Bill Nelson's Diary - October 2003

Wednesday , 1st October 2003 -- 9:34 PM  

Astonishingly, my sexual appetites continue to rage unabashed and unashamed. Age hath not withered them...thank God. I may be five years away from sixty but I'm still a drooling adolescent when confronted with the pleasures of the flesh. Sexiness is not dependent upon youth, nor is it youth's exclusive prerogative. My head is often turned and turned again. Luckily, Emiko thinks it's funny. And , without a doubt, it IS. Who was it that, when asked, "Now that you're old, don't you miss sex?" replied:  "Miss it?  It's like being unchained from a raving lunatic!"  Well...I can imagine what he meant but I don't particularly want to liberate myself from the lunatic quite yet, thank you very much.

Had a very pleasant meeting with Mark Hodkinson of 'Pomona' publishing yesterday to talk about turning these web-diary pages into a book. A real book that you can buy in a bookshop....you know, the kind that real authors write, like Hunter Davies whom Pomona have recently published.  I managed to stop laughing just long enough to say 'yes' before he could withdraw his offer. I could see that, for a brief moment, he realised he was dealing with a madman. Of course, I am the madman I'm chained to. That's part of my charm. We're already making moves to get the project organised and Mark seems keen to get it out in reasonably  quick time. Lots of 'reading through' it from day one to today if I'm to correct many typos and errors of various kinds. I need to make the initial foray into this territory myself but Mark will follow me once I've hacked down a few trees. It will certainly require a few sacrificial trees to provide sufficient paper for the book if we publish the whole damn lot. Some editing ahead, methinks.

Windsor concert coming up this weekend...a sell out on the cards, I've heard. Marvelous. This tour has provided a much needed tonic for me so far. Impossible to describe how important the feedback and support of the audience has been after such a long time locked away in my recording room. I feel as if I've been treat like some kind of sonic battery hen but am now suddenly liberated to enjoy the fresh air and wide open spaces long denied me. Or something like that. I overdramatise everything... Life's dull enough without adding reality to the equation. Let's have some colour, some humour, some warmth, some adventure, something we can touch and hold and squeeze and kiss and raise a glass to. All the rest can reside on the Conran coffee tables of the Sunday supplement crowd in their far too expensive apartments, lamps dimmed low, minds dulled to everything but their own flickering mirror image, icy music of nothingness whispering in the background like the windy dryness of desert sand. Barren, chaste, erased. Sterile...Give me fruitfulness, fecundity, fertility, the rich soil of love and lust and loveliness. I'm a plus person..., a yes person... Don't tell me you haven't noticed?

October 1^st already. 'Already'...the key word, the open sesame, the trick of the tongue that unlocks time. 'Already'... Leaves continue to fall... 'Already', the day wakes late and the sun is too heavy with the fruit of summer past to lift itself much higher than the horizon... 'Already'...In my eyes as I drive...Dazzling, brilliant, sustaining.

Monday, 13th October 2003 -- 8:46 PM 

Two more concerts completed since last writing. Windsor was a nice one, despite rather muddy monitoring which made for a stressful performance. In places, I completely lost where I was in relation to the backing tracks, finding myself a bar or two ahead or behind the changes. Couldn't really pick up the groove in certain pieces either, the beats being sonically blurred. A lot of guesswork going on for my part, and not always right. Nevertheless, a packed house full of enthusiastic people who really seemed to appreciate what I was attempting to do. Spent time signing albums and chatting with fans after the show. Was surprised to see an old familiar face amongst the crowd: Colin Miles (of 'See For Miles' records and one-time business partner of Mark Rye), who informed me, much to my astonishment, that he is currently in litigation with M. Rye over the demise of 'See For Miles' records. Colin said, "Mark has done the same thing to me that he did to you..."   Well, to say that I was shocked would be an understatement. Mark and Colin had been very close friends since the 'seventies. The news that their relationship has ended up in the courts is a surprise but, bearing in mind a certain person's track record, perhaps inevitable. I heard more gruesome details from Colin, which I won't go into here, but I'll just say that it confirmed my own experiences. The same old tricks. Someone seems to think that they are above the law but, if what I've heard is correct, comeuppances may be in the pipeline. Ironically, a couple of fans at the Windsor concert also told me tales of their own experiences at the hands of 'Mr Merchandising' himself, a man who is almost cartoon-like in his adherence to the 'fly-guy' stereotype. Not funny (though he thinks he is), just cynical, desperate and very sad. Poor bugger.

