Over a number of years, I’ve heard the repeated assertion that Blondie’s 1982 tour for The Hunter was canceled at least in part due to poor album sales.  It came up again today, and I wrote this opinion:

The one thing I would say in response to the many times over the years where someone said something like the Hunter tour was canceled due in part to “poor sales” “and the fact they weren’t going to make any money due to tax problems. The money had run out.” is this:

As an archivist of the band for 30+ years, I have never personally seen anything in writing (either official or internal correspondence) that supports the claim that the tour cancellation was related to poor album sales in any way. I’ve heard that repeated many times, but so far, no one has shown any evidence to support the claim (logical fallacy called “Proof by Assertion“). If such evidence exists, I’d certainly like to see it. The tour dates in the US that preceded the canceled part were doing pretty well in venues the size of where they have played in the last 8 years. Blondie has toured internationally every year since 2001, and in many of those years, had no album out at all, so album sales are not required for touring. In 1982, poor sales of The Hunter, though true, was not the cause of the tour cancellation, but it was correlated. Correlation is not causality. Chris was a critical member of the band and was taken out by an illness that was more likely than not to be fatal in 1982 and did not continue without him. Any tax liability owed by individual band members would not affect the profitability of a tour because that debt was not part of their record company or management company’s liability and did not affect income at all. It would be entirely owed by the individual. There wasn’t a lump sum of money that could “run out”. Blondie’s business is a revenue stream of record sales, tour income, merchandising, and royalties, and the business never had any responsibility for anyone’s individual tax debt.

It’s raining outside.  Sometimes if I imagine that it is raining words, I can write.
Last night was the Full Moon and an eclipse (though my vision was never good enough to see a penumbral eclipse).
I was playing all sorts of stuff on my music player (you can see what I play at Last.fm).  I would die without it, but those of you who are reading this probably already know that… and out of that combination came the inspiration of choosing a date to make my site live.

The date that everyone who has encouraged me to write has been waiting for shall be November 3.  Keep reading; you’ll get to the reason eventually.

My kids just left.  We were watching the Lady Gaga 2013 itunes festival show from an HD video… I can’t stop watching it.  Apple keeps issuing takedown notices to Google after it gets 250K youtube views so I saved it to a file.  Fortunately, files don’t wear out like records.
Anyway, I was raving about how I thought the song “I Wanna Be With You” was so fabulous and my favorite.  My son Jeremy said he thought that “Applause” was my favorite.  I like that song, in fact the whole show except for the rap song is so amazing I’m like continuously goosebumpy.  Jeremy left before I could explain why my preferences lie where they do, so I’m going to write about it.

It’s because “I Wanna Be With You” is a song she wrote for her fans, and the way it was performed leaves me no doubt about the genuineness of it and of her words and her delivery.  It was written for me.  Not just me, of course, but that makes me feel personally involved, and it matters.  “Thanks for taking me back” is just precious.

That is the kind of artist that I relate to.  It’s something I find important and that song is very symbolic of that.  I really love the other songs too, and the variety of topics (“Applause” being symbolic of why she performs, obviously “Swine” is about sexual abuse particularly of young or vulnerable people which is another of my own intensely personal ‘things’).  I am not a LG scholar but I do enjoy reading some of it…

That’s how Blondie is.  I was too young to even conceive at the time that this would be so important… perhaps it was subconsciously perceived.  Why it was Blondie, why I chose Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (or maybe they chose me?) is an ongoing investigation in my own head but I’m sure it has something to do with this.  Maybe people who feel that way about the importance of their fans write better music or make performances that are more emotional and feel more real than those who don’t.  When I’m on this topic I also think a lot about Shirley Manson of Garbage and Christina Perri and Lisa and Johnny of Killola.  They are the ones who I know enough about to know that fact about them.

