Sheesh.

I learned something depressing today.

>DEEP BREATH<

Turns out my occasional recreational toke on a shisha pipe is going to kill me after all. And as punishment for my smugness about its ‘practical harmlessness’, rather faster than a cigarette, apparently.

Great. Spent my life walking the remarkably high-minded line between having never smoked and being socially unphased by the idea of people smoking, and then it turns out my multi-cultural affectations are going to punch me in the lungs for being a pretentious arse. Fair enough I suppose.

A study by the Department of Health and the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre – you know them, right? – has revealed some allegedly shocking levels of Carbon Monoxide.

>SIGH-COUGH!<

Turns out half an hour on a hookah is, at its measurably very best, significantly worse for you than a fag. In fact, in many instances apparently, an average shish sesh outstrips a ciggy by factors in the hundreds for CO levels.

And to add cultural insult to circulatory injury, a London shisha bar owner mentioned that he doesn’t ever inhale when he’s using one. Like you’re not supposed to.

So I should stop filling my lungs with this stuff, then? You tell me this now?

But it’s so sociable. I really enjoy breaking out the pipe occasionally. Never put anything more relaxing in it than humble oriental apple resin, you understand, but it’s a nice thing to hand round the table after you’ve mopped up the last of your baba ganoush and your lamb tabouli, don’t you think? Right?

Oh fine. Right. So don’t break out the hubbly bubbly.

—

I can hardly have any complaints otherwise today, though.

I’ve spent half of it sifting through the schedule to construct various strata of To Do lists from the chaotic debris of a busy couple of weeks. And I’ve been doing so after a weekend that was a much looked-forward-to long one that’s subsequently etched its blatant idleness all over my face. Really. I have stupid ski-jock panda eyes from staring at the skies in sunnies.

After a few days of shamelessly lounging around the vast front lawn of Laura and Chris’s place on the Westcliff, sipping champers and nibbling strawberries, while tracing the lazy arcs of various acrobatic aero displays over Bournemouth’s fairly amphitheatrical bay, I feel nicely head-cleared again. Gorgeous weather for four days, basically, while a selection aviation engines purred and roared their poetry over the seaside atmosphere. Lovely. These are the days, and all that.

The ones that will help you say: “meh – fair enough” when it all goes belly up.

The secret to switching off in such a Carefree Git-like manner though, is tying up loose ends before you clear off. Wiping the ol’ slate. Putting out the mental moggy and leaving a note for the mental milkman. Clunking the door closed on a clean house as you leave with a full case.

I managed to push the wraparounds up the nose and fold the hands behind the remarkably successfully disengaged bean as I did for three whole, luxuriant days purely thanks to the number of serendipitously positive notes on which last week was mercifully ended – the most significant and serenading of which being the pertinent one. The one you need to take note of. The album.

The album.

Yes. Really.

If I could relax on the lawn at all for a couple of precious days, it was partly because I could bask a little in the mental warmth of having posted a complete pre-mastered version of The Golden Age to Jamie on Saturday morning. Yes, again, really.

No, really.

Ish. The ‘ish’ being that it’s not completely right, of course. So just hold your horses.

It’s not a version I’ll be putting in anyone else’s hands until I’ve heard his immediate verdict and given him my lengthy Well Obviously It Won’t Be Like That list. Various levels are off and numerous details are not quite right and a session is missing… but, ah, it is in shape. It does exist. ..I can now hear it from start to finish.

There is now no smoke to hide behind.

>DEEP BREATH<

So now, back to work, I have to start resolving what the hell to do with it.

Sheesh.

>SHUFFLE< >HORN SQUEEKS<

(Ready, everyone?)

>AHEM!<

“The Golden Age of Explora –

– whuh?

Oh bugger. What, still?

Right. Well so it’s too soon to do the big fanfare (sorry chaps – see you at Tuesday practice) but The Golden Age is none-the-less very close.

No, now less of that attitude. It IS nearly done.

Currently, these are the headlines:

• all horn sessions are done and edited into shape.
• cello sessions are done and awaiting mixes.
• almost all tracks are creatively finished.
• problem track Just passing through is almost on the mat but still slugging it out with me.
• awaiting strings for Waiting is a bit like being on holiday.
• we still have no opening micro track.
• we still have no album cover, but the cover artwork style is all together and looking fab.

