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The new TWELFTH NIGHT 'VOICES IN THE NIGHT' Double CD is now available on Cyclops Records.  The album of previously unreleased material, includes 3 of the earliest Twelfth Night tracks written and performed with 'Electra', in that brief, but glittering period when she was their lyricist/vocalist.  If you like the words 'PROG' and 'ROCK' in the same sentence, you'll like this. So, GO get it NOW!  [SLEEVE NOTES]

NOVEMBER 2007   "Leaving on a jet plane" .. well.. already LEFT!

Fri 30 Nov 2007  -  MGCK Music    ...Homage to the artist...

One of the wonderful things about Barcelona and her surrounding province: the enormous pool of talented artists and designers.  During this trip, I was fortunate to see a 'work in progress' by a dear friend, Lluis Plana.  Last summer (2006) I posed for Lluis.  This portrait will be shown in an exhibition of his work in Barcelona scheduled for early next year.

And now for the intelligent part of the story....  oh yes... here it comes.  I'm reading a book on 'Moriti Psychotherapy' (when I'm not reading 'A History of Venice').  The author, Dr David Neill, has studied this practice in Japan, and explains that 'doing' is far better therapy than 'thinking'.  I have to agree with him.  You can 'think' yourself into a total hole!  if you want to FIND or just maintain good mental health, doing things, with full mindful involvement, interest, focus and awareness; from feeding the dogs, raking leaves, washing dishes, to completing a song, whatever it is, mindful and focused action changes the molecules... So go forth and 'just DO IT!'  Isn't Nike Japanese?  At the same time, sometimes, 'withdrawing' to a quiet place, doing nothing... a time spent like this has been.. is the very best medicine.  You remove yourself from the prison of other people's perceptions.  The social bars that keep you 'controlled' and functioning like a wind-up clock in your environment.  Total retreat allows you to empty out your mind of 'other's' perceptions of you and frees you to refill the vacuum with your own better understanding of how you really are.

Deep?  Well.. yes.  I'm up in the deep woods in the mountains and it is beautiful.

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Thurs-Fri 29- 30 Nov 2007 -  MGCK Music    Thank F*ck she didn't name that teddy bear 'Allah'

I may still be high on a hilltop.. miles from care and concern.. but we have 200 channels and Man! the news out there in the world is scary.

But it always has been.  100,000 people built Los Alamos in the 40's and worked on the Manhattan Project and not a soul, not even the Vice President knew.  State Secrets Act.  Sign it, break it and go to Leavenworth for like 77 lifetimes.  So just imagine what goes on out there in the name of 'Allah', God or 'freedom'.

Other news: El Periodico: 'Grandes Exitos'

That's Español for 'HOT RELEASES'.. Very interesting reading.. the 'hot' CD releases in another country.  Don't have time right now to write, edit, amend or upload this... but later.. maybe tomorrow.  Only two more days in heaven.

In the meantime... here's something that may help when making those difficult choices:  ECSTASY test results

and you think I'm winding down from photographing everything I see like a mad c*nt??!  Well.. guess again.  I saw a PIG last night (no.. not a guy) a real live PIG... a  Wild Boar ('Jabali' en Catalunya) on the drive down the hill from the house.  He was beautiful.  Like a solid mass of muscle covered in thick long brown bristles.  One minute poking around in the middle of the road.. the next crashing through the underbrush like a small Hummer on high heels.  They've got quite long fine legs.  So.. no photographs.. but I was damned excited to see one, in the flesh, finally.  But I'll see if Google's got a picture that kind of looks like my man last night.

Yup, that was him.. kinda... and who was the Siren who turned men into pigs? Why Circe of course.

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Wed 28 Nov 2007 -  MGCK Music    Well... we never went down to Barcelona

We stayed here and enjoyed the beauty of L'Emporda.  I lived there for years anyway.  I can see it another time.. like NEXT MONTH!  I may come back for Christmas or, maybe I'll just STAY until then.  Anyway:

Yesterday, JM returned to Old Blighty and her cloudy skies that sit so low, you feel like the weight of the cold, wet universe is right on top of your head. I realised this is a FACT not just a perception by looking at some photos we took on our drive up from Liverpool at the end of October:

That image is NOT doctored.  Clouds over the M6 heading north.  Much nicer is the sky overhead here reflected in my Roberto Cavalli sunglasses. {Sorry... I had to add that nouveau bourgeois touch... they were a present from my sister. ]

Anyway, to the here and now or maybe the 'yesterday'...  Before JM went back we did as much capturing-of-beauty as we could get together AND still have time for wine and roaring fires and talking books.

