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Today I was hunted by sleep. At every turn there it was. I tried to ignore it but it was relentless and if it hadn’t been for the French, the blog and a sesh with Tony in Sydney today I would have let it seduce me. Other things happened to keep me going, it was a really beautiful day today, a perfect summer dream, a blue sky, a warm sun, a soft breeze, cool in the shade, gorgeous. After Tony’s early sesh I settled into some casual Sunday football which delivered all kinds of unexpected results, crucial at the end of a season. But I was waiting for someone I’d never met to drop by. I’d bought Focus’ Hamburger Concerto on eBay and Jeff who was selling it happened to be in Penzance. So he told me he’d bring it to the archive. Nice man, he gave me back the postage! He dropped in, we chatted, and he had a bit of a look around the archive and the studio, but when he had gone we had to get out there to bask (that’s bask not busk).

On our usual route to the sea and the recycling, we pass through Morrab Gardens. There were Magda and Daisy sitting in a sun trap trying to steal Olivia away to join them, but the sea beckoned. Daisy has a vintage clothes shop in town and Magda used to work at the arty cinema in Newlyn, the next village. We carried on and at the promenade car park, we ran into Kate and Jack. Kate sings like Patti Smith and Jack plays the trumpet. They have these amazing live-in-vans and they were down there kitting out one of them. Kitting out is the perfect term because Kate has cats that she takes with her on her musical odysseys.

Thanks for the info on the beast I saw in Morrab Gardens, apparently a Mari Lwyd. Olivia did some research and some readers have sent some info. Interesting, but not sure why the creepy looking creature was hanging around on that day. Having said that I do love a skull. My collection of skulls are ornamental of course but I wonder if mine could be painted and added to the shelf? Not right now of course but this is my official statement about my death – I do not want to be burned, I want to be buried and I want a gravestone. Thank you, I’m glad I got that information out there. In a perfect world, my whole skeleton would be in a glass case at the entrance to the In Deep Music Archive, possibly holding a Rickenbacker. Maybe there could be a slot for a coin that would play my greatest hits?

It was Steve Knott from Atlantaeum Flood’s 60th birthday yesterday. Happy birthday weekend Steve. We are not sure when there will be a second album but hopefully, in the future, we will get to it. Those dreamy instrumentals are something else. If you haven’t heard the first album (One Day) go here for the experience. It’s available on CD and vinyl.

I usually have more sessions on a Sunday but Rajan and Doug were otherwise engaged which allowed me to lie here like a vegetable and try to keep my eyes open. It meant that my French lesson was going to be tricky but I’m way ahead of the others in the league so I’m going to top it again and get promoted from the ruby league to the emerald league. The higher you go the more serious it gets.

I’ve got a couple of missed calls from All About Eve Andy and tomorrow I’ll call him back. I can see my bed and that has to take priority today. Olivia, like me, is a famous sleeper, she can sleep for days. I was famous for sleeping through thunderstorms, people banging on the door, people banging on the window, farmers driving tractors through the bedroom, alien invasions, Black Sabbath albums on full volume, chemical explosions, nuclear blasts, gunshots, screaming children, screaming monsters, mobsters, beasts, beats, photographs of weddings, catapulted old dead fish and caterwauling cats.

Music today brought the sad news of the death of Judy Dyble, the original singer of Fairport Convention, Trader Horne and solo artist. Although I never met Judy we were in touch via the net and I have an autographed copy signed to me of her autobiography An Accidental Musician. At one point she sent me songs she was working on with Tim Bowness and asked my opinion and now and then she commented on my posts. Really sad to hear she has died (she was 71). I’ll be playing records tonight associated with her. So sad – Judy, I know you were much loved by everyone that knew you.

I don’t have an original copy of the first Fairport Convention album or even a copy with the original cover (1968), but I do have a Polydor reissue that was part of a series released with dodgy artwork. It’s incredible how a record company would take the original idea and make it less visually appealing than the original and think that this would be the best way to attract sales – well, it was the eighties. I suppose that we should be glad that they thought of releasing it at all.

It’s a lovely album with Dyble and Ian McDonald singing. It’s more influenced by American music and Psychedelia than traditional English Folk. It’s a bit The Byrds, a bit Bob Dylan, a bit The Band. There’s a lovely version of Joni Mitchell’s I Don’t Know Where I Stand sung by Dyble and at this point, nobody in England knew who Joni Mitchell was. Not wanting to lose the opportunity of the discovery, Side 2 opens with another Mitchell classic sung by Dyble, Chelsea Morning, which Mitchell didn’t release till 1969 on her second album Clouds. This is a wonderful album that includes Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol on guitar, Ashley Hutchings on bass and Martin Lamble on drums. Highly recommended. One lovely anecdote about Judy is that when she wasn’t actually singing on stage, she would sit and knit.