So it’s, y’know, almost there. ‘So near’, etc.

—

It’s been a mammoth weekend. I’ve barely left the house. Between this and a fairly monsterous pitch for Typo, I’ve been bending the bean and the eyesight rather heavily.

But the end is in sight on both counts. If I dare believe it.

Now, clear up this tinsel and put away the chairs. Someone else needs the hall.

Welcome to the weekend.

I guess all things must change.

I just sort of periodically hope that this doesn’t apply to all things. Y’know?

There is one thing in particular that I didn’t dare contemplate would change any time soon. Just because it would be so, well, wrong. But it has changed. Or will be changing. And I have mixed feelings about it.

Because, from September, Pete Tong will no longer be welcoming us to the weekend.

Ee-GAD.

—

The thing I love about radio generally is how it gets in your head. It moves in with you and follows you around the house – though not in a creepy lodger kind of way. In a comfy chum kind of way. Or a learned chum kind of way. Or a groovy, energetic, well-connected, Will Make The Effort To Go Clubbing For You chum kind of way. I like that guy. All these guys. And, as any entrenched Radio 4 listener will tell you, these broadcast backdrops to your life can become part of the very fabric of it – the mucking about with of which is potentially upsetting.

Witness my month of measurable grief when Mark and Lard split. Those bastards left me all alone. With Steve Wright.

—

Now, the Radio One Friday evening schedule has been as much an irrational comfort to us as any nerve-steadying shipping forecast or gentle willow-crack heart-warming conjoured by cricket coverage. Just knowing it’s there is nice. It makes it Friday. Pete Tong makes it Friday. Moving him is like, I dunno, moving the Today programme to a timeslot after everyone’s gone to work.

>shudders<
My mixed feelings about his sacred show being moved are as they are because jolly good taste-setter and all-round radio poppet, Annie Mac, is swapping slots with him – he takes over the Mash-up slot at 9.00 on a Friday evening, and she will be booting up the weekend for us at 7.00.

Now, we’ve famously loved young Maccers’ little electro-beat show from the beginning. Even memorably starred in it once. ..Slash, momentarily wrecked its credibility. She is, I guess, as worthy a successor to the Essential Selection as you could wish for really – in fact, hearing bits of her sitting in for Zane Lowe this week, I can’t help feeling that most of the country would feel pretty happy about her being on the wireless every night of the week.

..But, isn’t the Mash-up’s music more of a 9.00pm thing? More quirky and varied; Pete’s slick grooves just feel more early evening chic, somehow.

Ah, well. I shall tune in to both and be thankful for each show’s different comfort appearing out of the unique funding of my license fee. Hadn’t planned to redecorate my Fridays but we shall bravely adapt. And really, you couldn’t wish increasingly legendary status on anyone more deserving than the blessed Maccers. So toot that air horn someone.

But.

Hmm.

Just perhaps…

..if even the most immovable things can yet be moved, when least expected, upsetting everyone’s comforting frame of reference… could that even include something as ludicrously unlikely as the blatant unfinishedness of Momo:tempo’s debut album? More even than that, it’s wanton ignominy?

Surely not. Some things DON’T change.

..Unless this weekend does what it’s supposed to.

—

Pips, sirens, beats – “Welcome to the weekend.”

It’s 7.00pm on a Friday as I type now and Pete is kicking things off noisily around the flat. I’m sipping a cream soda but plan to turn it into a G&T; shortly, to go with my aim of actually working up something cool and definite for the album artwork tonight.

You see, I’m working to a bit of an actual deadline on all this now. Stalwart, long-term TC Peach supporter, Jamie Lee, has become so insensed at the number of years he’s had to wait for an original recording from said obscure artist, he’s promised some kind of record store rage if he returns from his family’s extended break in France at the end of the week to not find a preview copy of The Golden Age of Exploration sitting on his mat.

Thing is, as one of fewer long-term fans than I have digits, Jamie represents a percentage mailing list loss I can ill afford. True, he’s hardcore – he doesn’t count Chaser or Beyond the storm as legitimate albums and claims to have been therefore waiting since 1997 and Worship the system for a proper pop record from me. But he did direct my first pop video – Thunder in the hills, which for my hair alone should never make it to YouTube – and does genuinely seem to actually like the music itself.