The day of the Windsor concert was also Emiko's 55th birthday. For the next two months I get to be her toy boy. The following day (Sunday), we had lunch at 'Le Jardin' on Covent Garden's Long Acre. 'Le Jardin' is a very pleasant seafood restaurant and one that I've mentioned before in these pages. I went for the monkfish wrapped in pancetta, as usual.  Afterwards, we had a wander around the shops but soon became bored and opted to take an earlier train home than we'd originally planned. Upon our arrival, York seemed cleaner and smarter and a tad more civilised than London's crowded and dirty West End. There was a time, in my youth, when we aspired to live in London...the myth of the magic metropolis. Not anymore. South is no longer synonymous with sophistication. Quite the opposite, in fact. How times change.

Another trip south this last weekend...all the way down to Deal, about eight miles outside Dover. A long time since I've been in that particular part of the country, probably the last time would be in the early 'eighties and then only to catch the ferry to France. I did have a holiday in the reasonably nearby little town of Dymchurch once, way back in the late 'fifties when I was a pre-teen schoolboy in short trousers and skinny as a rake. My mother and father rented a holiday bungalow there and I remember a well-stocked model shop in the centre of town where I bought various plastic aeroplane kits to assemble back at the bungalow each evening whilst my parents listened to the 'steam' wireless. It's all in the autobiography, of course. The 'fifties, for all their austerity-driven drabness, have provided me with the most vivid and colourful memories of my life. What that says about the rest of it I dread to think.

Dymchurch (to the west of Dover and Folkstone), seemed rather quaint in those far off days and my recollections are pleasant ones. Nevertheless, when I mentioned this to some local people at Deal, they looked at me in horror, wondering why my family would choose to take a holiday in such a boring place. I have no idea, unless it was an excuse to allow us our only ever foreign excursion: a one day trip to France on the ferry from Folkstone to Calais. It was the only time that my parents ever ventured abroad, a terribly exotic thing to do in those days, particularly for a family with such working class roots. I still have a photograph that my father took of me on the ferry, a cheap 'box brownie' camera slung around my neck, standing next to my mother and my (at that time) very young brother Ian. My grandmother Ethel was with us too, much to my father's chagrin. They rarely got along. My mother tells me that we drove to Dymchurch from Wakefield without even having pre-arranged any accommodation. The bungalow that we ended up renting was found for us by the local tourist agency, once we'd arrived. I can recall a miniature steam railway that ran through Dymchurch too. Just the sort of thing to capture the imagination of a post-war British schoolboy such as myself.

Last Saturday, in the not so romantic now of this 21st Century, the Nelsons (Emi and I), set off at 9:45 AM from York and headed south to Deal. We arrived, one car, three trains, a bus ride plus a walk carrying luggage, later at Deal. It was around 4 : 30 PM. A long, tiring trip. The venue was called 'The Astor Theatre' but its interior resembled a somewhat dilapidated school hall with peeling walls and well-worn floorboards. A sense of faded, genteel shabbiness about the place and certainly one of the less glamourous bookings on the tour. It turned out that the venue's patron is Sir Norman Wisdom. As I'm quite partial to Norman's old films, particularly the one where the two rival dairy companies compete for the local milk round, I tried to join in with the spirit of the occasion and trust that all would be well, despite pre-sales of only sixty tickets. I probably played to larger numbers of people in my own school hall, in the late1950's when I gave my first ever concert as a guitarist at Ings Road Secondary Modern School in Wakefield.  Was I eleven years old?  Anyway, it was a scary night but a couple of schoolgirls, who I'd never had the nerve to talk to, loved it and rushed to congratulate me after my performance. This definitely gave me the incentive to persevere with my fledgling musical life! Again, I've documented this particular incident in my autobiography. One of these days, someone might get to read it.  

