the funfair we went. Perhaps you can trick your body or your head into feeling better if you refuse to accept the incapacity, ignore the pain. I’m a sensitive soul, pain is bad, the dentist freaks me out, I don’t mind hard work pain or exercise pain but injury or sickness pain, that’s the worst. But I was dealing with it and the day was still young enough, the main problem was we’d forgotten to buy food in our busy lives so it was going to be expensive chips at the fair. But first, Olivia was desperate to go on one special ride, the swing ride! We’d bought tokens at the gate for £1 each and this ride took 3 tokens, if you don’t know what it is there’s a picture below. It’s a circle of seats that you sit in with a metal bar that stops you falling out. All the seats are florescent pinks and glitter purples and various garish colours attached by chains to a central spinning point and after sitting there waiting for more customers for a few minutes, suddenly the young uncommunicative lad in charge closed the entrance gate and we began to rise up into the air. That was ok because there was a lovely view of the sea and the surrounding countryside around the town, the sun was out, there was the beginning of a winter breeze but it was ok, late afternoon, nice light, blue sky with wispy clouds, but then we started to fly. Olivia said it would be just like flying and that was certainly true except with my heavy head and the spinning out around the central pole at some speed, I immediately started to feel a little dizzy. So I did that thing that they say pirouetting ballerinas do, they focus on one point ahead and for me, that was the silver-speckled glitter red seat in front of me. I tried to look out but the world was spinning by so fast and I soon had to close my eyes only occasionally opening one to a slight slit to check that we were still flying. I held Olivia’s hand and she was loving it. She was so grateful that I went up there with her, sharing the experience.

We came down and I was glad I hadn’t eaten the chips before the ride. At the food truck, I stupidly asked if they had anything vege, “chips” the young girl said. I guess it’s still last century in the fairgrounds. After the chips, we had a walk around and got talking to one of the lads who was running one of the rides. He was from Middlesborough, northeastern accent which I didn’t immediately pick up on for some reason, I could tell it was Northern but couldn’t place it exactly. I asked him about life as a travelling member of a funfair crew. He said he loved it, it was like a big family and another couple of lads were joking around with him. They seemed happy. He said that this was the only site available at the moment in Britain, everywhere else was closed, festivals cancelled and consequently, these bigger rides were brought down, usually the fair is smaller. But the weather’s been bad here in Cornwall and the crowds are way down, still, at least they were here.

We didn’t go on any of the other rides, the Ghost Train had strobes and I can’t do strobes especially feeling this way and then there’s the projectile vomit rides where they spin you round and round and they turn you upside down and catapult you backwards. I don’t know how people aren’t sick, there’s one called the Crazy Cage which is like a centrifugal force machine where you stick to the walls as they spin you around and then there’s the waltzers with a lad spinning you as you move around. It seems that so much of it is about spinning.

Then there’s the cacophony, every ride has a different soundtrack and as you walk around you can hear them all at the same time as each ride is in close proximity to another. It’s terrible, it’s like hell, I don’t know if it’s a musician thing but it could really drive you insane, I suppose the people that work there have grown used to it, they block it out like people who live next to railway lines or fire stations. I once went to a bird sanctuary in Queensland and there was one crazy bird with a piercing song that you could hear all the way back to the shop. I asked the guy how he dealt with it, “Badly at first but now I don’t hear it anymore”.

Olivia went mad and ate a load of sugary greasy donuts, and bought a bag of UFOs off one of the caterpillars. I took a load of photos trying to capture the mood of the place. I didn’t try my luck at winning a free panda or a husky or a hedgehog by firing pellets, chucking something at some silver cans or throwing darts, even though my Mum had a darts trophy on the dresser in our front room. The dead eyes of the horses on the carousel and the frozen fear on the faces of the other animals were as scary as I imagined. The paintings on the Thrill Seeker of a scantily clad Pamela Anderson and the monsters on the Ghost Train were glaring out as if the music was coming out of their gaping monster mouths and eyes. It seemed that everything was set up to scare you. One wonders about the thrill of fear in this context, how it stimulates people, like horror movies do, being frightened for pleasure. It’s certainly not my bag, when we left it was a relief.

