Sunday February 28th

Not a great day. The digital 8-track on which we’re recording the album, a Roland VS840, decides to suddenly wipe a whole song completely. Everything is lost: it was a seven minute Hal Hartley-ish epic called “Storytelling Johnny” that was nearing completion. I don’t mind so much about my own vocal, guitar, bass guitar and keyboard parts, but there +
was also Laurence’s keyboard part, Cressida’s flute part, Fiona’s violins, Sheila’s cellos, Marnie’s drums, Tom’s guitar…

Suffice it to say I felt a deep, yawning pit of doom in my stomach. A familiar one.

Mark Partridge and I are frightened to do anything else with the machine in case it does the same with the other nine songs. So today I’m writing frantically to everyone I know with an 8-track, digital or otherwise, hoping they might be kind enough to lend us their machine with which to “back-up” the other songs, hoping also they might even be kind enough to lend their machines to actually finish the album on too. And angrily taking the VS840 back to the shop where I bought it. Maybe it’s faulty, maybe it’s a design fault.

I suppose in retrospect I should have investigated investing in some kind of external back-up system when I bought the wretched thing. But I never was very good with knowing which computers and recording equipment to buy. And I certainly can’t afford to buy anything extra now.

This DIY recording principle isn’t so great sometimes.

Fiona also recorded some choirboy-type vocals on a song that DIDN’T get wiped. “I had to unclasp my bra to reach the really high notes”. I think Pavarotti uses the same technique.

I can’t afford to keep a mobile phone anymore. Which isn’t such a bad thing. Mark tells me that London is the worldwide capital of mobile usage: go to New York or any other major city and the trilling epidemic of elaborate electronic yelps from record bags is noticably less abundant. People elsewhere tend to prefer to be contactable when they want to be. Answering services are more than enough.

What do I think about “Queer As Folk”, the “shocking” new gay drama on Channel Four? Well, it had the Daily Mail in fits of umbrage and censorious apoplexy, so it must be a Good Thing, by definition.

Some gay men don’t like the fact that the show portrays them in a bad light (one character is predatory, selfish and irresponsible, one is underage and lets himself be exploited by the former, and one is, well, a Doctor Who fan…). But this IS what many gay men are like in the real world, rather than the saints, martyrs and token ciphers that exist everywhere else on TV and in films. It is possible to be gay and be a less than wonderful person. I was going to put in a reference to Peter Mandelson here. Oh, I have.

And I did like the line from the mother of the selfish man’s newborn baby: “so… we both had a child tonight…”