In Deal, John, the venue's promoter, couldn't have been nicer or more helpful, a thoughtful and sincere man who kindly gave Emi and myself a lift to the bed and breakfast accommodation so that we could check in before things got underway. Nevertheless, the evening gradually blossomed into a series of rather surreal (and in retrospect, somewhat hilarious), events.  There was a dance class in operation when we first arrived at the venue so we were asked to wait for them to finish. Five PM was the time that we were given for the 'all clear'.  Sure enough, at 5 PM the class appeared to disband but a handful of students lingered. We started to unpack our equipment. On the stage was a splendid and quite new grand piano. I wondered whether I could incorporate it into the show, using it to improvise over one of the guitar loop pieces. At 6 PM, I sat at the piano to try it out and check its tuning. As soon as I gently rippled out a chord or two, the dance teacher, a young woman who obviously enjoyed her authority, shouted to me: "Would you be quiet! I'm still trying to rehearse!"  I stopped abruptly, surprised by the belligerent tone of her voice. I looked at my watch...past six o'clock....I thought we were supposed to be OK. from 5 onwards?  Obviously 'Madame' disagreed. Not that, in the end, it mattered. The piano was destined to remain silent throughout the evening's performance as the in-house sound man couldn't get the piano microphones to send any signal to the out-front mixing desk. My personal soundman, Ian Thorpe, was trying to keep  his blood pressure under control, not helped by a blowsy, busty blonde who had entered the hall and chastised Ian for not being able to hear the piano. Similar problems with the outputs from my guitars to the direct injection box of the PA system meant that I had to forgo my on-stage guitar monitor-mixer. These kind of technical problems can be worrying, especially when they occur at a such fundamental level. Luckily, Ian  had a couple of spare DJ. boxes with him which at least enabled us to connect the guitars to the PA. in basic fashion, otherwise there would have been no way for the show to proceed.

Another problem to solve was that of video projection. The venue had a large screen which was stored at the rear of the stage. Finding the best way to set this up proved time consuming. It took several of us to manhandle the screen from it's storage position, desperately trying not to hit the ceiling lights or damage the proscenium arch. It was physical work. The attempt resembled Eric Sykes' film, 'The Plank' (but in our case the 'plank' was a screen and over twenty feet long). David Brown and Bob Humphries, who had kindly come along to help with the merchandise stall, also lent their muscle to the task. (Although David's most intimate muscle was still recovering from a certain little snip.)  We eventually arrived at a position that would allow the audience to view both the screen AND myself without too much obstruction from the projector stand. Bob bravely/foolishly volunteered to be projectionist for the evening, operating the DVD player using its remote control from his position in the audience. Good man.

Whilst understandably nervous about his responsibility, Bob did a fine job of stopping and starting the 'Dream Worlds' video throughout my performance, even though there was a confusing moment when 'Flashlight Dreams' started from somewhere in the middle of the disc instead of from the beginning! All part of the evening's chain of mishaps but not nearly as distracting as the busty blonde woman, previously noted and now in the audience, who attempted to walk through a table, sending everything crashing to the ground whilst I was in the middle of a guitar solo. Nor as annoying as the table full of young men and women who talked loudly and rudely all the way through the entire show...I could even hear them above the level of my monitors and found it extremely disconcerting, my concentration suffering as a result. At one point, I felt like telling them to leave and go to the pub if they wanted to chat but I just put my head down and tried to get on with things. I still don't understand why they were there. They seemed to show little interest in what I was doing. Still, with such low attendance figures, I needed everyone I could get to make the place feel alive.

Astonishingly, two of the girls from that particular table came up to me after the show and enthusiastically offered me "a quick shag" (their words), in the dressing room if I would give them my hat. As I would require at least an hour or two to get my 'hat's worth ' of enjoyment from these rather boozy young gals, I declined their offer. The words 'quick' and 'sex' when combined, are not particularly satisfying for either side...I usually don't like to rush my food. (Salacious chuckle...) Anyway, I'm already well provided for in the knee trembling department, thank you very much, being very happily married and all that. Oddly, it was like a sleazier replay of my (above mentioned) schooldays concert in Wakefield. Perhaps I should be glad that the girls were interested in something, even if it wasn't the music. I only hope, for their  sake, that their sexual generosity was as tongue in cheek as my own response to it, 'though who's tongue would be in what cheek allowed for some mind boggling ruminations as I drifted off to sleep at our B&B that night. Still, whatever else of the Deal concert might end up far from recall, that particular proposition will forever raise a smile (if nothing else), in my memory. What a pity the girls didn't have the audacity to actually listen  to the music I was laying before them... That's where the real  flirtation begins.

