11:19pm – Stormy weather has returned unconstrained. I woke this-morning to a steel-grey sea thrashing the coast for the sin of being the first obstacle to the mighty South Pacific. All day the wind has howled, and the training for the City2Surf got suspended with the advent of serious rain.

Instead I got down to business. Picked that old acoustic up and began working on 3 songs I’ve been working on. As well as finally trying to get to grips with playing the album tracks on my own with just the guitar… a daunting prospect, given the production style of the record. I haven’t played live for years. The last incarnation of g-raff was in 1997, back in Northern Ireland. Seems like a lifetime ago, which in many ways, it is. A different me, a different Ireland – I would never have believed that just 6 years later I would writing from Sydney, from a country where the same queen’s head is on the coins, but no-one knows why, and certainly no-one cares. On the subject of coins, I have to say that the UK’s coins are still the most beautiful in the world. No debate.

D. roasted a duck for lunch today. A 24 hour operation as she had to prepare the bugger yesterday. We hung it up on a coathanger above the cooker for want of those murderous hooks you see in Cantonese steam-pot restaurants in the chaos of Chinatown. Sorry, vegetarians. It was WICKED!! Lovely stuff. Gave me the fuel to add some touches to the site, in its ever-expanding nonsensical ivy-style propagation. What wall am I climbing, though, and what is over the other side? Who knows?

1:38am – Agassi vs. Philippoussis at Wimbledon… 1 set all, 1 game all. Its making me miss London a little bit – just that time of year when planes flying overhead have THAT certain sound, when the sun has a tone to it, the park flooded with people, smiles abound… There’s no better city in the world when the weather is good. Sydney is strange from that point of view – its nearly always sunny, so THAT becomes your starting point, from which any drop in conditions brings on a mild melancholia. The exact reverse of the UK, or particularly Northern Ireland, where people just go bonkers when the clouds move away. We all behaved like lunatics in that long hot summer of ’95, and I’ll never forget it.

Its been a shambling sort of day, not much to report on the creative front, except for extreme wedding website preparation stuff, including a ‘PRESENT MACHINE’ to help floundering guests pick sexy things for us. There’s some great Flash code in it, so once the event is over I’ll post the ActionScript and URLs for the anal amongst you.

Like me on Mondays.

HAPPYTOWN

Words by S & D Jones
Music by S Jones

Time sits, a proud king gloating over me
The kingdom of the blind
with an eye to see
what happens when you loose the ties
Everything flies to the sun.

These are happy sounds, this is a happy town
and we are happy going crazy here, ‘cos
our happiness depends on nothing, yes
we are happy going crazy here.

Time swings like a dead thing hanging over me
a meaningless reward given worthlessly
on a night when the moon was the prize
the stars and the skies to be won.

But these are happy sounds, this is a happy town
and we are happy going crazy here, ‘cos
our happiness depends on nothing, yes
we are happy going crazy here.

Time kneels like a mantis praying (preying?) over me
choking on a mouthful of blasphemy
he’s just a devil in disguise
hiding his eyes from the sun, and his ears from the happy sounds….

This is a happy town and we are happy going crazy here.

I wrote the beginnings of this song a long time ago, in the autumn of 1999. A friend, Brian Connor, had been staying with me in my flat in Dublin, under which was a Montessori nursery school. Every morning I would get woken by the mayhem of a hundred kids squealing their heads off… to be honest it used to drive me mad. Pillows over the ears, I would try and sink back under the purple cloak of slumber. It was only a one-bedroom place, so when Brian was down, I gave him the bedroom and slept on the couch. On the first morning I asked him how he dealt with the racket, to which he just replied, “Ah, yes, such happy sounds!” Something making me insane was so happy to him.

A week later I was at Brendan Perry’s church, Quivvy, auditioning for his world tour. On the front of the church is a plaque that says “IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND THE ONE-EYED ARE KINGS” So true. And that was it. Drove back to Dublin that night, having been offered the gig, and recorded the track. The middle section was a sample of my brother Mole and good mate John McBride having the following argument:

MOLE: “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”
JOHN: “That all depends on what your definition of a man is, and that varies as much as varies the hairs on a pheasants back”

That settles it then… Bob Dylan, your mystery has been solved.