When Judy left Fairport she briefly joined up with pre-King Crimson Robert Fripp with Michael and Peter Giles on drums and bass. She didn’t make it to any official releases back in the day, but later the home demos were released on The Brondesbury Tapes album (2001) where she can be heard singing on 5 tracks. Anecdotes R Uz today – The Giles Brothers had advertised for a singing keyboard player and of course Fripp does neither, I guess they picked him to join their band on audacity. Although The Brondesbury Tapes is essentially home demos, you’d never know. It’s properly recorded and sounds like an album would from 1968. It’s catchy, folky, melodic and is another essential if not hard to find release for Fripp completists.

A lot seemed to happen to Judy in that year. She guested on The Incredible String Band’s album The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (1968). At this point they were a very hip band, Bob Dylan even name-checked them. Judy is only on one track, she sings on The Minotaur’s Song although I can’t see a credit on my US copy. There’s a lot of Incredible String Band albums that you need to own, start here for the Psych Folk weirdness, the words, the arrangement, the odd instrumentation and then follow with The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion (1967).

In 1971 Judy formed Trader Horne with ex Them keyboardist Jackie McAuley. He also played guitar and they both sang. They released Morning Way in 1970. I have a re-released copy of it on the thickest cardboard ever made for a record sleeve. I remember when I bought it I was thinking how heavy it was and wondering about getting it back to England from America without having a weight problem. Inside the music is lovely melodic pastoral songs with occasional strings. Some tracks are acoustic with piano and guitar, others have drums. Judy plays autoharp and piano. McAuley wrote most of the songs and plays all kinds of instruments. Judy wrote the title track and co-wrote Velvet To Atone with Martin Quittenton whose name has shown up here before as ex Steamhammer man and the co-writer of Maggie May and You Wear It Well for Rod whassiname.

In recent years Judy has been prolific in her projects whilst suffering an ongoing illness. RIP Judy, you are missed. Condolences to family and friends.

Song Of The Day is Time Will Show The Wiser by Fairport Convention, written by Emitt Rhodes for his band The Merry-Go-Round in 1967:

Today was a long intense day in the studio playing bass on sessioneer Ahad’s record. We managed to nail six songs, some adjusted from earlier sessions and others completed from scratch. Although there are some quite simple songs here chord-wise, it doesn’t always follow that the bass will be as simplistic. Finding the groove, finding the part that fits not only with the chords but with the vocal melody and sits with the drummer, can be a tricky and time-consuming process and the first song we worked on today was just that. Some of the others were easier and some in between but as I sit here now I can feel in my body, in my neck and in my hands and fingers that I’ve been playing bass all day. It’s as physically challenging as it is mentally challenging and Dare and I came out of the studio today after 7 hours rather wrecked.

We did have one short break where we went into the park around the corner for some fresh air. We heard music (you can’t escape) and on the bandstand was a circle of old folkies playing old folkie songs. There was a violin, a trombone, a piano accordion, drums that you hold in front of you, a few different guitars, some weirdly shaped and including a 12 string acoustic. There was a man in the middle of the bandstand who seemed to be the leader and he’d count a song in and they were off. We stayed for two songs. There were people all around the park sitting and listening, not that many, but a few. There was something else, something strange. Have you ever asked someone, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”. Just to check you are not hallucinating? Dancing around the bandstand was an 8-foot tall dark shape hidden in folds of cloth that hung like wide black shortened streamers. Atop was the skull of an animal that might have been a cow or a horse with a crown of flowers. The shape moved around in ecstasy opening and closing the elongated jaw to the rhythm of the music and producing a noticeable clicking sound. I can only presume it was something pagan. It felt like one of those seventies films where suddenly everyone stops, turns around, looks at you with dead eyes and slowly moves towards you. We didn’t exactly run out of the park screaming but we did make a quick exit before the sacrifice.

It was one of those lovely days, breezy and sunny and warm but then when the sun drifted behind the spotted clouds a chill came. But it was like having the best of both worlds and we certainly experience variation down here in the south-west of England. Most of the year we experience different shades of grey and as Kate Bush had “50 Words For Snow” we have a hundred words for rain. The seagulls were squawking, the chicks were making high-pitched squeaks, waiting for food, the trombone was adding to the cacophony of frequencies and was the most clearly heard instrument as we returned to the studio. An interesting anniversary today – Dylan and Caitlin got married next door to the studio/In Deep today in 1937.

I have three different techniques for playing bass and I find that I use them all, fingers, pick, and soft thumb. All the sounds are different and I find that different songs need different things and it’s helpful to have these different approaches. There’s a lot to be said about bass and I find myself enjoying playing the bass more and more. It’s a hypnotic instrument and grooving your way through a song is very satisfying, bring it on.