For this reason, I am entrusting the first ever preview listen of the whole new tune fest to him – to tell me straight what he’s been prepared to tell me in the past. Namely, when he thinks I’m embarrassing myself.

—

Think about it. I need someone to do this. I can’t see anything about The Golden Age straight anymore. I have no idea if I’m some mad Victorian barron, spending a fortune on an elaborately inept invention that high society will have to humour me about, even as it titters in ever-more to-my-face ridicule about it. I need someone to hear this rubbish and warn me off.

I already know it’s a music album bereft of proper credibility, in Essential Selection or Mash-up terms. It’s too much of a process of exploration – partly hence the name – to be undone and made ‘cool’ by a berk like me.

Yet, is it still legitimate? I think – no, I suspect, – it… is. But I could do with at least someone else thinking so too before I press the button on a thousand hard copies of the blasted thing.

—

Brekkers with Gel in the Cali this morning saw us lingering an extra ten to chat music. I shared with him my inordinate excitement – eclipsing quite predictably the reasonably full-on workload in the Typo studio at the moment – about doing something I’ve dreamed of for years.

Putting real strings on a piece of music.

Yes, this is very normal for many musicians with a budget, but this week I could hardly contain my Bless Me enthusiasm at finally getting a simple little CD in the post for three tracks to have a cellist and violinist session on.

I spoke with Simon the cellist tonight and his solo work on Identity and Duality respectively is all but done. And frankly, I can’t wait to hear how this makes these two distinctly thoughtful chapters of the new album sound.

But more than this, I’ve decided to put my hand in Momo’s pocket for something rather special to end the whole long-player with – strings on Waiting is a bit like being on holiday, the album finale. It’s such a sun-drenched kind of refrain, it would just be such a classy way to leave the musical moment. If any potential listener can get through all the fannying around and stupid shenanigans before that, anyway.

Sadly, I have to wait until the end of the month before the violinist is back from holiday. But I am fully prepared to. I AM SO EXITED.

Gellan, on hearing this, was a total mate and simply said he couldn’t wait to hear it all.

—

I don’t know. I’ve operated in such comprehensive musical obscurity, unable to pull together all my musical experiences and explorations before now, the idea that me and my natural naffness might make a record that can almost stand up in the arena of credibility – or even get a couple of people to listen to it – well, that seems too much to imagine. Doesn’t sound very Real World to me.

Yet.

I’m getting one or two more people around me give me that look. That look that I’d get just very occasionally from a single very timely person, telling me that they totally loved what I’d done. Just when I was about to give up.

Bloody thanks, single timely person.

Like that one lass running across a field to me just as I was leaving another essentially-empty gig at a small local music festival, some dozen years ago. Or that one bloke asking for a CD just as I was packing up from a sparce show at The Gardening Club on some nameless Wednesday. Like, thanks. For sharing our madness, just when I was on the cusp of sanity.

But now I’m getting more unhelpfulness. The sort of little things that I am powerless to resist.

Simon’s growing interest in it from one cello session. The affection from Gel, Zo and the Thinking Juice gang about it. The sudden online airplay from one unknown DJ last month. The out-of-the blue contact from a young chap last week saying he’s ‘never been more excited about waiting for a new album’ than since discovering it. Mark the drum’s fantastically encouraging excitement about forming the live band for it. John the horn’s professionally experienced keenness this week to stay involved and do more sessions.

It.. it sort of feels like I should still, insanely be doing this. I told Gel I couldn’t really put all this out there, but I’m… darn it, it’s out there. I’m feeling it.

Now. I realise that all that this massive response so far adds up to is just a tiny group of positive friends sincerely wishing me well and a couple of possible random nutters, I know. Yet, tiny world as this may be, it’s very nice. And it’s been steadily increasing my tempted sense of excitement.

—

Don’t get me wrong – this record won’t be properly right. Take heart – remember that I simply don’t know what I’m doing enough. I am, lest we forget, just some chap making music that’s not very hip, simply to please himself. And that’s not going to change, of course.

So you won’t have to redecorate your life’s frame of reference any time soon, I shouldn’t think.

But it’s all rather good fun, isn’t it?

