Saturday was quite a long day. The drive to the jazz gig in London took 4 hours, (shoulda taken about 2 1/2)  tho that included a couple of stops. I only went a bit bats in central London - satnav lady wasn't always on the money with her directions. Got to venue - The Crypt in Camberwell - another dark underground venue like the Troubadour a couple of weeks ago. The soundman didnlt show up. The venue man set up the desk and mikes and stuff and I basically ran the sound - unfortunately their desk had 3 channels on the blink but we (just) made it. We luckily found a noodle bar so I ate well.
The gig turned out well actually - about 40 people - a little ropey at the start. I decided to make it chatty and informal which helped a lot as we often have  alot of tunign to do, especially Baluji. I;d made a good decision to take my small keyboard (the venue was small) and a great decision to take my headset mic which worked really well. The theremin went down very well - I took harmonizer and Lexicon effects for it. We sold a  lot of CDs - I ran the shop too - but they were Linda & Baluji's stock.
Packing up took a  while so I only headed for home at 12.45 but had quite a good run getting home at 3.15am. I hit on a great  driving album (Alan Stiven 1 Douar)  which helped a lot. Central London driving at 1am is mad - like Grand Theft Auto as cars drive really fast round all the roundabouts & twists as I gingerly change lanes assisted by satnav lady.

Sunday I took gingerly recovering from the previous day's trip. ot to The Donkey at about 3pm - luckily Big Neil was doing our sound and Neil the Cajon was joining Dan & I. It was our 1st leicester gig in ages.
The sound was awesome from the 1st number on so despite aches and tiredness we really got into it, starting with old safe songs, trying a couple of new ones and in the encore hitting them with some pop songs from the cabaret set. Slight gloom in the room later as Leicester City football team got relegated to effectively division 3. But overall we really enjoyed playing at The Donkey, probably our favourite venue in Leicester at the moment. Lots of old chums there too. Really satisfying gig largey due to the 2 Neils. Chloe the Singer was there too so could give her her copy of Songs for Dreamers.

Set 1 - Tequila, Snow & The Fire, Carousel, These Days, Long Day's Waiting, Sweet Thing, Call of the Wild, 
Set 2 - Wish, Finally (1st time out with Dan), Bad Things for Love (Dan new song), Deja Blues, Matty Groves, When Will We Be Married, Alien Jellyfish Song -
encore medley - Seems Like You Just Don;t Care/Lost Highway/Hounddog/Whole Lot of Shakin/ I'm a Believer

Chilled in evening - Vikki Clayton had come to visit the Vizier - they were watching a kung fu DVD but it was a bit busy for me

In the days before CDs we used to release cassettes. Often digitally recorded. It has been my intention to remaster and re-release these to CDr. Last year I did this for 3 Storm Thieves albums. Now I wanted to start with The Rain Garden albums. Starting with our 3rd album fro 1991 - practical Candle Magic - perhaps our 1st mature recording with a digital master.
Wiuth this kind of job I have to work out a different methodology in each case - I did start the night before but on todays listening I found any stereo enhancement wasn;t helping. once I worked out what to do in this case it all went pretty easily - just needed to reduce the odd boom of tabla or keyboard and then multiband compression and then overall compression to bring the level up.
Need to agree artwork with Carl the Sitar - the old cassette artwork was a bit limited as we could only afford black&white printing. Found a few possible photos on Dreamstime.

I also did a bit of mastering on the new Govannen Live album and looked for some photos for that too.

Nice feedback today from someone online who raved about my solo piano album Sanctuary which is gratifying. Plus nice email from a lass who really dug the Jazz Orient gig. Then I sold a River of Life CD online tonight. Coolness in threes!

The Vizier worked over my laptop in the end - he had to wipe and start again - I will add my music stuff and see if the shutdown problem happens again.