Working late at The Archive, filing records away, the ladies of the night had long left and on a Sunday night, the street is quiet. I walked over to the window to stare out at the silence. As I scanned the empty street, the street lamp interrupting the darkness of the windows, I noticed lower in the light’s spread something staring back at me from the gutter. It had a face and fingers, eyeless and motionless, it was a clock. It was sizable like a wall clock and I wondered how such a thing could find its way to this place. I then thought, perhaps it’s trying to tell me something: “Go to bed!”
It was good to be back in familiar surroundings after the strange weekend, although Olivia woke up with a stiff neck and had to cancel her Sunday skydive. I eased myself into the day by watching some football and saw Ronaldo score his 901st professional goal to beat Scotland. The commentators were saying that at 39 he’s so fit that there’s still no stopping him, sure he’s slower on the sprint but hasn’t lost his edge. One wonders where Haaland will be in 17 years.
Tomorrow we get straight back into listening to mixes and try to nail some of these projects for release. Like sorting out the records, everything takes so long. I wonder if it was always this way or is it just impatience to get something you started finished. There’s no use fretting about it, whatever it is, you can’t rush details and the creativity business doesn’t always deliver on time – unfortunately, The Archive rent doesn’t wait for you to tinker with a great idea, even if time improves it. Having said that, I was listening to Todd Rundgren talking about Andy Partridge and saying how because there are no XTC live shows, Partridge could tinker with a mix forever.
Olivia told me that the Psychedelic Furs‘ next gig after Luna Fest was also cancelled. It was in Granada and was foiled by thunderstorms. I once played an acoustic show in Chicago where 70 of the ticket holders didn’t show up because there was a massive snowstorm. That was most of the audience, but I remember we were staying in a hotel close by and it was difficult for us to get there. Does anyone remember that? It was at Shuba’s.
We are trying to find a gig in Lisbon. We also want to see Arooj Aftab and not just that, Olivia needs to renew her Swedish passport there. We hope to come to America and play shows next year, but one of the tricky things about it is that you have to find a booking agent, and that’s not so easy these days. The reason you need one for more than the obvious reasons is because you need to have prospective shows lined up in order to qualify for a work visa. We’re working on it, we don’t want to come to America and play three shows, we would like to play all over. In the meantime, we are planning on doing a live stream this month, we’re just figuring out how to do it. We need to get funds in for The Archive as projects don’t pay you monthly.
Music today has been the crazy world of Gryphon and a double CD – Crossing the Styles – The Transatlantic Anthology, released in 2003. They were famously played on Radio One, Two, Three and Four (in England) in the same week, hence the title.