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.