Friends.

I’m 50 so the cards say. I don’t remember getting numerical cards before. It’s the only odd thing I’ve noticed about being 50. I haven’t recognised myself in the mirror for sometime. The waif was replaced by beer o’clock Jim Morrison a few years ago. I used to be vain, perhaps I still am, I just don’t recognise the big guy with the beard. I used to worry about going bald, I still have a lot of hair, so that was a waste of time. I used to worry about everything. I worried about money whilst working in a business drowning in cash. All you had to do was cup your hands and catch some as it cascaded down. I don’t worry so much anymore. Obviously the medication is working Doctor.

No news about the book. About books in general here’s Garrison Keillor:

“… if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75. “

The whole piece is worth reading http://bit.ly/bTvsip

What else? It’s Allen Ginsbergs birthday. His long time partner Peter Orlovsky died on my birthday. He and Allen were such inspiring people. They lived a beat life, I would’ve died after a week. Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs indeed.

Dennis Hopper died too while I was away. I’m glad he voted Democrat at the last election. I’m sorry he didn’t live to see the release of The Last Movie on dvd and the major reappraisal, the inevitable reversal of the commonly held opinion that it was a disaster. It is a very beautiful film. It’s not self indulgent or pretentious. It’s a western, I love it.

http://bit.ly/cNxvf6

No news about the records. I wrote some songs when I was away. The studio isn’t ready here so I may have to make another record in the spare room. You seemed to like the last one I made like that; Astronauts. A record no one owns up to owning the rights to. I want to get it re-released but can’t find the owner. Do you know Mr McGee? It’s already been expanded as Astronauts + when it was released on Sony Legacy & Jazz back when. But it will be + squared by the time I’ve finished with it. I’ve found more stuff from that era and live versions. If you own the copryight to this album please get in touch.

I think if I carry on making things eventually I’ll find a suitible form of distribution. The sheer weight of stuff will insist on being released. The day before I left for the Continent I had a meeting. I decided I’d better have a meeting before there was nobody left to meet. As I came out of the lift everyone was folk dancing to some acoustic groove. Sony Music was never like that before. I liked it.

Astrology update: the original Duran line up are all Geminis. May 30^th myself, Nick on on June 8th and John on June 20^th. If I’d realised I was the oldest everything would have been different. How can we be 50 and how can we still have hair? (I know, Nicholas is only 48).

No, I don’t think there is any real news.  Sapphire Stylus by Nick Duffy and the Lilac Time is still available here but soon will be on iTunes and Spotify courtesy of AWAL.

Thank you for your best wishes and gifts. I know how blessed I am to have been able to make music and records with such lovely people and to have you lovely people enjoy it too.

Archie.

We’re still not doing much. The albums we own will slowly appear on iTunes Spotify and so on. We’ll let you know. Trying to find who owns Astronauts so I can add that to the bunch. We should have a new Lilac Time album to add to the pile by this time next year. I don’t know if we’ll have released the live album, film and book by then. I think not. But we are exploring ways of not losing money. Rock on x

On a clear day you can almost see the 70’s. . .

Leaves at last. . .

Hipstamatic April 2010

As the rain gently falls into the sea I sit listening to Bessie Smith with the dogs. We have decided not to play any concerts this year and make a record instead. Or two records. We also have another film project underway. That’s me and the Lilac Time not me and the dogs. Although the book and film of Memory & Desire are finished I have yet to find and acceptable “business model” that allows the manufacture and distribution of physical copies. Until one comes along we will continue to create but wont release anything. Although Sapphire Stylus has almost broken even Runout Groove and the three concerts we played in celebration have left us, perhaps forever, in queer street. Filming and recording everything we did 2007 was it seems improvident for troubadours with so few devotees. Some of the festivals we spoke to about playing this year really went out of their way to try and make it possible to play (thank you Moseley)  but we are coming to realise that it may take a supernatural phenomenon for all of the Lilac Time to play simultaneously ever again.  I would like to release our records on iTunes as complete albums, not for Floydian reasons but for elementary economics - a percentage of 79p does not provide anything like the mazuma needed to keep five minstrels and a balladeer on the bandstand. Manifestly I am blessed to be of an age that  made it possible for me to make money from the sale of vinyl albums and compact discs whilst strapped firmly to the breast of the man. The Guggenheim Museum opened on October 21^st 1959 shortly after I was conceived.  Sorry to lay all of this on you when it’s Monday and raining and all but what once was right on is now right off. I try to live in what I remember of the seventies though the internet will surely destroy us all. The 60’s seem to have become the 20’s and the 70’s are viewed as I once saw the 30’s.  Let us instead take comfort like Bessie “He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot. He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot. When he put in the bacon it overflowed the pot” Keep the faith. Keep on keeping on. Keep going. Keep it up. Chin up. Chin chin. Cheers. Here’s how. Your health. Skol. Prosit. Salut. L’chaim. Bottoms up. Down the hatch. Man the guns they’re coming x

