Its been a strange kind of day. Blue skies and sunshine from the moment I woke up, but I had so much work to get through in getting this laptop working right… Went for a great run round to Tamarama beach and back at about 4 just to break the cooped-up feeling in half.

My hair is a right shaggy mop now. I was growing it a bit, ever since the Asian tour with RK, when it was blonde, cut exactly the way I wanted it by Robyn Fenton at Mahogany, London. She’s a genius. Then, by the time the next RK tour came along, in April, I looked like a bit of a surfer dude. Now I just look like one of those dogs that can’t see out past its fringe. I may enter myself in Crufts this year, at which, if I play my cards right, I could win Best Of Breed in some obscure ‘hairy dog’ category.

Enough about hair. There aren’t enough hours in the day. This site needs a facelift. I want to put up biographies of the wonderful musicians who played on Angels In Drag. Let me just tell you about them in th meantime. Lets do it like school (groan) and go alphabetically, starting with…

Liam Bradley

Drums on Coldwalking and tambourine on Angels In Drag

Liam is like Yoda. The oldest and wisest being in the universe. We met in 1999 in a rehearsal studio in Dublin, getting ready to go on tour with Eleanor McEvoy, an Irish singer-songwriter. Liam had a great reputation, and I was the new kid in town. I walked in – his kit was set up, looking fantastic. From the first handshake I knew we would be friends, and I wasn’t wrong. Not only was I blown away by his musicianship, but I found I had discovered one of the world’s finest people. Ass-kicking drummer, beautiful singer and all-round top bloke.

After Eleanor’s tour, he recommended me as guitarist for a tour with Brendan Perry, which was absolutely great. (Brendan comes into the equation at this point – he sang vocals on one of my tracks and his daughter Emma is the girl on the cover.) During the rehearsals for BP’s tour, I stayed at Liam’s place up in Donegal, an old disused army hospital on the banks of Lough Foyle, converted into a magnificent house. Its beyond description really… but it was five hours of driving a day to get to Quivvy Church for the rehearsal and back. Liam will drive 8 hours a day if it means he can sleep in his own bed. Five hours is a lot of chat – thankfully Liam is also one of the greatest storytellers I’ve ever met – anyone from Ronan Keating’s band, or anyone who has met him, will surely concur. I heard all sorts of tales about his time touring with Van Morrison, before that when he used to tour Ireland with the old showband ‘The Memories’ (known for their excellent rendition of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, about the time he gave it all up and worked in a furniture shop… and so many more great tales, the names of many legendary Irish musicians thrown into the melting pot and then the pot itself melted.

When it came time for me to record the album, I had a ballad in mind, probably the strongest song on the record, called ‘Coldwalking’. I love the track and it has been many peoples’ favourite so far. I needed a drummer who could lie right back and play the drums with the vocal. Liam was the man, make no mistake. He pitched up at Mudd Wallace’s studio, Homestead, in a rainy little town in Northern Ireland called Randalstown, with that same old Sonor kit I’d seen the day I met him. And he played the track beautifully before getting back in the car and driving late, all the way back up to Donegal, to the house, fire probably lit, sending a thin trail of smoke up into the sky where, on summer evenings, people look across from the other side of the lough and say how beautiful it is, how truly beautiful…

WHAT A TWAT!!!

I cannot believe what a twat I am! Eddie Izzard, gig of the week. Posters all over town – 28th July, 28th July. But he was actually doing shows for ten days, and I brilliantly had tickets for LAST THURSDAY!!! Looked at them to see what time he was on, and felt:

(a) SICK
(b) COMPLETELY PISSED OFF
(c) TOTALLY EMBARRASSED seeing as Hartleyface had given me 66 dollars to get him a ticket.

God, what an idiot. So no comedy night for us. Quite the reverse – I’m moping around in my own stupidity… I shall so a Bruce Lee, take the thought and burn it.

I’ve just been sorting through my old album files, hoping to burn them to DVD and put them in a drawer somewehere, move on to the new stuff. There are some great unheard mixes, sections that never made it to the cut, all sorts of gems. I’ll throw some of it online in the not-too-distant future but for now I just want to enjoy it for myself. Including an interview I did with a Japanese DJ in Tokyo’s NHK Station, DJ Takuma. They cut it down to about 2 minutes, so its like a pint-sized preview of the record. It will give you some clues, anyway.