After the studio today we went up to Dare’s house where his brother Dave was cooking us some baked potatoes. Mine had baked beans, butter, and avocado, everyone else had melted cheese – it’s my favourite other thing to dislike along with a rather long list. I had a revelation this week about my food issues and I came to realise that my problem lies in Western flavouring versus Eastern flavouring. I like Thai and Indian food, Japanese food, Ramen, Vietnamese food, or going south even Lebanese food, Ethiopian food. I like Tibetan food (not so keen on Chinese food). I like pasta dishes and lots of vegetables. But I don’t like Mediterranean flavours, olives, sun-dried tomatoes (or any tomato), aubergine, peppers, I don’t like vinegar or coleslaw or mayonnaise. I don’t like eggs (I don’t eat meat or fish). I think the main problem for me is that I don’t like anything that’s tangy like salad dressing but if it’s spicy then that’s not a problem, not that I eat suicidal Indian dishes, as hot as possible, the food has to be medium spiced. I remember once in Thailand I went into a restaurant and ordered some food and thought that I’d communicated that I didn’t want it too hot. I ate a little when it came and nearly died it was so spicy, I remember sitting on the kerb outside the restaurant trying to recover with the staff laughing at me. How is marijuana illegal and this allowed?

Music today has taken me down that dangerous road where few follow, Jazz Rock Fusion. I felt like some Ian Carr’s Nucleus. He was a trumpet player but playing in a modern environment. He was the bandleader for over 20 albums but there were also some famous names that filed through the ranks. Early on it was Chris Spedding, but also Allan Holdsworth and Soft Machine members Karl Jenkins and Roy Babbington. The list is very long and I won’t attempt to share it here. There’s surprisingly little about them on Wikipedia, as suspected, there’s only a very limited interest but those who are interested are very interested. It’s like trying to find people who collect stamps. Have I ever told you about my stamp collection? One day.

I don’t have the first three Nucleus albums (or the fifth) or the later ones but I have four seventies albums, Roots (1973), Under The Sun (1974), Snakehips Etcetera (1975) and Alleycat (1975), plus a collection. I’m not going to break them down, I put these albums on one after another as if it’s one long jazzy event. Amazing musicians, warm sounds, seventies productions, experimenting, different instruments taking the lead, complexity, musicians playing off each other’s skills, but to me, like Jazz in general, it never sounds self-indulgent. It’s a vibe that you tune into like the classic Jazz of Miles Davis or John Coltrane. I was looking at the prices of those first three albums, Elastic Rock (1970), We’ll Talk About It Later (1970), and Solar Plexus (1971), plus the fourth, Labyrinth (1973), and came to the conclusion that I should buy CDs. There’s some ‘two for one’ albums on eBay at the moment that would cost £20 for four albums instead of £500 for the original vinyl albums on Vertigo.

It is tempting to listen to those first albums on Spotify after tonight’s experience and the word is that the first three are the best – as I’m digging these middle albums it can only get better. I’ve also never heard the dozen albums made beyond 1975. I hope you can find the courage to investigate this kind of music, I’m a fan and it’s not necessarily the skills, it’s the mood, the skills are the icing on the cake. Carr was also a professor of music and wrote biographies about Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. He died of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2009 at the age of 75 but left behind a wonderful musical legacy that is alive and kicking in the In Deep Music Archive.

Song Of The Day is Concert Of The Day and it’s Ian Carr’s Nucleus from NRK TV Molde Jazz ’74 Rådhuset, Molde, Norway…if you dare, if you daren’t go to 27.35 – 35.10 and listen to the interview, he may be able to explain to you what’s going on, intellectually. I’d just like to add that this live concert is completely out there in comparison to the albums that I have. So you might want to investigate the albums first.

Ian Carr – trumpet
Roger Sutton – fretless bass
Ken Shaw – electric guitar
Bryan Spring – drums
Geoff Castle – keyboard
Bob Bertles – alto sax and flute

One of those fluffy cloud days today, like a massive bag of cotton wool balls had burst into the sky. I walked to the bakery to pick up my pre-ordered pasty, I only ever just make it before they close. When I arrive the door is always already closed but I can see Lisa and Amy in there cleaning up. They are always good-humoured about my last-minute show, once I was there half an hour before they closed and they both fainted. I went up to Thornes the greengrocers (shouldn’t it be a florist?) and met our local friend and fellow nutty Liverpool fan Eloha, we solved the world’s problems before we both bought our unshrinkwrapped vegetables (it’s one reason why we go there). In the street Louella was playing guitar and singing her heart out, she’s good and in between songs I chatted with her. I never have cash on me but today I had £1.43 that I left in her guitar case. Then I ran into mellow Sean before finally getting to the studio. Olivia and I went to Dare’s for a bit, chatted in his sun trap (the back garden) with him and visiting brother Dave. Dave reminded me that when we were kids I used to eat sugar sandwiches which pretty much explains the teeth. I reminded him that when we were kids he took the budgie out of the cage and sang “Bend it, bend it, just a little bit” (the Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich song, no animals were harmed).

Down at the sea today there was a strange grey ship that looked like it couldn’t possibly float. It was all the wrong shape and must have been some kind of working vessel with a specific task. I could see a tanker sitting on the horizon and Mount’s Bay looked huge today, wide and blue and open, a calm sea with a high tide, few birds and only the occasional waft of seaweed. The cats were out in the secret pathways to and from the promenade and the recently hatched seagull chicks are aware of their presence. They are growing to be as big as them but they are still not able to fly. The parents keep an eye out to protect them, I wouldn’t bet on the cat against one of these massive birds.

