Last night my friend David “Wildcard” Tughan called me to say he had a spare ticket for an Oscar Peterson show in the Royal Albert Hall. Being as it was a fine summer’s evening, not to mention the fact that Oscar Peterson is regarded by many as the greatest jazz pianist of all time, I thought it seemed like the right thing to do. I grew up listening to his recordings, as my grandfather was, and still is, a big fan. Oscar is old now – 81 to be exact – and suffered a stroke a few years ago that seriously affected his left side… heartbreaking really, as the Peterson left hand was truly a legend in the jazz world, a powerhouse of rhythm and force of musical voodoo.

Standing outside the Royal Albert Hall is a great thing to do on a June evening. Black cabs pull up from all sides, and elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen climb out to enjoy their concert evening. Its very civilised. I was just standing there wondering if I had enough time to hotfoot it up to High Street Kensington to grab a bowl of noodles – I was so hungry after a failed lunch date with one of my old mates from university, Jake – more on him later. In the end, I had to settle for a £1.80 bag of crisps from the bar.

Showtime. The Royal Albert Hall is magnificent inside. Really – it transports you to another world, and the anticipation is palpable on this evening. The lights dim, and out come the band. Some moments later, a hunched over figure emerges from the side-stage gloom, leaning heavily on his walking stick and moving really slowly… it is the great man. The stalls are on their feet already, and the applause around the venue is of that warmth reserved for an artist who has ingrained themselves into lives, into the very souls of the people listening. I think the whole place was a bit nervous too, wondering if he could still cut it despite his age and obvious degrading of his technical ability.

What followed was one of the strangest gigs I’ve been too. Magical at times, yes. Musically wonderful pretty much all of the time – and the band were seriously hot musicians too (wish I could play guitar like that guy) – but something strange happened… Oscar got confused. He played a tune called “Backyard blues”, introduced by him saying, “You know, for the last year I’ve been in a writing kind of mood… this is one you might like called ‘Backyard Blues’…” Then he played it. Rocked the place.

He followed that with a touching and beautiful piece for his wife, simply called “The Love Ballad.” Then, immediately, and with no introduction, he launched back into “Backyard Blues.” I thought it was going to be a short reprise or something, but no, he played the whole tune again, and finished up by saying, “That was ‘Backyard Blues’ – I’ve been in a writing kind of a mood for the past year or so.” Part of me was aching for him, wondering what was going on, did he know he’d played it twice? Not that it mattered – the whole premise of jazz is of course that once the head of a tune has been played, its a free-for-all, and its never the same twice.

He played a couple more numbers. After about an hour and a half, he stood up, and left the stage to huge applause. the lights came up. We thought that was it, so everyone headed for the stairs. Halfway down, an announcement came over the PA to say that was the interval!! Oscar was coming back on! Dave’s wife Shiri had spotted an empty row of seats near the front of the stalls, which we duly occupied in the mayhem.

Out he comes again. Sits down, and plays what I recognise as a mellower, piano-only version of “The Love Ballad” – again. It was even more beautiful than the first time he played it. Then he followed up with the last tune he’d played in the first half. Then he introduced a song that he’d written for his beloved wife called “The Love Ballad”. And played it for a third time. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – part of me was falling to bits inside, wondering if this great man was just losing it, or was he so consumed by this piece of music and love for his wife that he just couldn’t think of anything else.

You could sense an uncomfortable feeling rippling through the venue… I didn’t care that he was doing this – especially since it was such a beautiful piece of music which I could almost sing to you now – but other people clearly did.

They finished up with some high-tempo cookin’ jazz and the drummer relieved all the tension by ripping the living bollocks out of a solo in the last track. I’ve never seen such an expression of pure will and intensity on a drummer’s face in my life, except maybe John Bonham playing with Led Zeppelin in that very same venue. When Oscar finally stood up to leave the stage, the applause was deafening. But it was applause for the man, and not really the show… although the show was great for the most part, I think people just wanted to thank him for those recordings, for a life that has seen him play in the hottest jazz gigs of the last century, of all time, the smoky bars and the huge concert halls, with all the legends we dream of.