Mon 26 Nov 2007 -  MGCK Music    "Spanish Castle Magic...." 

So many things, places, images that we loved on the climb to the Castell de Montgri... so I'll just throw them down here.

Best of all... we were the only people up there on this beautiful evening.  The castle was completely ours..

[Pretty much all photos on this page  E C Smith & James Miller © Nov 2007 -  'M6 Cloud Cover' Oct 07]

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Sun 25 Nov 2007 -  MGCK Music    The Boar Hunters and the Sea

Today, I went down the road to do some shopping and found boar hunters parked just outside our gates. They were going into an 'Area Caza Privada' (private hunting area).  All morning I'd heard their shotgun blasts and dogs howling in the forests below, but this was my first chance to get sight of some of their kit up close,

 i.e. the dog kennels at the back.

and it's happy little logo - a salute to those about to die.

I poodled about all morning in La Bisbal; first to buy a paper, cigarettes and fresh bread , then had a cafe-con-leche by the dry river 'Daro', frosty with ; early winter light 

and then drove to Gola de Ter to give LIly a run along the beach, where the colour of sun, sea and sky was enough to bring tears to my British-winter scalded eyes:

On my way back up the hill to the house, I noted that the hunters had taken their vehicle down to pick up their kill and left their dogs, one in the van bleeding (no photo, he was totally injured and shaking, his fur matted with blood) and another just waiting.  He was a funny looking beast, his neck adorned with giant bells that he kept shaking and ringing as he howled at me to keep my distance.  Lily did not like him very much.

In the afternoon, we went for it.. a drive out in the sunset, to 'go down roads that looked like they needed to be gone down'.  We ended up at Begur.  A small 'poble' on the coast built on a series of hills and when we climbed to the small but ancient fortress at the very top

we had a panoramic 360° view of the bay, the sea and the mountains behind...

and a close-up of the mountains across the valley we would climb the next day, to the Castell de Montgri at the top

then drove home again...in the total dark to a beautiful house lit by lamplight

that perfect white ball above on the left is the full moon rising out of the valley below (or somewhere in that vicinity).

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Sat 24  November 2007 -  MGCK Music    My obsession with the weather

Has lead to an obsession with 'METÉO' the 24-hour Spanish weather channel.  Which I LOVE with a passion.  They have wacky 'specials' like 'Diez Anos de Metéo' which offers clips from 10 years of their BEST meteorological predictions.  Hey.. it's  ALL television.  Even if Sol Campbell's girlfriend said his addiction to the 'Weather Channel' was the reason she left him.   

Not raining right now.. actually, it's been another STUNNING afternoon, 

But even when it does rain - like yesterday - after the rain finishes falling and the sun starts breaking through, the clouds are so unusual up on this mountaintop, they make me think of demiurges and the life of the Gods on Mount Olympus.

Something else... 'Metêo' shows us an ENORMOUS scary GREY weather front moving across the British Isles this weekend... and with a sigh of thanks to those very gods,  all I can say is better you than me!!!

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Fri 23  November 2007 -  MGCK Music    JM has arrived for the weekend.

And whaddaya know...  He brought the rain.  And a mist hidden Castell de Montgri.  Hopefully the Tramontana will come and blow the clouds away, so we can go climbing up there in the next couple of days.

Also, supposed to go down to Barcelona and Sitges some time in the next few days to see one of JM's long-time pop-promoter colleagues.  They go WAY back.  All the way back to early raves on Ibiza.  But, indeed, the weather is looking GRIM!!! So why drive?

when you can sit inside by a warm fire, listening to the 'Canterbury Tales' talking book.

I kid you not, Canterbury Tales, a roaring fire, a couple of glasses of wine... and you'll want for nothing else.

[Photos 'Castell  Nieblado' y 'Jim by the fire'  E C Smith © Nov 2007]

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Thurs 22 November 2007 -  MGCK Music    Thanksgiving day

And indeed... I give thanks.. for simple things.... 

like the cat NOT killing any birds since I arrived...

for the solar-panels that heat the pool AND the house 
{surrounded by electric horse-fencing  to keep the wild boars out) .

for walks on the beach with Lily

for palm trees in November

and for a stunning sunset over the marina @ Club Nautica, L'Estartit

[All Photos  E C Smith © Nov 2007]

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Mon 19 November 2007 -  MGCK Music    EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK

