Bill Nelson's Diary - December 2003

Monday, 8th December 2003 -- 11:36 AM  
Listening to what may be the final running order/track choices for the 'Plaything' album as I write these words. This is the fourth or fifth attempt at assembling the right selection. I've taken a more perverse route with this latest version, deliberately losing some of the more up-tempo pieces and concentrating on the gentler, slightly more left-field, introspective sounding ones. I've also cut back the number of tracks from 14 to12, making for a more compact listening experience, 'though many of the tracks are quite lengthy.  If this latest track-listing proves to be the one that satisfies me the most, I'm planning to master the album later this week in preparation for its manufacture. My plan is to have it available as an early exclusive for fans attending my concert at The Mick Jagger Arts Centre in Dartford on the 25th of January. What happens to it after that depends on how I feel about things. I may put it back under wraps for a while. I'm undecided as yet.  The sleeve art for 'Plaything' has been created by my friend, the renowned New York-based graphic designer Frank Olinsky whose original front cover artwork inspired my approach to this album. Frank has now taken on the entire package design and has everything finished apart from the track listing which, of course, he can't complete until I settle on the final choices.

This latest version of the album runs as follows:

1. 'The Revenge Of The Man In The Burning Ice-Cream Van'
2. 'A Prayer To Sleep With Mercurial Women'
3. 'Come To Me In My Dreams'
4. 'Beauty In A Sparkly Bra'
5. 'Nipples Of Venus'
6. 'The Embarkation Song Of The Last Fast Airship'
7. 'Luana'
8. 'Spanish Galleons Cruise The Sunrise'
9. 'Lagoon'
10. 'Lost Planet Sunset'
11. 'Six Legged Critter Singing In The Trees'
12. 'Rainclouds Over Paris Of My Dreams'

There's an improvised feel and approach to many of the pieces although some fall more into the 'instant composition' category. There's also an emphasis on sounds as much as notes, some of the guitars are heavily processed with delays and loops and sound quite keyboard-like in places. I've used my Line 6 Delay Modeller and Boss Loop Station a lot, often mis-using them to create electronic noise artefacts that distress the surface of the pieces and impart a kind of patina or 'grain'. Off setting this are more orthodox overdubs, sometimes acoustic. 'Spanish Galleons Cruise The Sunrise' features nylon strung acoustic as well as e-bow...relaxed and drifting over loop-stationed chiming electric guitars. It paints the picture suggested by the title. There are darker moments too...the first two tracks are definitely spookier pieces. There's also joy and beauty and a touch of humour too. The most poignant and yearning track is 'Rainclouds Over Paris Of My Dreams', which wouldn't sound out of place on a Channel Light Vessel album. It features slowed down, reversed guitar chords that drift ambiguously around the tune's main tonal centre. The main e-bow melody was laid down without monitoring these chords and there are shifts, anticipations and accidental juxtapositions that intentionally upset the applecart in a most delicious way. Certainly, not a track that plays by the rules. Nevertheless, it's this very 'wrongness' that gives the piece its hard to grasp, dreamlike quality. This is Emiko's favourite piece on the album and she always displays good taste.

Despite the mildly experimental edge, the album is full of melodic and thematic material, almost orchestral. In many ways, 'Plaything' is a bridge between the more retro-futurist guitar instrumentals of 'Romance Of Sustain' and the 'ambient' experimentation of my Cocteau Records years. I think it is an album that will grow in meaning the more it is listened to. Whilst its exterior is often crystalline and chrome plated, its heart is warm and rusty and overgrown with roses.  I also have many more tracks left over from this project, some of which are ideally suited to 'Romance Of Sustain Vol. 2', when I get around to assembling that proposed project. The remaining titles for future use are:

• 'Pure Joy'
• 'Walking After Midnite'
• 'Somewhere Else Is Here'
• 'Flowers Made Of Light'
• 'Hostess Twinkie Vapourised'
• 'Nearly Everyone You Know'
• 'Kingdom Of Clouds'
• 'On The Off Chance'
• 'Kissing Keeps The Candle Burning'
• 'I Remember Circus Boy'
• 'Blue Sparks Flying'
• 'The Delirious Domain Of Dr. Funkenpunk'
• 'Confessions Of A Psychedelic Dandy'
• 'The Orson Welles Memorial Sleighride'
• 'My Electrical Empire'
• 'Helios In Memoryland'

So,16 pieces sitting on the shelf, awaiting their turn. By the time I get around to dealing with them, I'll probably have recorded further material and making choices will be just as difficult as 'Plaything' has been. Perhaps some of these pieces will end up on the next Nelsonica convention CD.  'Plaything' has occupied a tremendous amount of my time of late. A hell of a lot, in fact. I really need to switch off and deal with Christmas which is rushing towards us at tremendous speed. My Christmas shopping will be all last minute, yet again. For some reason, I always seem to get busy with music and its offshoots at this time of year. Actually, it's been a busy year generally...I don't seem to have stopped. The intense creativity of the last twelve months has certainly made 2003 pass at hyper speed. A blur.

