Time to drive to Maryland but first Jeanne was showing me where someone had left a pile of cassette tapes on the street for people to take. Apparently, a lot had gone already since the previous day but I did take two sealed blank Maxell tapes as I like to get ideas for songs down on cassette at home. The tapes that were still there were seventies artists, I imagine recorded from albums (and meticulously labelled) in an effort to have as much music as possible. The albums you bought were one thing but taping your friends’ albums was an affordable way to increase your collection. Not good for the artist financially but no one can ever afford every cool record that gets released, this way at least you got to spread the word and maybe buy the band’s next album on vinyl because you had a chance to listen to the tape a few times and become a fan. It’s like bootlegs, for all the hoo-hah about the artist not getting paid, it was only the true fans that ever bought them, and they had every album you made anyway, we liked the bootleggers for giving us more material. If the quality was dodgy (and sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t), you didn’t care, you loved it anyway. I’m not sure how many bootleggers got rich.

The trip down to Maryland was long and scary, not least because the Starbucks we stopped at on the highway had no espresso, no cream cheese for the bagels and no brown sugar for the oatmeal – the next one had the cream cheese but not the bagels, haha. The gods of weather and breakfast were against us from the start. We were trying to get down to meet sessioneer NJ Brian near Cherry Hill in South Jersey because he had my Seagull and was lending me another 12-string for the house concert at Tery and Jen’s in Frederick. The only problem was the traffic, the tolls and the accident that had us stopped for an hour on the highway. We were late but Brian was able to meet us in a Wawa car park anyway, with not two but three guitars. he brought me his Taylor and his Takamine 12-strings to choose from which I did later on.

Darkness fell and rain started to fall heavily making visibility difficult. There were trucks tearing down the highway into the blackness at seventy miles an hour, the roads were dimly lit and the reflection of the headlights on the wet black tarmac from the cars coming towards us made the whole second half of the trip precarious. We were originally trying to get to Tery and Jen’s at 4.30 but it was closer to 6.30 when we arrived, at least we were in one piece.

Lots of good homemade food helped as we met the friends and family that were there to see us and hear us. This house concert was way overdue, it was part of a pledge for the campaign for the second MOAT album Poison Stream from 2019 paralysed by the pandemic. Finally, we were here to honour the pledge. I chose the Takamine over the Taylor as my second guitar, a nice night with friends and music lovers, thanks Tery and Jen for having us and for all the support. By the time everyone had left and we’d had a last chat with our hosts and a welcome cuppa, we were pulling into the hotel car park at 2 AM. We checked in and I blogged, as you do.

Music today was Robert Wyatt’s Greatest Misses (2004/2020). Originally only available in Japan on CD in 2004, Domino finally released it on vinyl in 2020. I love Robert Wyatt, I couldn’t leave this album behind, thanks to Andy and George at Rough Trade NYC for having it.

Music Of The Daze

Question? What do you do in New York if you are not going to see a Broadway show? Answer? You go to the New York City Ballet at the Lincoln Center. So we did just that and went with Ahad of Afridi/Willson-Piper fame and Nurtaç of amazing person fame. Take thyself to the streaming sites and listen to the album or go to Bandcamp and purchase a download. We walked from the final Path train station at thirty-three and a third street to sixty-first and Western avenue where we were meeting Nurtaç and Ahad, that’s quite a hike on a cold day but the pace kept us warm and the bulging, buzzing and burgeoning early Saturday night New York streets kept our minds occupied as we sucked in the culture, unfiltered.

Earlier in the day we had walked into Jersey City to pick up a Turo car. This is a car that you hire from a private person. You don’t need a credit card (we don’t have one) which you need for the established companies so this is our only option. It’s all very modern, we went to the car park under his apartment building, found the car and took six photos of it from various angles which we then had to upload, this was supposed to unlock the car, it didn’t work. So, Olivia called the owner and he opened it remotely (just as impressive in my book). We parked, we left for the ballet.

The ballet was four ballets in one, Tchaikovsky/Allegro Brillante, Pärt/Liturgy, Gounod/Walpurgisnacht and Stravinsky/The Firebird. It was beautiful, the high art of ballet, the magic, the skills, the choreography and the music and the atmosphere of the David H. Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center, oh yes, and great seats. Afterwards, we walked through the legendary streets of New York, past Central Park, then Columbus Circle, places I know from having a management office nearby in the distant past.

