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Wakey wakey, it’s time to plan to be early and end up rushing around and panicking that we’re going to miss the train. One thing about taking the train to England is that I can bring all the records, because there’s no weight limit, but can we fit them in the suitcases? Can we move the suitcases when they’re in? Can we get them on and off trains up and down all the stairs, through the labyrinth of the London Underground? Well, as it happened and this must be a first, every station had a lift. Result! Getting to London was really straightforward, less stressful than the plane. Siv dropped us off at Rhöndorf and we took a train to Cologne (50 mins) and changed there for Brussels (2 hours). As soon as we we hit the Belgian border, there was snow. It was a reminder that it was actually winter in Europe.

I closed my eyes as soon as we got on the Brussels train and relaxed into Black Sabbath Vol. 4. Ha ha, really. It’s such a melodic album, Ozzy always sings catchy melodies and Tony Iommi always has great guitar tones. It’s a fascinating story about Tony Iommi, he lost the tips of two of his fingers in a factory accident, so he plays with caps on his fingers and uses super light strings.

Read about it here.

We were on the luxurious ICE train,‘flying’ across the countryside, Germany, Belgium, France and from Calais on the Eurostar through the tunnel to England. I managed to get a snap of the Atomium (1958 Brussels World Expo) as we went by.

We met all kinds of interesting people on the way. On the Rhöndorf to Cologne train we met Travis, 27, in acting school, nice fella, friendly, helped Olivia get her designated heavy record bag on the train (Ha ha). Favourite actors, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and more but had never heard of Richard Burton. If he gets back in touch, I’ll be sending him some lists. Arriving in Cologne, coming across the great iron bridge with the oxidized statue of the famous man on the horse that no one knows and the thousands of love locks attached to the walkway. You might have seen it before in Paris, padlocks of lovers, symbolically binding each other together forever. I wonder who did it first? How did it catch on?

It was the third train, the Eurostar, where we met Jake and Mitchell. Jake, a photographer from Sydney, Mitchell an environmental scientist or as he described it “I’m in waste management”! We discussed film, acting and music for two hours. We arrived in London at King’s Cross/St Pancras and although we had gone through customs on the other side it takes a while to wind your way through the corridors and passages to the other side of the exit and to where all the shops and restaurants are. It’s going to be so different when Brexit comes into force, when all these people of different nationalities will be in the ‘alien’ queue, like arriving in America. We will suffer going to Europe and our time there will be limited. Looks like Olivia and I will have to move to Portugal. Will keep you posted on that one.

We’re staying with our friends Biggles (Pete) and Colleen. Biggles produced our (with Dare) first demo, The True 100’s. I’ve mentioned him before (he was the A&R man for Carrere Records). Biggles was at the Fulham – Swansea game, 1-0 (94th minute). We got to the house about 20 minutes before he did, Colleen met us and fed us, Bear, the dog looked at us, oh it’s just them.

So we’ve just spent that 3 hours chatting away and realizing that we’ve been travelling for 9 hours and should probably go to bed. So goodnight.

Last day in Germany, Shrove Tuesday, Siv made us pancakes for breakfast, English style thin with sugar and lemon. It takes me straight back to childhood, not only because of the taste, but because we only had this treat once a year. I really thought that you were only allowed to eat pancakes on this one day…and then I went to America. In Sweden they eat semlor, a creamy super sweet cake and it seems like this tradition exists in the Christian world to use up what’s left in the cupboard before the fast to Easter. I had no idea, Siv did some research. I didn’t even know that Christians had a fasting tradition. If you are not brought up with religious ritual these things pass you by.

It was get up and pack day today, will the records fit? Do I need my two acoustic 12 strings? Can we carry everything bearing in mind we are on the train and not flying? Is there a baggage limit on the Eurostar? Do I need my big coat? Are we taking sandwiches? Are my iPods charged? Do I have the right adaptor plugs? How long will we be in England? Despite being a veteran traveller it’s not easy to remember absolutely everything. I’ve started to make lists: Gym/pool lists, shopping lists, record lists, Brahms and Liszt.

Despite all these mind-numbing responsibilities we had arranged to go to Bonn today to meet Barbara who supported us at the Düsseldorf gig and livestream. Siv lent us the Fiesta and I broke all cool protocol and listened to Double Vision by Foreigner on the iPod. Olivia had to go and pick up her cellolin today from the luthier in (wait for it) Mozartstrasse (Mozart street), so while she was in there I took the opportunity to listen to the first Foreigner album, too (formed by Mick Jones who was in the latter day Spooky Tooth and Ian McDonald who was in the early days of King Crimson). 80 million records later, yes they sold that many records but despite being much maligned by anybody who might have taste, I think there’s one album that has great songs, Double Vision, that’s the only one. Hot Blooded is of course very silly, but I Iike the other songs. After that it was Fire And Water by Free and Houses Of The Holy by Led Zep so I went a bit seventies Rock mad today. We went to Nobbi’s record store and I bought Sound by The Mighty Lemon Drops (1991) and Permanent Damage, the last Icicle Works album (1990), so big jump from the seventies sound to the nineties sound. A record by Alan Ross (I already have two records by him, but nobody really knows who he is), last but not least I bought a vinyl copy of the brilliantly titled Electric Landlady by Kirsty MacColl. You may know she was tragically killed, run over by a boat whilst on holiday. It’s one of the most terrible stories, I won’t retell it here.

