Shanghai TV

I’m sat in the car outside the lads club on a Tuesday afternoon talking on the phone to Damian Morgan assuring him it’s free admission to our gig at TV 21. Damian is doing the gig with us and being a long in the tooth promoterly type is asking for more clarification than would seem to be necessary. Honestly…I’m not kidding, it’s free. Steve [Petrico…who owns TV 21] says we’ll just ram it full and make on the bar which is fine by me. So there you go…no excuses. OK so it’s not until 18th October but do come along if you can. It's the local leg of the tour. Damian is having a busy week in preparation of the release of his forthcoming single ‘Dimming of the Light’, a charity release on the Pronoia label to raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Society. It’s also a very fine and poignant record that deserves to be heard. The plan is to get it into the charts; it’s available from from http://www.tunetribe.com/Album?album_id=1069590 . Probably best to download it in the week of 28th August. So please do. Once I’ve convinced Damian I head into the club and meet up with Bruce Cherry [the cross cultural organiser/promoter behind todays visit] who in turn introduces me to the Chinese film crew from the Shanghai Media Group, here to capture something of the essence of the city’s musicality. We do an interview and where Travis the interpreter leads and I dutifully follow. Everyone is really friendly. I also do a live to camera version of ‘Batman’ from the new album and do my level best to explain what it’s about. They tell me they have 10 million viewers back home….so we’ll see. After a quick tour of the building I’m away in time to get the washing in like a proper man about the house. VP x

Curfew Tower

I’m back on the mainland after a week in the Curfew Tower Cushendall, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland where we’ve been making little films to accompany the new album release. It’s a beautiful place and we stayed and made art just like it says on the poster Check it out, artists can apply to stay but please…a personal request… no more painting. We were, in no particular order Suzanne Sheldon [Filmmaker and travelologist], Tim Browne [producer of records and nice cups] John Hirst [the Tower’s artistic curator and resident chef] and Jane Twig [Artist and Teacher]…when you put it like that it sounds almost impressive. I was there too making a show of myself. I spent Wednesday afternoon half naked and covered in face paint. I also did the rarely seen trippy hippy dance to camera like a regular lazy bohemian. Oh how the cutting room floor beckons ...We still have a few more bits to film and then we send the footage on to Tom Robinson for editing; hopefully he’ll make sense of it.We last worked together on audio visuals on the Suicide Dad video of 2001 [shot by Stevie Owen and Tim Browne] which is back on you tube again if you want a butchers. In-between the angles poised the pan zoomology we took long and winding coastal walks through cemeteries and deserted houses. At night we played and sang ourselves hoarse in the local pub. I’d like to say my version of ‘Rocket Man’ was a glittering success…there you go, I just did. Other highlights included a karaoke version of Sperm Donor and something by Steely Dan that Tim had up his sleeve. I expect we’ll be back at some point. VP