Eventually, we came to Sixth Avenue where we said goodbye to Ahad and Nurtaç. We walked down to thirty-three and a third street via a sandwich shop, where I talked to a Mexican lad from Oaxaca. Olivia stopped off for a burrito, I waited outside where a man approached me for a ‘donation’ in the Year Of The Rabbit. My explanation that I was cashless because my wife was in charge, amused him greatly.

Music today has been Estonian composer Arvo Pärt‘s Fratres (from Tabula Rasa), turned into a ballet (Liturgy) by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

Music Of The Daze

Waking up in Jersey City half an hour after we are usually in the studio. Jeanne told us there was no hot water and it seems that I was the cause, going to bed the night before, bleary-eyed after a long day, I left the tap on. Hot water came back as soon as we realised what had happened but not in time for us to get out of the house and into Manhattan. It was a slow start and all the plans were running away from us as the fingers on the clock span around so fast it only took a minute for an hour to fly by. What exactly is a New York minute? This from the Urban Dictionary: “A New York minute is an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it’s the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn. It appears to have originated in Texas around 1967. It is a reference to the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorkers’ lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.” Interesting seeing that Texas is the place we have just left, I’m not sure I agree.

We took the Path train to 33rd Street (or thirty-three and a third street as I call it). Two heavily geared-up transit cops were hovering over the seats I wanted to sit at so I asked if we could sit there and they said “sure” and moved away. They have their belts with all this stuff: whistles and torches and gloves and batons, handcuffs and that nasty-looking gun on the hip. They were off the train at the next stop and we were soon alighting and were quickly up the stone steps into the street on 6th Avenue. We stopped at a coffee shop and immediately got talking to two women from Argentina. “Then you’re sitting on the boulevard, with a girl from Argentina”. They were sisters having a fiftieth birthday holiday for one of them. One of them was a teacher and had heard of the Argentinian seventies band Vox Dei – but didn’t like rock music, haha.

Me ol’ mate Craig called me from Nashville whilst we were having a sushi snack and admiring a young fellow’s high leather boots (they had pockets). He took off his sunglasses to reveal blue eyeshadow and a lot of rouge, I just had to talk to him, so I went and told him how great his boots were, he was humbled by the compliment. I had a long chat with Craig, he and his wife Yuriko own a restaurant in Nashville (Peninsula, try it, it’s different). Craig has played guitar live with me before and was in a band called Maplewood in NYC which is where I know him from. We decided that Rick Rubin’s beard wasn’t real.

We walked up to Rough Trade which is next to Radio City Music Hall where we saw the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes (an amazing show if you like old-fashioned entertainment). I’d ordered two hard-to-find reissue Mars Volta albums last time I was in the city, Frances the Mute (2005) and De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003). Andy in the store recognised me when I came in and immediately knew what I was there for, but he couldn’t find the albums for ages. He called George who I know from the Brooklyn store for help and spent a good deal of time searching but found them in the end, they were secretly stashed in an odd corner, thanks for the effort Andy. I also bought a Henry Cow album, Unrest (1974). It was on an American label, us record collector types like that kind of thing.

Finally, it was getting dark and we had a brainstorm, let’s go and see a Broadway musical, so we did. We checked to see what was on and decided on A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond musical, it was a two-for-one ticket and yes we knew all the songs. I met him once in a studio in LA. I was listening to Sticky Fingers and he came into the lounge from the studio next door and said, “What’s this, Dylan?” – “No,” I said, “The Stones, Jagger/Richards, Sticky Fingers” – “Ah, ok,” he grunted and left the room, hah, what a thrill to actually have an interaction with the man, and a musical interaction at that. The man who played him in the show, Will Swenson, totally had his voice, he was made for the role. The real Neil Diamond is 82 in three days. He has retired from touring as he has Parkinson’s Disease. The show was a hoot.

Music today has been Henry Cow’s Unrest (1974), experimental, progressive, a bit jazzy and odd, what more could you want as a contrast to Neil Diamond, enjoying both in the context of their separate skills.