One very pleasant aspect of the concert was that my cousin Ian Boyle was able to attend. Ian is the younger of two cousins (the other is Walter), who are the sons of my late father's late sister, Nell. Both are now in their sixties. I had lost touch with them both for many, many years but was extremely glad to re-acquaint myself with them a couple of years ago. Ian is a jazzman (a trumpet and flugelhorn player), and also a fine artist/painter. He and Walter were heroes of mine when I was a kid. As Ian now lives about ten miles from Deal and the concert provided him with the opportunity to see me play for the first time, I was feeling quite nervous. I knew I would have to receive his judgment after the concert.

Ian is a lovely, warm-hearted man and I'm sure he would have told me that he'd enjoyed the show, even if he hadn't. However, I sensed that he really had  enjoyed himself. We were able to spend a little time together, once the autograph duties (and the randy girls), had subsided. Ian and his two friends were in cheery and positive mood making Emi and I feel loved and welcome. I'm still trying to find a way for Ian to play some flugelhorn on one of my recordings. I may yet get this together before this year is out.

One more person appeared at the aftershow 'meet n' greet'. A face that was familiar but obviously older and a little changed. I couldn't put a name to it. It turned out to be Colin Mawston, involved in the very early Be Bop days and someone who is perhaps not the most, how can I put this, 'missed' person in my historical parade of heroes and villains. It turns out that he now lives in the Deal area. Hopefully, time has mellowed the situation but I still felt somewhat uneasy, being suddenly confronted in this way. There is a certain amount of residual bitterness, a connection that carries negative memories. Well, despite these feelings, I tried to bear in mind that he had made the effort to come to the concert, so maybe some hatchet burying was in order. I did my best to be affable but could sense the edge within the conversation. Colin's long standing wife, who was with him, showed no such restraint and was as disingenuous and sweet as she always was. Nice to see that they've stayed together all these years.

Perhaps it is simply a part of growing older, of people seeking solace or closure or a summing up of their lives, but these last few years have strangely provided me with the opportunity to re-acquaint myself with persons or places from my past, Mike Levon and the Holy Ground crew, The Duke Of Cumberland, Bob Wiczling, Nick Dew, Colin Miles. Colin Mawston (both, ominously, with the initials CM), there are others, of course (recently Bob Ironfield from 'The Teenagers' band that I was part of during the 'sixties), but the post dinner glass of wine is now taking its toll and my ability to recall names is fading along with my enthusiasm for continuing with this particular diary entry.

One more thing to add. After the Deal concert, on the following day (Sunday), Emi and I broke our journey north by spending the afternoon at the Tate Modern gallery, on the South Bank of the Thames. (Excellent Paul McCarthy exhibition, by the way.) We had a very pleasant lunch there and then spent a couple of hours browsing the well stocked bookshop in the basement. I bought a book called 'Characters Of Fitzrovia' which documents the artists and eccentrics that have inhabited that particular area of London throughout history. Also, a biography of Wyndham Lewis and, best of all, a DVD of Ken Russell's absolutely wonderful early 'sixties BBC TV documentary dramatisation of the life of Elgar. This, I think, has only just become available but I recall seeing it, when it was once repeated, during the 'seventies. Its images and atmosphere have stayed with me ever since and I am extremely glad to have found the DVD release of it. In my opinion, it far outstrips many of the more lurid, big budget features of Ken Russell's later career. It is lyrical, romantic, poetic and probably far  too idealised but...I loved it when I first saw it and tonight I will watch it again and introduce Emiko to its gentleness.

Next week, Wavendon. A great venue, I'm told. Then the final concert of the tour, Leeds City Varieties. I hope that the stories I've heard about the Leeds promoter John Keenan advertising the concert as an 'old favourites' show are not true. If they are, he will have been misleading people in a very calculated way. 'The Romance Of Sustain' tour is purely instrumental and certainly not a 'greatest hits' package. It has its own perfectly legitimate merits and has no reliance on the nostalgia market. The old favourites (and new wonders), tour comes next year.

Now I have to set up my DVD player and watch the Elgar film.

