Tonight we went to Jamie and Alex’s house. Jamie won the Archibald Prize in 2018, for his portrait of Jimmy Barnes, singer of one of the most successful Australian bands, Cold Chisel. He and his wife have moved to Porto, and we had a nice evening of chatter and cat stroking, with Jamie cooking a fine vegan meal. The hours rushed by until we left at 12.30 for a 35-minute walk through the calm and quiet Porto streets. Not too hot, not too cold and not too risky walking through this city in the middle of the night.
It was a late start after a late sleep, a late breakfast and a late lunch, a late shower and off to Jamie and Alex via the subway where the train wasn’t late and neither were we. On the train I was wondering about what is the best way to get to the pool from The Archive, walking, subway, bus, everything is in reach in this city, you just have to see how long you have and how your body holds up on the hills (haha), hence going to the pool. But living in a walkable city is a wonderful thing.
Tuesday nights are so nice and quiet, the perfect night to go out. Friday and Saturday nights are the perfect nights to stay in. I suppose it’s all about what you’re after and us musician types don’t look at weekends as escape time, in fact for us, that’s work time because everyone else is escaping to come and see us, hopefully. Gigs on Tuesdays are a struggle for the smaller acts.
I was pressing buttons on the mixing desk earlier and trying to get In Deep studio world happening, but it’s pretty much a large learning curve, I was never schooled in engineering, but now we are set up to go and flying the plane is a necessity until the bags of bucks fall from the sky and I can pay an in-house engineer.
The studio has a broken window in the back and as time goes by it gets more and more broken, the shards of glass slipping further apart. We’re also looking at having a fire exit at the back because at the moment the only way out is the front, carrying Olivia and one Rickenbacker.
Music today was Arooj Aftab and her latest album, Night Reign. She is playing in Lisbon in October and we will be trying really hard to get there to see her. I previously posted about her album Vulture Prince (2021).