Madrid

Hanging out. Hanging on... to the back of my friend Pablo's motorcycle. We had a night on the town starting with the best cocktail bar in Madrid, dinner in a Tapas bar and then to a jazz club. The nightlife in Madrid is one of the best in the world, he assures me. It's certainly one of the most expensive. The cocktails certainly helped with the motorbiking, and took my mind off the rain. He says I can take it round myself tomorrow but I think I'm safer on the sidewalk.

I didn't get a chance to see Rome yesterday. I will have to go back as everyone assures me it's stunning. It also hit me for the first time that I'm really on the road without a base, when I realised that was the first flight I think I've taken when it's not been to or from my home airport. They've always been there and back flights.
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I've given some thought to what I might like to do once I've toured myself to exhaustion... It came to me last night while I was in this packed jazz club as the hippsters on stage where grooving there thing.

More established songwriters have done residencies in venues like The Living Room in New York. And if I had one I'd like to do a News Revue. Spending all week writing songs, poems and other topical pieces based on what's gone on that week. Having that deadline and that demand for fresh material would be marvelous, and having the time to do it. Now I only play my best 10-20 songs over and over again with little time to write new ones.

I know Revues are nothing new. They were probably among the first performances, and they're still on the radio every week. But I don't know of any songwriter ones in clubs. Done well it could be quite an event. Also reviews are nearly always comical, so it might be more unique if it wasn't funny. But serious songs are much harder to do. It would be easier to do bits about the Pope's teenage diaries and the (not so) private lives of English footballers, than to write about the masses dead in Haiti or Iraq. Perhaps poems over sombre jazz? A backing band improvising tunes. Means I'd only have to do the lyrics. Also residencies are much more common in jazz bars.... mmmm.... and more atmospheric and intimate... I'll give it more thought anyway. It's an idea still on the stove.