I was up earlier today and out before dark, usually, I’m still in the coffin, with my bat wings, sharpening my teeth for the evening, hiding from the sunlight and avoiding the burning flesh. But today I had a message that there was a record down at the record store, so I was out, and surprisingly, the sunlight was warm on my skin and the flesh remained on my bones, getting a new record cures all ills, even vampirism. At the store, it was Happiness Bastards, the new Black Crowes album and the 50th Anniversary Dark Side Of The Moon with the snazzy pic discs – Archive essential. But I also ordered Judith Hill – Letter From A Black Widow (2024), a really great authentic-sounding funk soul album with an ace singer that wasn’t seduced by the sounds of now but was inspired by the sounds of then and consequently as with everything of quality, it sounded timeless because now creeps into then whatever you do, all you need is the magic.
From there to Carlos at the music store, he is coming Friday to look at these boxes of records to advise me what to do about moving them, swapping, having him sell some for me at markets for a percentage, we’ll see what he thinks. The problem is that every time I open one of these boxes, there’s something I don’t have, and then something I do and then something with a damaged cover and then something in bad nick (How is bad Nick?) and then something terrible, haha, that’s freebies for you.
Back to The Archive for late lunch and filing away the Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea CD of PJ Harvey demos I also picked up today. I was crouched in the CD room when Sarah arrived hot from Texas via turbulence. We decided to go to the psychedelic psupermarket whilst Olivia was doing a Portuguese lesson and made it back as she was finishing and planning the evening of visitors. Yesterday it was Martin and Karen from Glasgow, today it was X from Florida with a nice little prezzie of fine miniature skulls. I didn’t say his name because he hasn’t told his online buddies he’s here yet. Olivia cooked great food and we watched Man U/Newcastle (definitely a penalty). How can they have the technology but not the will? It was 3-1 in the end, Europe the prize at the end of the season.
I opened another box which I really shouldn’t do because I have a lot of open boxes already that need to be sorted, but I was just showing Sarah the range of records inside. Most of the boxes are small with 20–25 records, so they are easy to move and look through, but if you open 10 of them, you have to sort them out before opening more. Still, I’m looking for more appropriate dupes to take to Xico tomorrow for records I have behind the counter.
Sarah is going to help with many things here, wiring things up being one of them and there’s lots of wiring to do, cables and finding the right speaker wire for four stereos, one to be set up in each room. Lots to do but also tomorrow at some point I have to listen to sessioneer music, assess bios, look at sessioneer videos and contemplate bios and interview questions, and sequencing for imminent projects, with the help of Olivia and Sarah of course, never a dull moment.
Music today has been Rod Stewart’s classic seventies album Never A Dull Moment (1972) because there never is.