The track was mostly finished, but not quite sitting right. Then one morning, while I was back in Ireland during the Christmas holidays in 2002, my dad came downstairs, put the kettle on and said, “I’ve been thinking about Happytown. I think it needs more meat.” When I asked him what he meant, he suggested shortening the section with Mole and John and adding another verse. Next morning, he came downstairs, put the kettle on again and presented me with a line – “Time kneels like a mantis praying (preying?) over me… ” When I read that the rest popped out in minutes. It was a very astute piece of songwriting, syllable matching my ideas and rhyming schemes for the other verses. Actually he was quite encouraged by that, and has gone on to come up with other sketches of song ideas which might make it to record sometime.
You’ll see it on the album – DJ gets a writing and production credit for Happytown.

I loved the bit with Mole and John so much, it was a shame to lose it. So on the final day of mixing with Alastair McMillan, I suggested doing a short remix – the mp3 of it is here. Hope you enjoy it.
SJ

Not much to report from today. Been checking out the Beach Boys all morning. Just stuck iTunes on and its been playing all their albums ever since – so may songs about surfing got me thinking about California in the 60’s… it was so straightforward! If you had a big car and you surfed, you were THE MAN. Otherwise you weren’t. No ‘I love him for his mind and superior intellect’ stuff… surf and car or else single.

Reason is fantastic software. I might throw a few Reason grooves online now to see if any of you can make sense of them. I’m also going to build the ‘One Line Message Box’ which is pretty self-explanatory.

The Framley Examine is well worth checking out, especially the ‘classifieds’.

In case you were wondering about the photos, with the exception of ‘Beachcombing’ (24th June) which is just a nice rock I found on my way round to the house, the others are close-up details of the forthcoming album artwork by Martyn James Brooks.

Martyn was the inspiration behind the concept and development of the artwork for the record. All I would do is say ‘Angels In Drag’ and he’d be off, already dismissing ideas before they’d even made it out of his mouth, mind-Ferrari-tight-corner-artistry-nonsense. Those late-morning meetings over tea and the finest of pastries in Patisserie Valerie, Old Compton Street, London were very much part of the album-making process. Tangled pictures, threading dreams together, painting with spoons and napkins, hoping for a miracle.

We got the miracle, in the shape of Emma Perry. The shoot took place in late autumn 2002, in Ireland. We shot much of the stuff at Brendan Perry’s house and at Quivvy, his 19th Century church converted into a recording studio. Emma had an angel costume (which I’d imagined would be white), and she’d agreed to dress up in it for us. She is 5 years old. When she came down, the dress was brilliant pink with little wings on the back, perfect for the title. We wandered down to the lake by the house, where Wildcard (over for a bit of company and mayhem) and I stretched a huge white sheet to catch the glaring sun while Emma danced and danced, beautiful little ballet spins,the dogs going crazy jumping in the water and curious fishermen looking over as their boats sputted by breaking the silence.

Martyn was so good with her – he just had that instinct. And, crucially for me and my dreams of the cover shot, he GOT it. If I’d given him a budget of £100,000,000 and ten years it couldn’t have been better… I can’t tell you how good it is to see something that you’ve had in your mind for years suddenly there in front of you, real, in full colour, perfect.

But I can’t show you the whole thing yet. Wait for the record to come out.

Brendan Perry was formerly half of the cult band ‘Dead Can Dance’ in the 80s and early- to mid-90s. He’s an incredible vocalist and songwriter, a huge inspiration to me… I got the chance to do a world tour with him as guitarist in 1999 and we’ve been friends ever since. He generously agreed to sing one of the tracks on the album, ‘Higher Deeper’ – I’ll put an mp3 excerpt up later today or maybe tomorrow, along with the lyrics. I did his website for him in 2001, in the old days of Flash… even so, its worth a look, if for no other reason to visit the section on Quivvy church where we did part of the photo-shoot.

What a day! I never imagined I would see surf like I did today. I cycled down to Mistral Point, down south of Coogee beach, about 20 minutes of nightmare uphill/downhill bike nonsense, but worth every puff of breath…It was like watching a liquid avalanche with every wave coming in. About 20 other people were watching too… spellbinding. The noise was deafening, a huge crushing rush of water, with the offshore wind blowing the spray into 30 foot-long manes of white, the sun glaring down, conspiring to perfect the scene with huge rainbows.