We arrived right on time at A Taste Of India in a part of Bonn I hadn’t been to before. It was a Southern Indian cuisine. It’s funny, I’m not a foodie, but Barbara was telling us tonight how she was a foodie after we discussed our hobbies, (ha ha, mine were…) Olivia and I are so picky with food. Whenever anyone invites us to dinner I always say “Are you sure you want to do that?”. But anyway, nice chat about the universe with Barbara. We ate the typical dish of this cuisine, vege dosas, nice. I never talk about food and that’s twice in one day.

We got back to the house in time to see Chelsea get hammered 0-3 at home in the Champions League against Bayern Munich. Then I listened to a bit of new artist Hazel English, before listening to the new Ozzy album, Ordinary Man, the last two tracks featuring rappers Post Malone and Travis Scott. It’s a long way from seeing Black Sabbath on the Vol. 4 tour at the Stadium in Liverpool in the seventies, or is it? I was talking to sesh man Tony on Sunday about how unheavy Sabbath’s sound actually was, especially Vol. 4 onwards and when you compare it to what happened in Metal music since…Ozzy has a kinda sweet voice actually, is it double-tracked all the time? It’s always so smooth. I went to see them with the Anekdoten lads in Stockholm on their final tour, Ozzy sang Iron Man so flat, all the way through. No one seemed to notice. Flat Iron Man. I’m back on Hazel English now, so keeping it eclectic.

Whenever I’m in a foreign country and heading back to my own country, I always hate to leave. Not because I have a problem with my country, but because I like the strangeness of somewhere I didn’t grow up, especially when it’s a foreign language. I’ll miss the left hand drive cars, the signs that I can’t read and all those odd little differences that make you feel like you’re in a parallel universe. It’s exciting, isn’t it? I don’t identify with home, not a home, that would be nice, but home as in where I’m from (Heimat in German). I’m at home with people from all over the world, like I’m at home with other people’s ways of making music. I don’t have to like it to appreciate it and the image never hides the quality or blurs the intent. Remember when Bowie toured with Peter Frampton as his guitarist? Remember when Aerosmith and Run DMC did Walk This Way?

Did you know that John Mayer plays with the Grateful Dead? What a wonderful world of surprises we live in.

Drachenfels (Dragon’s Rock) is the scene of the legend of Siegfried and the dragon where the Burg Drachenfels (Castle Dragon’s Rock) sits above the Rhine in the mythical Siebengebirge (seven hills) region. A mixture of famous legends, Siegfried sailed down the Rhine to slay the dragon after which he bathed in the dragon’s blood to become invincible, but a leaf floated down onto his back which became his vulnerable spot, leading to his demise. Look out George and the dragon and Achilles. So today we went to the scene of the myth.

The castle on the top of the hill was built between 1138 and 1167, originally to protect Cologne from attacks from the South. The castle was ‘slighted’ (deliberately demolished) in the 17th century after the Thirty Years’ War. Lord Byron has a poem where it features. Ok, history lesson over.

You can either walk up a steep incline to the castle or take a cog or rack railway, which was our chosen transport. That is an experience in itself as you are dragged up there (not the same as not wanting to go). The carriages built in the fifties just have doors on one side and inside and out have that wonderful design style of the period. When we got to the top we were soon standing in front of this awe-inspiring ruin but in truth there’s not much of it left, it’s the legend that lives on.

It was very windy up there and the path to the actual ruin was closed off, so we took our life into our hands, presumed the dragon was asleep and went up to the observation point (check out the sci-fi galaxy viewer). The view is rather spectacular, you can follow the curves of the Rhine and see all the barges slowly making their way towards their destinations in the direction of Switzerland or The Netherlands. In the distance you can see Bonn and beyond that Cologne. With my zoom lens I can just make out Cologne cathedral. The other way Olivia and Gerd were trying to figure out where their village was in the hills beyond Königswinter and Rhöndorf.

I rather like being a tourist even if the locals can see tourists just as a necessary evil, an economic compromise. Apparently in Venice there are so many tourists that they are being encouraged to stay away.