Hellooo Bogus Frontage. Your copy of Saphire Stylus by Nick Duffy & The Lilac Time hasn’t arrived? Well I am soooo sorry, I’ll check with the guys and see WTF is going on. Ta ta.

OH AND HEY! Birmingham screening of Memory & Desire at The Flat Pack festival http://bit.ly/bo9nPv YEAH!

Another day transferring the analogue. I’m sure you cant wait to own these outré fragments of peculiarity, wrapped in the reassuring hiss of tape. How well the cassette recorded the vinyl album, I came across a selection of songs by The Beatles, far superior to last years remastered compact discs. It is little wonder that the music business ended.

It seems Mr. Hopper may have spent his last Christmas on earth. He made The Last Movie years before. Perhaps he will release it again before he dies so it can be showered in the acclaim it deserves.

February 15th, 2010

I’m transferring all my cassettes and DATs and mini discs onto a drive and compiling a cd of the amusing bits for release. I remembered that John Taylor had given this cassette to me in 1979 so imagining untold and unheard early Duran sonic experiments I made to transfer. But the cassette had snapped. Luckily growing up in the 70’s one learnt how to rectify this kind of palaver. So I set about the task. Very fiddly having not done such a thing for so long. After pinging bits around the room for twenty minutes I slipped the healed cassette into the player. 120 minutes of local bands recorded at the Barrel Organ in 1978. A Generation X Peel session. A little bit of Dada rehearsing. A phone conversation. And “Life in Tokyo” by Japan, the reason why he gave me the cassette. I still don’t like it.

Independent on Sunday. Please draw a beard on this picture of me in Alaska in 1993.

T shirts on the beach this evening as I walked the dogs.

Admittedly they had frostbite.

February 9th, 2010

January 28th, 2010

Pictures from my phone showing  yesterday was golden.

January 22nd, 2010

I did finish the book and it’s gone off to Mal to see if I have finished the book. Now I start compiling the disc that goes with the book. I’m listening to every cassette DAT and mini disc for unreleased performances and sketches from the years between 1979 - 2009. I’ve found the Lilac Time essaying the Icing on the Cake as if they were Thelonious Monk and the Crickets playing to themselves in an empty Teacher Training College somewhere, perhaps Derbyshire circa 1990. We also have the QEH show to mix [we filmed it too], half a covers album [called Fattie Bum Bum for obvious reasons] and all of the live stuff from the film. So Bogus Frontage have a back log of nascent catalogue to be released. After I’ve got the Memory & Desire book and film ready for release we can get a shift on. Sapphire Stylus is still available here and will get a more conventional distribution and download option next month with the launch of it’s own website. Nick and I are making another film to accompany the audio book. The sun shines the dogs have gone to be scalped a robin sings. I took

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1. Buy Sam Shepards new book Day Out Of Days.

2. I should really have finished Memory & Desire by now.

3. But I’ve been looking out of the window.

4. Or at the wall.

5. Staring at the clouds

6. And making lists of records I liked absent from lists others liked.

Trees Outside the Academy by Thurston Moore

The Covers Record by Cat Power

Pig Lib by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

trampin’ and Gung Ho by Patti Smith and her band

Murray Street by Sonic Youth

Figure 8 and New Moon by Elliot Smith

Battening The Hatches by Mt Egypt

Master & Everyone by Bonnie Prince Billy

Patchouli Forest

21st December 2009

Here is our press release:

Nick Duffy & The Lilac Time - Sapphire Stylus - recorded in Cornwall manufactured in Plymouth and sold only by hand at Nicks local deli Provedore 43 Trelawney Road, Falmouth.

“We see this as the green version of the The Eagles selling their last album only through Walmart” says Bogus Frontage CEO Stephen Duffy “I don’t know if the Eagles delivered their stock by hand but Nick does. The music is also a bit different from the soft country rock vocal stylings of the Eagles. For one thing it’s instrumental and for another most of the instruments sound slightly broken”.

Joe Walsh was unavailable for comment.

[the album is also available by mail from www.thelilactime.com.]