It seems that we have some kind of groundwater issue in the back room at The Archive. Oddly, the front is above street level and the back is below street level. In the back, water seems to have got under the boards we put on the back room floor. Aussie Pete, who has been checking in for us, said it was squishy, not a good look for a floor. A little awkward since we are in Texas and won’t be back till the end of February. Pete is going to look at taking the boards up, see if we can rescue them and then we must consider dealing with the floor in another way and we will have to talk to the landladies about that when we get back. It will be the room with all the books for The Archive, so it needs to be really dry. Annoying news.
We were in the studio today with Jed, working on Space Summit songs. Jed didn’t look too worse for wear after his mega drive from Minneapolis. We began with a tricky song with lots of layers of violins. It took all day, laying down lines, doubling them, harmony lines, it’s quite a process. We managed to get to two more violin songs done, but they were simpler – we’ll start another one with lots of layers tomorrow.
I keep on waking up, going into the shower and looking out of the window into another overcast sky with rain and gloom. I wouldn’t be bothered if I was in downtown Rotherham because I would expect it there for months on end, but in Texas, even in January, you expect sunlight – and raccoons.
I woke up this morning before the studio to do a sesh with Bob in Boston and I’m trying to do that as many days as needed before the studio. If you are waiting to hear back from me about anything, I’m trying, I’m 24/7 in the studio pretty much till the end of February.
Music today has been East Glaswegians The Marmalade’s debut album There’s a Lot of It About (1968). In contrast to the Beatles’ album of the same year, half the album is covers of American hip songs, the other half English sixties pop. The original songs are great, the covers record company pressure, they would have been better off being allowed to release the less pop songs they must have had, but now they are consigned to history as a forgotten sixties harmony group. Still, they were there to have hits, probably in their minds as much as management and the label and others wrote some of their original songs. Having said that, they had a big hit in the seventies with the self-penned Reflections of My Life, which Jed played in the car on the way to pick up dinner – that’s the connection.
Check out Lovin’ Things (UK No. 6) and another self-penned song, I See the Rain (a hit in The Netherlands and Jimi Hendrix’s fave tune of 1967).