One of those strange mornings. I got in late, finally went to sleep about 4:30am, and was woken just before six bells by the unmistakable sound of a wild storm coming in from the sea. Rain pelting the windows relentlessly, wind howling like banshees through the tiny gaps in the window frames. Which, when you’re tucked up warm in bed isn’t too bad – noisy though (we have a ‘storm room’ in the house for when it gets too loud) – but when you realise you’ve left your washing out overnight is a bit grim. So I jumped up, threw on some jeans and ran out to salvage what I could… a bit granny-like, I suppose. I should have just let everything get soaked. But the storm had only just started, so I more or less rescued everything.

Back to sleep, until (ahem) one o’clock. Latest I’ve been up for a long, long time. Totally disorientated, there was only one thing for it – food shopping! Since D. left I haven’t managed to muster the enthusiasm to risk Harris Farm Markets. Still, one thing can be said for Australia – the produce is fantastic, and much cheaper than London. I dread the thought of ever going near a ‘Safeways’ again.

Came home laden to the gills with fresh fruit and vegetables, some lovely cheeses and meats from the Italian deli, and cooked up some Fan Kei Ju (a Chinese home-cooking kind of dish with pork, egg and tomato – gorgeous!). So here I am – its dark outside, pretty grim, and it feels like lunchtime. Pot of tea at the ready – more of that lovely Ceylon Pettigalla that I picked up in T2 on Saturday, brewed in a new teapot from the same place. My last one, although funky to look at, consistently soaked everything within ten feet whenever you tried to pour a cup.

Eric, the phone engineer has just been and fixed the line. So I have no excuse for my lack of content anymore. I was not idle in my absence – spent yesterday changing the whole data system again to XML-based structure (how anal can I POSSIBLY get) so I can do more stuff. Learning the techniques of all this programming use the wrong side of my brain for musical creativity – it can be like wading through treacle, but from experience, I know that there will be a time in the next month or so where the dam bursts and BOOM! I’ll be right back with a bunch of new songs.

I actually have a load of new stuff waiting to be recorded, but computer problems persist and I can’t record anything in the meantime… but D. is bringing me back my shiny new PowerBook, and Emagic contacted me today to say my copy of Logic 6 is in (Thanks Nick), so the music machine is revving up… I keep forgetting most people haven’t even heard Angels In Drag yet!

Went over to the Rose Of Australia last night to hear Jackie Orszaczky (pronounced Orzowski) playing with his ever-changing band. He’s a old soul man originally from Hungary, and a couple of the potential S*T*U*F*F musicians play with him – Dave Symes on bass and Clayton Doley on Hammond… but he is so revered that all the best Sydney players turn up to play with him, whether they get paid or not. The last time I went it was stunning, completely mesmeric in its groove, but last night was just simmering along, with a couple of extremely dodgy women who decided the local karaoke bar was too far away. Enough said. They, of course, got the biggest cheers of the night…

Its always been something I have tried to get a handle on – the unerring quality of the punter that cannot tell whether something is fundamentally good from a musical point of view. It doesn’t matter anymore, and of course there’s the old ‘there’s no accounting for taste’ adage to contend with.

Just got this from the USA:

“Great sound to Place Your Bets. It received good reviews by the staff of the NWF Southeast Natural Resource Center today in Atlanta.”

Jake Scott, Education Co-ordinator, National Wildlife Federation.

Bollocks to FHM, Q, all those pants magazines. THIS is the kind of review I want. Spurred on by the success of Part I, here’s Part II! Just playlist them back to back in your mp3 player and enjoy… might be a little glitchy, but hey… and here are the lyrics too:

Stone cold sober in the doctor’s chair – something’s up – I’m sure I shouldn’t be there. I sniff the gas and get ready to run when the clock strikes one… Trip-switch gone, all the lights are down and I’m swimming around in a blacked-out town. All I hear is the casino MC saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please place your bets, ‘cos its time, time, time. Put a penny on the table when the music stops and lets laugh a while.”

I’m the paper-hat king of all I survey – the young girls smoke a cigarette path to the dancefloor (they love that funky music). I’m taking my orders from no-man’s-land, whistling Dixie with a game in hand. Did everybody bring their dice? Well, that’s nice.

“Place your bets, ‘cos its time, time, time. Put a penny on the table when the music stops and lets laugh a while.”
Its twilight bells for the chosen few, flipping up a jack for a 22 – the MC’s booked his holiday! He’s starting to sing with a Singapore Sling in the glove compartment and a list of things to do before the final call of “Ladies and Gentlemen I love you all!!”

