A long weekend, tired now and sitting on the couch watching flashes of sheet lightning light up the sky in the distance. It was hot today, 31/88, and I was trying to position myself in line with the fan. There’s no air conditioning or heating in our place and our front room gets quite hot in the summer, that’s what the blinds are for, to keep the heat out. At 1 AM all the windows in the house are still wide open and the slice of moon like a white piece of honeydew melon has slipped off its plate in the sky and disappeared behind a mauve cloud. All the creatures are asleep, the humans and the birds and anything that moves by night is also silent, I don’t see a mosquito or a moth, just Sunday stillness.

Today Olivia decided to spray Ariel’s bed palette blue in keeping with her aesthetics and the ambience around the wheel arches, Ariel needs a tasteful interior. In the week, she’ll be back from the beauty salon with brushed, rust-free hair, a working radio and heater and a wing mirror that doesn’t move inwards in the wind of the motorway. Her heartbeat will be checked, her limbs and her lungs and hopefully she will have the strength to take us on a journey through Europe, more on that in the coming days.

Today was busy and slow, a strange combination but it’s Sunday and Sunday always hobbles along on unsteady feet, almost stumbling but somehow it always claws its way to its conclusion. It puts everything on hold by doing nothing, it’s a benign obstruction, an invisible blockage, a story you want to end. Instead of a day of rest, it has become a day of waiting, or impatience, of anxiety towards the toothless, fear of that which is no threat.

Seshes today with Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney, Johnathon in California and Space Summit Jed in Minneapolis. In the afternoon, I spoke with Arno in France who we will be seeing soon as we will be driving north from Spain after next Saturday’s Anekdoten show. I played bass on one of Arno’s records, the band was Sweet Gum Tree and the song was Bird Of Passage, featuring Isobel Campbell (see below). I also did shows as the bass player in France and England.

Music today has been The Strawbs – From the Witchwood (1971) with its lineup of Dave Cousins on lead vocals and guitars and Tony Hooper on vocals and acoustic guitars and both of them on various other stringed instruments. At this point, the keyboard player was Rick Wakeman recording this album in February/March only weeks before appearing on Bowie’s Hunky Dory recorded in June/August and before becoming a full-time member of Yes recording Fragile from August-September, not a bad year and that wasn’t all of it, the obscure Piano Vibrations was released in the same year when Wakeman was working as a session musician (see article). At this point, John Ford was on bass and Richard Hudson was on drums, they would both leave in 1973 to form Hudson Ford, who remembers Pick Up The Pieces? One presumes they had to be called Hudson Ford despite F coming before H because Ford Hudson sounded like a make of car, having said that Hudson was also a make of car under that name till 1957 (fascinating facts).

Music Of The Daze

I was determined to get up this morning despite a late night because I had packages to send and the post office closed at lunchtime. Somehow I made it and two happy people (one in Stockholm, one in New Zealand) will be receiving their mysterious packages very soon, there’s nothing like a surprise in the post. It was market day in the Marquês square and I arranged to meet Olivia there on the way back from the post office. I’d managed to miss the first Saturday of the month by thinking that the market happened on the second Saturday of the month – it’s first and third, it’s first and third, it’s first and third! Today I got it right and we found some very interesting curios, an odd miniature doll’s head, a clock that looked like it was from 1968, a pink radio, a small pottery dish with ‘Le Homard Bleu’ written in French and a picture of you guessed it, a blue lobster. Six more copies of old Wire magazines, a Balinese metal goddess (or perhaps a ‘Metal Guru’), a copy of Rimbaud’s poetry in French and a small blue lava lamp. A perfect collection of fascinating objects for the In Deep Music Archive or the home, depending on the space. Sometimes we find nothing.

I ran into Nuno again and met his wife Sofia, he bought a very cool-looking edition of works by Rilke, it still had the price on the inside cover in escudos. At this stall, we met Pedro and Carolina and had a great long talk about the way things are, how they could be and what we might do about it. On to Emanuel for another stimulating conversation about music and the Wire magazines of which he seems to have an endless supply, one with Mercury Rev on the cover, another with Tom Waits, another with Faust, all for the Archive music magazine collection. We inched our way back through the busy throng on this hot Saturday afternoon (28 degrees). We talked to regular stall holders where we didn’t buy things, but they are regulars and so are we so we recognise each other and chat, even if we don’t buy. Languages abound in our day in some form, English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Portuguese and Swiss German, but that’s later.