Its a beautiful day here – bluest of skies imaginable, in the middle of winter. Di and I met Rose, a record company boss and all round lovely woman, and Stuart Hunter, the keyboard player from Silverchair, for breakfast up in North Bondi, at a place called Brown Sugar. A great little spot, actually. Stuart is a wicked keyboard player – I gave him a copy of Angels and hope he likes it ‘cos I’d like him to maybe be involved with the S*T*U*F*F thing. Sydney, being the cultural and musical black hole that it is, is making me believe I should wait and do the launch etc. back in London. I’ll see how I feel in a week or two.

Have a go at the Happytown Remix Engine – I did some decisive work on it late last night and feel its finally beginning to shape up. No instructions yet… just fool around and see what happens. Broadband recommended but not necessary. Later x

Freezing.

I have abandoned OS X for the meantime. Happytown Remix Engine is finally working properly, although I had to go down a completely different route. Its good fun, and I’ll be developing it a lot this week.

We’re going to a friend’s house for dinner so I’ve got to go…

2:46am Post roast dinner and lots of good fun. Came back and did some work on the HaRE, but its really time for bed, so I’ll write tomorrow. Still haven’t quite got into the swing of things with D.’s jet-lag keeping us awake until silly times of the night and in bed until lunchtime! I’m going to try and get a Monday feeling, but never having done a 5 day week in my life, might find that hard.

EDDIE IZZARD tomorrow night with Hartleyface!! Brilliant. Over in the Enmore theatre – last time I was there I saw Elvis Costello who was stunning, last July, on tour here with RK. It really was a gig, and left me so inspired.

Australian Pop Idol kicked off tonight. The nightmare begins. The slow but inevitable grind of the music industry machine into absolute creative nothingness and increased employment intake of accountants has begun again in another corner of the world. And, what’s worse, the public are just as delighted with it here as everywhere else…

I must admit I found the first series of auditions for PopStars in the UK (the very first one that yielded Hear’Say) very funny, but since then, they have been faked, I’m sure of it. “I KNOW – the public like people making fools of themselves, so lets get some people in to make fools of themselves. Call the advertising placement agency and let them know. God, this is going to be huge!” I hate it. Gareth Gates, Will Young – talent? I’m not even going to answer, but the word zero springs to mind very quickly. Where are the Freddie Mercuries and Bonos of the new scene? Where is the new Sting, the new Led Zeppelin? Naaah. Maybe those days are gone. Tom Waits making multi-million records as a new talent in 2003? I think not. Still, its not all doom and gloom – there are some funky people out there making great music, and long may that spirit live. I suppose its been this way in a different guise for a lot longer than we all give it credit for.

I am heartbroken. Truly devastated… by the closure of my favourite cafe in the world, Direction Of Cure on Burnie Street, Clovelly, R.I.P.

I went down a couple of Sundays ago and it was closed, but I thought “Aha! She’s just closing Sundays ‘cos its winter and not really that busy… I’ll come back next week.” But alas, my worst fears have been realised. ‘Tis gone, never to return. Apparently the owner has had enough of the cultural black hole that is Sydney, and has gone to Melbourne. Not that I can blame her – Melbourne is fantastic, much more European than the heavily American-influenced Sydney. Make no mistake, Sydney is a fantastic place to BE, but not a great place to DO. I loved it when we toured there, although it has to be said every last man in the touring party had an outrageous suite at the Sebel Hotel, which may have had something to do with it… a superb bar up the road called Chaise Lounge added another late-night stroke of mastery into the equation. Maybe I should kick Sydney into touch and head for Melbourne… well, maybe not. I’ll just plant seeds and see what happens.

And don’t ask, just download the link below. Shooby Taylor, a genius, the human horn. I guarantee you will never have heard anything like it… John Coltrane had better watch his ass.

15:37 Its a beautiful day out there. I’ve been working on the HaRE since about 10am., getting on really well – have another go – should be more intuitive now. Just select the instrument you want to add to your arrangement, pick a pencil to put it in, or eraser to delete it. Fill up the slots and GO!! Your own remix of Happytown! What fun!

1:03 An entire day of wading through sludge. Flash can be a right bollox at times. I just CAN’T get this bloody sequencer to line up properly ‘cos some little bastard of a loop keeps triggering things twice, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to fix it. I’m waiting for Jared, my drummer-in-waiting, to come round with my Neumann mic and pre-amp. As my computer was knackered, I let him take the stuff away, and from the sounds of it, he’s been using them non-stop for three weeks, right up until about 20 minutes ago. Don’t know what time he’ll make it, but my body clock is now so completely screwed I don’t know what time I’m in. So it doesn’t really matter. Just need a pot of tea. Toying with the idea of a late aromatherapy bath – I love burning some candles and rosemary oil, lying back for a chillout and maybe a read of ‘Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix’ – yes, I have succumbed… I’ve read ’em all kids! Love the third book – masterpiece. The others are pretty good too, though – I can imagine how brilliant it must be to read that stuff if you were 10. The latest one is pretty dark – great! I’m the sort of person that lives a book until I close the cover. I read ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ a while back and on opening it each time, I felt the dank canopy of rainforest close in on me, the heart of darkness chill my bones even in the humid heat of the jungle… awesome. Faded very badly towards the end though, it did… still, the factual (?) stuff about the CIA’s covert operations in the Congo and the part America had to play in building today’s Third World Debt (which reminds me – where is the Second World?) is amazing, and very, very dark. I could believe almost anything of that period in history, from the sixties through to the mid-70’s – the age of JFK and Monroe, Vietnam, the deals behind closed doors in Ulster, the Rumble in The Jungle… the days before I was even born.

