Yay, I did it, I came top in the French Obsidian League and now I’m in the top Duolingo league, the legendary Diamond League. Of course, being in it and staying in it are two different things and I was making lots of stupid mistakes today, making the same mistake four times but I suppose I’m learning, it’s just a shame that I have to have it beaten into me. Concentration is the hardest thing in this mad world. I was talking to sessioneer Doug about it today. There’s so many distractions, add to that responsibilities and your interests then add up how many years you’ll be alive. It’s probably about now you can forget about your dream of speaking Lithuanian and climbing Mount Everest, not because you can’t achieve those things, it’s just that they’re number 966 and 8475 on your list of things you want to do.

We finished the third Arctic Lake song today, guitar touch up and mix and we will hopefully mix the last song on Tuesday. We’ll be working on one of sessioneer Craig’s songs on Wednesday and Ahad brass on Thursday. It’s a busy week of studio and sessions, we also have campaign responsibilities, especially with the Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics, which are time-consuming. The lockdown is still going strong and we haven’t heard anything about whether we will be able to travel on December 3rd when it ends. Fingers crossed. Sessions with Arctic Lake’s Tony in Sydney today and Brian in Florida (Doug near Woodstock). I noticed that Brian was sitting outside, here the rain was pouring down and the heater was on, I guess that’s Florida in the autumn.

To everyone that is planning on ordering something from the Indiegogo campaign for the new MOAT record Poison Stream, please do it before December if you can so we have a chance to honour any orders whilst we are still here in Penzance. The campaign ends on December 6th midnight GMT so only about 3 weeks left. The record itself and T-shirts will be coming from our label Schoolkids in the US but Mystery Boxes, Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics and the first MOAT record will be coming from us here in Penzance so we’d like to send everything out before we leave for Portugal. Postcards we can send from anywhere, might be nice to get one from Portugal. By the way, sorry to see them lose to France yesterday and of course England lost to Belgium, beating them once was a miracle, twice unlikely.

The MOAT – POISON STREAM Campaign

We ran out of veggie sausages today and it’s a big long walk to the only supermarket that sells them, the one outside town. If it’s going to be horrible weather it’s an awful drenching walk, although the sea path will be beautiful. I wonder what we’ll eat in Portugal. Dare and I were laughing today about the scenario of me trying to buy veggie sausages in a Portuguese supermarket. (There’s a crazy English guy asking for veggie sausages!) I shouldn’t generalise, perhaps there’s tons of nice veggie food in Portugal, we’ll see. Probably lots of tomatoes, too.

I’m finding it hard to find time to put records away in the archive and when we leave I don’t want to leave it in a mess. Our friend Aram looks after it for us when we’re gone. He comes in, empties the dehumidifiers, turns the stereo on, has some cosy music time. Dare is also here all the time mixing, working on our projects, so there will be people here. I finally fixed the door handle which has been missing for about six weeks. I’d been meaning to talk to the landlord about it but he hasn’t been well and because it was kind of old looking when it broke I thought I’ll need a time machine to get parts. The day before lockdown I went to the locksmith and he said: “Sure, I can have that part you need by tomorrow”. As he is considered an essential service he stays open so I was able to get the part and install it. It made me wonder about mental health and how bookshops and record stores should be considered essential, it’s not just about your physical health.

Music today has been the reissue and Tony Visconti remix of Metrobloist aka The Man Who Sold The World by David Bowie. It’s not only a different title, it also comes in the cartoon cover on white vinyl with a gatefold and lots of the pics from the photoshoot with Bowie from yet another version of the cover with long curly hair and wearing a flowing dress.

Allegedly the title was a play on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis but Mercury Records changed the title before the release without telling Bowie. The album was released in 1970 in the USA with the cartoon cover. It was released in April 1971 with the dress cover and in 1972 RCA Records reissued it with the black cover which was a reaction to the success of Ziggy Stardust, the cover now sporting a more Ziggy-like Bowie.

It was pre Trevor Bolder so Visconti not only produced but also played bass (Ken Scott engineered, check out the resumé), Mick Ronson played guitar and Woody Woodmansey played drums, The Spiders were about to be unleashed on the world. On this album, there’s not only some great songs but it’s the Bowie debut of Mick Ronson and it’s worth it just for that. It’s quite riffy and Rock but also acoustic and with strings in other places, great melodies and lyrics and Bowie’s ace singing. A must-have album especially in this interesting remix version.