In Barcelona... Catalunya... probably all of Spain, but particularly this northern part of it, the aesthetics of design explode on your senses.  The art of the tile.  The art of the furniture.  The art of the kitchen.  The art of the fittings and fixtures.  The art of the light!!  The total art of the vista is a BIG consideration.  Interior and Exterior designers concentrate on what you will see both inside and outside of your home.  And the little shops, boutiques and huge warehouses are stocked to the gunnels with 'stuff', devoted to helping improve your view; from the nifty Corbousian design of your garlic press, olive oil pourer or wine collars, to the many many modern and fine art galleries, installation exhibitions and gorgeous antique emporiums.  With this kind of 'help', heaven help you if you have bad taste or suffer a pedestrian predeliction.  The other sensory delight: people in this region, again all of Spain, maybe, probably, ALL of Europe, are intellectual and political.  Conversations are ALWAYS political.  Maybe that's what comes from having an educated populace: multiple languages to converse in and a keen understanding of the state of play.  Maybe that's what comes from 40 years of Franco, or however long he lasted.  Maybe that's what comes from two world wars and an-ever quickening global market; an intense competitive sense.  Maybe the Americans will be this political again (someday - soon I hope) because of the 'Bush' and economic pressures.  Yes, they're fucking up in a BIG way.  But, maybe they'll WAKE UP!  There were signs of it when we were in Austin last June.

Regional music?  Has improved since I lived here as a teenager.  Improved markedly.  They've got their own sound, their own bands and artists both male and female; not a totally watered down pop-americana sound like you get in the UK, but their OWN sound and they like it.  They sing in their own language and dialects.  And yeah, they've also got Beyonce and Rhianna and lots of American chick singer-songwriters, plus some great choices of American art-rock and metal.  They seem to love american male art-metal singers, especially Chris Cornell and that guy from STONE TEMPLE PILOTS doing an immaculate acoustic version of that great heavy hit of theirs (the name of which escapes me), the hook line "Where you goin' to tomorrow?"; which I've heard here so many times as a loop on the basic TV package channel and also on the radio.  But God... no wonder... I mean..  his VOICE!!  What is his name?  I only remember he had a little problem with heroin and then wondered if he'd died, but then realised that was the ALICE IN CHAINS guy.  Another great voice.  What ever happened to great British voices?  They used to sing the ASS off everyone else.  Now it's boy bands and pop-rock outfits with girly wet voices and lyrics about how shit life is.  No wonder Robert Plant went to America.  I must get the 'Rising Sand' album he's done with Alison Krauss.  She has achieved my fantasy.  Dueting with Robert Plant.  Oh well.. .  Someone had to do it.

Reading so many books... 'A History of Venice' by John Julius Norwich... yes that's next  - a trip to the Rialto!...and many, many books on meditation as I have an 'unquiet' mind.  Or as the Spaniards so perfectly put it: 'culo inquieto'.. which means, basically, you're just a restless asshole.  Boy oh boy... am I. 

Was in the artist's studio and thinking... you could have a recording studio upstairs with the tangerines ripening against the window.  It would be FANTASTIC.  Yes, God.  Give me the money and I would make them an offer they could not refuse (and make it MY little artist's studio!).[and yes, that's the lightning rod that failed and crashed the whole place  into total blackout in October]

Last night, took a drive over to Torroella de Montgris to see friends.  Long time friends.  Friends of my sister's from many years ago in New York who have lived here for about 10 years now and have that fabulous gallery.  I drove up to the foot of the mountain and thought I might try a bit of the climb to the Castle on top... but it was getting too dark.  Still... the valley below looking across to Les Muntanys Des Angels, was covered in a smoky mauve light, which I couldn't quite capture (I've got no fricking idea what an 'F-stop' is.   'Dislex-speak' for a G-Spot??? I bought this camera and did NOT read the manual! Actually, I tell a lie.. these photos are taken with my 'old' camera which I also carry everywhere with me.  I carry three.  How crazy is that?)  But the cathedral looming smack in the middle of it made it for me.  Oh España, oh CATALUNYA!... you are SO lovely.

Then continued on to L'Estartit looking for a 'WiFi' hotspot someone told me I'd find there, to upload this (as it takes hours, i.e. TOO LONG! on a modem.)

Again.. the view across the bay down to the headland near Pals and Pallafrugell from the sea wall by the marina, where I sit, uploading these pages. Simply lovely.

[All Photos  E C Smith © Nov 2007]

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14 November 2007 -  MGCK Music    "I need a Permanent Vacation" - Aerosmith

"WANTED: House-sitter for large masía on mountaintop in Catalunya, surrounded by miles of protected forest.  20 minutes from the beach. Solar-heated pool.  Artist's studio.  Well-stocked wine cellar.  Three weeks.  All expenses paid. 

You only have to sleep... 

with a dog! 