Right. One last-ditch attempt to get that bloody machine working. Tomorrow D. gets home and life can perhaps regain some of its sanity in the timekeeping department. And I get my new PowerBook.

The greatest congratulations to my friends Foy and Joanne Vance – baby Ella Naomi was born yesterday at 10:45am Belfast time, but I only got the text message this morning… Unbelievable… the strange circles of life keep spiralling to infinity and we’re just clinging on, hoping for some kind of rollercoaster ride to something. I am over the moon for them, just imagining the big smiles on that boy’s face.

Foy is one of the most amazing musicians I have ever met. Liam Bradley (who played drums for Van Morrison, Ronan Keating etc.) says that Foy’s album is still the best thing he’s ever worked on. I would have to agree – I had the privilege of producing it. I hope he gets a website up soon so you can enjoy it as much as we all did…

After the late night with my old mate Hartleyface, I surfaced at the crack of noon, thinking of old Tom Waits and how I used to go to sleep to the tune of Nighthawks At The Diner when I lived in Japan, in the glory days of the CD DiscMan. Even that sounds like ancient history. The speed of our lives is getting ridiculous. I’m just listening to the waves crashing, birds singing outside, wondering where all this is going at such breakneck pace.

I’m fundamentally a slow kind of person. That’s why I prefer tea to coffee (mark my words, tea will come to represent slowness and become very trendy in big cities… I’ve been saying it for a while. People will talk about coffee in the same way they talk about cocaine – ‘Its SO eighties man’)… time to brew, time taken to pause your life for a moment. Like Guinness too… I miss a decent pint of that, it has to be said. Escaping one’s Irishness is never easy in a bar.

0:27 I just got a sudden glow of satisfaction there when I realised I had brewed a pot of Madagascan Vanilla tea which was sitting behind me… just forgot about it in the midst of putting up the latest version of the HARE (HAppytown Remix Engine). Spent ages on it today, putting in a sequencer feature, where you can arrange the song now as well as play the loops in sync with each other. Detailed instructions will come with the final package, but for now lets just have a play. We’re all fumbling in the dark anyway so no matter…

The day has vanished before me in all this laptop-fuelled mind-enigma nonsense. I was a machine… food… program… food… practised some guitar (just rehearsing some of the album tunes on my old acoustic as one-man performances)… tea… programmed… blah, blah and so the beard grows. But I’m enjoying putting this remix tool together. It will give you a chance to hear how the parts fit together… eventually we’ll have a competition for best remix.

Still beavering away on the Happytown Remix Engine. Should be a lot of fun. I’m going to see Coldplay tonight… should be good. More in a while…

1:02am Just back from the Coldplay gig with Hartleyface, a great old mate from the North. We were impressed by the headwobbling brilliance of Chris Martin. A great, if slightly predictable show. ‘In My Place’ will never cease to give me shivers… I hear the sham was arrested a couple of days ago when they did a festival up north, in Byron Bay. Link in the extras.

Hartleyface tells me they need a new drummer (he was the original drummer for my last band g-raff so he should know) and has, kindly in my opinion, offered his services, not only as a drummer, but as Gwyneth Paltrow’s keeper if so required.

We are now sitting down listening to Radiohead’s Hail To the Thief – its a grower for sure – and tucking into a couple of bowls of some carrot, parsnip and ginger soup I made earlier (Delia watch out). Yes, after a couple of Coopers Greens, the old tradition of getting some food in remains absolutely immoveable.

I have just finished the first draft of the Happytown Remix Engine” and decided I would put it up immediately. Its a very basic version of what is going to be a funky little toy, allowing you to completely remix Happytown intuitively. Just load various loops and hit PLAY – they will automatically sync up. You will, of course, need to have your speakers turned on… Have fun and let me know how you get on!!

