THURSDAY, 20 Sept.

Chapple and I had dinner with Glenn Max, Peter Murphy and Russell Mael. Everyone’s really nice and Peter is especially cool. I already knew Russell from Los Angeles (i used to see him and Sparks’ drummer at Urrth Cafe every morning ages ago. Their drummer, Tammy Glover, is a friend of ours, and her old band, Chewy Marble, had their first record produced by none other than Rusty Squeezebox.)

The breakfast grub was great, a variety of awesome meats, cheeses, cheesy eggs (not like in England, thank God), fruits, juices, nice breads.

Around noon we left the hotel in a van to rehearse with the Artist. Unfortunately the ground work had not been done by the festival so none of our cars had appropriate passes. Forget that you have all these Pop Stars siting in vans and are OBVIOUSLY here to perform on THAT stage, which is in ear shot and completely empty. But wait we did. For an hour. Our taxi actually drove us to the front of the venue and left us there. We had to wait for a venue bus to finally get us and take us to the gate with a proper pass. How I wanted to cuss out the concert (dis) organizers…

Rehearsals were long (2pm to 10pm) and afterwards me, daddyo, chapple, Badly Drawn Boy, Russell, the arrangers (Matthew and Rupert) and some friends came out for GET THIS …Tacos. Yep, we found a “Mexican” resteraunt in Milan. And I use the word “Mexican” loosely. I found conductor, Jergen, eating at Mc Donalds accross the way and made him come over for drinks at least. badly DRawn boy was having some sort of rum concoction of sorts.

After the resteraunt kicked us out, we headed back to the hotel where manye bottles of wine were flowing but i wasn’t sure who bought what. I remember Marianne faithful’s Mgr getting a bottle, as well as Matthew and BDB. I also got a bottle. there were a lot of bottles going. in the courtyard. till 3am. and it was fun.

(tomorrow more to come)

Mike Randle