Wednesday 7th of March, 2001
At about half past eight, the door-buzzer goes. I leap up, past the intercom phone (which doesn't work) and down to the front door and collect the Scholastic job that was sent yesterday. Ha! In the old days I's be half asleep and casting around for a pair of trousers, not finding them, putting a shirt on inside out and finally getting to the front door to find that the postman's left a card saying he couldn't deliver the parcel.
But that was before I discovered the power of Getting Up Early.
I check my ratings on the Garageband.com page, and find that the two songs I posted - Iodine, and Sensitive Boy are languishing, somewhat, although Iodine has got another good review. They are reaching the end of their reviewable life, and will soon be stuck in the archive never to be heard again, on Garageband.com, anyway. It is fun, though, and the reviews prove that people all over the world (or all over America anyway) actually are hearing the songs. The only even slightly applicable category is Folk and Country, and most of the people listening to that category are primarily interested in country, who must have been quite bewildered to be confronted with so the good ratings I've got have been nothing short of miraculous, really. Iodine is down to about 8,000, from a high of number 3,000 and something. Since it started at 15,000ish, 3,000ish was, I thought, quite good. Sensitive Boy has well overtaken it, bu it too is down to about 5,000. I don't know why, but there you are.
I get down to and finish the cover that arrived yesterday, and e-mail a JPEG off to the designer in charge.
I cadge a lift to the supermarket with my father - he likes to check in once a day to check out bargains. I realise I'm on two cycles, running out of half of the stuff on Tuesdays and half on Fridays. If I managed to get it synchronised, I'd only have to go once a week. But then, I'd have to carry twice as much. It's a dilemma. Donna from Walker's calls about some work just as I'm at the checkout packing the stuff into bags. I am constantly amazed at the way the universe manages to organise such coincidences - after all a couple of minutes earlier or later and there would have been no problem. I ask if she can call me back.
Donna calls back just as I am trying to manhandle the bags up the stairs, but this time I brazen it out and manage to keep up the conversation with the phone under my chin, carrying six loaded shopping bags up the stairs, opening the door and taking my shopping to the kitchen. I am to go into Walker's on Monday to do... all sorts of things. Good.
Collect email: There are some corrections to the cover to do, and some alterations to the Animorphs I e-mailed over the other day. I do them and feel a warm glow of achievement.
Telephone call - I answer, chap on other end says "Who's that?"
"Well, who's that?" I reply, "You called me."
"Is that Nick?"
"No, you have a wrong number."
"I was calling myself."
"No, really, it's a wrong number."
Chap must have had an image of someone burgling his home, and thought that he'd caught him red-handed. Although what kind of burglar would answer the phone, I don't know...
Spend some time practising/noodling - I can feel my right hand improving, the strokes becoming clearer and stronger. I am still in that difficult "in-between" stage - my hand can remember another way of doing it, which it considers "easier", because that's the way I've always done it. But the Guitar Craft right hand (also the George Benson style and numerous others, but it was explicitly taught - indeed demanded of the students - at guitar craft) really is so much more logical and efficient - it's just not the first way of holding the pick that one would think of. Most of us just pick up a ... uh ... pick, and hack away at the strings somewhat until we reach an uneasy peace with out instrument. This is, I think, muck better.
I check back at Garageband.com - Iodine is now at about number 4,000, and Sensitive Boy at a thousand and something! What on earth is going on? Is this what happens when your song has almost run it's course. The world's gone mad.
Call from Denise, who is no longer in a bar in Spain, but is at London Bridge attempting (with little success) to get some information that will help her get home. Not from me, obviously. I don't have any travel information, although at one time my number was obviously very similar to an organisation that did. People would be phoning up asking for train times, and were sometimes quite difficult to dissuade.
Watch the Brel video at last - extraordinary performer, not that I doubted it, but it's nice to be able to see it for myself. Sometimes, listening to his recordings, I find I have to listen through the trappings - the chansonness, the arrangements, the strings. I have the same problem with Scott's early albums, too. My problem, no reflection on either of these Godlike genii. The legacy of a post-punk musical upbringing. Live, however, there is no doubt (well, there is no doubt anyway: live, there is less than no doubt) - Brel rocks. Incredible energy and power. I do find myself staring at his colossal mouth somewhat, though. In a mouth-duel, Mick Jagger would come off worse by a long chalk. For a start Brel has to do French and Flemish with his, whereas Jagger can barely manage English.
The songs are mainly drawn from his mid-sixties recordings - Jacky, Mon enfance, Au suivant - that is the best known era of his work (generally), where a lot of Scott's versions and ...Alive and Well was drawn from.
At the end of the show, the audience are, I think, chanting "Quitte ... pas ... quitte ... pas," which is quite a good bit of ironic humour, it's included on the video from a completely different source (a studio-bound television programme, I think) - apparantly the audio quality of the version he did at l'Olympia isn't releaseable. According to the box. But then, with my French in the parlous state it is, it could be anything.
If you ever get the chance (and are interested in Grand Jacques, at all), I can highly recommend it. And it's all mine.
And then I watch Les Shadoks - this was broadcast on weekdays at about 6:00pm on the London ITV station during the mid-1970s. It functioned as a more obscure, stranger Magic Roundabout to the five or so people who watched it. Stranger - I'm not going to try to explain it, and since the video's in French, I haven't really got a clue what's going on. More obscure - the only other person I ever met who's heard of it is Ben. And I'm the only other person he's met who's heard of it.
Maybe I will try to explain it, or give some examples, at least:
The Shadoks decide to scientifically arrange the planet (which has recently been threatened by a fire-breathing, music-loving insect) - "A Place For Everything, and Everything in its Place" - all the trees in one place, all th mountains in another and so forth - in an attempt to reduce accidents.
It doesn't work, obviously.
They take refuge from the insect on the moon, to and from which they climb by ladder (one that goes up, one that goes down - if you use the wrong one for the wrong direction , then it is likely to break and deposit you painfully on the ground). The moon's atmosphere is all on the inside, so the Shadoks learn to breathe through their feet.
Imagine Searle drawing a stick figure version of the Moomins, with a certain amount of hallucinogenics involved - that's the style of it, somewhat.
Or possibly a cross between Tales of the Beanworld as written by Spike Milligan and Musrum.
A doodle gone mad.
Or something.