—

So, after a week of bending my head around website structures and pitch strategies and brochure copy and emailers of news, I am staying at the Mac and shipping in the pizza and turning up the dance music tonight, to see if I can make a credible brand for The Golden Age out of the print making session that the creative superforce Sarah G-H kindly helped me with in her studio a couple of weeks back.

Then I have two days to wrap up all the edits, sessions and unworking bits of Momo:tempo’s debut album musical creative, in order to actually, definitely, possibly complete it.

I guess all things, even this, must change eventually.

Maybe.

Eighteen and expecting.*

Just over a week on from an old friend’s happy wedding and from happily making jokes at his expense in front of all his other friends, I find myself looking at today’s date in the diary and remembering a similar day a couple of worlds away.

Eighteen years ago, Caroline and I demonstrated our decision to stop mucking about and step up.

For, betrothed by our villages as a peace accord I think, our childlike selves took vows to laugh at eachother’s jokes and to inspect eachother’s unmentionable ailments until one or both of us dropped with the emotional effort of looking interested.

To her eternal and almost saint-like credit, eighteen circuits of the Earth later, Caroline still lets slip the odd unguarded titter at my shrinking gene pool of jokes. Which might have been reason alone to keep me interested all that time, clever girl.

But the truth is, of course, when someone consistently impresses you with who they are, it’s hard not to stay interested.

And if, on top of this, they’re consistently nice to you… well, the shoes are staying off and under the table, aren’t they?

..Though I would say it turns out that this happy equilibrium depends rather on you giving them as many reasons as you can humanly think of for them to be nice to you. One of which might be pretending to play it cool at a very early stage – something which can for a while take the kind of herculean creative effort of a hormonal young man that could alternatively have been very usefully channeled into a career or something. Sure – tell ’em you’ve fallen in love. But not every ten minutes from about half an hour after meeting them. Not if you want it to last, loverboy.

—

Approaching life’s middle eight, I marvel at anyone’s ability to find someone who can keep time and tune with them. To find someone who’s willing to join the band at all seems remarkable, but to find someone who can stick with the piece through numerous time signature and key changes and still have intuition enough to improv a little before coming back in on cue for the big refrain together at the end seems too much to ask. Not least of all because it sounds as if you’re asking them to marry a jazz musician.

No, to have survived so many over-stretched metaphors, flowery language and inexplicably stuck drum machines on stage and to still be arsing about enjoying ourselves as ever we were is something I don’t really know how to say thankyou for.

But the fact that my long-suffering wife would, if made to read this, simply sigh and get on with something useful rather than carefully packing a case and leaving without a word is something you should show her some reverence for.

I do.

—

When I think of the different relationships around us during those eighteen years – or twenty-one really – I think I’m mainly thinking that no marriage survives in a vacuum. It needs relational air to breathe.

For those whose paths have had to separate during that time, I pause with some reverence. And for those who have helped us build something consistent through changing circumstances, by being consistent with us and eachother in all their different shapes of relationship, I simply mumble a thankyou prayer.

Because, just over a week on from Julian’s wedding and remembering my own, I can picture that he, for example, was at both. And interestingly, from a different but distantly related social family, so too was Mikey – Best Manning at the first, creating a party atmosphere with decks at the second. ..As too was his wife, then girlfriend, Emma.

I think, when friends demonstrate that they think it’s worth sticking around – at least, those that are somehow able to – you get to see over time why commitment is really so groovy.

Without the cloud of people who were there in August 1991, tripping over Caroline’s beautiful long train in the barn dance, and who weren’t there but who I can’t somehow believe weren’t, and who were but aren’t around with us now – and even those who never joined us at all, though we hoped they might – without them and the thought of them, I might not be still coming home to this remarkable woman’s embrace every night.

(..Except, she comes home to me. But, y’know. Don’t pick at the mood.)

So I’m thinking, here’s to the next eighteen years, gang. Wherever we find ourselves on this particular Monday, whatever has or hasn’t happened to us as we’d hoped, whatever is present, whoever is absent, when it feels things should really be somehow otherwise… I’m still expecting all kinds of good things. You’ve shown us an uncountable many already.

xxx

*Don’t get excited. Read to the end. It’s a play on words thing.