Raining in London. I don’t mind today, as I feel a bit under the weather. My voice has headed off for a holiday, leaving me with a sore throat, a squeaky whine and hoarse whisper in its place. I had to go to Sydenham DIY today to pick up some drain-unblocking equipment (the duties of house ownership, eh?) and made the owner laugh by attempting to ask if he had anything suitable. It came out like dolphin-talk… I cleared my throat and tried again, but only succeeded in sounding like a kitten that had recently eaten dry Alpen. Nonetheless, I managed to leave the shop armed to the teeth with some serious gear – so serious it had its own custom bag, and duly unblocked the drain which last time cost £101.65 for a DynoRod guy to poke around for at most two minutes.

So what else? I’ve been hard at work on the Flash front today, coding up a new site for my multimedia business g-raff Multimedia (decommissioned) – its a guerrilla team of ace designers, coders and whatnot. We just do cool jobs and have lots of fun. D. and I were talking earlier about how you just never imagine your life will go the way it goes… I didn’t expect to be spending so much time working on programming, and have often felt a bit geeky / really boring. Still, I do love Flash and the whole idea of creating and nurturing stuff, regardless of what platform it is in – music, the internet, writing on paper, growing a flower from seed.

I dug out rough mixes of the tracks I hope to record soon. Jules is waiting for demos, so i’d better get my act together. Still not entirely sure what vibe to go for, but I think it will be much less ostentatious than Angels In Drag. Wondering about musicians too… I’m not sure who to involve, as its such new territory for me, letting someone else produce the record. Jules has an amazing sideways approach, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he makes of the new tracks.

Been listening to The Blue Nile a lot. I love it. Paul Buchanan’s voice is just spellbinding, and the forlorn Glasgow heartache leaks through the rain and beauty of every note. I really love it.

D. needs a backrub, so I’m outta here.

Tea

Just drinking a cup of tea now. Had a cup of milky nonsense at our friends Jo & Laurence’s place. Laurence doesn’t drink much tea… he serves a fine cold beer, mind you. They’ve just had a lovely wee girl – it was strange holding a tiny baby in my arms, as L. is now a powerhouse who spent most of our visit trying to eat Laurence’s copy of “Infidels” by Bob Dylan. It was great listening to that old record when we were there – memories galore, especially one of my favourite Dylan songs of that era – “License to Kill”. L. failed to eat the record.

Teething

Poor L. – squealing like a stuck pig in agonising pain as his top teeth pop through. Foy Vance recorded a blues number for him yesterday, which just about sums it up. Foy also played a new song of his, which has no title, but is so spellbindlngly simple and beautiful I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry or throw up. AWESOME!! The guy is scary… just a melody machine, dripping with soul and beautiful music. Teething must be limited in the fun stakes… I can’t quite remember.

Teetering

England have just beaten Ecuador. Actually it was like watching Little Upton Special School 2nd XI play Ecuador. I can’t believe they won – they were a bag of balls. Still, that means the flags will stay up and Chris Moyles remains more comfortably far away from me than usual, at least for the time being. Is it just me or is Radio One just unbearable? If someone can tell me a good radio station to tune into in London, I will be most grateful.

Saturday morning with baby L.. He’s so mobile now its scary, and with his new wee teeth has a very simple checklist of things to do with everything he comes across:

• Can I eat it?
• Can I rip it?
• Can I climb up it?

If the answer to all three is “No” then he moves on to something else. All items in the house are being tested with his checklist, including guitars, feet, cables, friends, sofas and D.’s weekly TimeOut.

I’m writing this post on the laptop I used to record “Angels In Drag”, and wondering if I should have some kind of sentimental attachment to it, which of course I don’t. Its a dinosaur now – a first-generation Titanium PowerBook running Mac OS 9, whose screen is littered with lines of broken pixels. Digital items are hard to bond with – why is that? They often look lovely, but that’s not enough. I have never felt the same way about a digital camera as I did with my old Fujica – it belonged to my grandfather and I took every photo in my teens with it. I brought it to Japan, and it was a travelling companion in early tours. Then one day it just clicked shut and that was it. Downstairs I have a box of all my music relics – and the nicest things in there are without a doubt the 8 and 16 track reels of tape. They look positively regal beside the hopeless little DAT tapes and faceless hard drives… Still, its the thrust of our age – smaller, more data, more disposable.

I’m hooking up with Foy Vance later today – what a whirlwind his life has become, and you’d better watch out! Just Google the name and all will be revealed.