Song Of The Daze

Sunday and in the studio again today working on the last Arctic Lake song. It’s an instrumental and I found myself playing the Fender 6 string bass which is always a pleasure as it has such a distinctive sound. So we went all Shadows today, Jet Harris used to play Fender 6 and then when it came to electric guitar we started with Dare’s red Fender Stratocaster which actually sounds more like a Strat than my Strat, perfect for this instrumental piece and the part I played was reminiscent of something that Bruce Welch, The Shadows’ rhythm guitarist, might play. Some organ, some lead parts on my Strat and we’ll try and finish tomorrow with Olivia singing some ethereal vocals and we’ll be on to mix. This will conclude stage one of this project. On Thursday we will be finishing the recording for Ahad’s album (we have recorded 13 songs). The album will be mixed in December. Space Summit is done. Sessioneers are making records, what a journey it’s been.

The weather comes in waves, like a marauding army of bandits that attack and leave and then return for more. They leave behind misery and pain and as you see them disappear into the distance you’ll know they’ll be back to ransack your village. But today I ventured out in a period of calm, walking along the pavement still wet from the last raid. The evidence of autumn lay on the ground, broken twigs and piles of leaves pushed to the side against the wall, unable to decay back into the earth as they sat on a bed of concrete.

As I walked past the school, I heard what I presume was a leaf blower, the most irritating of distractions. Where do they blow the leaves to? I never see them putting them in sacks to be taken away. They always seem to just blow them to the side waiting for the wind to blow them back to where they were.

Olivia has been buying German Christmas goodies from Lidl. Lebkuchen have that sugar and spice Christmas flavour often with ginger, mmmmmh. They come in all shapes and sizes, are soft when you bite into them and have a sugary frosting. I always hated Christmas food starting with Christmas Cake. Then worst of all there were mince pies and of course all that greasy meat and stuffing. One Christmas I had Tofurkey, it was rather like eating a deflated football but harder to chew. But on a positive note, Arnaud dropped by the studio today with a freshly home-baked sourdough loaf. We are eating it now – thank you.

I never really talk about food because it always ends up with me listing what I don’t like and often people telling me “you obviously haven’t tried”. Agggh, there’s nothing worse than when you hate tomatoes when somebody tells you you haven’t tried a really good one. I would rather have my ears stapled to the wall than eat a tomato. I can’t bear being near them, in the same house, the same street, town, country. Olivia is the same with bananas or even worse, she would move carriages in a train if someone started eating a banana. I’m not sure why people are such adamant food evangelists, it’s hard enough not liking things to have someone shove it down your throat (appropriate phrase) but we don’t complain, we just want to be left alone.

Have you ever stopped and asked for directions and halfway through the pleasant person’s explanation of where this hard to find place is, you realise that they are telling you as if you already know, projecting the image of the place into the instructions as if you can also see them. The traffic lights, the hotel on the corner, the old fire station, Smith’s, the bend in the road and the giant oak tree. It’s all there, a clear and obvious picture but you just got lost at the left turn at the bottom of the hill – or was it right?

Another day in the studio tomorrow and three sessions so I’d better get to bed. It’s also the last day of the Duolingo French week and at the moment I’m No.1 in the Obsidian League, one league below the top league, the Diamond League. Promotion is almost sure but it would be nice to be promoted from the No.1 spot – like Leeds.

Music today comes from Jon Anderson’s first solo album Olias Of Sunhillow recently sent to me by sessioneer Brian in Florida (thanks Brian). Anderson plays all the instruments, including the harp as well as many other instruments, bass, guitar, mandolin and the saz, or the bağlama, none the wiser, right? Well, it’s some kind of Turkish stringed instrument which suits this array of organic twangs that complement Anderson’s distinctive pure vocals. Although there’s also electronic noodlings (that he doesn’t play) which make you wonder if the idea was to try and blend these two disparate elements together. Anderson always strode the ground between Progressive and World Music and on this album, it is most prevalent. Asian scales, African drums and western synthesisers, oriental strings, American acoustics and a northern English voice from Accrington, Lancashire. If you’re from up that way, you can occasionally hear his accent jumping out from the yoga class.

The album was recorded in 1975 and 1976 and released in 1976 between Relayer (1974, with Patrick Moraz) and Going For the One (1977, the return of Rick Wakeman). At this point Yes were releasing their first compilation album, Yesterdays (1975). Roger Dean was too busy to do the artwork so it was designed by David Fairbrother-Roe and put together by Prog designers Hipgnosis. Fairbrother-Row also did Nazareths’s Hair Of The Dog and Popol Ace’s Stolen From Time as well as Sci-fi writer Anne McCaffrey’s book covers. This from Wikipedia: “It is a concept album which tells the story of an alien race and their journey to a new world following a volcanic catastrophe on their home planet”. Go Jon!