We decided to walk back down past an abandoned mansion and steep winding paths with forest all around us. Looking up into the twilight sky there were arrows of returning geese. Even they seem to know that the spring is upon us early. Halfway down the hill is Schloss Drachenburg, built in 1882 by a financier called Baron Stephan von Sarter, neogothic in design it would be a great location for the In Deep Music Archive.

At the bottom of the hill in the car park someone has scrawled ‘UFO’ on the wall, I wonder if it is the band, because German guitarist Michael Schenker was a member and it seemed like it was graffitied a long time ago, because another graffiti was ‘Kilroy Was Here’, anybody born in the fifties or sixties or before would recognize that phrase even if you never knew what it was supposed to mean, another mythical character.

Listening to some seventies German and Dutch music before we leave Germany on Wednesday. Inga Rumpf’s Frumpy, By The Way 1972. I bought it in Lucerne in Switzerland, hard to find outside the continent. Successful in Germany in the seventies, unknown in England. There’s some great footage online. I also listened to the very hard to find George Kooymans’ solo album, Jo Jo, from 1971. Kooymans is the guitarist in Golden Earring and I found the record those 3 days we were in Amsterdam. Kooymans was 13 when he formed the band in 1961 with his 15 year old neighbour Rinus Gerritsen. They have been together for 59 years. I saw them in the seventies in Liverpool at the Stadium when Radar Love was a hit. I can still see him strutting across the stage all dressed in black with his black Les Paul, Gerritsen super cool with his Dan Electro Longhorn bass, Barry Hay singing and playing the flute and Cesar Zuiderwilk jumping over his drum kit (as you do). This concert was also where I discovered another of my fave Dutch seventies bands, Alquin, the support that night.

Ancient legends, ruined castles and seventies rock bands, what a perfect day. But for those of you that don’t go for the seventies sound and you only know one song from The Netherlands in the sixties (Venus by Shocking Blue), go and blow your mind and listen to the AMAZING Group 1850, the album is Paradise Now from 1969. You won’t be disappointed. Interestingly the cover photo is taken by Herman Kooymans? I wonder if…

There’s an ominous roar outside, the trees are bending silhouettes against an ever darkening sky. The street lamps extend over the street on long metal poles, moving the light backwards and forwards on the glossy wet tarmac. The other day it poured and blew like a hurricane for 15 minutes and then stopped unnaturally and completely. There’s two stationery cars hidden in the shadows and at the end of the street by the church someone is driving home. The village is otherwise deserted. The lights of early evening are still sparkling in the windows as people look for an excuse to stay awake, wishing for the morning and the brightness of daylight. It’s Rose Monday tomorrow and carnival in Western Germany is in full swing. All the revellers are praying for a rain and wind free day for the celebrations so the parade and the floats aren’t hindered as they were today, cancelled in parts of Cologne and Bonn. Many people are free from work tomorrow, but somehow a Sunday night never feels like a Saturday night despite the following day of leisure.

Everything is closed on Sunday in Germany, apart from the obvious, but the supermarkets are closed, so you can’t buy groceries. Garages are open, cafes, restaurants, but anything retail is closed. I suppose everyone’s at church. Hm? You are not allowed to mow your lawn in Germany on a Sunday. Whispering is allowed, but only quiet whispering. It’s mandatory rest. As recognition of the sabbath (that’s ‘the’ sabbath not Black Sabbath) has waned, Germany keeps up the tradition of Sunday being a day to slow down. It seems odd that the one day you are not at work you can’t get around your garden fixing all the things you couldn’t get to in the week because of work. Saturday is filled with the supermarket and other shopping – it takes all day. Out on Saturday night? Sunday night, well you’re back at work the next morning. How do people that lead a traditional 9-5 lifestyle ever get anything done? This is where the 4 day week comes in. Shop Saturday, fix and mow Sunday, rest Monday. Then there’s the holiday issue – it seems that in America there is no requirement to give employees any holidays at all, mostly they do, but you could work for 20 years in America and only get 10 days off plus public holidays. I wonder if this helps or hinders productivity? In my world, there are no holidays and no pension, no retirement and no job security, no guarantee of anything at all, but that’s the world of the self-employed in the field of creativity. Plus you can get lucky and can get very rich – or try so hard and get nowhere. Either way it’s worth the risk.

Gerd took a picture of the hole in the protective piece under the chassis (silent c in England) where we hit the piece of metal in the Citroen on the road yesterday. No serious damage to the workings of the car, but it’s why there’s bumper bars, you protect the body work with something in front of it and there’s something under there that protected the car underneath. These days cars seem to just crumple, I suppose that’s how they are made these days like so many things, built to bend but not to last.