When I was in Bangor, I had a great chat with Jules Maxwell, a huge inspiration to me and a great musician. He’s going to produce my next record. We were talking about the future of music, and both came to the conclusion that there is an inevitable shift towards music being free. So my next release will be a free download. Simple as that. The mercenary amongst you may be wondering, “So how do you make your money then?” – well, its easy… merchandise, touring, use of the music for TV etc. I’m going to try it and see. Put up an art pack that you can download and print out that accompanies the music… Good idea or not? We’ll have to wait and see. Most people think we’re nuts, but I say wait five years and read this again.

I did say in my journals two years ago that tea would make a major comeback… and I can hardly open an edition of TimeOut without seeing some article on the latest teahouse in London.

The baby talk has reached a point where its too cute to ignore anymore – I must go and play with my wee boy.

Just back from a weekend and a bit more in Bangor, the town where I first kissed a girl, drank a bottle of cider, and jumped naked into the sea. Not all at the same time, I hasten to add, though thinking about it that would have been fun. The main purpose of the visit was to be best man for a truly great friend of mine, Steve Vincent, who also happens to be L.’s “ka-yeh” – the Chinese equivalent of godfather. Guitars and swimming in the ocean, the cutest thing that’s ever happened to me, the Northern Irish summer roulette… magic.

Steve had asked me and another friend to perform “May You Never” by John Martyn at the wedding. Its a beautiful and special track, and the original version is just amazing – stunning guitar playing and a great vocal. Simple and wonderful. I figured I’d better figure out my own version, which meant getting back to playing the guitar. What a joy! I haven’t really played for pleasure that much since packing it in last year… and had forgotten how much I loved it. Its all coming back – like some tiny stream in a barren mountain range, and the rain’s been falling. I had such a great time playing my mum’s beat-up old Spanish guitar in her summerhouse, looking out over the view of Belfast Lough and the tankers heading due east to God knows where through a haze of sea fog and white sunlight.

While we were performing it in the church, something heartbreakingly cute happened – D. set little L. down at the back of the church. He crawled out into the aisle, looked up and saw me… his face blossomed into the biggest smile imaginable, and he started to crawl up the aisle towards me, so determined and absolutely oblivious to everyone else in the whole place. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Some of the other lads were all choked up seeing it happen. It was beautiful, and I was completely losing my concentration. Eventually D. came and rescued him… I just don’t know what I would have done if he’d made it all the way to my feet. So sweet, and a memorable part of a lovely day. Then I had to make my speech… I should paste it in here, but perhaps its best kept under wraps.

I’m just back from the studio. Its so nice up there now – a new guy has moved into the back room… the mighty Paul Wilkinson, who produces Duke Special (I’ve raved about him no end, and with good reason. His new album box set is nothing short of stunning – D. bought it for me last week). Paul is a really nice bloke with some serious talent going on, and its good to have yet another Norn Irish bloke in the place. He was just leaving, so I stayed to play some piano for a while – a new grand piano was put in a couple of months back, which has just made all the difference. I can’t wait to start recording now – the time is coming soon. I’m just choosing my tracks and then all systems are go.

We are missing out. Our generation with the digital cameras. D. and I spent a whole evening looking at old photographs. Polaroids and faded 70s colours, some with rounded edges. Notes on the back – dates, places, fuzzy pictures of family, of my brother and me as babies… it was fun to look at them, to try and recall the scents of gardens, the feel of toys and the endless days spent with grannies in summers. But our memories are safe in hard drives, on CDs… instantly shown on a small LCD screen, judgements made, the delete button pressed with ruthless abandon. Gone are the days of the magical moment when you’d get your photos back from the counter at Boots (not altogether a bad thing mind you!) and just open the envelope, not knowing what you’d get. I miss it in a strange way. I really must make an effort to print more photos out. My granny Greta’s pictures of L. are dog-eared by now – anyone with eyes and ears isn’t safe – she’s so proud of her great-grandson – and why not?

For now, I’m off to bed.

I went out to water the plants this-morning. There is a big old rosemary bush at the back of the garden, and as I was watering it, I noticed something red peeping out from the leaves. It was a perfect scarlet rose – just one that had grown about 3 feet of stem to reach the light… I was amazed. Maybe there’s a lesson in that – if you just keeping ploughing your way through bark and leaves, you can eventually reach the sun. No sooner had I recovered from that moment of wonder than I discovered that we have a cherry tree, complete with now-ripening plump red cherries. This made me very, very happy.