“Place your bets, ‘cos its time, time, time. Put a penny on the table when the music stops and lets laugh a while.”

If I had written this song while under the influence of LSD I would understand where it came from. But I swear to you, I wrote it in the bath at my mum’s house in the summer of 1997, straight as can be. Interpretations on a postcard please. Just enjoy it.

Still having major problems with the phone/ADSL.

Thanx for all the continued OneLine Messages… glad you’re enjoying this stuff… I’m off down to sunbathe on the rocks, go for a snorkel and practice some guitar

13:15 I should put some music on. Its so quiet in here – strangely so… Woke up late and I’m just making my way towards the kettle right now. Its time for the whole lyrics to Angels In Drag. This song has been described as ‘reading an epic book from cover to cover in five minutes’ – I love that description!! Hope you enjoy it… I’ll put the mp3 up soon.

“Go sailing to see what you find in the unchartered seas of your mind. Its so easy to stay in the harbour but storms have a pleasure divine. Take a map of the stars in your sky, take heart, take a capful of rum, then unleash your ship, make friends with the ocean, and surely adventure will come…”

I suspect you know what I mean – how we sit in our souls, lamenting and dreaming of liberty when all the while freedom is inside us trying to get out.

We are dancers tied to the wall, we are teachers learning to write. We are angels dressed up in drag, devils shining in white.

Under cover of night you voyaged before, to every port, every shore, every corner of life. You’ve got it all in a book – I promised you I would take a look… You’ve got one million photos composed perfectly, your beautiful flat paper memories. I bet you can’t remember the taste of the air… put down that camera and breathe…

We are dancers tied to the wall, we are teachers learning to write. We are angels dressed up in drag, devils shining in white.

Let your passion be your sails with reason at the helm. Let your compass be your dreams, but let your north star be love… let your north star be love.

We are dancers, painters, sailors, angels in drag… we’re geniuses and we’re terrified to teach.
We’re dancers that don’t want to move, painters – don’t want to use our colours, sailors sitting on the beach.

We are dancers tied to the wall, we are teachers learning to write. We are angels dressed up in drag, devils shining in white. Its time to let the dancers go to the ball, let the teachers stand up and fight… Let the angels dress up the devils in drag, its Saturday night…

21:49 Sitting with a glass of Peterson’s dessert wine in hand listening to Led Zeppelin live at Madison Square Garden, 12th February 1975 – a bootleg I picked up in a fantastic little shop in Tsimshatsui, Hong Kong. Keith Duffy (the bass player for The Corrs and all round lovely chap) took me there on a quest for some good ‘Zep. When I asked the owner if he had any, he just laughed and pointed to a long shelf just in front of me. Everything on it was Led Zeppelin. He told me this one is the best of the lot, and it is absolutely awesome, it has to be said. MASSIVE!!

D.’s gone home to the UK. The house is a bit lonely – uncannily quiet, missing her like I am.

Its flat calm out there. The flashing red wingtip lights of planes on the flight path are distant and silent. No surf tonight, no sound at all – its a perfect evening of tranquillity. I just left King’s Cross, a whirl of prostitutes and neon mayhem on the other side of Sydney. All the sleaze, the trashed-out people lying on the streets, a backstage grim reality of this beautiful city. Thinking I would, once and for all, get a feel for how far away we lived from the dark heart of the city by walking home, I set off for Oxford Street (King’s Cross, Oxford Street – am I actually IN London?). I did that in London once, and once only, tumbling out of Ronnie Scott’s on a jazz-fuelled high, doused with cheap wine, and put one foot in front of the other until the overgrown hedge that marked our house out from the others on the street proferred me a leafy welcome home. Its amazing what you see if you move slowly. We’re all trying to get places quicker – no, I’ll take the car – never wanting to walk, especially in the rain. Try it some time – make the choice to be slow, and see how good it feels. Its making the choice that counts.

Anyway, so much for me walking home all the way. My new shoes haven’t quite worn in yet, and I can feel blisters after a really long run yesterday, so the first bus that came along, the 380 to Bondi, I jumped on. I would have taken a cab, but I’ve spent a damn fortune on cabs today, taking them here (to Fideli’s pie shop on Bronte Road – superb!!!), there (to the airport) and everywhere (over to my friends’ pad in Pott’s Point). Actually I did end up getting one home from Bondi Junction, unable to face the walk back from Bronte Beach on my aching feet. Thats, let me see – $60 in cabs… ah, in pounds… thats only £24!! I feel much better now.

