Agggh, last day before the road trip and not enough time to get everything done including stringing my Strat, rehearsing properly, answering all the pressing emails, hitting the bank to put a US cheque in (for a really small amount from some US royalties), but it still has to be done. Then there’s Ariel, getting the rundown on everything that’s fixed and making sure she’s ready for a drive to Spain, France and England and back again. New tyres (the spare was flat too), brakes, exhaust, new heater, radiator, radio, shock absorbers on the back. Jorge was over today, too, helping me with the load box and taking away my Rick 6 to have the electronics sorted out. Sesh with Brian, Duolingo, blog, oh yeah and breathing.

We leave for Peralta tomorrow, it’s near Pamplona in Spain and about an eight-hour drive. It’s close to where they have the running of the bulls. I hitchhiked through there once in the seventies. It must have been when I was on my way to Lerida to do the peach and pear picking with Dare. Ah, those were the days, sleeping in a shed and waking up in the morning, covered in flies. As I remember, we got the job by being in the Lerida market and trying to talk to the farmers. I found a 1000 peseta note on the ground and asked a group of old men if they had dropped it, one of them saw me pick it up and immediately hired us, seemingly impressed with the honesty. The work was tough, getting the fruit off the trees before it was ripe, it didn’t take long before your thumbnail was raw, breaking the fruit off the trees. I imagine there was also a tool but in the case of the pear trees, we were up tall ladders and you had to keep your balance. There’s a lot to write about this time, I hope one day I get to do it.

I’m taking my pedalboard to the gig, I had to dig the road case out of the cupboard, it was of course right at the back. I’ve got into the habit of making a list of what to take away, sometime before we actually leave (I went to Australia without my computer speakers). This time I’m hoping to remember everything, I don’t need to forget an essential plug or lead I might need for the show, oh no, no plectrum and I certainly can’t use a spare one from Nicklas because mine are soft and flexible and his are made of concrete.

We leave for France and our friends’ house on Sunday after the gig and I will leave my guitar and pedalboard with them and pick them up on the way back. The trip to England’s raison d’etre has changed and the records and all my life have to stay there until I can find a way to bring it all to my adopted home, safely, practically. Now we hope we can bring back some things inside Ariel’s belly, like more amps and guitars, some more English books, more lava lamps and skulls but are we going to be hit again with the customs in France? Brexit, what a joke, although it’s what drove us here, unfortunately, because it coincided with Covid and the borders were closed, I arrived without most of my belongings.

T-shirt alert today, another Slipknot, two days in a row! Another Pink Floyd, a teenage girl sitting on the stairs in our building with her boyfriend. We bonded on liking The Floyd.

Music today has been Anekdoten’s Until All The Ghosts Are Gone as I’m playing songs from that album live on Saturday. I hope Nicklas is up for a rehearsal before the gig, it’s the first time I’ve played with the band without being in the rehearsal room with them for a couple of days. These songs are not three chords, tricky timings, tricky parts and lots of them. Wish me luck.

Music Of The Daze

A disappointing day of letdowns and a wild goose chase. The idea was that after playing in Spain with Anekdoten, we would continue north, drive through France, go and see our friends Arno, Virginie and Tim, then head to England, go see AAE Andy and Lisa in Folkestone, seventies friend Biggles and his wife Colleen in London, meet up with Mohamad for dinner with him and his wife Zeinab in Soho, see sessioneer Noel and possibly even see Dare and Nicky in Somerset, Boydy and Trish in Bristol and possibly even drummer Ed. All this seeing and hanging and chatting and catching up with friends would all revolve around us getting to the storage house and having a truck arrive from Portugal and have us supervise the load, next stop Porto. 36 hours before we leave for Spain, the trucking company who haven’t been in touch for eight days, told us they couldn’t do it. Everything remains where it was in England until we can come up with some sensible cost-effective way to move everything here. The VAT into Portugal was going to be huge, plus the shipping cost, perhaps it was dumb to agree to pay out a lot of money anyway, perhaps we need another plan.

So today I went for my last swim before we leave which I took earlier and happily had a lane to myself for the whole 72 lengths. Afterwards, I went to the psychedelic psupermarket where I met Olivia who showed up with Ariel fresh from her health resort. New shockers, tyres, a new exhaust, a radio and various engine parts changed, the list was long and it wasn’t cheap but we are now MOT’d and have a reliable vehicle. Now with these reliable wheels, we were able to go on our wild goose chase. In lieu of bringing everything archive, musical and personal from the Somerset storage house we were driving to Matosinhos by the harbour today to see premises. At this point, we didn’t know there was no point. Not that it mattered, when we got there we were told that we wouldn’t be able to have music there because the woman upstairs didn’t like noise! Haha. So we never actually saw the premises, we just met Fernanda, a lady in her eighties who owned it and her younger friend Elisabete. They had a sweet shop in a deserted street, it was all very bizarre but they were nice enough and they had a friend there from Mexico who we spoke with (in Spanish) who was really nice (their kids were playing together). At least we gave Ariel a bit of a run.

