David Singleton's Diary

You wait all year for a diary

You wait all year for a diary and then, just like buses, two come at once…

Time to come clean about everything we have been up to - and all those wonderful plans lurking teasingly out of reach in a state of “about to be becoming”.

First up, I suspect that many people now know what I have been doing for the first two months of this year – mixing “Live in Toronto” with Mark Vreeken (KC’s live sound engineer). It seems, given the general flow of the reviews, that we succeeded in hitting the sweet spot – although when I sent the first draft around, one of the band members told me “you’ve made the ugliest album ever” (I paraphrase slightly). A very slight remix, and some production mastering, and we now apparently have “the best KC album ever”. The gap between the two is scarily small – particularly when my self-imposed brief was to make a stompingly, powerful album that reflected the live show that we have all been enjoying. Take one band, sprinkle liberally with distortion, adjust compression until ears bleed, back off slightly for good taste – on second thoughts, put back to the level you just had it. One man’s “clear and yet absolutely thumping” is another man’s “cymbal distortion is unfortunate” (get with the program!).

And yes, it all has to be done again in a couple of months time for the all-singing, dancing, videoing album this autumn (which will also include the pieces not on this CD). There will be some tasters on the DGMLive Youtube channel as we complete them.

And if this were not enough, there will, of course be a boxed set to go under the Christmas Tree (unreleased gems from the 1980s being unearthed even as I write), a new DGMLive website for 1st September (there’s a hostage to fortune if ever there was), a KC book, a new Vicar album, a new Vicar novel, accounts to complete for the KC tour last year, this year’s KC European tour to manage…I suddenly remember why I wasn’t writing my diary as often as I should have been.

If that were not sufficient, I have decided to learn Welsh. Bore Da!