The last thing I will say about that video is a cut-and-paste from my Facebook post late last night:

I can’t help but comment that Lady Gaga’s beautiful song she did in her own hair “I Wanna Be With You” from the iTunes festival London performance
“I won’t be right without you/
and I might break without you/
I’d rather be poor and happy/
than rich and alone.
I’ll write hit songs about you/
No matter how we’ll get through/
I’ll keep on singing for a living/
but I want to be in love/
and I want to be with you.”

I was a skeptic at the beginning but this song touches me like the one I saw her do on Saturday Night Live and I could never have imagined or predicted my reaction to that performance.

Debbie Harry said to me, in person after they had just performed together that she likes Lady Gaga, and that really makes me happy. Because that line I quoted: “I won’t be right be without you and I might break without you”, that is how I feel about all of you, every one of you who I have ever met whether you like what I listen to or not, whether we have ever met in person, and no matter how much pain we have been through. There is a special place for the artists who genuinely adore their fans. They live forever and we cherish them. You all know who you are! I wish I could write for a song for all of you, but I can’t, but I do relate to the “I would anything for you”. My blog will be visible on November 3. You’ll have to listen to why it’s that day and oh, the verbiage when it’s on my own site and not about directed advertising, you’ll see.

*Nite* xxxx eclipse moon

I already know some of you are going to comment something like “Gaga is no Lady”.  I will pre-empt it here with my cut+paste response:

No, she’s an artist. Well, to be accurate, Stefani Germanotta is the artist and Lady Gaga is her artwork. It’s an ongoing performance piece. It’s okay if people don’t like it or her as there is a lot of art in the world that I don’t like or don’t get.

Fast forward to launch day to read why it had to be November 3.

In reply to an article analyzing the art of Lady Gaga, which I thought was great…
http://theotherjournal.com/2011/05/23/gaga-a-gogo/

I wrote:

This is a really great analysis and discussion that you wrote.  It’s too bad that everyone is not taught from an early age how important it is to give everything a less superficial examination and help them develop the mental tools to do so.  I particularly liked your point about the ‘conventional notion of a dichotomy between pop and art.’  It was certainly relevant to the topic and still is.  As someone who was guilty of this with my own early dismissal of Lady Gaga as “probably another pop star being fed to us” but realizing a year or so later that assessment was completely wrong, I have developed a deep admiration for her art, her social commentary, and her messages, many of which are deeply personally meaningful.  For me, at the age of 49, many of the ideas in those messages, which you mentioned but didn’t fully elaborate on, are the same as the ones I’ve come up with on my own after decades of self-searching, introspection, reading, and thought, concepts which represent everything I believe in and are the source of my happiness, self-identity, and desire for personal growth.  I could only imagine how much of a head start I could have had on this process if she had existed 20 years ago (which, of course, never would have happened as her success is the convergence of many factors including technology and less restrictions on speech and performance art to name just two important ones).

If you were ever to follow up with a continuation of your analysis, I’d certainly be there to read it.  I wonder what you thought and how you feel about the 2013 “Itunes Festival” performance.  If you haven’t watched it (linearly, not in pieces), I highly recommend it.

The last thing I wanted to mention is how interesting it was to read points about “pop” and “art” in your article from over two years ago and know that her new album, out in a few months, is titled ARTPOP.  I’d say you’re one of those who “gets” it.

Listening to Garbage play on my music player is so… ummm… what’s the word…. disembodying?  that’s not a word, but that’s how I feel.  Maybe it’s because I read the transcript of Blondie’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Happy Birthday to Lisa from Killola whose lyrics were the inspiration for the name of my blog 🙂

Today is the lovely and rising rock star Taylor Momsen’s birthday.
I am here only with Logan.  Thunderstorms went through and as usual (though this one was different…. I couldn’t get into my swimsuit because it was inside out and is torn up the side…. I need a new one…. I was in the pool trying to get the solar cover on, in the rain and wind.  Later, there was an insane amount of lightning.

Which of course took down my internet service, so I decided to play Light Me Up, which I still think is one of, if not *the* best album of 2010.

At the beginning of “You” (which I played a few times today thinking of a friend whose last two years are essentially summed up in the message and meaning of that song), Logan thought it was Johnny Cash.