Home for a quick lunch and dropping off our trophies and down into town where I wanted to pick up the CDs I’d somehow left at the record shop the day before. As they are only 5€ each I bought some more: Blonde Redhead – Penny Sparkle (2010), Black Sabbath – Vol. 4 (1972) and 13 (2013), Jesu/Sun Kil Moon (2016), Joe Jackson – Fool (2019), Broken Bells – After the Disco (2014), Jack White – Boarding House Reach (2018), Jaakko Eino Kalevi (2015) and last but not least, Daniel Johnston – Is and Always Was (2009). I have been wondering whether to pick up The Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987/2018) remix, where Nick Mason replaced all the horrible drum sounds from the era by simply playing the drums again, so I did. Jorge in the shop convinced me to buy the new Ozzy album, Patient Number 9, with the website-only cover that was mistakenly sent to the shop’s distributor – it’s a worse cover than the popular release. How the album is I have no idea, hopefully, the appearance of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Zakk Wylde, Mike McCready and Tony Iommi might stimulate the guitarist in me and you never know with the Oz, but the reviews were glowing!

At the record store, we met Marta who we bonded with over vinyl and vegetarianism and after we left we walked through the centre of town towards a place where we might potentially be able to store The Archive until we find a proper place for it. On the way we made two ‘talking stops’, one with João and Gabriela, he told us he was 18 and I stopped him because he was wearing a Pink Floyd – Animals shirt, I wanted to tell him about the remix album. They were nice and very open to talk to an older man and his wife stopping them in the street to explain about the Animals remix. The other ‘talk stop’ was outside a bar where Olivia had nipped in to get some Fritz Kola and I started talking to two young guys sitting at the outside table, they were Swiss and spoke Swiss German, one at least from Zürich, a friend joined them. Olivia came and joined in and we laughed about imperial measurements and English spellings versus American spellings. We moved on and checked out the place where we could possibly have The Archive at least temporarily. It was a very hip shopping centre and very quiet at this time on a Saturday with nearly every shop closed but it could help, we’re running out of time to find a place.

Walking all day we took a car home where I immediately got on Skype with Nicklas from Anekdoten as we need to refresh ourselves for the Spanish show next Saturday in Peralta (near Pamplona). We spent most of the time talking about music, records, and the Swedish political situation and planned to rehearse together in earnest on Monday/Tuesday at least. Anekdoten play tomorrow at the Macken Festival in Stockholm at 5 o’clock. It was going to be an expensive exercise for me to be there and there are about 1000 heavy metal bands on the bill as well over the weekend, so we figured I could miss this one.

T-shirt watch today and yesterday were interesting in their normality, yesterday Metallica, The Beatles (Abbey Road) and AC/DC, today Tupac, Pink Floyd, ‘Dark Side‘ and Animals, AC/DC and surprise contenders Rancid and Rise Against.

Music today has been a real oddity, the first Beatles solo record and the first release on the Apple label in 1968, George Harrison’s Wonderwall soundtrack. The film, directed by Joe Massot and starring Jack MacGowran, Jane Birkin and the controversial Iain Quarrier, is actually available to watch on YouTube, something few have done, now’s your chance.

Music Of The Daze

A day of encounters that began with the return of Bellyman in the Marquês square, belly out, celebrating the sun and in his usual seat. Dogman was also there with the three dogs as well as the ‘Suéca’ players and their entourage. It was the warmest and nicest day for over a week so the world had reawakened and the recent rain was already a memory. The mumbling man was outside the bank and the homeless people who weren’t allowed on the bandstand were sitting around it. The school kids were flocking out of school and a girl was sitting on the pigeon poop bench who I warned and she confidently told me (in a friendly way) that she hadn’t been hit which was code for I don’t think I need to move. When I returned from the pool, she was still in the square – on a different bench.