I had a sesh with Brian in Florida today but we talked quite a lot about the situation in America first. It made me think about how power corrupts and blinds, turning cagey cretins into glorious fools (prizes for the music nerds here?). Surely if you were as dodgy as Clamp, the last thing you would want is scrutiny? But the lure of power has drawn attention to every lie, every dodgy deal, every broken law. Only an idiot crook would bask in the limelight instead of keeping a low profile…and then after the protection of office has gone, without power, the many enemies will be waiting to pounce whether it be on January 20th 2021 or God forbid in 4 years if America can survive that long.

Dinner was late tonight, it was leftovers with added carrots to change the colour to make it seem like something different. Earlier in the day I’d switched to my computer and stumbled across Jarvis Cocker interviewing Paul McCartney at LIPA. There’s always an interesting Beatles story to be told for the fans and as Jarvis said later we could talk till the end of time. The interview is 1hr 11 minutes long and is sometime before the release of Egypt Station and the gig he played at Liverpool Echo arena that Olivia and I saw. That was the time I had my first meeting with Paul Simpson from The Wild Swans and his partner Gemma – and look what happened.

 
The gyms are opening up 25th July and an Email arrived today from the Penzance Leisure Centre but it looks like you have to book a time for the gym and there’s no mention of the pool. Olivia and I are trying to imagine next year when we can travel, play and release records. Can you imagine the things that I will be able to write about having been in different countries with different languages, different atmospheres and meeting new and different people? Of course, I won’t be able to go through the albums like I can here at the In Deep Music Archive but it’s the 21st century, it’s not like it’s impossible to listen to new or old amazing music online and share it as a link or make playlists.

Music today began with a record that arrived in the post. Clear Light were an Elektra Records Pop Psyche band that made one album in 1967. I mentioned them before as the bass player Doug Lubhan played on several Doors albums. This self-titled debut was produced by Doors producer Paul A. Rothchild and has lots of fuzzy guitar solos and sixties organ sounds. If you like Love you’ll love A Child’s Smile. The band also featured Dallas Taylor on drums who went on to play with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, you can see his picture on the cover of Déja Vu. The other interesting thing about this band was that they had two drummers (the other was Michael Ney), unusual for the time, or any time.

Side 2 opens with a creepy Psychedelic Tom Paxton song, Mr Blue, for a creepy 6 minutes. Sometimes you have to search through records like this for the gems and if you ever liked The Byrds you need to hear They Who Have Nothing, written by lead guitar player and occasional singer Bob Seal. He didn’t sing this one, that was left to Cliff De Young, who later became an actor (he was in The Hunger that starred Bowie, Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve). Organist Ralph Schuckett played with Todd’s Utopia. Schuckett and Ney played on The Monkees classic The Porpoise Song, covered by the ex-band on A Box Of Birds (1999). Clear Light’s only album, it reached No. 126 on the Billboard chart and is a true document of the times.

I followed this by listening to the other Clearlight, who are French and feature keyboardist leader Cyrille Verdeaux. Clearlight Symphony (1975) is their first album. It also features three members of Gong, Didier Malherbe on sax, Tim Blake on synths and percussion and noises and Steve Hillage on guitar. It was the time of Tubular Bells and records like this were probably going to sell especially if they were on Virgin Records who understood. Side 2 was recorded at the same studio as Mike Oldfield’s masterpiece (The Manor in Oxfordshire) and there were high hopes for its success although I don’t see a chart position anywhere. It’s some kind of epic, symphonic, jazzy, new age, classical, instrumental Rock album – what could go wrong?

The label decided that Side 1 should be Side 2 and reversed Verdeaux’s original concept (that he addressed later for the CD re-release). Side 2 had different musicians Christian Boule on guitar, Martin Isaacs on Bass and Gilbert Artman from Lard Free on drums, vibraphone and percussion. It was recorded at David Vorhaus’ Kaleidophon studio. If you are not aware of his White Noise project that included BBC radiophonic workshop innovator Delia Derbyshire, read on. Clearlight Symphony is a must for fans of Gong (especially Pierre Moerlin’s Gong), Mike Oldfield and epic seventies instrumental albums.

Clearlight followed this symphonic first album with Forever Blowing Bubbles, also released in 1975. It was also recorded at The Manor but this time with a mainly French band with Joel Dugrenot on bass and lead vocals, (sporadic) Brigitte Roy sings Narcisse et Goldmund (the title from the Hermann Hesse novel of 1930) – only Artman survived from the first album. There was one Englishman on there, King Crimson’s David Cross played the violin. The album continues in the multi-mood genre, highly enjoyable, but you have to want to like it.