Music Of The Daze

Although Crosby’s death dominated Thursday’s headspace yesterday, I hadn’t become aware of it till we were sitting at Dallas/Fort Worth airport waiting for our plane that was delayed for nearly three hours. Olivia had read it online and told me as I returned from a wander. I know there are so many born in the forties who are going to be leaving us fast, McCartney, Ringo, Jagger, Richards, Dylan and many more who I like that are not considered legends and not everyone has heard of. Some of these legends (they’re all legends to me) we grew up with were born in the thirties – Ian Hunter is 83, Bill Wyman is 86, John Mayall is 89. These fellows were born before World War II had started in September of 1939. The fact that they are still with us is at least surprising. I suggest you go and listen to their music now before they leave us to join Crosby and Beck who have sadly both left us in the last ten days.

We flew United, it was very calm, we had an extra bag of luggage but Brian had taken my Seagull as I will be able to pick it up from him on Sunday in south New Jersey when we are on our way down to Frederick, Maryland. Why are we going to Frederick, Maryland? We had an Indiegogo album campaign for MOAT’s Poison Stream and one of the perks was a house concert, then the pandemic came. We’ve been waiting for an opportune moment to play and Sunday is it.

Texas waved us goodbye with a beautiful blue sky, a warm breeze wafting through the streets and the sun sat majestically in the sky. We went to see Carron in the main house for breakfast before we left. We hadn’t had much chance to see our hosts Carron and her English husband Ed, we live in a world where everyone is busy and between different hours and different jobs, never the twain shall meet. The opposite weather greeted us in New Jersey, we arrived in a massive rainstorm, the plane shook and the shock of the landing when I was listening to some mellow moment on my iPod took me back to the cold reality of the north.

Deplaning is always chaos as is getting the Uber from the airport but this word ‘deplaning’ is odd, is it from ‘dismount’? Can you ‘decar’, ‘decafé’, ‘detrain’ even? As we waited for the Uber, the rain came down like metal bolts from the heavens, the lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled around us, all this is why we were delayed in the first place. We arrived at the new terminal at Newark, very nice except outside the gaps between the new paving stones are exactly the same size as the wheels on your case, perfect for getting them stuck.

Music today has been that classic record from Crosby, If I Only Could Remember My Name (1971). What? You don’t have it? Whilst listening and buying The Stones, The Beatles, Dylan, Mayall, Hunter, and Mott the Hoople, get that one too. Then start on the artists you have never heard of – while they are still here.

Music Of The Daze

Last day in the studio today, not just the final day of Brian’s Valley of Salt project but also the last day in Texas till I’m not sure when. It’s been quite a trip working on sessioneer Brian’s record, sessioneer Fred’s record and the mystery record as well as doing some live shows with Salim. It’s been so good working with the “Dallas wrecking crew”, John, Jason, Rich, David, Paul, Joe, Kevin and all the musicians who came in to play the weird instruments, the oboe, the accordion, the trumpet, the cello, the kids choir, the gospel singers, and Olivia singing and playing violin. Salim and Sarah making it happen with the studio and the shows. I never imagined that I could be so closely involved with such a cool bunch of talented people in Texas, Liverpool to Dallas, really? Thank you all.

The regularity of the studio and the habit of the coffee shop had them making my drink before I ordered it today. We’re just here for some weeks, imagine if you’ve been a regular for ten years. You might know the people behind the counter better than anyone, talking every day about the world, and sharing the latest news. I wonder if people often marry those who make them their coffee in the morning, purely because they really get to know each other and become so familiar with each other that they propose.

We left the studio tonight at midnight to the sound of gunshots. Brian had gone, it was just John, Olivia closing up the studio and me outside looking up at the stars, the magic of the night shattered by the reality of the street. We took an Uber home, the driver thought Portugal was a town he hadn’t heard of in Germany. The stray cats in the yard were running through the cacti, the friendly possum was close by after a sighting last night and clearly, there were other animals out in the street.

It’s been quite a trip, as we head into our last week in America. The next musical adventure will be the British dates in March as well as getting back into some regular seshes before those dates start. We also have a whole lot of situations to sort out in February including Ariel’s engine and an issue with our flat in Portugal. Planning the year is the only way to get things done, although in my mind I live in a random universe, a contradiction.

Music today has been ZZ Top‘s Tejas, of course as a musical mainstream going-away present. I did find out that “Tejas” means friends in the dying Native American language Caddo, the origin of the name Texas. In 1997, there were just 25 speakers of the language.

Music Of The Daze