Sunday, I was possibly going on a boat cruise with Des and Georgie after they’d come back from the art gallery on their last day in town, but it was getting late, Georgie was tired and I wasn’t quite feeling up to it. Plus, since the whale watching experience in Sydney and the ferry from England to Spain, it meant that Olivia and I, separately or together, would rather walk for three weeks around the headland than take a boat for an hour.
Des ended up coming over here for the last evening, I had no seshes today and we just talked about how the sun hovers in the sky and listened to loads of cool records, Cigarettes After Sex, King Hannah, The Mysterines, Still Corners and Maxwell Farrington and Le SuperHomard. I kept on giving Des more album titles to listen to but the great thing about Des is that he will listen to them – Harp, Grandaddy, PJ Harvey, Horsegirl and new albums coming from Travis, Nada Surf and London Grammar.
This is me trying to keep The Archive full of records from both then and from now. You can’t buy all of them, but you can try and acquire, preserve, collect (whatever word you wish to use), and do your best to have some of them in The Archive. Firstly because they are so good and secondly because pressings are so limited these days, once they are gone they are often too expensive to buy anymore, if you can even find them – like Dinky Toys in their original packaging.
We have now recorded two In Deep YouTube sessions – Vítor from Portuguese punks Grito! and producer Peter Walsh, with more on the horizon. We didn’t manage to get The Cult or Anoushka Shankar but with more names interested in doing it, people and musicians able to see it, it will probably do what any exposure to something cool will do, attract more viewers and attract musicians, and like with Tiny Desk Concerts, eventually even Bono and The Edge will want to do it (if you like them or not isn’t the point).
Des stayed till 2.30 AM and left for the Airbnb around the corner. He’ll be back with daughter Georgie in the morning to drop their bags off and hang a little while before leaving at 1 AM for Suffolk and then next week Brisbane, flying across the world. It’s been great seeing them and reconnecting with Des after all these years, it’s like I saw him yesterday.
Des was my first wife Lucy’s boyfriend after me, and we became fast friends, but one of the most memorable moments with Des was when he had a mustard Volvo parked on the north hill at Bondi Beach. We had been to a café or somewhere in Bondi and we were returning to the car, we crossed the road and I went behind the car to the grass verge to look down at the beach – I didn’t get there, Des had a tow-bar sticking out at the back of the car and I slammed into it so hard that I honestly thought I’d broken my leg and was writhing around in terrible pain. I still have the scar.
Music today was King Hannah from Liverpool and their great new album Big Swimmer.