Just back from the ultimate Run Of Death. When I landed here back in February I said if I ever managed to run from here to Bondi Beach I’d be delighted with myself. The great Jules Maxwell was here at that time (one of my biggest musical inspirations) and we walked round one day, having been struggling with running even as far as Coogee beach and back, puffing and panting, sweating like dogs, swearing we’d never do it again. I suggested that one day before I left Australia I would manage the run to Bondi.

I DID IT!! There and back, no less. Sorry for gloating but I’m still revelling in the fact that I’m still alive! Only three weeks until the City2Surf, and I’m feeling well up for it.

A rainy Sunday. Another perfect Scrabble day and no-one to play it with. Feeling like an old hermit trapped in my cave, I am listening to a fantastic playlist on iTunes to lift the grey spirits of the afternoon. The sea is fantastic, though – steely grey and smashing the coastline to bits for some unforgotten sin. I’m going to make some late lunch and just stare at it for a while.

This playlist is so good, I’m considering going all Hi-Fidelity and putting together a little playlist viewer so we can see what everyone is listening to.

Now I have nothing personal against Victoria Beckham. I just saw this photo and thought it was fun. If you can suggest a better name I can put in instead of the delightful Victoria’s, please let me know by means of the MessageBox. Best one goes up!

Its been a sleepy kind of Saturday. That “wake up late, slide into a bath and do sweet F.A. all day” kind of day. I’ve been struggling along with the Happytown. A much better lyrics page will be added when the album is released – not too long now, we’re in the final stages of manufacture in Hong Kong.

Just made some fresh green pesto. I am one of the world’s messiest cooks. I actually love making a mess – must be a throwback to childhood. D. hates it when I’m in the kitchen (suits me just fine). So by the time I’d produced one little tub of the stuff, almost every utensil in the whole place had been coated with green and flung in some corner! Great! Fatz gave me a doggy bag of her lovely pasta bake with halloumi cheese, so I might take the easy option for dinner. I promised D. I’d try and eat sensibly, but I’m not doing a great job of that.

17:52 We’re on the flight path tonight. Some days we are, others no. Just depends on the wind. Tonight the waves on the rocks are not alone, smothered by overhead 747s. I’m sitting down with a glass of decent red wine to contemplate the coming of evening.

23:56 And the day dissolves into itself, NEVER to come back. Some days that terrifies me, other days exhilarates. The 19th July 2003 will NEVER happen again. Unless you are in America, just waking up… oh, I don’t know. The whole time-space continuum is a question that periodically rears its head and reminds me that I know bugger all about this magic universe, that all bets are off and we are walking home at dawn with our bow ties slung over our shoulders… the house wins again, but the dancing was fun.

The links below are dedicated to that American genius (laughs his ass off in the background as he types this), Defence (I refuse to spell it Defense) Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. If you really need more fear concerning the collective IQ of the American government, click on the links. Its terrifying, really… like listening to the Muppet Show Special from the Pentagon.

Following yesterday’s post of the Bruce Lee Video Remix tool as a funky link, my friend sent me a link to something only the Japanese could possibly conceive. Link in the extras – broadband recommended… but its good fun!

18:30 Now I’m on the 339 bus to go for dinner at Dave Symes’ house. He’s a funky-ass bass player and the number 1 choice for Stuff. Actually, typing on my Palm is not easy on this bumpy old dinosaur of a bus…

My run took me down to South Coogee just as the sun was going down – that beautiful time of the evening when the sea is lighter than the sky, mirror calm. I ran through Grant Reserve, where some children were collecting frogspawn, with the splashing and deep croaking of the bullfrogs rattling against the soft swish of the tide on the rocks. A peaceful run rather than another R.O.D. – saving that for Sunday.

Cab home, 1.11am. One of those perfect chilled nights – nice food, wine, chat, music and cards… D.’s fave game, a Chinese game called Chaw Dai Di. Dave’s girlfriend Fatz slaughtered us over Turkish tea and some Wolf Blass Shiraz…

Now I’m home – its pretty cold in here. Tapping away on the Palm in the cab nearly made me throw up. Either that or the abominable playlist of on 105.9FM – ‘Today’s BEST Music’ – I don’t think so! Complete shit. I despair for what people get shoved down their throats, and what they willingly accept as good. Oh well, its been this way ever since Elvis, I suppose, and there’s no point whinging about it. Make more music, flood them with tunes, hope for the best and sing louder than anyone else! The cab driver was a Chinese guy – obviously a karaoke champion, as he was giving it some on the tunes; he knew them all. I think that dreadful Avril Lavigne was there somewhere, but I can’t be sure. It sounded like Alanis Morissette so it must have been her. Sorry – I’m sounding off about music again. Still, its my page so I can do what I want.