And yes, I sleep with that dog and another one every night!.  And I drank too much wine last night and this morning had to take many headache tablets.  I'm discovering the incredible beauty of 'retreats'.  Away from everything.  The 'silence' if you want silence and then all the other modern conveniences, like a piano, a flute and a two-storey artist's studio to paint in.  There's satellite TV with 200 bilingual/multi-lingual channels and 3 cars to drive and NO BROADBAND.  Very cool.  And there is solar-panel heated water in the pool, the colour of aquamarine diamonds:

with a faultless blue sky to match... not a cloud in it:

and a beach to walk on, though now the temperature is dropping close to freezing at night, so you wouldn't want to swim in the sea (without a wet suit!), plus the rip-tides would carry you a-waaaaaaaaaaaaay.

 I'm going to spend Thanksgiving here this year.  And last year, I spent all the winter in California:

 I must have done something right in a past life to get sunsets like these... in Les Muntanys Dels Angels

[all photos, 'From The Bedroom', 'Lily', 'Pool', 'Spanish Sky',  'Gola De Ter Playa' and ''The Sun Truly Sets'  E C Smith © Nov 2007 . ''Surfers @ Ocean Beach © Nov 2006]

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11 November 2007 -  MGCK Music    "REMEMBRANCE DAY"

Yes, I know.. I know.. I'm supposed to be going back to Catalunya.  And YES, I am!  Just making the most of the beautiful moments and access to BROADBAND before I go. Had a call from Ed Stack last night.. something about a new internet radio station thingmy... sounded really interesting.  

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 I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has DAYS LIKE THESE:

NOVEMBER 1989.  Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "Got up late, Tried to write about art, but it's no good.  Played patience - a sort of madness.  Read.  A talk with the children about servants, a letter from Lyova (his son) and our entire way of life made me think: our life with it's slave workers, with our servants, seems natural to us.   And as the teacher said, 'If a man feels no humiliation at emptying my slops, then I'm not humiliating him." And we think that we're quite liberal and justified.  But had it not been for slavery, nothing like this could have been invented."

and in my short past:

20 years ago this month??? I was living in London, and on one of those November nights, @ Hammersmith Odeon, watching 'Faster Pussycat' and 'Guns & Roses' take the crowd by storm; their first UK tour on the back of their incredible debut album, APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION.  Ian Jones was backstage too (and this was 6 months BEFORE we met AGAIN completely out of the blue and became musical partners), as oddly enough, was 'my' Andy, the Warner's Int'l Marketing Director.  Then out to the tour bus.  Strange days in the gold-mine.

10 years ago this month?  I was in San Francisco, managing The Vorpal Gallery. I had left music and all of her sweet lies (or so I thought), a million miles behind my life.  Can't remember anything except lots of gallery openings and clubbing events.  Lots of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and nights OUT and an incredible gig by David Bowie, early that December, which shook my foundations.  Reminded me, maybe, I had not left it all so comfortably behind.

5 years ago this month???  I was living here in Edinburgh.  A very dull life.  Just concentrating on writing lots of songs and producing rough demos of same.  Had just come back from a small trip to California.. done the rounds, San Francisco, Yosemite (marvelous and obligatory), Vegas (also obligatory), The Grand Canyon (ditto), Monument Valley (your getting the gist) and back through LA to See Alexis Blue about placing one of my songs with Debbie Harry's manager.  He was very easy to talk to, and willing to listen, but he didn't like the content or connotations of 'That Boy (So Beautiful)'...And as with all big music biz folk, when they don't like something, the dialogue is a short one.  So there ya go.   Chances come and chances go and sometimes, they're just figments of your own desperate need.

One year ago this month:  I returned to San Francisco for the winter, wishing to all the gods and deities and alien powers that might have some control over space time and desire; praying to them all that I could quit this addiction called music.  That it was causing me nothing but pain.  A driving pain, like an endless nail hammered into your heart.  I understand completely Prometheus' eagle.  So, I ran to San Francisco last year and buried myself in other interests; hot tubs, lazing by the pool and on the patio, watching the light change across the Pacific above Ocean Beach.  Flirtations with The Film Institute in a purely cinematic sense, but Alavala kept showing videos of my songs at their open screenings.  Worked daily on a screen-play part-written many years ago, but kept getting letters from Brian Devoil of Twelfth Night about the contracts for track re-releases on Cyclops.  And finally in total desperation to break away, took a lengthy road-trip with JM over pre-Christmas to post-New Year's.  Of course, we spent the trip listening to GREAT music.   So... Tried all kinds of ways to break the painful passion, the attachment to three-chords and certain guitar riffs.  The longing to just open my mouth and 'sing'.  It didn't work.  There ain't no 12-Step Program out of this.