The bell in the village just rang as it does all day and night. There’s something spooky about it. Something about it ringing when no one’s listening. It makes you wonder if there will come a time when no one hears it again, will we survive the bell or will it continue chiming after all living things have gone? There’s nothing more mysterious and atmospheric than a deserted village. The imagination runs riot, exploring a derelict house, a mansion with dirty windows and ripped curtains, cobwebs around the doors. Impressions of a life unknown, reliving the affect that life has had on inanimate objects. You see the vacant chair that was once occupied by a child every morning for years. The pots and pans still hang above the stove. You can hear the chatter that rang around the kitchen table in its most vibrant days. No ghosts, just shadows, distant voices and vague memories lost in time.

I’ve been hoping that I can get these ‘tour’ records back to the archive in two wheelie bags and our suitcases as we are on the train, so there’s not going to be a weight limit but we still have to haul them across Europe. It’s always a task and always worth it. Filing them away in the In Deep Music Archive whilst listening to some unlikely forgotten record or in turn a popular gem. I sometimes say to Olivia, no one in the world is listening to this album right now. As I write I’ve been listening to the Elvin Bishop Group debut from 1969 and Ben Sidran’s The Cat And The Hat from 1979, see what I mean? It’s not that they’re obscure, more just forgotten. The fans that liked them when they came out are dying out and I can’t see them being replaced by a new audience. Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, sure, but it’s not only limited pressings of unknown groups that fade into memory, it’s music that was once well known, drew a crowd, had a following. Times changed, it’s the way of things, but I am happy to preserve these treasures for someone, as yet unknown.

Driving in the German twilight, on the right, the high Rhine, on the left the grapevines for the sweet wine that’s made in this region. We are listening to one of Gerd’s CDs in the car, Sonny Terry, blind bluesy singer and harmonica player, singing songs with titles like Pepperheaded Woman and I Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog Anymore. It made me think how different eras see it all their own way. I thought of The Stooges and Iggy singing, I Wanna Be Your Dog. I’ve been catching up on a few of the albums that I bought recently since the tour ended, Paul Brett’s Sage and Hokus Pokus today. If you’re interested you can always go see the playlist:

In Deep Playlist 2020

Although the waters have receded somewhat the Rhine is still very high. You can see the line where the water reached at its peak but below it, the bottom of the trees are still underwater.

Canada geese preen themselves on the shoreline. Gulls are floating on the surface of the river, a chilly breeze leaves ripples on the driving current. The brown-hued Egyptian geese waddle in the grass near the footpath and cormorants perch themselves on half-submerged branches and fallen tree trunks. The barges still slowly crawl backwards and forwards between Switzerland and The Netherlands with their industrial cargos and national flags, the captain’s car parked at the stern of the ship (How do they get them on and off?). There’s something peculiar about the steady serenity of the slow paced boats with their rugged exterior and heavy cargo. How do they even float? How can a gargantuan craft be so silent and go about its industry so calmly?

There’s a certain way we like to drive back to the house from the shops, around a bend that is so exquisitely engineered that you hardly have to move the steering wheel. I wonder if it is in fact a perfect circle and we are in an eternal loop, unaware of our repeated ecstasy. But this time we came out of the bend to a large piece of metal lying across the road, too late to avoid it, we drove over it with a double clunk. It was like something had fallen off another car, hard to imagine here in Germany, Vorsprung durch Technik!

I played Clannad’s first album from 1973 today and Olivia recognized a couple of the traditional songs from her Irish music book for the violin. So she picked up her mandolin (that she has had no time to learn or practice) and started reading the music and playing the tunes on an instrument she doesn’t know. Impressive. She spent most of the day studying three different languages, Swedish, Portuguese and Indonesian while I watched football. Ha ha. As I said, impressive. But then we both caught up on two episodes of Picard and learned some Romulan. Impressive.

My Anekdoten bandmate Nicklas confirmed that he and his partner will definitely be coming down to Penzance on March 18th. We have a chemistry as guitar players together. It doesn’t happen with everyone you play with but it does with him. Different styles that somehow compliment easily. I never imagined I could play with a band as complex as Anekdoten, but somehow my approach to the guitar and percussion fits in with the music and the musicians, Nicklas, Jan Erik, Pete and Anna Sofi, amazing musicians – all of them. The way they effortlessly execute this difficult music and how it affects a certain audience so completely is an intriguing experience. How is music like this written? It is quite literally music from another world and it’s a privilege for an alien like me to be invited to dinner.

I’ve been told that my involvement in various different projects distracts and confuses people. I think each project brings something fresh to the next project and having different roles is inspiring to me. Surely just being the keyboard player in Bon Jovi would be boring after a while. But I suppose the money is good, the audiences are huge, the percs vast, the luxury travel, imagine the records I could buy and the building to put them in! That’s it, I’m joining Bon Jovi! Not sure what I would do? Perhaps be the translator for the Romulan tour?