Last album tonight is the experimental An Electric Storm by White Noise (1969). It’s the album mentioned earlier, the brainchild of David Vorhaus. It came about when Vorhaus attended a lecture with Delia Derbyshire (Dr Who theme anybody?) and managed to enlist her and fellow BBC sound scientist Brian Hodgson into the project. It’s an incredible record because it’s both absolutely experimental and wonderfully melodic. There are also lots of vocals from John Whitman, Annie Bird and Val Shaw, percussion is by Paul Lytton. It’s not an easy record to explain, you might be best going to Wikipedia, read about it and then dive straight in at the deep end.

Song Of The Day is the mostly forgotten Esther Phillips version of The Beatles’ And I Love Her (And I Love Him) mentioned by Paul in the interview and introduced here by John:

Seaweed! I always loved the smell of seaweed and today down at the beach I found myself a nice big piece to have for my lunch. Whenever I buy seaweed, either dried in a packet or if I have it with something Japanese, it always seems so expensive and disappears quickly. It’s frustrating to see so much of it on the beach for free. It was weird down there today, you could only just see the join between the sea and the sky as a summer mist descended. St Michael’s Mount had disappeared completely and what seemed like insignificant waves lapped the beach surreptitiously as the tide gradually advanced onto the shore. Two cormorants sat on the rocks, wings spread like emblems on Bohemian flags, eventually one leaving for the water and diving under the surface looking for unsuspecting fish. A soft drizzle permeated the air but it wasn’t enough to bother with the umbrella, it was like the soft caress of an inadvertent sprinkler, more a pleasant surprise than an intrusion.

I left Olivia on the beach as she had arranged a call with one of her best friends Isa in Germany. People are so used to seeing us together that at the supermarket Toni the checkout lady inquired as to where she was. It’s so cheap in this supermarket (Lidl), it’s a German company and they sell products that the Coop sells but often not with name brands. Buying cereal that’s £3 a box cheaper is one example and as the story goes, you’ll find more nutrition in eating the actual box than in the contents anyway. On the way up to the studio with the shopping, I walked around the pathway and there underneath one of the palm trees was a woman sitting reading holding an umbrella, only in England, typically in Penzance.

Today is Nicklas Barker from Anekdoten’s birthday, so go wish him all the best. We spoke on the Skype today, checking in, chatting, planning, plotting, but it’s hard in a pandemic. He and his partner Sophie were supposed to be here in Penzance in March, they bought tickets but then the pandemic happened. Coincidentally today we both got a note through the door from the post office, Nicklas sending me the new live box set from 1997 and my label sending him the Record Store Day release of Hanging Out In Heaven. We were talking about the upcoming Anekdoten shows in Sweden and Poland, will they happen? We don’t know.

I got a call this morning from a man called Jeff, he got my number from Dare, not sure how but he informed me that I had won an eBay album from him, Focus’ Hamburger Concerto. My US copy has a serious pressing issue that sounds like a white noise machine. He called me to tell me that he didn’t need to post it to me because he was in Penzance, so he’ll bring it to me on Sunday and refund my postage, perfect.

I had just one sesh today with Jeff in Ohio, just one tomorrow with Brian in Florida and on Saturday I have a full day in the studio with Dare, going through and playing bass on the Ahad songs. I’ll have an early start for me (midday) so I’d better make sure I get to bed a little earlier than usual or I’ll be grooving to a different beat.

French made a lot of sense today and I was actually going through the lessons with one eye on the football. Studying every day is the way to go, it sinks in and even if it takes a while you get there in the end. I hope that my old brain doesn’t refuse to take in the information and one wishes for a child’s ability to learn quickly. I wish I had been exposed to languages as a child instead of accents. Maybe if I’d been given a clarinet at 3, a piano at 5, a drum kit at 7, a double bass at 9 and a flugelhorn at 11, I would be able to do more musically having only received a guitar at 14.

Some people were born to study, others don’t get the chance. Can you imagine a world where your talents were pursued without question and where your educational opportunities were equal? What kind of world would that be? A planet dedicated to the arts where you lived just to create, to come up with ideas for their own sake, ideas in all fields. All the work that nobody wanted to do was done by invisible creative entities that supplied food and warmth. Soon it would become obvious that the suppliers of everything were benign gods. The world overrun with beauty, a paradise. Eventually the population would evolve into invisible beings themselves that became pure consciousness that floated into space and spread the idea of artistry and intelligence – and football across the stars.

Music today had me thinking about those bands whose music is somehow irrelevant now, whereas once they had a contemporary sound and were riding high in the charts. Case in point was McGuiness Flint who had the same idea as Fleetwood Mac, naming the band after Tom McGuiness ex Manfred Mann guitarist and bassist and Hughie Flint ex John Mayall drummer. They teamed up with singer/keyboard player and songwriting team Graham Lyle and Benny Gallagher who sang, played guitar, bass and keys. Their first album was released in 1970 and it all started well, the first single, When I’m Dead And Gone, reached No. 2 in the UK singles chart and even reached No. 47 in the US – the album went Top 10 in the UK. Most of the songs were written by Gallagher and Lyle and things were going famously. Gallagher and Lyle even wrote another hit, Malt and Barley Blues that reached No. 5 in the UK charts.