Song Of The Daze

A sparrow in a hedgerow, a box in the alleyway outside Jess’ house with something furry inside. The gates of Morrab Gardens still open in the early dark. A walk down the narrow lane by the studio to the sea, a car coming down too fast. Walking past the fish and chip shop, two ladies in face screens inside, cars parked outside, hazards flashing, waiting for their order and at the sea, the high fence remains so we still can’t walk along the seafront at a time when we really need it. The groundwork looks done but the fence is still there. Behind the fence, strangely shaped giant stones that look like alien eggs have appeared. We can only presume that they are going to be decoration you can sit on but none of them look like they could take two people, a design flaw to ruin romantic walks for sea-gazing lovers that need to cuddle.

When we came to the sea we saw black waves, no moon, clouds up above and darkness, only the light pollution from the hanging seafront lights and the village glow of Newlyn on the east of the bay. On the west of the bay, the peninsula that is The Lizard shimmered in the distance. Down on the shore, the waves washed in relentlessly and underfoot you could feel the stones where last week’s weather had swept them into uneven ridges. Today though it was calmer, its incessant roar reminded us of our mortality, I love the phrase “puny humans”, quipped in sixties science fiction farce, was it the treacherous Doctor Smith from Lost In Space siding with the monsters? But the point, as you stand next to the power of nature under an ominous black sky, you easily feel insignificant in the universe.

The skateboard park was also dark but one young lad was managing the assault course anyway and further along outside the supermarket on the other side of the road, two more skateboarders were riding the concrete under the lights. Inside, the temptation of the baked muffins are the first thing you see and we quickly found our usual set honey, brie, cereal, until we sped out into the darkness past the new flagless flagpoles on the deserted front, the wires banging against the hollow poles. I had a sesh with Craig in Atlanta and had to get moving to make it on time. I’d dressed for a windy, dark evening but by the time we were on our way back I was disrobing in the street, way too hot to move at speed. At the archive, I threw everything off onto the hallway floor and made it to Skype with three minutes to spare. Hans followed Craig in Seattle and then it was double Californians In Space, Discovery followed by Enterprise over dinner.

Olivia is packing Mystery Boxes, handing me items to autograph, Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics are next. The first MOAT album is running out as are the days for the campaign, only 24 days left. There are now two songs available to listen to, Gone By Noon and Acid Rain, the first 50% donators got an early listen to the third song, The Roadmap To My Soul, but it will be available for all ears from December 1st. There are autographed prints available of all these titles in the campaign. And now we have just added a cool T-shirt in various sizes. But after all, it’s about the music and that is coming, the first of a whole lot of new projects. Can we play live? We don’t know yet but we will certainly be trying and when we do we will be able to do house concerts that are also available as a perk.

It’s getting closer to that date! Presuming we come out of lockdown on December 2nd we will be attempting to make it to Portugal, hopefully in one day. Early train from Penzance to Paddington, Paddington Express to Heathrow, fly to Porto, arrive in the evening and begin one exciting adventure. Hopefully, I will be able to learn some Portuguese whilst continuing with French, how many languages can you learn at once?

Last but not least with the international football weekend coming up, congratulations to Scotland who beat Serbia in a tense penalty shoot-out to qualify for next year’s European Championships, their first qualification for a major tournament in 28 years.

Music today comes from Suzanne Vega’s play Lover Beloved, co-written with Duncan Sheik, Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers (2016) based on the life of author Carson McCullers who wrote a book with one of my many favourite titles: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1940). The literate songwriter that is Suzanne Vega might be known to most for Luka (1987) but I’ve been a fan since the first album (1985) that I bought at the record store in the olden days of Bondi Beach before they went mad with the commercialism. That first poetic album showed no evidence that on her second album she would have a worldwide hit and if you ever followed her releases you might be surprised about how far away she went from that first record with her production styles. She was married to and has a child with producer Mitchell Froom who will be Crowded House’s resident keyboardist.

She made a series of albums called Close Ups, where she rerecorded her A&M owned songs, I’m a fan I buy everything she does. Last but not least I know Doug Yowell, her drummer, and two of her bass players, Mike Visceglia (longtime) and Tony Shanahan (guest and Patti Smith’s bassist). Why am I telling you this? Because Mike, Doug and Suzanne have been down to the archive. Whilst she was here I asked her if she had heard Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts’ version of The Queen And The Soldier (1995) from her first album? “No”, she said. So I played it for her. She didn’t really respond to it (I love it, great version) but she is a thoughtful person, I think she needed more time to think about it.