Back home I wallowed in disappointment for an hour until I eventually snapped out of it and we watched Elementary over dinner and plotted. We are still going to make the journey and we are going to try and rearrange the storehouse so we take up less space and bring the monthly bill down, I hope to be able to bring back some things, amps, guitars, books, lava lamps, skulls, anything that might be tricky to move in a big truck. Plus going to England will mean I get a stamp in my passport showing I have exited the EU/Germany which I don’t have at the moment. Portugal still hasn’t given me my resident card which means Germany treats me like a non-EU resident. On the way into Germany from Australia, they gave me an entry stamp as an alien, on the way out to Portugal there’s no exit stamp because both the countries are EU. This means it looks like I‘ve overstayed my time in the EU in German eyes. I haven’t because I’m allowed to be in Portugal for as long as I like as a resident, but that doesn’t matter in the world of bureaucracy.

T-shirt watch complied with the rule and exposed two more Pink Floyd T-shirts but there was also the first Slipknot shirt. It makes you realise that people generally want noise, hip or epics to be represented on their chests. Not so many contemporary artists and why do I never see a Nick Drake shirt? I must see if I can buy one, or what about a Tim Hardin shirt, a Roy Harper shirt, a Robert Wyatt shirt, a CAN shirt or even a Bob Dylan shirt, or is Dylan too intellectual for a T-shirt? What about a Nick Cave shirt? I’m looking forward to seeing what Londoners are wearing, I bet it’s not Suede shirts or FKA Twigs shirts if such a thing exists.

Music today has been an odd mixture, a lot of noise shared with some subtler titles, Cream – Disraeli Gears (1967), Steven Wilson’s The Raven That Refused To Sing (2013), Pink Floyd – Meddle (1971), Muse – Will Of The People (2022), Moody Blues – Seventh Sojourn (1972), and Def Leppard – Diamond Star Halos (2022). Cream was the first today and I never tire of Disraeli Gears.

Music Of The Daze

Today the hot weather made you head for the shade the moment you got outside. It was up to 30/86 in the city, and that’s towards the end of September. After living in Australia I do my best to avoid the sun for fear of permanent skin damage, although I don’t think that the damage is as severe here in Europe. Still, it’s hot and the shade is a welcome relief from the relentless spears of heat. One of the best things about living in Porto is that it doesn’t stay blisteringly hot for weeks on end in the summer and it doesn’t get limb-numbingly cold in the winter.

So I was up and out of the house and at the gym at 11.20 this morning because I needed to be leaving for the city by 1 PM. So I had just twenty minutes in the gym, but the walk there and back and the little I did was worth the trouble because just going and keeping it up however little you do is the road to progress. I went past ‘the dodgy café’ where a man has recently appeared regularly with a powerful JBL portable music player, sitting outside and banging out a good sound with some mainstream rock music. I stopped and asked him if he spoke English or Spanish. Spanish worked but he was a little taken aback by being approached, looking away from me, intimidatingly toothless and a little annoyed as I asked him how much it cost. “300 euros,” he seemed to think that I thought it was cheap for the quality, cheap being the offensive word when he’d obviously really splashed out for this thing. I just wanted to know because we talked about having something more powerful in Ariel’s belly.

Back home in time to leave, Olivia and I made a detour for some printer ink and Olivia’s seamstress work before we headed down earlier than usual into the city. Leaving earlier than usual, we discovered there was no real shade on either side of the street, the ladies of the day were hiding on the steps of their building. We were in two minds about whether to hurry down to get into some air-conditioned shops, causing immediate overheating or whether to move slower for less exposure to overexertion. All I know is that everyone seemed to be moving slower than I wanted to.

We were off to Garage & Stage, the music shop, to talk to Vitor to see if he had anything to report on his call to the hipster shopping centre about shop or storage space availability for The Archive. Unfortunately, they hadn’t returned his call yet so we may have to investigate that one ourselves, we have a name and a number. Whilst we were there two American women and a man came in to buy the green plastic recorders that were in the window. They were from Saratoga and having a jolly old time with their party of 12 and 17 days in Portugal, tourist heaven on a hot day. We left for the record store where I finally bought Bowie’s Toy album which I’ve been avoiding because the cover is so ugly.