But all was not well, one camp wanted to play live, Coulson/Flint/McGuinness, the other concentrate on the studio Lyle/Gallagher. Instant success had caught them by surprise and they were struggling to play the songs live and then illness hit the band and the first tour was cut short. They made another album, Happy Birthday Ruthy Baby (1971), mostly written by Gallagher and Lyle and it failed to chart. Gallagher and Lyle left and went on to be a successful duo in the UK with two top ten hits on their fourth album Breakaway, Heart On My Sleeve and I Wanna Stay With You (you may remember them). The title track was also a small hit and recorded by Art Garfunkel. These guys got around, originally being signed as songwriters for Apple artists, they wrote International, Fields Of St Etienne, Heritage and Sparrow for Mary Hopkin. In 1983 Don Williams had a No. 1 Country hit in America with Stay Young. Even later Lyle wrote What’s Love Got To Do With It and nine other songs with Terry Britten for Tina Turner, hm, nice house bro.

When I hear these two albums, I wonder at the musical climate. It’s mellow, it’s not very challenging, the songs are not as good as The Beatles or Elton John or David Bowie. So, they are pretty much forgotten. Thank you, goodnight. But they did carry on (replacing their lost songwriters) with an album of unreleased Dylan songs called Lo And Behold (Dixie Dean joined on bass). Coulson left and Lou Stonebridge joined on keys and Jim Evans on guitar and they recorded Rainbow in 1973 and C’est La Vie in 1974. They broke up in 1975 – Bye bye and not really remembered.

I remember Lindisfarne fondly from the early seventies. Their second album Fog On The Tyne (1972) was the biggest selling album of that year and this in turn propelled the first album into the charts in the same way that Ziggy Stardust reactivated Hunky Dory for David Bowie in 1972. I first became aware of them with the mega hit Meet Me On The Corner, the opening track on the Fog On The Tyne album. There was something about the sound, the vocal blends, the folky guitars and the songwriting skills of principal songwriter Alan Hull. Their first album, although initially not charting at all, had some real standout tracks, the opener Lady Eleanor remains a classic and on re-release it reached No. 3 in the UK chart. Another piece of classic Hull songwriting is Winter Song. There’s something quintessentially English about them perhaps even quintessentially from the North East like The Unthanks. They are a cross between Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and Bob Dylan – and themselves, lovely meaningful songs. Towards the end of the album they do a Woody Guthrie song, Jackhammer Blues, and you can hear from this uptempo track that with this and their thoughtful other songs, that they were popular live.

Dare and I used to sing Meet Me On The Corner, great harmonies, great beat, great melody, great words, great song, but not written by Alan Hull, written by Rod Clements (bass, guitars, violin and vocals). The song had mandolin and harmonica player Ray Jackson on lead vocals you may remember Ray Jackson was credited on Rod Stewart’s Never A Dull Moment album as the mandolin player from Lindisfarne as Rod couldn’t remember his name despite him playing on the mega hit Maggie May. Although Fog On The Tyne was a big success and contained the memorable title track, the next album Dingly Dell (1972) saw tensions arise and cracks began to appear as the album received lukewarm reviews and didn’t do as well. Ultimately the band split into two different bands, Jack The Lad with Rod Clements, Simon Cowe and Ray Laidlaw with Alan Hull and Ray Jackson keeping the name. This version of Lindisfarne with a new lineup made two more albums, Roll On Ruby (1973) and Happy Daze (1974), but the spirit was gone and Alan Hull was also making solo albums, so in 1975 they broke up.

After this a lot happened, including more albums, successful reunion concerts and to this day the band with one original member (Rod Clements) continues to play. Alan Hull died in 1995, Simon Cowe died in 2015. You can read all about it here.

Song Of The Day is a rare performance of Lady Eleanor on Australian TV show GTK:

I was so confused by the heat today. I left with a scarf and returned shirtless and that reminded me that I need that swimming pool to reopen. In my twenties I could eat a whole black forest gateaux, eighteen bags of crisps, a crate of sugary drinks and the only thing that happened was my teeth fell out, my body was fine with it. I’ve gone from swimming 3+ miles a week with random visits to the gym and occasional yoga to nothing at all. I can’t run, that’s knee and hip pain, all I can do is hope for the leisure centre to reopen and walk a lot. There’s the sea of course but I like the laps and the sea would be splashing about trying not to freeze to death. I’m not sure if that’s really exercise. It’s just incredible how your body changes as you get older, you really have to take care otherwise when you get out of bed you will find your stomach hitting the floor before your feet. But with the teeth, I had problems early on and lots of experiences with pain and bad dentists. I’ll tell you about some of the experiences.