Need some of my Madagascan Vanilla tea – my new favourite brew.

That done, I return to this rambling pile of nonsense. Lets get back to Angels In Drag. I really should add a dedicated Angels bit to this page… maybe tomorrow I’ll start building that.

I wanted to quote my great old friend Simon Maxwell who said, about the album’s title track, “It is like a painting or a novel more than a song! It has beautiful intricacies and resonances to it. Songs as literature?” Thats the way I’m starting to think of this record. People have been getting dumbed-down with music for so long that they can’t handle anything with any depth or arrangement. I love the old Steely Dan records (amongst many other things) which by today’s grungey standards sound over-produced, over-arranged, over-complicated and overplayed. But they are awesome records… Gaucho is genius at work. And their lyrics – don’t get me started – I love them. But the tunes are complex, evolving pieces. I wanted to do something like that, something more ambitious than a three-chord trick. Sure, you can argue that some of the best music of the past forty years is made of three-chord tricks, and I wouldn’t argue. Sometimes that is perfect, just what a song needs. Simplicity, communication through simplicity. Coldplay are already around if that’s what you want. I wanted to make movies with sound, to take you on a trip through all I felt for a couple of years back there, to take you sailing out on that grey old sea and see where we end up.

Well, congratulations to Roger Federer, who pleasingly cried like some grandmother when he won Wimbledon… but honestly, watching it here in Australia is almost unbearable. I am going to e-mail the director of Channel 9 Sports with the following today: Are your commentators aware that there are sportsmen capable of winning tournaments and matches who are NOT Australian?

WARNING – SPORTS COMMENTRARY IN AUSTRALIA RANT ABOUT TO COMMENCE

It was ridiculous – It was as if two diehard fans had ousted the commentators, finally having a chance to shower the nation’s television sets with their partisan yelps. I remember the glory days of Dan Maskill, that superb Wimbledon voice, praising the perfect poetry of shots and volleys… instead I have these two Aussie tossers giving such incisive commentary as “Thats more like it Mark – COME ON!!” and when Federer hit a ball long to keep Philippoussis’ hopes on the brink of survival, “YEP!! Its long. Its long. Its not over yet.” It was fantastic when in the tie-break for the 3rd set, Federer was 5-1 up. They had nothing to say. Silence. The first enjoyable commentary. When Federer won, all they had to say was, “Thats it. He’s won a Grand Slam final.”

Not only that, but TV here is so Americanised – ad breaks every 0.8 seconds. Wimbledon here is brought to you by… Jacob’s Creek (‘the official wine sponsor to Wimbledon’ – what a joke. I didn’t see Agassi asking for a quick glass of Chardonnay between sets, did you? The only people drinking Jacob’s Creek are the VIPs who’d finally drunk enough champagne to stop turning their noses up at it), Toyota, Telstra (Australia’s version of BT), Sakata rice crackers (I’m not kidding), IBM, and at least a couple more. So when there’s a change of ends, a lull, that moment when the cameras go in and you get to see how each player is feeling, to sense the psychology of the match, its ads. Ads, ads and more ads. Like I said, it was almost unbearable at times.

SPORTS COMMENTARY IN AUSTRALIA RANT OVER.

16:53 Just got a shed-load of furniture from a friend who’s going on tour. Lots of lovely Spanish hardwood stuff and a voluptuous chaise longue… I love them. Put on Jimi Hendrix, cranked it to 11 and started moving the stuff in. Now I’ve mellowed to good old John Lennon, Mind Games. Time is moving very strangely, in fits and starts – expanding and contracting like an accordion in the hands of a lunatic. Just got my quotes for the shipping of Angels In Drag from Hong Kong… if you are interested in pre-ordering a copy, send me a message in the OneLine[MessageBox] and include your e-mail address. It should cost about £12 plus postage. But it is a beautiful thing. All will be revealed. I’m going to put up another track soon, so you can have another listen. Don’t forget Happytown is on the 5th July entry.
Thats my eye in the background! Part of a Martyn James Brooks light-painting piece. The guy is definitely better than the above-average bear.

Not much more to say tonight. D. is leaving for the UK tomorrow so I am not going to sit at this piece of circuitboardsandtitaniumandelectronsandstuff for much longer. She’s running around my studio picking up all my undone paperwork and putting it away (flat inspection tomorrow morning – doesn’t worry me… the days of student chaos and filth are long gone – this place is a veritable palace of cleanliness and joy). Go away!! I was never meant to be an accountant, I can tell you that.
So tomorrow, another chance at good things, for all of us.