Listen to and download Bill Nelson MP3 files at 
http://www.mp3.com/billnelson

Monday 27th October 2003 -- 12 PM 

Well, 'The Romance Of Sustain' tour finally concluded last Wednesday in Leeds at the legendary City Varieties theatre. The last time I had been in this wonderful old building, the only surviving and still operating Music Hall in England, was in the 1960's when I was an art student. A couple of my fellow students and myself had attended an afternoon matinee show. We were actually meant to be out on a sketching trip, gathering material to work up into paintings back at the college later, but instead used our freedom to check out the surreal variety of acts performing at the old music hall. There was, if I remember correctly, a troupe of performing poodles, each one dyed a different pastel colour, jumping through hoops and balancing on beach balls. There was also a kind of clown act, a man playing the accordian, a comedian of the 'Ooh, missus!' variety and, to our hormonal adolescent delight, a woman dancing naked, her 'naughty bits' covered only by a pair of large feathered fans which she moved teasingly around her ample body. The feathers fluttered, flicked and flirted in sync with a rickety piece of accompanying music, never quite revealing the more private aspects of her charms. Why we found this innocent act of titillation exciting is hard to understand. As art students we were used to seeing naked life models on a regular basis...We had to spend several hours each week gazing at the nude female form, trying to draw or paint it to the best of our ability. Perhaps the fan dancer was more provocative, if somewhat less explicit.

The City Varieties hasn't really changed at all, other than it now presents the likes of Beth Orton, Kelly Joe Phelps and myself instead of novelty acts. The decor is the same, the ancient Victorian plaster work is crumbling and the scarlet and gold velour trim is worn and faded but it creates a magical atmosphere. A suitable haunt for the ghosts of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Houdini who had all performed there in days gone by.

The place was packed to the rafters as the 'Romance' show had sold out several days before my performance. I suspect that this was partly due to the fact that promoter John Keenan had deliberately and misleadingly advertised the concert as consisting of 'old favourites' when in fact it was nothing of the sort. I had gone to great pains to make sure that what little promotion there was for the tour stated clearly that these were solo instrumental shows and had nothing to do with the Be Bop Deluxe era whatsoever. That John Keenan chose to suggest to the potential audience that things would be otherwise was more than naughty of him, it put me in a very difficult position with those members of the audience who had come along with ill-informed expectations. I suffered a (thankfully small) number of hecklers throughout the performance. "Play something of your own!", was apparently one of the calls. Obviously, this particular person hadn't realised that the material I was playing was my own. Where had they been these last 25 years?  I tried to ignore them but it was really off-putting and my concentration  slipped on more than one occasion. Still, the vast majority of the audience seemed to approve of the music on offer and I was fortunate enough to receive a loud and enthusiastic response. I threw in a vocal  (a voice and acoustic guitar rendition of 'Wonder Of The Moment') as my final encore partly as a sop to the die-hard fundamentalists in the crowd but also to surprise those more familiar with the instrumental material. I hope that those members of the audience hearing the instrumental material for the first time were able to find something to enjoy amongst it. Whilst some of the pieces might seem difficult to certain fans of the '70's music, there are still plenty of references to earlier things of mine. In fact, the fundamentalist Be Bop fan would probably be better equipped to spot the references in a piece such as 'For Stuart' than a more recent fan of my more 'pure' or 'art' music.

Of course, I intend to really  satisfy the older Be Bop die-hards next year when I put together a concert tour featuring a band. The idea is to celebrate the 30 years anniversary of the release of Be Bop Deluxe's 'Axe Victim' album. The tour's working title is 'Be Bop Deluxe And Beyond.'  There will be a vast array of music performed, something from each era, plus some new material. My plan is for a three hour show, if all goes according to plan. It will be a very broad and colourful canvas. For myself, these divisions of past and present, vocal and instrumental, solo and band, mainstream and avant, composed and improvised, are of no great consequence. The entire thing is all one constant flow, all embracing and part of the same vision. I have no urge to compartmentalise the music, to serve it up in the accepted tribal colours of preconceived genres and so on. As regular readers of this diary can confirm, I detest being shoved into whatever categories are convenient to either audience or industry. If there's one thing I'd like to achieve with my work it's the broadening of my audience's minds (and my own in the process). I like the idea of a music that says 'yes', a positive thing, not divisive or narrow or laden with desperate attempts to appeal to either the philistine or the snob. It's music for people who are alive to the possibilities of a liberated aesthetic, alive to the moment and unfettered by the pop-cultural sales pitch. At least, that's what I hope for.

After the Leeds show, several invited friends and colleagues went to Bar 88 International Cuisine Restaurant in Eastgate to relax. My plan was to say thank you to Ian Thorpe (front of house engineer on the tour), Dave Standeven(my acting guitar tech), plus Alan Myers, Garry Nicholls and David Brown who had helped me out in various ways throughout the tour. My manager Richard Chadwick had also traveled up from London to attend the concert and was also invited to the soiree, as was Ian and Paul Gilby from 'Sound-On-Sound' magazine. The restaurant had offered to stay open late to accommodate us all.