I was attempting to get to the pool earlier because sessioneer Fred was catching a flight to Austin and needed to speak two hours earlier (4 PM). I made it to the pool by 2 PM, it was quiet, it was lovely. I talked to Firmino, one of the lifeguards, yes, Firmino, like Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino, except Firmino is his first name and get this, his surname is Miguel! I swam a thoroughly enjoyable non-stop mile and realised that this is why I do it, it’s the groove. I did the extra strokes and the dilapidated moth and retreated to the dressing room.

At the same time, a lot of even older men than me were coming out of the smaller pool. What is it when a bunch of men get together? The exchange, the banter, the noise. As I left the shower the noisiest old fella had his leg up on the sink so I couldn’t pass, I stopped and waited and he went into some kind of banteresque exchange with the others. It pissed me off, I said, “Hey, talk to me, not them!” and when he moved he continued his exchange with the others so I looked him straight in the eye and said forcefully, “Talk to me, not them!”. At that point, he backed off and nothing else was said.

I was running short on time, no time for lunch, no time for the bakery, I ran part of the way home and sat down at my computer at exactly 4 PM for my sesh with Fred. Olivia was out and when I was done I had the urge to get out myself and follow up a connection for temporarily storing the archive c/- the guys at the music store. So I headed down the street for more encounters, Olivia was arriving as I was leaving and as we were talking we were accosted by a friendly drunk who recognised us as not Portuguese and asked if we were tourists or lived here and told us that he’d lived in Belfast for 15 years and went on his way with a smirk and informing us that the police were looking for him. Olivia and I agreed to meet for dinner and after my mega swim, the encounters and the 15-minute brisk walk each way to the pool, I powered down the street because it was already after 5 PM. I said hello to the ladies of the day and zigzagged around the school kids and was soon in the centre of town.

The new/old Bolhão market has opened after four years and I walked through, looking for avocados. I found them ripe and ready at a stall where before me a woman had picked up some vegetable pieces with her fingers and put them back, the woman serving told her off and her husband got angry that his wife had been admonished as they stormed off into the crowd. I went down to Garage & Stage, the music store, and spoke to Patrick about this possible archive storage before moving across the road to go to Tubitek, the record store. Jorge and José were busy so I browsed some cheap CDs and found an Anohni – Paradise EP (2017) and the B.E.D. album (Baxter Dury, Étienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday, 2018). It was then that I met Francisco the editor.

Francisco edited the piece we did about The Archive on Portuguese television with interviewer Carlos when we first came to Porto:

 
He told me he reads the blog every day and we had a good chat about The Archive and the possibilities. We agreed that we should film as much as we can around the move, for a possible documentary, you never know. In the shop, I came across a nice brand-new copy of Procol Harum’s first album (1967/2016) and the first-time release of the legendary 1970 Creedence Live At The Royal Albert Hall concert. The new Mars Volta had arrived as had the remix of The Floyd’s Animals and the new The House of Love, A State Of Grace, double 10-inch. This is the point where I realise that although I have all the records, I somehow seem to have mislaid the CDs. Maybe I left them at the shop?

Back home via the psychedelic psupermarket in town and a quick coffee where they taught me how to say ‘you are cool’ in Portuguese (Tu és fixe) and as the light faded I powerwalked home on a humid night and on arrival immediately placed myself in front of the fan – and Forest/Fulham (2-3). We ate and the clock kept on spinning and told me to get onto my language lesson before midnight (Spanish at the moment). At this point, my iMac suddenly couldn’t find the internet and three hours later still doesn’t work whatever I do, ideas? This is me writing on my laptop which works perfectly as does Olivia’s laptop. The frustrations of technology, even worse when it’s the latest technology.

Music today has been Bob Dylan’s 1965 masterpiece Highway 61 Revisited, his sixth album which was recorded between June 15th-16th and July 29th-August 4th and released on…August 30th, those certainly were the daze. The album reached No.3 in the US and No.4 in the UK, No.2 in Greece and No.28 in Germany.

