The sketches to Eddie The English's Third Symphony, fleshed out by Anthony Payne, played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Paul Daniel, is vibrating away in this 17th. century dining room (probably 1681). On Naxos at £4.99, this is close to inviting the public to do themselves a favour & luck out on a bargain. I paid £15 for the first release of this on full price.
In the corner of the dining room is a large Christmas tree, decorated by Toyah on her one day at home, Sunday. Lights sparkle, red hearts glow, decorations decorate. I am very happy to be home. I have been away too long.
The flight on Friday from JFK was relatively uneventful, although the woman in the seat next to me had small ear-fitting headphones which sent out tinny drums into the space around my head for the entire journey. Occasionally she sang along.
Jonathan Brainin failed to wake on time, and our hurtling to JFK through Manhattan in the early rush hour was a small adventure. I have never seen the profile of the city from New Jersey at daybreak on a clear day. It was a wonder.
Arriving home, some work has been done inside: the turret stairwell & bedroom landing have been painted warm & strong colours. John Miller paintings either echo the colour scheme, or determined the selection of colours, or both. Perhaps the world needs these colours right now. Three Millers hang on the landing, vibrating strongly.
Sky satellite tv in now installed and vibrating. It's possible to see 12-17 movies at any one time. Who cares they are nearly all really bad? There's so many of them! Since I've been home, two of them have been Terton Rinpoche vehicles. "Hard To Kill" is utterly implausible, features a very bad script even by the standards of the genre, and is the first Seagal movie my Sister took me to. Sister also introduced me to Chuck Norris. Patricia takes care of her Brother's cinematic treats in place of our Father. Dad probably corrupted us irremediably every Saturday afternoon by carrying us to one of the film palaces of the area during the early 1950s.
On Saturday evening I popped into the inn to make sure that Martin, our friendly & heroic local barman, had a diet pint of the night at the end of his working day. Toyah arrived Saturday night late, and on Sunday we had lunch at our village inn's sister pub four miles away - where PJ Harvey lives next door, when in the country. The pub's salmon fishcakes are utterly ace. The Horse returned to London on Sunday night, getting re-routed by an accident in Dorchester & then becoming awfully lost in a blinding rainstorm on small Dorset roads I know well, but she doesn't. Instead of turning towards Blandford immediately before Piddlehinton, she kept going north. She arrived tired, late & very ratty at Chez Horse, Chiswick.
Monday afternoon I drove to DGM World Central to meet David Singleton. Martin, barman superbo & heart of the inn, had discovered that my car battery was so close to being dead that a new battery had been fitted.
Huge changes have taken place in the structure of DGM, and more are coming online shortly. In the fullness of time, and with a little time, I'll report on these. Sufficient to say that currently DGM is no longer a record company. In terms of how a traditional record company is perceived, it probably never was a record company. So, recognising this, we have translated the founding brief & mission statement to embrace a larger worldview.
Meanwhile, I'm pretty beat.
11.13
The sky is overcast & rain falls. What do I care? This is home, Deepest Dorset, Haydn string quartets are playing. The sun is shining in my heart.
22.15
Another visit to DGM World Central this afternoon, via Salisbury for shopping.
When I arrived David Singleton was completing the DGM record contract for The Rosenbergs. This is perhaps the most alarmingly radical & imaginative scheme for revising the basis of record company & artist functioning that I have seen since 1968, when my life as a professional & aspirant musician began enmeshing me in the heart-crushing business of reading record company standard contracts. (They are incomprehensible to a person of moderate intelligence, even one possessing competence in the English language. They are probably incomprehensible to a person of high intelligence & exceptional fluency in the English language).
I spent maybe 2 minutes reading this two page document and, at the end of this period of time, knew exactly the intention & practicalities which underlay the relationship. My only suggestion was to change a "he" to "they", to eliminate any possibility of implied gender bias. David had already come to the same conclusion himself. I confidently predict that this record contract will never be adopted by any of the presently existing major labels. And, because the focus of DGM has moved to developing an overview of the totality of an artist's working life, probably not with any of the smaller record companies either. It may, however, present a model for an emerging generation of managers & players who have not yet been nailed flat to the earth through adopting the industry's conventional wisdom. David's wisdom is quite unconventional, and exceptionally rare.
The Beatles' "1" is powering along behind me.
"Craft is a universal language."