Music today reflects where we went today. Kevin Ayers‘ last album, The Unfairground, was released in 2007 and was his 15th album of which I have 14, plus collections. There’s one called Kevin Ayers’ Deià…Vu, only released in Spain, that I’ve never seen before. I saw a CD on eBay for 30 quid, yikes, too much but I guess it’s rare. The Unfairground was his first album in 15 years which was a big gap for someone who had been so prolific between the sixties and 1992. I think what happens is the music world moves on and leaves you behind, your audience gets older, isn’t as active as it was in terms of purchasing music and going to shows, and for some people, music madness is something they did when they were younger. Of course, some older artists are still treasured, Robert Wyatt for example who was in the original Soft Machine with Kevin Ayers. But then it’s about the perceived quality of the records, Wyatt seemed to have something about the future in him or more, something timeless, whereas Ayers sounded like a man who made more sense in the past. But it’s also true, his best records were made in the seventies. I think of records like this as reminders, something to make you remember him and his qualities, not that this is a bad record, it’s pleasant, has that special voice and his unique approach to songwriting, it can only be him. It’s like playful intellectual cocktail music where everybody is wearing dress suits and bow ties but they’re all tripping. If you’re a fan, especially a long-standing fan you’ll be glad to let him sing to you in any guise, in any era.

I’ve told this story before but I stood next to him once in the backstage toilets at the Shepherd’s Bush Theatre at a Go Betweens gig, had a nice long chat with him, mad, cool, eccentric, lovely man, he died in 2013 at the age of 68 and the world misses him. If you wonder about his effect on other musicians, go to the Wikipedia page and see who played on this record.

In 1975 Michael Moorcock, the science-fantasy writer, released an album under the name Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix called The New Worlds Fair. It featured Moorcock, Steve Gilmore and Graham Charnock on guitars, vocals and lyrics, as well as members of Hawkwind, and Snowy White on guitar. I assume it’s supposed to be a dystopian future predating Banksy’s Dismaland Theme Park by three decades, except, well, this is just a record and Banksy actually did it. Still, here it is, it has a narrator in between songs, more spooky interjections. Sadly with Moorcock’s skills and his perfect band of musicians he fails to create any atmosphere at all. One of the most disappointing great ideas I’ve ever heard. The songs are average, the lyrics needed better music, more appropriate to the concept but I guess being a writer doesn’t make you a songwriter as being a guitarist, singer-songwriter doesn’t make you a writer! Haha.

In 1988 Scotland’s Fairground Attraction couldn’t do anything wrong. Their single Perfect was No. 1 in the UK, their album The First Of A Million Kisses No. 2, they won best album and best single at the Brit Awards and then the arguments started and they broke up. Classic R’n’R story, although they weren’t very R’n’R, they were more of a folky soft Pop group. The band was Eddi Reader on vocals, Mark E. Nevin on guitars and songwriting, Roy Dodds on drums and Simon Edwards on guitarrón which is a Mexican 6 string acoustic bass. Their second album Ay Fond Kiss was released by the label after Reader had left and was mostly B-sides and not really a follow up although the label didn’t tell anyone that as they saw a cash cow disappearing before their eyes. Mark E. Nevin co-wrote and played guitar on Kill Uncle by Morrissey and Eddi Reader has made a ton of solo albums.

Staying on Fairground Attraction simply because it’s topical and revealing about the corporate labels. In 1996 the loving label released a best-of CD, thinking how can we sell more records of this successful band when they’re not together anymore? I know, let’s put a CD together of all but three tracks from the original album, add some of those B-sides from the album that wasn’t an album and let’s call it The Very Best Of Fairground Attraction Featuring Eddi Reader. And while we’re at it let’s leave off the one song that Eddi Reader wrote (Whispers) from the first album whilst talking her up in the ‘positive’ sleeve notes that mention her solo career but dubiously suggest that Reader becoming pregnant made them ‘lose momentum’ and that’s why they split up. So keep it positive in those liner notes but put the demise of the band at the door of the pregnant woman. Hm, nice. By the way, let’s make sure that the CD cover art is the cheapest possible piece of cost-cutting we can think of. One positive thing that I didn’t know and connects the music today, remember I said that Kevin Ayers hadn’t made a record since 1992 before he made The Unfairground? Well, that album was called Still Life With Guitar and Mark E. Nevin played on 4 tracks and co-wrote one track, Something In Between – who knew?

Song Of The Daze

Kevin Ayers’ May I? with Mike Oldfield on bass and Lol Coxhill on soprano sax: