January 1st 2007

New Years Day and another joy filled visit. This time album cover supremo Phil Smee and is lovely wife Angie. Big favourites of Django

This time 9 years ago I was in a terrible state, wondering what the hell life had in store next and considering just how keen I was to find out (if at all). This was right in the middle of the period that is the corner stone of the current album.

Today I consider myself very blessed and very fortunate. I have spent too many years feeling distressed and hard done by. A victim of the cruel industry I gave my life to.

As I sit here, I am all to well aware that I have a beautiful wife, two lovely healthy children, a very nice house and a job that earns me a decent living and the freedom to indulge my musical fantasies. I have great friends and am able to count some of the best musicians in the world among them.

If I knew who to thank directly, I'd write them a letter.

Better just to savor the moments and not take them for granted.

Happy New year to those of you who take the time to drop by and read this nonsense.

I thank you.

December 30th

Back in London.

A lovely day spent in the company of 2 of my oldest and dearest friends Nick and Liz. More food, more drink and more presents.

December 26th

Drive to Bournmouth to spend a day with Amanda's family.

The kids behave badly and are not remotely charming.

December 23

Travel with Amanda, the kids and too much luggage down to Chris Porter's lovely house in a village about 9 miles south of Sailsbury. We spend the next 3 days here. We are made to feel part of the family and the kids have a fantastic time, charming everyone they meet. Fantastic.

December 22

Django is 2 days into his school holiday. It's treat time. I take him to his favourite restaurant for lunch, Starvin Marvin's. A rather authentic American dinner set in a long aluminium casing on the A40 diagonally opposite the Hoover Building. We then go to the Cinemas to see 'Flushed Away' the computer generated Aardman feature.

Half way through the film my ear pops back to normal, exactly one month from the moment it popped on the descent into Milan on the way to Venice.

18th December

Decide to get the train in to the west end for last minute Christmas shopping. Easy stress free trip to Tottenham Court Road. However on my return the Central Line has stopped running due to a signal problem. I decided to walk as it's a bright winters day. Start to regret the idea by the time I reach Notting Hill Gate and give up all together at the Shepherd's Bush roundabout and hail a cab. (This is a walk of some miles, for the non-Londoners amongst you.)

In the evening get a call from Ian Wallace, who is still in the ICU at a hospital in LA. Ian has gone public with his illness now, so it's a secret I no longer have to keep. Ian tells me that he has been having hallucinations as a result of the heavy medication. I'm sure he'll retell this amusingly in his own blog soon.

17th December

Today Is Amber's 2nd birthday party. Her actual birthday is on the 20th. As she's only 2 most of the guests are grown ups and people we haven't seen in a while.

As most people leave, the Barbieri's (Richard and Suzanne), arrive. They've been stuck in pre Christmas traffic for over 2 hours. They stay for the evening and we get a Chinese. Always great company, we never seem to see enough of them.

December 15th

It's been a week of Christmas get togethers, forgotten admin task's and invoicing.

Tuesday was Paul Crockford's Christmas do. I sat next to Tim Hook, who had been the Level's tour manager back in '94. Subsequent to this he was Crimson tour manager during the life of the 6 piece line up. Also in attendance was Scott McKeon. Who is still only about 19 and is managed by Paul as a result of playing him a CD and insisting that he see him play. I advise you to do the same. He plays modern blues guitar with a confidence and maturity of someone twice his age. Also in attendance was Mark Knopfler. After lunch there was another pop quiz. Which I won. This is not bragging, but evidence of a young man who had no friends and too much time of his hands.

Wednesday night saw the annual dinner at Langens Brasserie that we have with Barry Moorhouse, of 'The Bass Centre' fame and Professor Barry Fox, eminent plastic surgeon to the stars. Professor Fox is a bit of a guitar playing music fan, hence the connection. Indeed he has formed a band with other like minded plastic surgeons. They are called (and I'm not making this up) 'Tuck That'. Tonight's new boy is the 'unknown' John Clarke. Some of you may know him as the guitar player who replaced Allan Holdsworth in Bruford. He has, quite coincidentally, been playing for Sir Cliff in his band for nigh on 20 years. There is a festive break from the world tour, hence is Christmas meal availability. Much fun and annecdotage was had by all.
I point blank refused to to tell my 'Saxon' story. Amusing though it well may be, I have told it at this same function 3 years running.

A day later and I took Dominic and new by Dave, from the ad agency, to the splendid kerelan fish restaurant in Charlotte street.

Today, however, Amanda and I drove out to Hertfordshire to view a property. Following the eviction and the end of Mand's current adventures in publishing, now seems the right time. I no longer need to be in the smoke for work. indeed I rarely ever get to meet any of the directors or producers of tv ad's any more. Bikes, that would regularly arrive and depart the house with latest edits and versions, have all been but replaced by the internet, e-mails and ftp sites. I'm sick of the grime and the yellow and black police signs asking for witnesses of yet another violent crime. The 'Life' sentence given to our former nieghbours still shocked me, in spite of living next to them for all this time. It all add's up and wears me down.

The house, set in country side just out side Hemel Hempsted and but a stones through away from Steve Wilsons studio, is beautiful. Grade ll listed, land and out buildings make it tick most of the boxes. However, from the aerial shots we viewed from our computer, the open fields it backed on too, have been replaced by a large 'luxury development. Luxury they may be, but they are still big and over look the garden on two sides. So not for us, but the search has begun.

December 7th

Those of you who have been reading this blog this year will know of the horrendous time that we had with our neighbours. They were eventually evicted from the premises next door back in July. A couple of months prior to this the 19 year old twin boys and their cousin had been arrested in an operation that involved closing of our road. 6 police vehicles and some 18 or so officers.

Well in todays local paper there was a report of the final court case of the boys in question. Even allowing for my knowledge of the facts reading the details of their attack was truly sickening and shocking. Make you own mind up:


http://icealing.icnetwork.co.uk/ealinggazette/headlines/tm_method=full%26objectid=18244444%26siteid=67372-name_page.html#story_continue

December 6th

The sound in my head appears to be like having half of it immersed in a swimming pool, not ideal for a working musician about to drive to the studio, so I go to the walk in medical centre in Brentford. My own GP cannot see me till next week. I have a bad ear infection and the Eustachian tubes are blocked.

Get to the studio for day 2. Even play a bit of flute! I also use Mel's 335 on a jazzier number.

We finish early enough for me to get to the west end in time for the Eclectic Christmas party. Live band for the evening are the legendary Edgar Broughton band. I'd never seen them back in the 70's, but had just seen their albums and photo's from the numerous festival appearances.

There was also a prog type quiz and we joined forces into teams. Mine included Sid Smith, Steve Wilson (of P Tree) and Wooly Wolstenhome, keyboard player with Barclay James Harvest. Indeed with 3 anoraks and someone who was there at the time, how could we fail? We didn't and won hands down. A free T shirt and a bottle of Champers to the good.

December 5th

A day recording at Chris's studio in Acton. As we are all playing together, which is a novelty in it self, we are setting up in the studio upstairs which belongs to Hugh Padgem. Chris and Hugh have bought the entire complex between them.

As I'm playing a lot of acoustic I'm locked in the vocal booth right next to Gavin Harrison in the live room. This enables Gavin to spend the next couple of days mercilessly taking the piss out of me. Such is the nature of my usually solitary musical life, that I greet this with fondness and nostalgia.

December 4th

Spent the morning finishing the new version of the Gospel advert.
In the afternoon began learning and writing charts for the sessions that begins tomorrow.

December 3rd

I've been feeling worse. My ear is still blocked up and spent a lot of the weekend feeling dire.

This morning I received a message from the agency with an accompanying file of the music that is currently the favourite for the gospel viral. Having told you how the demos have to be an accurate reflection of the final piece, this piece has no vocal, or indeed any tune whatsoever. Further to this, having been told that my original version was too slow, this piece is at a slower tempo than my original. Which proves that you never really have any idea why they make the decisions they make at all. Spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what it was about this version that they liked and applying it to my original.

November 30th

Preparing for next weeks session, an album Chris Porter is producing, I go to Chandler guitars in Kew. I needed a couple of tweaks to some instruments. While there I bump into Terry Britten. A lovely and talented man, whom Mel and I were chatting about only last week. Terry has something of a track record as a writer with covers by Michael Jackson and of course 'Whats Love got to do with it' for Tina Turner. We exchange numbers. He was there to pick up a little ukulele that he had inadvertently sat on.

November 29th

I still feel crap and my ear still hasn't popped back.

The feedback from the ad people is that my tune needs to be faster. So I have to re-record the multi-layered vocals as just time stretching them doesn't work that convincingly. During the phone conversation I'm told that they are having a difficult time finding a real gospel choir who would be prepared to sing about their 'big fat arses' I say to them, in response, that I can't believe that I'm actually having this conversation.

November 28th

Recording my gospel demo for the previously aforementioned viral advert. One thing I do know is that you just can't demo a song up and expect the 'creatives' to imagine it sung by a gospel choir, you have to fake it up. Doing so, on my own, takes time.

Meanwhile the TV job has gone pear shaped. The TV company, dont like the music. Whilst I'm not entirely surprised, and am relieved that this stressful situation has come to a close, I can't help but be annoyed by their response. The fact is, if one were to employ, say, Ry Cooder to record your film soundtrack, it's pointless to complain when it doesn't sound like Lalo Schiffren. So if you employ the great, legendary Danny T, what you will get is what Danny does. Eclectic, folksy, jazzy with a hint of ethnic. From the e-mail, that I could only get half way through before I deleted it, it was clear that there was another agenda going on here. The company never really wanted him to do it and were using this as an excuse. Sod em I say.

November 27th

In spite of the fact that I have finished the the Qatar job, mixed in 5.1 and converted the files to multi wav format, the fact is that the client have changed some of the script and re-recorded the voice overs. Also the loop sections do not appear to work in 'Watch-out' so could I make then each bit several minutes long?

Consequently I spent the day editing the 5.1 files. I then went to FX up the road to reconvert these to multi channel wavs. I then uploaded all these to the companies ftp site which took about 6 hours. Dull, but necessary and somehow inevitable.