Once on tour in America I had to go see an emergency dentist and he was so doddery that he dropped one of those horrible tools in my mouth. My dentist in Bondi Beach did such a terrible job that when I moved to Stockholm with more pain, I opened my mouth and the dentist said with a wonderful Swedish accent that gave it more affect, “Oh my God, who has done this to you?”. In Stockholm a dentist treated an abscess by sealing it up so that when the numbness wore off I was in terrible pain. I once read a story where they mixed up the medical cards of two women, one with breast cancer and the other with nothing wrong. So they removed the breast of the woman who was completely healthy and failed to address the issue with the woman who actually had breast cancer and of course she died. So although my teeth issues were not as serious as that tragedy, one hopes that when one goes to see a professional that you get professional work, because after all they do charge like a bull. I have a broken tooth at the moment and no regular dentist so I’m scared that I might pick the wrong one. In later years in Sydney I had a genius from South Africa but it’s a long way to go for a dentist you like.

There seems to be sugar in everything. In the American supermarkets I always had difficulty finding a loaf of bread that wasn’t sugared up. It’s hard to quantify the extent of the damage caused to the population by sugar (including me). One assessment of the massive virus death toll in America equates it to how unhealthy the population is. President Plump’s alleged diet is a fine example. It’s easy to be addicted to sugar, or tobacco, or alcohol, but we can overcome it if we recognise the problem, awareness is step one, then the hard work begins.

What we are fed doesn’t just apply to food, although I always wondered about the appeal of Fast Food – to get something worse quicker doesn’t sound to me like a formula that should work. With entertainment we are fed music, movies, games, sport, and I am as happy to watch a football game as read a book although admittedly lately the football is winning. But then I am learning French, speaking Swedish with my German wife, doing 10-15 Songwriting & Guitar Guidance sessions a week and writing between 1000-2000 words every day for the daily essay in between eating something sugary and making a record or three. So there’s balance needed – I’m not sure when the lying on the beach all afternoon is going to kick in?

I think it’s so easy to waste time that you could use to do better things. But that depends on the kind of creature you are. Everyone’s life decisions are relevant to them – socialite, life of the party, introvert, academic, sportsman, doctor. Everyone sees it differently and of course there’s always mistakes. You might have seen the adverts on the net for MasterClass where famous people like Neil Gaiman and Carlos Santana are doing some kind of posh learning course with the experts, it’s kind of like my Songwriting & Guitar Guidance sessions with more successful people – and I gather a heftier price tag, one of the classes is with writer Joyce Carol Oates and she says something very interesting (and I’m paraphrasing),

The biggest problem for writing is not your ideas, your skills, your visions or your enthusiasm for the task, it’s interruption.

Liverpool won 3-1 today, beating Brighton in Brighton. It was the Liverpool/Brighton home fixture that I saw at Anfield in November. Man City hammered Newcastle 5-0 and this week the cricket is starting with England vs the West Indies. I love trying to explain cricket to people who have no idea about it. You know, a series of five matches that last for five days each and end in a draw – and then there’s the crazy rules. I don’t go to many sporting events, but I’ve been to see cricket at The Gabba in Brisbane, Australia vs India (thanks Geoff) and then England vs Australia in both Sydney and Melbourne (thanks Angie). In the seventies I went to see a motorcycle race with Barry Sheen and Agostini. I saw the Melbourne Grand Prix one year but the highlight of that was seeing The Who on site when it finished. I was at the World Cup Final and saw five other games in the USA in 1994 (thanks Lian and Todd). But unlike my sporty friends I like the commentary on the TV and the pundits explaining why things happened tactically. Snooker, mmmh relaxing, skilful, aesthetically pleasing, beautiful and the commentary is wonderful. There’s so much to do and experience in this world – Dostoevsky to Ronnie O’Sullivan, we have such limited time, how frustrating.

Music today was the odd transition of sixties Pop star Cliff Bennett who had considerable success with The Rebel Rousers but then grew his hair (like everyone should) and formed the heavy riffing Toe Fat with ex members of The Gods who were to be future Uriah Heep members – Ken Hensley on guitar and keys and Lee Kerslake on drums. Another God John Konas played the bass. They released both their albums in 1970, Toe Fat and Toe Fat 2. 1970 seems to be the year to release two albums, yesterday it was the two Syd Barrett albums and the two Ringo albums, the day before it was the Triumph Vitesse with its twin headlights. Both albums have the sound of the era but because it’s Cliff Bennett they aren’t all out Heavy Rock, you can occasionally hear that he might have been in a sixties band before the musical climate changed.

There’s vague signs on the first album that Uriah Heep seeds may have been planted in Hensley’s head, but Hensley is the main guitarist whereas the main Heep guitarist was the immortal Mick Box (met him once, nicest guy). So the sound isn’t quite right yet and this album suffers from being a little too much wasp caught in a bottle guitar sounds rather than scary men with long hair and giant earth-shuddering amps. The songs aren’t so great either.

