August 21st

Spent the morning locating various bits and pieces. Unused tracks, unfinished tracks alternate mixes. Quite surprised myself with some of the finds. I end up with over 50 minutes of material, all of which is pretty good and, I hope at least, of interest.

Mel arrives in the afternoon. We are recording some stuff for the forthcoming Crimson Jazz Trio CD. He plays soprano on a version of ‘Frame by Frame’. This is treated like a Jazz standard with the tune (head) stated and solo’s on sax, piano and bass. Mel, of course, plays beautifully throughout. Being Mel though, he’s unhappy with a lot of it. I find myself deleting takes that any other player would deem the best. That’s one of the reasons why he’s a good as he his, I guess. We move on and Mel plays tenor of a very free version of Formentara Lady/Sailors Tale. Again there’s some great stuff here. As always it’s a pleasure just to sit and listen to Mel in full flow.

We have a cup of tea and catch up. Mel’s been slowly writing a solo record which he’s asked me to help produce. I look forward to it. The two things he’s played me so far sound really exciting and unusual. As if to maintain the Crimson nature of the day Pete Sinfield calls. He’s been on a trip to the Canaries to help his recovery from the major heart surgery that he had just after Christmas. He sounds in fine fettle though. Our conversation was truncated somewhat by the kids going nuts. It was their bedtime. Never a good moment to chat on the phone. I’ll call at a more convenient moment later this week.