Suzanne Vega on Gender Identity, Britney Spears and New Concept Album

Music Of The Daze

I left the protection of the indoors and rugged up. I have some small irritation in my chest so I thought, it’s autumn, you may want to wear a coat? So I put on jeans, T-shirt, waistcoat, scarf, warm jacket and ventured out. It was then that I realised the sky was blue, the sun was shining and I was overdressed. I went to pasty land, Quorn fillet land and sprouts land. I wished I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I went back inside and had a shower, happy that it’s working again. Back into town via W.H. Smith’s, picking up the McCartney issue of Uncut where he discusses his new, more thoughtful record McCartney III which, although it has perhaps a less thoughtful title, is a continuation of a theme where McCartney plays all the instruments as he did on McCartney II (1980) and McCartney (1970). I walked past Vicky and Joe’s house, Vicky was working at her desk in the window (it’s Joe, her husband, who masters our projects). As I walked down the road the weather had completely changed, the sky was grey, it was darker, it was colder, the sun and blue sky had completely gone. I had been indoors for just 45 minutes. I need a clothes change for every hour, it’s times like these that it would be good to be Elton John.

I saw a cat in the distance yesterday and beckoned to it and it came running towards me meowing. I’ve been reading that adult cats don’t meow at each other, kittens meow to mama when they’re cold or hungry. So when a cat meows at you, it recognises that you are an alien and is asking you something in a language reserved for you, probably I’m cold or hungry or perhaps scratch my ear.

I spoke to Gerd, Olivia’s dad, tonight because I had a question (he’s a scientist) – are the planets all in a row in our solar system? I was also wondering about infinity and if our Milky Way galaxy, which has millions of stars, is one of infinite galaxies in all directions, up, down, left and right, I mean infinite galaxies, then surely until we check some of them out, any explanations we have for existence are premature.

We were in the studio again today trying to finish the Arctic Lake recording which we did in a three-hour session. I played some more lead guitar on the Strat, some arpeggios on the Rick 6, the Les Paul (and the Strat). Dare played some organ and we edited some parts in and out, the wonders of computer programs. We will mix on Saturday and then just have one instrumental track to work on and Tony’s Arctic Lake’s latest songs will be done and up to date, we wait for more.

Next week we have brass booked in for the final recording on Ahad’s album. Trumpet, trombone and flugelhorn. After that, we’ll check all overdubs are done and we can start with mixing into December. I’ll be here for the early mixes and when I leave Dare will be sending mixes to me for my input. Jed has sent me the first song for Space Summit 2, months before Space Summit 1 has been released. MOAT’s Poison Stream will be in your hands before you know it.

GET POISON STREAM HERE

I’m finding it quite hard to keep up with the musician losses this year, I haven’t even mentioned Jerry Jeff Walker, Helen Reddy, drummer Tony Allen, Johnny Nash, Dave Munden from The Tremeloes, Brian Locking from The Shadows, Mac Davis, Tommy DeVito from The Four Seasons, Roy Head, Max Merritt, Pete Way, Justin Townes Earl, Wayne Fontana, Mark Wirtz, Trini Lopez, Walter Lure from The Heartbreakers, Jan Savage from The Seeds – Agghhh! This is just since the end of August and not including those I have mentioned: Lee Kerslake and Ken Hensley from Uriah Heep, Spencer Davis, Gordon Haskell, Eddie Van Halen. I have records by all these people and they are all gone. I don’t really want to have an obituary blog. If I wrote about everyone that died and who deserves to be written about then I would only be writing about death but then obituaries are celebrations of life and we mourn them as much as we can.

Music today comes from the very alive Danish mood master and singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. Her debut CD Philharmonics (2010) fell through the letterbox this week and this is the second time I’ve had a chance to listen to it. It’s interesting to hear how she has developed between this, a rather simple mainly piano-based album of songs and voice, to her later more atmospheric and sophisticated effort that is Myopia (2020). Not to say that this isn’t an atmospheric record, it’s just less treated. Philharmonics is a rather nice entry into the world that would see her develop through her albums, Avantine (2013) and Citizen Of Glass (2016). She cites Erik Satie as an example and the album has four instrumental tracks. A surprising cover of John Cale’s Close Watch seems somehow out of context but that might be more about my familiarity with the original. Agnes Caroline Thaarup Obel lives in a world of hushed tones and you know she loves her silence as much as she loves her sound.