Sorry for the lack of information yesterday. It would have been nonsense anyway; by the time I got home from our friends’ Andrew and Vicki’s house I was totally pissed on the ‘finest wines available to humanity’ – Andrew is a serious wine lover, complete with set of Riedel glasses, and has just returned from the Barossa Valley in South Australia. There exists a simple formula: (Barossa+Shiraz) × Recent Trip by wine lover = YEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAHHH!!!

Serious stuff. I was in heaven. He has a couple of lovely old guitars too, including an old Gibson ES-175 – lovely. Had a bit of a play, which was cool. I’m actually playing tonight in a little pub called the Shakespeare over in Surry Hills, Sydney, with another friend. A guy called Stuart Hunter will be there, playing keys – he’s just back from touring with Silverchair, probably Australia’s biggest band (probably only known in the UK because their lead singer is going out with Natalie Imbruglia (lucky bastard)) so I’m looking forward to meeting him, just to get out with that old Telecaster and make some noise.

Supergrass are tearing my stereo to shreds just now – MOVIN’, JUST KEEP MOVIN’ – Great track!!

Thanks for all your OneLine[Message Box] messages. And I’m glad Happytown is going down well – please distribute at will, but make sure you tell them to sign up to the S*T*U*F*F mailing list!

23:55 I’m just back from Corinne’s gig – it was quietly fantastic, actually, to play again. Stuart had his old Wurlitzer EP down there (reminding me of the great Scarface McClintock) so it was pretty much a chilled affair. Some guy, a complete basket case, sincerely believes he owns Corinne, and got a little precious about the other musicians joining in… very strange vibe for a while. Still, after the half-time whistle and a couple of Cooper’s Greens (best beer in the world?) it felt cool again. I hope to meet up with Stu at some point soon, see what happens. The other guys from the potential line-up of S*T*U*F*F get back from their tour tomorrow, so I’m getting pretty excited about the possibilities – just hope I can make it happen. It was a bit like dragging a wet alsatian backwards through a hedge before, they had so many other gigs on just to make a crust. Thats the big difference in London – you can do a cool pop gig, get all the TVs maybe a tour or two, some recording and you’re set for a while. Here, there is no such loop – its pub gigs all the way. The ‘pokey machines’ – gambling machines – have killed Sydney’s music scene. I heard a statistic that ten percent of the worlds pokey machines are in New South Wales – scary! About eight years ago it was apparently pretty hip… plenty happening. But now its history, the fading bones of a killer whale on the sea bed. I hope to throw a spanner in some works, somewhere in this city – but it will have to be somewhere off-the-wall…

On the way home tonight we stopped into one of the coolest places I have seen for years, called ‘Incubator Studios’, a funky warehouse all decked out with movie-prop quality furniture and stuff, hired out for photo shoots, uber-cool happenings… I fell madly in love with it. Thats where I want to launch the record. What a place! Between that and ‘Reverse Garbage’ over in a suburb called Marrickville, I have found something of my perfect space. I hoped Incubator would have a website, but it seems its under construction. Even the Flash splash page they have up is cool. I have added the link below anyway, so add it to your bookmarks and have a look in a couple of months. Just plant the seed.

The Wimbledon final is on, D. is leaving in two days… I have to go. See u 2moro x

11:35 Just got up – lazy Saturday feeling in my veins. So nothing to report, except that the sun is blazing and spirits are high. Might have one more go at fixing the camera.

I’ve put up an mp3 of one of my fave tracks off the album – Happytown. I’ve been going on about it in previous days, including the lyrics and how it all came about. So here we go – the song. Free download. The way all music is going anyway – you may as well get it from me as KaZaa. Hope you enjoy it… Its 3.3MB so might take a while to download if you’re on a slow connection – perfect time to go and get a cup of tea and see what the scene outside your window is like.

0:54 Two good friends from London arrived in Sydney today so I’ve been doing my tourist bit, spending too much money, taking too much time to slide around in a haze of holiday spirit.

Started by escaping the rain after lunch with suckaos (kind of a DIY hot chocolate) in Max Brenner (Chocolate By The Bald Man) which is probably the ultimate chocaholics shop in the known universe. Thence to a shopping expedition, drifting around the city, buying G-Star jeans and two pairs of funky-ass Converse corduroy shoes. I’ve been wearing my poor old Campers to death out here, having panicked about excess baggage on the last trip here – not without undue cause, I might add, as I had 65kg of baggage – so felt some new treats for the feet were in order.