It seemed that there were a few others at the party though, who hadn't originally been on the invited list. I didn't object too much as everyone was supposed to be taking care of their own tab, excepting those who I'd decided to treat when the bill paying part of the evening came around. Unfortunately, when that time came, it seems that several people had deliberately left without paying their way and they weren't the people I'd chosen to look after. I found myself presented with a collection of unpaid bills totaling one hundred and seventy nine pounds but had no idea who I had ended up paying for.  Some of the people I'd meant to treat had actually paid their own bills and those who I hadn't intended to cover had left me to pick up the tab. The ironic thing was that the only food that Emiko and I had ordered was one plate of noodles and a side-salad which we'd shared... People elsewhere at the table were ordering starters and main courses. Anyway, I paid the various bills with as much good grace as I could muster and Emi drove us wearily home. A lesson learned, as they say.

Since then, I've tried to relax a little but relaxing isn't my style. I have enough projects lined up to take me through the next twelve months, so the pressure isn't exactly off. Next on the agenda is the editing of my diaries in preparation for their publication in book form. I have yet to begin this task and need to pump up my enthusiasm for the technical aspect of the job. This means checking for grammatical and stylistic deficiencies, cutting out any potentially libelous references to people or companies and chopping the whole thing down quite a bit in size. Oh, I'm supposed to add explanatory footnotes too.

Also competing for my attention is my collaboration with Matt Howarth who has now completed the story and illustrations for the comic-book that I'm to soundtrack. The story is called 'The Last Of The Neon Cynics.' In early November, I'm to spend some time working with Paul Sutton-Reeves, searching my archives for information to go into his forthcoming book about my work. It's due for publication next year. Paul needs to carry out some interviews with me too.

Besides the above, there is a great deal of preparation for next year's band tour. I need to set things in motion in terms of venues, rehearsals, choice of material, technical requirements, musicians, transportation, publicity and so on. Plus, I want to write and record a band-oriented album to accompany the tour. (There will be new material as well as lots of old favourites in the show.) Luckily, we seem to have been blessed with the offer of sponsorship from a couple of quarters, particularly from 'Sound-On-Sound' magazine who have been tremendously supportive, so I think we're in with a good chance of presenting something special to the audience. I'm genuinely excited about the possibilities. It could be a dream come true.

One more solo live performance this year though: This coming Friday, in fact, when I perform for my pal Steve's 40th birthday party. It will be a cut-down version of the 'Sustain' tour set.  The venue is to be a local wine-bar/restaurant. What the birthday party audience will make of my ambient-avant noodlings is another matter...it's not exactly in the Kylie and Robbie neck of the woods, after all.  I can hear the comments now..."Who is that strange old man in the corner with those droning guitars and flickering screens?"  "That's Bill and that's art..." someone will, hopefully, reply. My concession to the party will be to wear jeans , cowboy boots and a '50's rockabilly shirt. I may just play the more up-tempo pieces from my set too. Music for martians to dance to, three legs and all that...

Saturday and Sunday were spent with Emiko. We visited Howarth on Saturday and Saltaire on Sunday. A fan waved cheerily at us as we ate our lunch at 'Salt's Diner'. Fame at last. I bought some nice chunky, waxy, coloured pencils from the gallery shop plus a graphite stick. I'm always inspired to draw or paint whenever I visit a gallery. Whether I'll find time to do so is another matter entirely.

As soon as we got home, I went up to my recording room and did some more work on the sequel to the 'Romance Of Sustain' album. Two new tracks recently completed have been titles 'Pure Joy' and 'Flowers Of Light.' The prospect of making new music always triumphs over dealing with more mundane tasks. That's just the way it goes.

Now I'm away into town to meet my son Elliot. He borrowed my loopstation guitar gizmo this weekend for a Honeytone Cody demo session. I'll need it for this coming Friday and for the latest recordings.  Clocks went back yesterday so the days now feel much shorter. It gets dark around 5pm. Conducive to work, though. I like to feel enveloped and cozy in my little studio, all dark and misty outside. Just me and the music, happy together.

On to November 2003

back to the Diary index