Talking of Blur, I see that Damon Albarn has just released an album of his home recorded demos which he refers to as a 'sonic scrapbook'. The reviews I've read of this are amusing in that the terminology used to describe Damon's approach is almost exactly that which I've used to describe my own approach to home recorded musical sketches over the years. I like Damon Albarn, he seems an intelligent and creative soul with a genuine motivation.  My own musical scrapbooks (I prefer the term 'sketchbooks'), have brought me enough insight and pleasure to want to encourage Damon in his experiments. Not all of his fans will understand where he's coming from but those that matter will.  Another man after my own heart is Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead who has recently released a solo album which is the soundtrack to a film by Simon Pummell called 'Bodysong.' It's encouraging to see a younger generation of rock guitarists discovering that there's more to it than just 'rockin' out' and selling chart fodder to the masses. The Art School Dance Goes On Forever, as someone once said. And so it bloody well should!

In the 'seventies, throughout my time with Be Bop Deluxe, I used Carlsbro amplifiers. The company didn't have as glamourous an image as brands like Marshall or Vox but they built very good amplifiers which were much better value for money than the 'household name' brands. I bought my first Carlsbro before I became a 'pro' musician and stayed with the brand right through my Be Bop Deluxe career, even going as far as scouring the country for spare 100 watt valve amp heads when the company stopped making the model that I used.  I bought up half-a-dozen of the discontinued heads and had them all slightly modified for strenuous on the road use.  In the early nineties, when my life was being turned around by divorce and a legal struggle to get the rights to my work returned to me, I had to sell these amplifiers to raise some much needed cash. Two of them ended up in the hands of a Be Bop Deluxe tribute band. I haven't used any guitar amp much since then, preferring to process my guitars direct to the PA system via a rack of effects. In the studio, I always go the 'direct' route.  As a result, I hadn't really been aware of the Carlsbro company in recent years and didn't realise that they were still in business until they contacted me a few months ago. They'd asked my permission to use a photograph of me in their latest catalogue of guitar amplifiers and I said that I was happy for them to do so as a past Carlsbro user. This week, they sent me one of their new products. It's a radically designed amp called 'The Tower'. Despite what the title suggests, it's as far away from a stadium 'stack' as you could get.

Also on the technical front: My previous diary entry mentioned the fact that I have many tapes of old Sony PCM F-1 recordings from the '80's which I haven't been able to access since my PCM system gave up the ghost several years ago. I was knocked out to discover that several fans have decided to remedy this situation for me and have clubbed together to buy a still-working PCM system that they had seen for sale on the internet. I should soon be able to hear all my 'lost' music again and, hopefully, piece together an album of rare, unreleased material. I will list these generous fans names on the sleeve of the album when the time comes as a token of my gratitude. What a lovely, caring bunch of people I have listening to my music!

Frost this morning, quite a severe one but sunny now. Still waiting for a central heating boiler engineer to visit and cure our home system which has been acting up again. I called the guy 9 days ago and he still hasn't turned up to do the job. He promised he'd call me today to fit it in but I've heard nothing yet. I'd better try his mobile and, if he's not going to show up again today, I'm free to go out and stretch my legs. This latest running order for 'Plaything' sounds good...could be the one! What an odd but lovely album.

Saturday, 27th December 2003 -- 10.34 AM
The day after Boxing Day: Sun low in the sky but intensely bright sunshine, long shadows, pheasants running in the fields beyond our garden.  Christmas over for another year, the shopping and eating mania subsided although I suspect the towns and cities across the country will now be overrun by bargain hunters, eager to spend the last of their money at the post-Christmas sales. Emi and I haven't ventured out from our immediate environment for the last two days, other than to enjoy a Christmas Day lunch at our neighbour's house at the end of the lane. My own shopping mania subsided on Christmas Eve when the shops finally closed their doors and the town became quieter than it had been for the last few bustling weeks. A ghostly, anti-climactic hush.  I've spent time and, unsurprisingly, an uncertain amount of money attempting to take care of Christmas presents for our family and friends. No matter how frugal I try to be, Christmas becomes more complicated and expensive with each passing year. I'm one of those obsessive types who can't simply dash around the shops buying the first thing they see. I need to look for the right present for each person, searching out special treasures and curios. I take a vain pride in my choices, nothing is bought for the sake of it, everything has to have 'something', a personal quality, otherwise I feel I've cheated.  It's not simply a matter of financial cost as I often manage to turn up some real bargains... it's more a matter of finding things that I'd be pleased to receive myself. I tend to fuss and fret over my choices until I'm sure I've found the right gift for each person. Nevertheless, the final financial total, no matter how many bargains I uncover, inevitably comes as a shock. A shock followed by a shrug: "oh, well, it's Christmas..." My experience is that it's not only 'better to give than receive' but it's much more fun too.