Well, I’ve been hard at it today, taking up my alter ego as Flash Boy, programming most of the day except for a trip to the shops… ah, what a life!! Total rock and roll, the excesses of basil and watermelons at ‘Harris Farm Markets’ in Bondi Junction – Keith Richards would be proud of me.

I’ve decided to run in the Sydney ‘City2Surf’ race on August 10th. 14km, including a ludicrous hill 7km in that goes on for 1.5km or so. Entering was fun, training is becoming increasingly tough and the weather has joined in to make it a bit of a ‘mare. Where is my motivation coach when I need them? Truth is, I’m fundamentally pretty lazy unless I get my teeth into something, at which point 24 hours is just not enough for a day (you should see me in the studio… I’ve had to be torn away from mixing desks at 6am., eyes bleeding and ears fallen off). I look at cats, sleeping their asses off most of the day (better still, koalas – they get 19 hours a day!) and I just think “You lucky, lucky, lucky little bastards.” Sleep, sleep, sleep. And its great sleeping here, with the sound of the waves, until the cockatoos get going around 6:30am. So getting up early to run to Centennial Park and back is NOT the ultimate in gentle wakings. Got to do it tomorrow… ah, tomorrow, best friend of the procrastinator.

Got some good fonts this-morning from a website that specialises in small stuff. Worth a look if thats your bag.

Off to make some tea now… night night

Rain smashing at the windows and my Telecaster guitar is making noises about wanting to be played. I’ve been stuck in front of the computer for too long, sipping at ever-cooling Assam tea (fantastic tea shop in Newtown, Sydney called Tea Too) and nibbling on the last of the Smarties brought over in March by the great Scarface McClintock. Just been listening to The Beatles ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ from Abbey Road – fantastic!

The Tele is practically screaming “PLAY ME!!!” 1971 Blonde… peaches and cream.

I really haven’t played enough guitar since last week. This apartment sounds great acoustically… I love picking my Lowden acoustic up and getting lit on some groove in the front room overlooking the sea. I’ll post the view soon, along with pictures of my polystyrene sculptures, bought for ten Aussie dollars at a funky warehouse called ‘Reverse Garbage’.

When I landed here in February I laughed in the face of anyone who told it would ever get cold. We only bought a heater from some friends who were leaving Sydney after extreme badgering. At this moment in time, my clothing is as follows, from the ground up: 2 pairs of socks, jeans over fisherman pants, tracksuit top (bought for a fiver in Portobello market in March – bargain of the year) over Replay long-sleeved T-shirt over my favourite ‘Grand Royal High’ Ghettoblasting Sausage Dog T-shirt. And I’m still cold!

My grandfather e-mailed me a scan of a letter from a school in Edinburgh that used ‘Angels In Drag’ as material for their year-long video project. I want to see what they’ve done but the tapes are a long way away, sitting on the old mahogany dining table in my grandparents’ house. Soon…

21:46 – Just got back from a quick bite of dinner in the Clovelly Hotel. Not bad.

About a month ago I saw a big bat hanging between telegraph wires down the street. Just hanging, in broad daylight. Next day, it was still there, so I figured it was dead. Day after day it just swung in the breeze, clinging to the wire, wrapped up in its wings like some shrivelled brown fox in a bag. I told D. it would fall down the back of her jumper some night when she was walking home. One thing was certain, though; that the bat would fall sometime. It was there tonight, crashed on the pavement, lying in puddles, solving its own mystery. We wait for these things to happen, but when they do, we just skirt round the edge and walk on as if nothing has happened.

Beachcombing… I always loved it

This page is going to be fairly random. I started yesterday with a blank page – it will doubtless expand and develop over the next couple of months… patience will have its rewards. Fruits of my labour at 1:36am Sydney time. We’ll do this until Angels In Drag is ready.

Its getting colder now. Strange, being so cold in June… memories of school summers in the northern hemisphere, always so blue and perfect. The sea was beautiful today down by the rocks at Gordon’s Bay where I live now. Grey, but so beautiful… I clambered over the rocks just as night began to fall, surf crashing below, singing to myself. Headed out for Vietnamese food after some Groovebox programming. The rain has come back. D. is tucked up in bed reading Harry Potter, glued to it like some little schoolkid! I haven’t listened to any music all day.

Maybe that’s why I feel so vague right now.

“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.

Now, I suspect you know what I mean; how we sit in our souls, we dream, we lament for our liberty, when all the while freedom is inside us trying to get out…”

Its time to go sailing now…