What a day. ROASTING! So damn hot I could hardly sit outside. Even at 9am, as I drank my morning brew on the sofa in the back garden (yes, there’s a sofa in the back garden), I began to melt. Our flat is “upside down” – the bedrooms are on a half-basement floor – in the winter, as we froze our asses off going downstairs, we used to say (with doubt-filled voices), “Ah, just wait for the summer… it’ll be great then.” Well, the pay-off has arrived. The temperature down here is spot on. Wee L. is asleep with no blankets or even his little sleeping bag… he’s so cute its heartbreaking.

The old acoustic guitar has been wheeled out. I have to learn a John Martyn song for the mighty Steve Vincent who is getting married on Saturday. To tell you the truth, it never really went away. Even in the dark days of no sleep and going slightly crazy when L. was very young, I used to play for some kind of salvation. I used to play “My Song is Love Unknown”, a hymn that Leo (Abrahams) arranged beautifully for guitar, and end up crying my eyes out at some ungodly hour of the night. Partially because I was so gone, so tired, but also because its one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard… playing it is like praying in a strange way. I played for L. – he loves stroking the strings, and played his first chord at the tender age of 3 months with the help of my left hand. I never would have believed I could become such a cooing dad… is that what happens to all blokes when they have a baby? I have become an emotional basket case since L. was born, and its not changing.

London gridlock. There’s nothing quite like it to ruin your day. Travel should be transparent – a bland tunnel through which to pass on the way to brighter things – and I’m pretty sure it used to be like that, but time have changed and travelling from A to B has become a thing of great smelliness. There had been an accident in Chelsea, meaning all bridges across the Thames and roads leading up to them from the South side were just standstill traffic… even in that there is something to see. A crazy woman (at least I think she was crazy – maybe she wasn’t… after all she was walking and we were sitting in cars) was stopping at the window of every vehicle, asking where they wanted to go, and offering the best possible route. I love the random choice of crazy action… she has obviously decided that is her thing.

Anyway, after the dreadful journey, I arrived at Brian Eno’s studio up in Notting Hill a quivering shambles, and just lay down on the floor for a while as he made me a cup of tea. He has moved the studio out of the famous little cupboard of a room he used before, and into the light airy space that is the rest of the building. Something of an improvement. It was good to see him again – he’s a man who knows how to smile. Naturally the first thing we did was leave the house and head for some lunch on the terrace of Rico’s up on Westbourne Grove. Theoretically it shouldn’t be that good, but the salad was a killer and with the sun beating down in that “London summer” way, it was pretty close to a perfect lunch.

Thence to “Tea Palace” for the purchasing of some nice tea. Since L. was born, I just haven’t had a chance to indulge in brewing much. I even went so far as to buy teabags!! When you have 5 minutes between a nappy change and bathtime its more important to get a tea hit than worry about the quality of your Keemun/Yunnan blend. Brian bought some very odd Japanese tea that smelt like All-Bran – it tasted damn fine though.

Back in the studio, it was time for the fun to begin – recording some guitars for an installation piece he is working on for Art Angel based on the biblical plagues. It opens with Robert Wyatt being a swarm of flies. What followed was a fun session of playing some pre-written parts, and an insane trip down effects lane – always my favourite bit, as Brian inevitably gets ideas for other tracks and lets me loose on those. It got so chaotic that I eventually handed him the guitar and just started manipulating knobs and pedals with all hands and feet. What fun. It made me remember why I loved music so much… when I start to play it just all floods back.

I have become the classic blogger – the one who just can’t keep their mouth shut. But ultimately there’s just so much to talk about, to listen to. I’m going to use a blogging tool called WordPress, which I’m only just learning to use – my theory that content is king and no-one really cares about design in these days of so-called “Web 2.0” will be tested. I am going to leave this blog in a fairly non-cosmetic state for a while.

Music. I think its all coming back. Its been a strange run – stranger than I ever thought possible – but now my baby is starting to sleep, the air around my head just seems easier to breathe. That’s not the main reason, though – I went to a gig on Friday night that reminded me why I love music so much – The Blue Nile playing at The Barbican in London. It was devastatingly magic. Some people just don’t get their music, but I have to say it hits me right in the soul.