Song Of The Daze

French was tough today but I think it’s mostly about distraction, of course there’s some tricky grammar, but you have to concentrate to have it sink in. I was going over it and over it but the good thing is that every time I made a mistake I knew why, you just gotta get those rules into your head. They say it’s much easier to learn a language as a child and I’m sure that’s true but perhaps as you get older you need to keep those grey cells moving and with learning a language you can put it to practical use. Of course you think you’ve learnt something, you get to the country and you don’t understand. Well, I remember my first trip to Aberdeen when I was a teenager! I’ve been to various places in the UK in recent years where I’ve struggled to understand, Newcastle, phew! In Liverpool I speak the language but if you think about northern France versus southern France or northern Sweden versus southern Sweden or Chile versus Spain, knowing a language doesn’t mean you know it everywhere it’s spoken.

Dare and Olivia and I were in the studio today working on Arctic Lake. I was playing a whole range of guitars, Tak acoustic 6 and 12 string, Rick 6, Jazzmaster, Les Paul, Strat. Rhythm parts, lead solos, we will continue tomorrow and try and get this song finished and ready to mix. Olivia sang some Birkinesque vocal parts, Dare was editing things, piecing the solos together. It’s wonderful in the studio how you start with nothing and slowly build it into this fantastic finished thing. The hours I’ve spent doing this in my life!

Out there in reality land, it was dark, cold, windy, grey, rainy, that seems to be the pattern but in the studio, you are protected. I went to pasty land as usual, I went to the greengrocers as usual and bought the most beautiful broccoli crown. I was out for ten minutes and then ran back to the comfort of holding a guitar. I was sure that the soloing would be on the Les Paul but nope it was the Strat and the Jazz, I was sure the rhythm guitar was going to be on the Strat but no it was the Rick 6. Sonics are a strange thing and different guitars blend differently into different songs and they change as you build them, that’s what makes it exciting, it’s the surprise of it all as it takes shape.

The MOAT – Poison Stream Campaign

You may have seen the post today that announced that we have a new MOAT T-shirt on the Indiegogo campaign. You can pick your size on checkout (initial issues now fixed). Stephen in DC was asking today how does the House Concert work? Well, when the pandemic is over and we can travel Olivia and I will come to your house and play, we would need accom and means to get there but we’ve done this before and it works. (Veggie) snacks for everyone and a casual atmosphere playing all kinds of songs in a really relaxed situation. It’s quite different to a gig. We also have a new print available, The Roadmap To My Soul, the latest track for Poison Stream, available to all soon.

 
We’ve also started with Facebook and Instagram Stories and I’ll be showing some sleeves of the records I’m listening to and today Olivia filmed me noodling around on my Les Paul. That’s the Les Paul that I didn’t use on the Arctic Lake track I was working on so that’s a moment that wasn’t preserved on tape. Tomorrow we will continue with this song that has a long outro and although there’s a Strat solo in the middle perhaps that Les Paul may find its way on the track after all.

Some CDs arrived today, four by Erykah Badu, plus Agnes Obel and another Lou Rhodes CD. It’s incredible how CDs have died such a death. Remember when they were the future? Remember when they were indestructible? Remember when the record labels rushed out compact disc reissues that sounded terrible and had cheap and nasty artwork? They finally discovered proper mastering and proper artwork but after they’d made lots of money with no effort. Cynical or ignorant? But second-hand CD prices these days are great for the archive because I can catch up on a lot of music cheaply, get the history into the shelves. I still like CDs and buy them new and second-hand and in a perfect world every time a new record came out I would buy it on both CD and vinyl.

Music today had me trying to take my head somewhere else, into a different reality, so Funkadelic’s Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow (1970) seemed appropriate. (Thanks sessioneer NJ Chris for reminding me.) Some Psychedelic, Sci-Fi, Soul, Funk never fails to inject some groove, some joy, some passion and some madness into the room. You just are engulfed by it, I put it on and turned it up twice. It was their second album and the second album they released that year. Crazy guitars, crazy organs, crazy grooves, crazy singing. Wah-wah guitars, jamming, soloing, it’s Rock music you can dance to. Mainman George Clinton (Funkadelic’s Keith) said that the inspiration for this album was an attempt “to see if we can cut a whole album while we’re all tripping on acid”.

A great band of singers and players, including Eddie Hazel on guitar and Bernie Worrel on organ, Billy Nelson on bass and Tiki Fulwood on drums, George Clinton sings as do Hazel and Nelson with a whole lot of different singers contributing, Ray Davis, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, Grady Thomas, Tawl Ross, Martha Reeves, Tema Dawn and Joyce Vincent. What a crazy scene it must have been on those late nights in Detroit with this band of nutters. If you ever see an original copy of this album with the woman facing down, you know where to send it.

Song Of The Daze