Olivia left for a violin lesson and I went to Chico’s secondhand store that he shares with a skateboard seller. He always has interesting records in there and I found some reasonably priced rarities that The Archive will love. The Herd – Lookin Thru You (1968), The Troggs – Trogglodynamite (1967) and Contrats (1970), Kensington Market – Avenue Road (1968) and Tim Hardin – Suite for Susan Moore and Damion: We Are One, One, All in One (1969), covering the sixties, Noel Redding Band – Blowin’ (1976) featuring Eric Bell on lead guitar and Steve Hillage – Aura (1979), covering the seventies, Ian Dury – 4,000 Weeks’ Holiday (1983), covering the eighties and Joe Jackson – Laughter & Lust (1991), covering the nineties. Plus a double sixties compilation album, Undersound/Uppersoul (1971).

T-shirt alert today was Pink Floyd, Guns N’ Roses, Rolling Stones and Tupac, Tupac is now officially added to the list that is a recurring Top 11 of constant recurring bands. I collapsed in front of the fan, the only fan you need on a day like today. I’d exercised, talked, inquired, shopped, bought a new nose clip, hit the coffee shop, the new record store, the old record store and now I was back in time to rehearse with Anekdoten Nicklas for the Spain gig on Saturday. Never stop.

Music today was the new album by Suede, Autofiction (2022), that I bought today.

Music Of The Daze

Hot in Porto this week, 28 today and in the mid to high twenties for the rest of the week. We’ll be leaving for Spain as it dips but it’s still Spain, it’ll probably be warm there too. Summer is ending but not here, it’s one of the perks of living here along with the fact that the coming energy crisis won’t be affecting our heating bills because we don’t have any heating. Bellyman probably doesn’t have any heating either, he was out in his usual spot in the Marquês square today and I think he has found a way to store heat in his stomach. He then takes it back to his flat and offloads it into an organic storage system that he has developed himself using the husks of various fruits. It’s unclear whether he will share any excess with his neighbours over the winter or whether he plans to turn his belly storage into a commercial business and we are yet to know if he is patenting the process. As yet, there have been no other examples of the human belly-heat storage transfer technology, otherwise known as HBHSTT, sometimes referred to as bs**t.

The pool water was cold today, one imagines that it’s because it was hot outside, although I’m not convinced I’ve got the science right there, if it’s science I usually glaze over. But it was nice to immerse yourself in this strange cool liquid, that envelops your body, lets you run your fingers through it, float in it, exercise your limbs in it. I don’t think the concept of water as an entity is new, if you’ve ever seen Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), you may have perceived the ocean on the planet below as an entity. I never saw the remake, I was scared.

Nuno was in the pool again today but swimming buddy Hugo seems to have disappeared. In the changing rooms was João Paolo who is a gym goer and I often see him there. As we left the pool/gym together we walked together to the Marquês square and philosophised about the human spirit all the way home. I was supposed to be rehearsing with Nicklas for the Anekdoten show in Spain on Saturday but had to take a hastily set up meeting with our accountant as we try and figure out how to bring the archive into Portugal with as little pain as possible. Perhaps it will be a private collection that people can visit like an exclusive library, perhaps it could be for the world to wander through and marvel at the CAN albums or admire Robert Whitaker’s ‘butcher cover’ with a sugar-free blueberry muffin in hand, but what’s important is it exists, how the future treats it might be out of my control.

Afterwards, I went straight into a sesh with Mike in New Orleans, trouble with his Skype that eventually worked itself out and then we listened to his songs and set about working them out too. Songs can sometimes be problem-solved mathematically, other times conceptually and other times they write themselves, it’s a fascinating ‘science’.

During the day I listen to lots of music and I used to post all the cover art from the albums I listened to. Nowadays I pick the one that worked best for me that day. I try to listen to different things and today I started by leaving the house whilst listening to Here Comes The Sun, leaving Spotify on ‘random Beatles’ for Olivia to wake up to. After Mike, I listened to Dr. John’s In The Right Place (1973) followed by the two U2 albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017), the former, the far better record in my opinion although I’ve really lost it with U2. I listened today because Mike and I were discussing what happened. Songs of Experience sounds like the songs that weren’t good enough for Songs of Innocence and one wonders if with all their skills and money they could ever do anything truly great ever again. The Unforgettable Fire (1984) is my favourite album by them. Stylistically Dr. John’s New Orleans thang isn’t really my thang, but I love his voice and also dig it when he gets his groove on. The sound of In The Right Place album is really something and I found myself listening to that as much as I was the songs. But I chose Anathema’s Weather Systems (2012) as Album Of The Daze. I saw them once in Stockholm and also in Germany at Olivia’s festival. We met Lee Douglas who was super cool with a great voice and a great accent (hello, Lee). Anathema were from Liverpool, sadly they broke up in 2020 after 12 albums.

As today was the Queen’s funeral, Jed and I thought it might be appropriate to post the video and song for Queen Elizabeth’s Keys from the Space Summit album Life This Way. The album was released on Schoolkids Records in September 2021, the vinyl will be available next month, welcome to the future.

 

Music Of The Daze

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