First time that this particular track from our EP has been played. Ben Eshmade ran Daylight Music at the Union Chapel pre-Rona, and that's where me and Robert first got talking about music. Robert was playing guitar with Judy Dyble and was hanging out with Ian Button. It was easy to get talking and when he suggested a collaboration at the end of last year, I was bound to say 'yes'.
Life can be absolute crap at times, but these collaborations are worth more than being a millionaire to me (although that doesn't stop me from doing the Lottery from time to time). It's such an adventure; it's so stimulating and exciting. Life doesn't pass me by- the hurt and fear and anger that everyone feels belong to me too, because I'm part of everyone as well a being part of music.
Getting over the painful fingers years ago- that was so worth it! It's like having some sort of machine within you that converts bad stuff to good stuff. You can sit there with an emptied out head and an emptied out heart, and then a glimmer of light appears somewhere in the recesses of your brain, or rather a glimmer of sound.... and off you go on a new song, travels in your imagination.
I have a new song to work on for Friday's Song Circle. On Monday, we were talking in class about music being out of date and so on. One of the students talked about some 2020 artists they were listening to, and of course afterwards I raced to Youtube to listen. One, I didn't like: Melodyne vocals have had their time and should be thrown into the dustbin with ADT (automated double tracking: the vintage Kylie sound). I hate the murdering of women's voices so much that I wrote a book about it (out February!). The other, though, was intriguing: shades of D'Angelo via Frank Ocean. I looked up the chords online, and lo and behold! They were familiar friends, deliberately crushed together with no breathing space so that they created an emotional punch. I'd got my melody from the dream I had on Sunday night, sung on to my phone. I woke in the night and was too tired to record it, but I think I got it right when I woke up properly. The rest came from yesterday's five-miler. The eight hour online work day on Monday resulted in a seized- up body and it needed a lot of unwinding; more song came as I was walking. Last night I stretched and pulled the melody like a baker kneading dough and all night long it played in my head, stabs and stops, working itself out as I slept. Difficult chords to play, new things for old fingers!
Back to Ben Eshmade and his show on Margate Radio- here's the link. He has a very wide taste in music, and is truly a curator of new stuff in the best sense of the word. Big thanks for this, Ben:
https://ko-fi.com/post/Margate-Radio-November-2020-D1D52TYWO
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