Monday 26th of March, 2001
Spend the beginning bit of the morning putting stuff on a disk to take to Scholastic, and copying files from the Powerbook to the old G3 to be burned to disk or to make way for Peter Cadle's files which will be amended this afternoon.
I foolishly use my copy of Norton on the Powerbook - the disk icon disappears, and all I get is a This disk is unreadable. Do you want to reformat it? error message. I dig out my original System disk and use it to fix the drive.
Doh!
I deliver the disk to Scholastic - they have been widely refurbished, it's actually quite disorientating. I chat for a bit and then go off to visit the gym for the first time in a week.
It's a tremendous relief, not too much exertion, just enough to gently remind my body that it might be expected to do such things occasionally. I tolerate the MTV with as much humour as I can muster and I particularly enjoy the Hot Room afterwards.
Getting home, I quickly make and eat a bowl of pasta and get the equipment ready to take up to Peter's.
We have been recording his album for about a year now - we tried some initial tracks at my house, which weren't to impressive, and then last summer I went up to his place to record The Virtuosos doing a backing track of one of the songs. It was much better recording there, so I went back for a few sessions to redo Peter's guitar and vocals, and today we are recording Katherine, the accordianist with the Virtuosos.
I have dragooned my pa into driving me up there - I know it is unidignified for someone of my advanced years to rely so on lifts from a parent, but I really do need to get a lift to carry all this gear - two small flightcases, one containing the mixer, the other the microphones; a bag containing leads, the computer and two mike stands. It's the mike stands that are the real pains in the behind - they are so unwieldy and difficult to carry.
On the way I call someone about some work he desperately needs to be done, however my phone just keeps dying on me. I really don't need misbehaving technology at the moment.
When I get there, Katherine is already there running through her parts with Peter. I discover that the Enter key has gone missing from the keyboard I bought last week, and this makes me somewhat despondent, coming on top of the phone and the close shave with the hard disk this morning. It really feels as though everything is falling down around me. I retrace my steps back to where the car was to make sure that it's not fallen out there. No sign of it.
My mood is not improved by an hour's struggle to get the sound working (Katherine needs to monitor herself and the Mac through headphones, so I am sending the signal into the mac via the sends on the mixer (one of which is post-fader, so I can't just kill the faders) and bringing the Mac in on another couple of channels. I give her a good poewerful burst of feedback, which leave her ears ringing and me feeling incompetent and wretched. Then there appears to be either no signal or only an overpowering and distorting signal going in. A bit of poking around results in my discovering that the sound input is set permanantly to "Zoomed Video", whetever that might be. I struggle for a while to get the input set and then restart and finally get some levels and can record.
We are doing three songs: Dovetail, Menilmontant and Bless This Guitar. We do six takes of the accordian part of Dovetail, four (I think) of Menilmontant and several of Bless This Guitar, and finish just before 6:00, in time to be picked up.
All the time Peter has been making notes of which bits of which takes he likes, so I will have to splice them together at some point. He says that he'll send me a chart or something in a few days.
When I get home, I discover that the Enter key fell into my slipper (!) just as I was packing to come out. So that's alright then.
When I open the washing machine door, water pours out - I think it must have been broken, but in fact it looks like I stopped it halfway through the cycle. All the same, it's a venerable washing machine. It won't last forever.
I'm getting intimations of mortality from machines here...
After dinner I talk to Denise about stuff and this work that I'll be doing, email the guy in question (I wasn't sure that I dictated my e-mail address clearly enough, and anyway, it's a difficult one to get across properly) and download the evaluation copy of Dreamweaver 4.0 to do it with.