Tomorrow I am heading up to Brian Eno’s again to do some recording, tea shopping and eating of lunch in the fine establishments of Westbourne Grove. I had to go to the studio today to collect all my gear – which I haven’t touched since January. Its scary, really, thinking that I actually have to plug it in and somehow make it work. Still, he is an inspirational character, so if anyone can give me reason to bother, it is him.
That’s enough for now. Expect a mixed bag in this journal. Some posts will be out and out techie stuff, as I’ve had my head down in Flash ActionScript world for months, and have learned a few tricks. There will be baby stuff. There will be the progress of my new EP – “Time Once A Friend”. There will be the excitement of my project I’m working on with John “Big Issue” Bird. Oh yes – it will be a mixed bag.

21:23pm No end to Pop Idol domination on the TV.

So here’s the light-hearted lyrics to Miss Alleluia

Hey Miss Alleluia, let me see you smile
Light me one of your cigarettes and we will talk a while
Hey Miss Alleluia, I love to hear your voice,
so won’t you take me driving now, in your pretty pink Rolls Royce?

Chorus:
You’ve got a whole lot of joy
every boy in town wants your kiss
You’ve got time to kill
A seven-dollar bill
and magic at your fingertips

Hey Miss Alleluia, dressed in silver silk
in the supermarket buying lighter fuel and milk.
You drink them both together – you promise me that its nice.
You call it lightning lemonade,
but you never strike twice

(Chorus)

Hey Miss Alleluia – you make me want to scream!
You remind me of summertime, eating honeycomb ice-cream
But you’re a little bit sweeter, and not so cold
so kiss me now Miss Alleluia before I get too old!

Written for Jenny Alleluia, my old pal in Dublin, years ago. Recorded for the millenium party.

23:34pm The storms smashed Sydney to bits yesterday. One guy was killed and two swimmers dragged out to sea… never great news, is it. I narrowly avoided decapitation as I was walking across the road in Manly when a sign flew straight at my head – I ducked just in time!

D. spent the evening watching Australian Pop Idol – there is at least one funky singer who looks a bit unusual and different, unlike the UK version, which despite the judges assurances that they were looking for ‘someone original, someone with their own voice,’ managed to eliminate everybody with any personality whatsoever.

Following Pop Idol we had ‘Bachelor III’, the televisual equivalent of watching a cow vomiting. Absolutely PANTS!! I can’t believe how bad it is. Some overly rich American trying to find the perfect date amongst 40 or so gold-diggers. I laughed when a vegetarian (who had been one for 12 years) ate a huge chunk of lamb just because he was offering it to her – principles? Naaahhh… not when the rich boy’s about.

God, I’m such a cynic. Not really – I’ve never been much of a TV person. And Australian TV is a good few rungs below anything I’ve seen. Almost American in its lack of substance and number of ads… but not quite.

Less than a week and I’ll be back in Ireland. Hard to believe – is it just me or is time accelerating to a point where all perspective gets lost? I’m sure I landed here last week… but no. That was February. Summertime down here. Its getting nice again now – the seasons are spiralling on to infinity and I’m just hanging on, hoping for a free ride home. They’ve been sweltering in London, the hottest summer ever, while the storms smash Sydney to bits. Its that kind of year.

I’m working on the music page for the site. Should be quite cool, but as ever, the number of hours in the day is sadly lacking. Give me 48, please. Any good Flash designers out there who fancy a bit of creative work, get in touch via the messageBox.

I feel a trip to the Hunter Valley should happen soon, to get some Peterson’s wine – my favourite. You do get spoilt down here – there’s so much good wine its hard to believe. French people will point their noses in the air and lament the fate of the sacred European grape, but to Philistines like me, there is little better than a gigantic Barossa Valley Shiraz or a Margaret River… ah, its all so good. My friend Andrew Adamovich is a complete fiend, though he will claim ‘I just know what I like’. Every trip to his house is an over-the-top session of the finest wines available to humanity.

I got woken up a couple of days ago with a phone call from my old boss, Ronan Keating, out in London for the night – great to hear from him – sounds like things are going well. However, the bugger had no idea that the time difference was 9 hours, so I was standing buck naked in the hall at 5:30am having a conversation with. Surreal moments or what! Probably more information than was really required, especially for Ro.

Goodnight.