There’s a super-cool little Japanese place down on Brisbane Street called The Uchi Lounge where the tastiest cocktail I ever had was mixed with immeasurable finesse by a groovesome waitress a week after I got here. Of course, then, it was summer. The doors were thrown open as the staff hung around on the twilight steps sneaking a quick cigarette before the evening onslaught. That cocktail was a Tokyo Iced Tea, a twist on the old favourite of Paul Turner’s and mine, Long Island Iced Tea. I sipped the drink at the long bar back then, toasting Paul and his new found success as bass player with Annie Lennox… we all had the same drink tonight after an exquisite series of Japanese dishes, but (why is it always like this) it just wasn’t the same. Actually, there’s probably a very simple reason – some Japanese guy mixed it, rather than that quirky waitress with the bright red hair who gave me the run-down on every cool bar in the city.

It is strange how there is always a defining moment for the best “X” (yes, could be your best ex) you will ever have. Will I ever have nicer sashimi than the piece of ocean trout I had at Tetsuya’s on D.’s birthday this year? Or a more succulent piece of beef than the slivers of ‘Le Tigre Qui Pleure’ in Thai Thiou in Paris, 2001, the night Di was nearly floored by Gerard Depardieu? There are always these benchmarks… sometimes its better just to stay away. I have learned NOT to have creme brulee after the perfect one in, rather unusually, a 3-star hotel in Waterford, Ireland, with Eleanor McEvoy, after some dodgy radio show. Soon I will ask you to tell me your best “X” stories… the 1-LINE[MESSAGEBOX] is coming soon. Where is this little embryonic monster going? Who is going to read all this shit? Not me ‘cos I’m off to bed.

I’m going to go to my favourite cafe, ‘Cure’ tomorrow for the best latte in the Eastern Suburbs, perhaps even the best in Sydney. After a run… the rain has destroyed the training schedule – we are such WIMPS!!!

There were some great storms today out on the South Pacific. Huge lightning splitting the concrete sky and thunder cracking like bombs going off up the road.

I’m just back from a Japanese dinner, held by a poster child for the dotcom boom (and bust)… Chris O’Hanlon, founder and ex-CEO of Spike Networks, which crashed through the floor when the dotcom bubble burst, way back when, it seems. His reputation, in Australia at least, is somewhat shady, so when the opportunity to meet him first hand came up, I snapped it up. There were a few other creative types there – a stylist, just back from clothing Naomi Campbell (job-swap anyone?) in London, a couple of film-makers, a clothes designer, and me. It is always interesting to meet people with a reputation, isn’t it? So much expectation, so much known (or not) before any words are exchanged… I have only concluded that it was a fun night and that the sashimi was top notch. Even the ‘uni’ – sea urchin, which I’ve never had the balls to eat before. All else will be revealed in due course.

SPORT IN AUSTRALIA RANT ABOUT TO BEGIN: DANGER!

As ever, Wimbledon is going on in the background. Phillipoussis in action again. An Australian. Its been bizarre here – no Henmania whatsoever. If you’re in London and Tim Henman does a particularly impressive sneeze, you know about it. Over here, in this strange land where people are FANATICAL about sport in a way you can’t imagine unless you’ve been here, the focus is one-hundred percent on the Australians. In fact, although the Henman match is on, I haven’t seen any of it… and they are totally up for Henman to get beaten when rain stops play and they show a shot or tow on video. When I arrived in Australia, I was a huge fan of Australian sportsmen – particularly the cricket team, always praying for them to slaughter England (no offence to anyone English – I just couldn’t stand the ‘we are the best’ mentality). But not any more… I will leap for joy as England destroy them in the Rugby World Cup (despite the fact that Big Ken Haddock in Belfast may never speak to me again). D. and I cracked open a bottle of Peterson’s Methode Champenoise when Lleyton Hewitt got trashed. Yes, my love for the Aussie sportsmen has plummeted, due to chronic smugness on the part of their home nation. The cricket team will be the last to be ditched, however… that would be asking too much at this point in time; but if I hear one Australian extol the virtues of the side as the best in the world when the season starts again, I will be rooting for Little Upton Special School 2nd XI should Australia be playing them.

RANT OVER.

Right, I’m off to bed. Long day tomorrow…