This Year: Finds me still addicted to music and suffering accordingly; daily bouts of agony sprinkled with occasional starlight: the occasional renewed memory of some long-forgotten ecstasy.  The clear reason why I ever felt this love in the first place. 

Then I get up and start doing it all over again.

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[It's difficult to remember, even on Remembrance Day, that a bunch of guys 'died' everywhere.. all over the place, over years and years of 'wars', so that I can sit on a sunny Sunday morning, with the television on, without having to observe 'the Sabbath' if I choose not to, looking out the window at the park and the kids playing, ''remembering" only my little pains... my little worries... my little concerns, disappointments and frustrations and not having to worry about anybody telling me to get back to work or work harder or to do this or do that.  The fact we have incredible FREEDOMS (even if George Bush wants to change all that) should be enough to ensure a great satisfaction and love of life. ]

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9 November 2007 -  MGCK Music   ...a pocket-full of contradictions.  

One minute espousing 'zero carbon emissions', the next packing my bags and heading for the exit, via anything with jet engines.  I'm a human being living in the 'west', raised in certain privilege and used to it.  So that makes me greedy for endless sensation, yet 'educated' enough to know when it's wrong and self-centred enough to never really do anything to change it.

Anyway, back to a world of current themes:  That's the end of Roberto Cavalli for me!

And I'm an elitist.  [So stick that in your pipe with your crack and your mouldy old curry-powder hashish!!]  As soon as a designer's 'designs' becomes available to every little shop girl (i.e. at H & M) that designer is DEAD to me.  Breaks my heart.  I know these talents are global 'brands' and their marketing actions are determined by stock and shareholders and there are a lot more shop-girls going about than heiresses, so, in shareholder terms it makes sense to mass produce (a limited edition) rather than let some no-name knock it off, i.e. "designs by Roberto CAVERLY!"  But for me, fashion is a religion, a sacred calling - a pure art; The House of Chanel the cathedral where my mother worshipped.  And now Karl Lagerfeld has announced a 'line' for H & M.  Could somebody please tell me what is goin' on?  Are we all 'shop girls?'  Is ever artist a cheap little merchant?  All of us a little merchant class?  The big boys selling their ideas and the rest of us selling our 'CD's' and our music and our time and our energy and our souls.  The almighty dollar may be falling like a storm-trooper with a shredded chute, but it still calls the tune and we dance.

Anyway.... Re-reading Aleister Crowley's 'Diary of A Drug Fiend' as a hopefully potent cathartic to the bourgeois zeitgeist of the times in which we live.

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5 week November 2007 -  MGCK Music    "Don't know when I'll be back again"

and care even less.  It's winter.... it's official.  it's creeping closer each day.. and there is the sense that while we're battening down the hatches here; travelling all 'wrapped up' in wet tunnels of darkness to and from whatever places we think we need to get to-and-from; spending depressing evening hours seeking solace in dark and dreary pubs with all the other grim folk, suffering SAD Syndrome, clutching their pints like the last Titanic lifejackets; there is a whole other world out there - somewhere else - a world that goes on LIVING, just because they CAN.  Just because they have a climate less dark and dank and physically and emotionally inhibiting and assaultive.  A climate that allows them out of doors into **SUNLIGHT**.

So that 's it for me.. I'm off!

But before I go.. I've noticed something I REALLY like going on in the surroundings of Leith and other parts of Edinburgh.  Guerrilla anti-advertising ALL OVER THE FRICKIN' walls and billboards.  I saw the best ones, somewhere out by Gorgie.  A car billboard describing some crappy motor as 'a new breed'.  The guerrilla spray-can guys had adorned the billboard with the phrase (in 2-foot high letters) " A new breed of Planet Killer!!".  Of course, I missed getting a photograph of that and they've since cleaned it up.  But there are more.  I've been trying to capture them before the billboard companies send someone 'round to paste over them, or the council scrubs them down.

...have to agree with them.  In general.. 'it' really ISN't working out.  the values of this culture we're living in. 

Check them out... might give you some useful ideas.

[photograph of moose and cat is courtesy of some marvellous person whom I've never met.  Billboard and 'Leith Off License'© E C Smith Oct 07] 

MEMO FROM SHOOTING PEOPLE. ORG, NEW YORK 5 November 2007

If you're looking for LAST MONTH's stuff - Go to Last month: OCTOBER 07 -

Still smokin'!!!! 

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  BE THERE...... or BE SOMEWHERE ELSE!  If you don't know how.. take lessons

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Sites worth a visit and support are: http://www.adbusters.org and Be an 'Antipreneur' - anti-corporate - self-motivated activist: http://adbusters.org/metas/politico/antipreneur/

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