Music Of The Daze

I had a crazy dream last night where a man in a cafe handed me a cheque for £250,000 and said this is for The Archive, haha. I can’t actually believe I had a dream like that, it shows how much it’s on my mind. Strange that it was in a cafe too, it just seemed so casual. So at some point, I’m going to post an In Deep Music Archive Portugal move GoFundMe – Phase 2 because in the coming weeks I’m going to try and bring it here and hope I can find the money and hope I can find premises and hope that I don’t die before I see it up and running in this lovely city of Porto.

A week on Friday, September 23rd, Olivia and I will be driving with Ariel, fresh from her holiday camp (the garage) out of Porto to Peralta in Northern Spain, Navarre Province, on the edge of the Basque Country, where on September 24th, I will be playing a gig with Anekdoten. It’s about 60km from Pamplona (famous for the ‘Running Of The Bulls’). So I’d better start rehearsing because I won’t be seeing them to rehearse before the gig. From there we will drive up through France and into England and to the Somerset storage house where The Archive patiently waits. The plan is to be there to supervise it all being put on a truck to Portugal and hope it all fits, if it doesn’t I may have to leave something behind like furniture or perhaps I may have to break down shelving, make it flatter. Then I have to pay for its entry into Portugal, that is VAT on its value (hard to assess), the freight cost and then have somewhere to put it that’s affordable. No wonder I’m anxious.

Despite feeling better, I avoided the ‘sick machine’ today and instead of cardio, I just pushed some other machines around. I think I’ve concluded that I was sick because I started ‘pushing it with cardio machines’ whilst breakfast was still swimming around in my stomach, so I’m not really sick, I was just ‘sick’ so thanks for all your kind comments and concern, but I’m not dead yet! Wasn’t that the name of Phil Collins’ autobiography?

Olivia came back this morning after a mainly sleepless night as she had to be at the airport in Cologne at 4 AM. So she stayed in bed till late afternoon. I got up soon after she went to bed and came back to some casual football watching and a sesh with NJ Brian. We watched Elementary over dinner, home sweet home, dinner in front of the tele.

Music today was Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (1974) where Lou made the sacrilegious decision to sing Velvet Underground songs with accomplished ‘rock’ musicians. Personally, I like it both ways, although some critics didn’t. The idea that Nick Cave might Def Leppardize his material in the future is amusing and intriguing but as The Mars Volta has noted with their upcoming album, they had no choice but to be more commercial because it’s an area they hadn’t explored, it’s the same idea that Steven Wilson had. Of course, if you were allowed to be The Beatles, you could do anything and most would go along with it however experimental or light and fluffy, what happened to eclectic bands, even Led Zeppelin were eclectic.

Music Of The Daze

Soon after being physically sick, I felt fine and can’t quite explain why it happened. I might know more tomorrow when I climb onto the same machine for the same amount of time and await the result. But on the subject of staying alive into your sixties, I couldn’t do much more to stay healthy, the greatest threat to my life, apart from a random attack, a falling piece of masonry or lightning strike, is probably worrying about the In Deep Music Archive as I attempt to turn it into something for posterity, the Jean Paul Getty museum of music except in this world musical family, we all need our ears.

At the pool, I found myself in the same lane as Nuno and we talked about the bandstand in the Marquês park that today has been cleared of the homeless people who had taken up residence there. There were tents and sleeping bags but it didn’t last for long. As it grew, the chances of it surviving became less and less and today was the day to banish the inhabitants to their next place to be evicted from. I went back to swimming a mile and some today but because I was sharing a lane and had been sick yesterday I started off slow and calm but easily completed my swim without pain. But I feel the creeping sensitivity of the joints and worry not just about The Archive but about my hands.

French new wave innovator Jean-Luc Godard has died aged 91 and although the name shouts loud I realised that I’ve only ever seen his first film, Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. I’ve seen more films by the other famous new wave name, Francois Truffaut, who died at the age of 52 in 1984.

The rain has been with us for over a week now and I like it. Growing up in the north of England, it defines you but then I went to Australia and then Stockholm and then New York and then Penzance and now Porto so I’m in love with rain, snow and sun…and mizzle.

Music today has been Björk’s over-the-top new video and song, Ovule. It’s from the upcoming album Fossora and all I can say is don’t try this at home.

Music Of The Daze