The problem lies in the fact that Bennett is writing all the songs (bar three covers) and not really getting to grips with what 1970 wants. There’s moments in the songs and the guitars but they’re few and far between. Interestingly the second song is an early Elton John/Bernie Taupin song, Bad Side Of The Moon, which was an extra track on the CD release of Elton’s self-titled second album. There’s a rocked up Nobody written by Soul writing duo Dick Cooper and Ernie Shelby. Another track, The Wherefores and The Whys has that Heep sound in the vocals, so I imagine that although it’s written by Bennett it must be sung by Hensley and at this point I realise that part of the problem is Bennett’s voice, if Hensley sang them all I might like it more. There’s a horrible version of Just Like Me, covered earlier by The Hollies and The Coasters. It’s that sixties singer missing the point of now, that is 1970. Still Paul Rodgers sang a bit like this – but somehow he was just better.

But here in the archive we are as interested in cover art and both Toe Fat albums are grotesque moments in design history. Apparently they were trying to come up with a really horrible name, they succeeded, but then needed cover art to reflect the horrible image that the name suggested and of course the perfect people for this monstrous task were the good folks at Hipgnosis who incidentally were also responsible for The Madcap Laughs (see yesterday). So there’s naked figures on the cover who instead of having heads, have big toes, even the lady. It’s actually a great piece of bizarre weirdness out of the imaginations of fearless creators.

By the second album Hensley and Kerslake had gone. Another ex God Brian Glascock joined on drums, Alan Kendall joined on guitar. Later Brian’s brother John replaced John Konas before going on to join Carmen and playing with Chicken Shack and then Jethro Tull before tragically dying of a congenital heart defect at 28. It’s not actually clear who did what on the album as the album covers have pictures of members that weren’t on the albums. In a way Toe Fat 2 is a better record because at this point the guitar sounds were a bit less buzzy, There’ll Be Changes has a cool Bluesy wah-wah solo. Kendall co-wrote all the songs with Bennett but the ideas are the same and the singer is the same and it’s disappointing because this band on paper looked like it might have been a lost gem of the era.

But still we have the grotesque artwork part two! The second album has attempted to use old food – chicken legs, a shrimp, melon seeds, grapes and God knows what else as an environment for miniature toe-headed men and women to hang out. It’s Hipgnosis again (of course it is) and another classic album cover in the archive. On the subject of the cover art, I also have an original Argentine copy of the first album and there are no toe-heads to be seen anywhere, it was just too much for the Argentine public. Apparently the US cover has a sheep where the naked toe-headed woman is (of course, makes sense).

My Toe Fat 2 is an original copy on Regal Zonophone and like my original Argentine first album (on Odeon Pops) they have seen better days, but you can still play them and it’s nice to have original copies especially of the Argentine rarity which I bought in Buenos Aires. My Toe Fat 1 is a re-release and is on red vinyl, released by Soundvision, an original Parlophone version would be pricey.

I have an original copy of the Genesis album by The Gods and I have a Record Store Day reissue, so I can feel the original and listen to the brand new one. The album like Toe Fat 1 was allegedly released on Parlophone but two years earlier in 1968. I say allegedly because my original UK copy is on Columbia, my reissue on Parlophone. Nerds, where are you? The lineup has Hensley singing and playing organ, Kerslake and Konas playing guitar – it was bass in Toe Fat? – also he seems to have been called Joe in The Gods and John in Toe Fat? Supernerds will have to figure that one out, too. He certainly had a better tone than buzzy Hensley. The album has some great crossover Pop Psychedelic on the way to Progressive moments like the Konas/Hensley penned track Looking Glass. The songs are generally better than the Toe Fat songs and were written by different teams of Konas/Hensley, Konas/Kerslake or Hensley/Konas and Konas alone with two Sugarman/Robertson songs, Radio Show and Plastic Horizon, opening Side 2. Who are Sugerman/Robertson?

In 1969 The Gods made To Samuel A Son, not as good. My copy is another Soundvision reissue. When I bought it, the man in the shop (in Hamburg) said there’s something wrong with the pressing. He said it was low volume. Well, that might be true but it’s like listening to a bootleg, you get used to it and it is sixties so it’s going to be missing some of those modern frequencies, bottom end and level. (It seems like Side 2 isn’t a problem but now I hear the issue clearly.) What we lose on technological shortcomings we gain in visions of the sixties creative mind. I remember reading somewhere that when stereo arrived The Beatles treated it like it was a fad and asked why would you want to hear music out of two speakers instead of one? Apparently they paid little attention to the stereo mixes of their later albums and lots of attention to the mono versions. This second Gods album seems lost between the sixties and the seventies and you can see how they felt like they needed to form Toe Fat to escape the clutches of the sixties Pop, but unfortunately they did it with another man trapped in the sixties.

Before Heep there’s one more band and album to check out, Orgasm by Head Machine (1970), probably the best of the pre Heep lineups – but just on Spotify. Later when Uriah Heep were born, they were talked about as the worst band ever along with ELP (Greg Lake was also in The Gods for a time). They were the first band I ever saw at Liverpool Stadium on The Magician’s Birthday tour (I think), I’ve always had a soft spot for them despite what the cool kids say, it’s the same with ELP who I saw at the Empire Theatre on the Brain Salad Surgery tour (that I remember for sure). One thing about writing is that it helps you remember things and a lot has happened since 1958.

Song Of The Day is The Gods in 1968: