Back in the studio today, working with Salim on his Salim & The Philistines record. There have already been two guitarists doing their thing, one of which (Joe Reyes) I worked with whilst he was in town, the other, Chris Holt, I don’t know so well, so I left that to Salim who does know him well. But today was my turn and I went in to listen and see what I could play on. So, I played the 12-string Crockenbacker on one song, a long involved arpeggio, intermittent tremolo and sprangs. It suited one aspect of what I do really well, result, but then it was time to go to see the superb owls.
Superb Owl Day in America is big and if you sit in front of the television, you and millions of others get to see some really superb owls. They were quite exciting today, leaving their flight till the last couple of minutes of their roost. Their plumage was brighter than most superb owls, especially the red ones, who seemed to be the happier flock. In between there were adverts that cost 7 million dollars for 30 seconds, the superb owls didn’t bat an eyelid, neither did the bats.
I directed Sarah to the place on the roof where the dead bird lay, but it was gone – eaten or carried away by some other creature that had it for breakfast. Lots of wildlife around here, the squirrels are almost as fascinating as the pickup trucks, it’s quite posh around here and for fun we counted how many pickup trucks there were in the last 90 seconds before getting to Sarah’s house, there were ten, more than there were squirrels, strangely these houses are the equivalent of Porsches but in Texas, the pickup seems to be the face you want to show to other squirrels.
Olivia came back on the bus from Houston after seeing Itzhak and she commented on the fact that he’s getting on (we noticed too) and you can hear it in his playing, but he only played on the first piece and conducted for the rest of the night, probably best as the accuracy and the intonation aren’t what they used to be – he’s 78.
Music today has been the second album by Peter Green‘s Fleetwood Mac – Mr. Wonderful (1968). Recorded live in the studio, it’s a document of the purist blues trip they were on at the time, recording it live being part of the plan. It’s a pure blues album, so don’t go there if you don’t get it. Having said that, there’s a lot of love across the board for their 1968 instrumental single Albatross which did not appear on this album.