Emi, as usual at Christmas time, has been working late at the flower shop every night due to the season's demand for floral gifts. She's hardly had a moment for anything other than work. As a result, all the Christmas preparations, card writing and sending, gift shopping and food foraging, had fallen to me. I'd pushed and shoved my way through the increasingly desperate hordes, returning home each evening to unload various bags of gifts and food purchases from the boot of my car into the house, losing all track of time, not to mention expenditure. As, I suppose, does everyone else at this time of year. The Dickensian fantasy writ large. It's a common passion amongst my generation, although the fight to overcome one's cynicism gets tougher with age. Try to avoid the 'Bah, Humbug' bug at any cost. Sometimes though, a minor infection is inevitable. An example follows:

The atmosphere in the towns and cities I'd shopped around in fell somewhere between a Hollywood snow fantasy and an Xmas themed zombie movie...'It's A Wonderful Life' as directed by Davids Cronenburg or Lynch. I emailed Harold Budd, far away in warm and sunny Los Angeles, the following observation:  'Rabid shoppers ride the crest of  yuletide fever, stores stripped back to naked shelves. Office workers stagger late afternoon streets, bile dripping from beer-marinated tongues, foul-mouthed curses hurled at anyone victim enough to catch their hate-hungry eye. Drunken girls teetering on scuffed heels hitch miniskirts high to piss in gutter...all twisted tinsel and smeared lipstick, hissing satisfaction, eyes shot to hell. It's freezing cold but the revelers contrive to expose as much flesh as possible. Open blouses, push-up bras'...Tits are big this year.  Fat women wearing Santa hats printed with 'Merry Christmas' might just as well proclaim  'Fuck me, I'm anybody's.' Pagan lust or 21st Century desolation?  It's way before/beyond the Church's deepest dreamings.  Secret Popes watch security video footage, cocktails in hand, shaken but not stirred, aroused but never satiated. The city oozes a bleak, desperate fecundity. Drooling hordes in search of the Big Bang. Welcome to Christmas UK 2003...maybe I'll get lucky tonight.'

My own work has been shifted to late evenings, the only time left available to me. 'Plaything' was made ready for the manufactures and should be pressed and printed in time for my January 25th concert in Dartford. Frank Olinsky's artwork looks perfect and the music goes hand in hand with it. 'Plaything' is to be a limited edition pressing of 500 copies only at this stage.  I've also made a start on the music for my collaboration with Matt Howarth. I completed a six and a half minute long instrumental called 'Theme From Cynic' which sets the tone for Matt's sci-fi fable. A second piece is underway.  I have made a start on my diary editing, as I may already have noted in these diary pages, but it's ground to a halt in the orgy of eating and drinking that gripped Nelson Acres these last two days. Already, I am balloon-like, bloated and slow...My winter sins catching up with me. All kinds of lusts taking control whilst good sense and decorum go out of the window. My own modest contribution to the seasonal insanity...wouldn't want to let the side down.

Talking of lusts: I still remember my teenage Christmases, the one's where I no longer was held on the parental leash. I particularly recall the art-school Christmas parties, the cider-fuelled fumblings with girl's underthings (suspender belts, stocking tops, oh, what joy),  the kissings and cuddlings in darkened bedrooms whilst revelers bopped to blues and soul music in the lounges below. A tender Bacchanalia. Never in my parent's home, of course, but always in the houses of friends whose mothers and fathers were generously out 'somewhere.' My own parents were inevitably always in, sober and mindful of the time. As a result, I indulged my party self elsewhere but within certain time constraints. A curfew had to be observed. I generally played the dutiful son and got home by the agreed hour, though often in an embarrassingly sticky state.  I may have been a relatively shy boy but even I got lucky sometimes.  Elle and Elliot came over for lunch yesterday, another blow-out. We all played couch potatoes afterwards, watching the Portishead and Talking Heads videos I'd placed amongst my son and daughter's gifts. I was pleased that they enjoyed them. I tend to fuss over their musical education, though as discreetly as possible. Whatever influence I have has to appear invisible. A gentle sowing of dreams and potentials. It's important to adjust the balance here and there, pass on some kind of spirit of adventure.

Now...A brief respite from the Yuletide decadence and then begin again. New Year celebrations on their way. After that the real, harsh recovery. Hair shirt and wicker underpants for me.

back to the Diary index