People have been asking, so I’ll set it down now.
PJ Harvey will not be recording at FSS this spring. Too bad- OF COURSE I’d have enjoyed it, but let’s not get carried away here… We all gotta do what we gotta do, and find ourselves in all kinds of situations. The trick is to fall into situations that will bring you joy. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it don’t.
Here’s the story:
My dear friend Marta Collica (whose music you should hear) plays in John Parish’s band. She got wind of the rumour that John and Polly and Mick Harvey were interested in Berlin as a place to record the next PJ Harvey album. It turns out that John and I have quite a few mutual friends, and when we met last May we had a great afternoon gossiping about this and that. So when Polly and John returned to Berlin during the summer to look at studios, they visited this place too.
We spent really maybe just an hour or so together. It was nice and congenial, they put me at ease, and they liked the place. I couldn’t be prouder. But instead they decided to do the album in Dorset, where PJ’s at home and a church has been converted into just the kind of space that they need.
So this time it ain’t gonna happen here. Still, although it sometimes seems that the world is disjointed and dissipated and dissolute, it always seems to be the case that when you have good friends, good things happen to you. So I thank my lucky stars, and above all I thank my good friends.