8th August 2002

What is The King Of Pop doing trying to look mean and moody by
candlelight?? Well all is not what it seems. This isn't a romantic meal
because I was sitting on my own as my wife and kids had gone off to the
Kent coast for a few days. I don't usually eat by candlelight on my own
but 700 houses in my area had been affected by a power cut and I had no
choice. I had woken up and looked at the clock that morning and it was not
on so I tried the light: no joy. I got up and went downstairs and all was
switched on but no power. Apparently a nearby substation had been flooded
by the torrential rain and caused a short. I had some Weetabix and boiled
up some water in a pan and made a cuppa which tasted like cat piss. I went
up to the studio where I was doing a bit of recording and expected to come
back to find all the lights on. When I got back the whole street was in
darkness. It turns out that the substation was on MOD property and they
didn't gain access until 9.00pm. They couldn't find the key and it took
them 15 hours to eventually decide to cut the padlock off with an angle
grinder. Baffling isn't it?? I can't comment on this any more because I
will just get pissed off and start ranting about gross ineptitude so I
shall move to the positives of the power cut. I had to cook my dinner
(noodles and fried salmon fillets in case you are interested) by
candlelight. I taped my jumbo Maglite to the cooker hood and did quite
well. While I was cooking I was thinking about how Jamie Oliver would have
coped in such conditions and after ten minutes decided that I was the
"Candlight Culinary Daddy" and he was not fit to season my mince. The
picture above is me enjoying the fruits of my labour. After dinner I went
into the living room and lit about thirty candles and got my guitar out. I
entertained myself (no, not like that!) for about three hours and wrote a
new bit for one of my songs and started another new tune. In fact I got
the video camera out and recorded me playing a tune in the dark so I will
try and get this on the site at some point in the near future. The power
came on at 1.00am which was just before bedtime. The biggest bummer was
missing the athletics on tv because it was the final night of track events
at the Commonwealth Games, luckily Stevie B was on stand-by with a blank
tape in a house with electricity.
I spent a very warm sticky night in The Torrington last Saturday watching
Stairway To Zeppelin. The singer is a guy called Kenny who is a golf buddy
of Harris and he had invited me along. I took along Mr Smart, the
Irishman, and we had a few beers and listened to Led Zeppelin. I really
enjoyed the music but I couldn't get into it becasue it was so hot and
humid in there. I really felt for Kenny because he was wearing the full-on
Rober Plant curly wig!! He told me a few days later that he was nearly
passing out and at one point had to step out the back door. They were very
realistc and if I half closed my eyes I could almost transport myself back
to 1971 when Zeppelin were playing venues like The Torrington.
On the recording front I have been doing a bit of recording with Harris
for a day or two and then I did a day of recording Noel and Niol who are
two guys who I have been seeing a lot of recently. I have decided to
recruit a new band becasue it is extremely difficult for me to go out and
do gigs because all my Welsh buddies are all involved in various projects
and I can never get all of them together for any length of time to get the
band really kicking and rehearsed. I discussed it with all of them and
they agreed it was the best idea so I asked these three young gents if
they fancied doing the job and we have been rehearsing. I think Nige is
going to try and do gigs if he can but it will be two guitars, bass and
drums for the most part. So far it has been going well. We did an acoustic
rehearsal on Tuesday night and decided to go down to there local where
there was an open mike night happening. We all bowled down there and did
four or five songs with bong, bass and acoustic guitars. The people seemed
to dig it but it felt a bit detached as the stage was at one end and the
PA was a bit weird but I think it is something we will do again. I have
played to record a lot of the rehearsals and have a new mp3 availible at
the top of this page and put up a live track every time I update the wise
words. I think the odd cover version will get thrown in very now and then
as well as the odd gig performance. I would be interested to hear any of
your thoughts on this.
Talking about the site, we recently lost our guestbook to cyberspace which
was just as well because we (when I say we, I really mean Ket) have
decided to have a forum instead of a guestbook so I would like to hear
your thoughts on this also.
Last edition this week is about an exhibition I went to see a Wapping
Power Station called NYC. I saw a feature on the local arts programme
about it and decided to check it out. It was an exhibiton of photographs
of New York before and after September 11th. The photographs were blown up
on huge canvasses and were very striking. There was a great shot of a dust
covered street with two telephones hanging off their hooks. There was a
great photo of a fireman walking down this mound of wreckage at dusk, a
very solitary figure in the midst of all this destruction. The centrepeice
of the exhibiton was a film by a guy called Ewan Fairbanks who was a
cameraman on the ground below the twin towers on the day it happened. It
was a 22 minute film with no sound because the microphone was not switched
on. It was very eeire watching this film in a large stone room in a power
station in silence. There is a book of these photos by Magnum Photograhpy
and when I buy it I will let you know if it is worth it but at first
glance it looks really good. I will try and slot in another wise words
before I go on holiday next week but if I don't I will see you in about
two weeks or so with some of my holiday photos. Enjoy the summer.