He was referring to his cover of Sheryl Crow’s awesome song “Redemption Day” which I have loved since it came out (along with “Anything But Down” and “If It Makes You Happy”).  Johnny Cash’s version of “Redemption Day” is on an album we often play here when my dad visits.
I love it when my dad visits.  I feel that my connection to him has always been very intense… ever since we walked into the fog after I pointed to fog and asked, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s fog.  Do you want to go in it?” and I said “YES!” and we did.  This is one of my first memories.

I think I was 4. That was very special, we walked around in it and talked about how fog was like a cloud on the ground.  It was so humid today that Logan told me the shotgun he wanted to shoot had condensation on it when he took it out of the case.  We have been discussing condensation the last two days….

I had a very special night in the fog as an adult when I took the green laser photos for Melissa Poole, an artist, friend, and Chris Stein’s ex-wife.
The green laser, and the blue LED, these were only a dream of science when I was growing up. Now they are reality.

Unrelated:
I feel a very special pride when I can explain something to my children the way that my dad explained things to me.  I’m also pleased that I can add more detail, like defining “dew point” and the relationships between volume, temperature, and pressure of gases.

I like how streams of thought lead from one thing to another to another and seem to end up in a random unrelated place, but one that reminds you of something important.

It occurred to me after I imagined that Sheryl Crow must be very proud of her work given that Johnny Cash, a musician whose work has been popular since before I was born, that there is a story about me that I don’t recall ever telling.

When I was young, I visited my grandparents (my dad’s mother and stepfather) and stayed overnight from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon (I would always watch Land of the Lost and The Pink Panther and I *loved* that Ant and the Aardvark!).

When I was 3 years old, perhaps until I was 4, I would sit in a tiny, dark brown, wooden rocking chair and play the 7″ 45 rpm single of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” over and over and over. The memory is vague, but I think it had the big hole in the center.  I don’t know why I did this, and I barely remember it.

I believe that time doesn’t really exist.
Reminder to self: write about the article talking about contingencies and continuities and how they are undetermined until they pass through the singularity known as “now” to become fixed as the past.
(Note to self 12/25/12: I did this, Walter Alvarez the guy who discovered what killed the dinosaurs.  Must find this.)
discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/26-the-man-who-discovered-what-killed-the-dinosaurs
The interesting part is on the second page.

So back to my point about time not existing.
In 1980, Blondie covered “Ring of Fire” for a movie and put it out on an LP.
Why THAT song?  Why that one?
I didn’t know about it at the time… in fact it would be years after that, when I became a Blondie collector and they became the center of my entire adult life until I realized that existed.

It just seems that there is more to it than simple coincidence that I chose THAT band, and it happened to be THAT song that I played 15 times in a row when I was just turning 4.

Hmmm.

I wondered for 30 years what that song is about.  I was writing on my friend Hayley’s facebook page and listening to music when it hit me.  Here are my words, in original order, since I was writing when it happened:

I set my hand to writing you, and I’m scared to death I’m going to freak you out or that your fan mail will get lost on its way.

Dragonfly is parked outside.  Do you get in?

Hover high level off.  The time space tactics saved us then.
Grande Trex fans throughout the universe are well informed on the risks pilots take in entering this race.
We have retained as an added feature of daring, thrills, and excitement for this race, a feature, which I’m sure you’re going to like: musical override lasting three and a half hours…
…
The postulate for mischance runs high but not as high as the tension and competitive spirit right here, and all over the galaxy!

XXXX amazing
(blk) is having a moment of Blondie supernatural inspiration!  !!! no words
The line in Angels on the Balcony: “The door swings open and it’s cold outside” which is one of my favorites of *anything* **ever**…
It’s a coincidence (spoken like the twilight zone “It’s a Cookbook!”)

I finally understand it, after 30 years!!! :: Everyone who matters to you, the door opens; they all come into your life when it’s cold!!  October, November, December!!!
BLK supernovas!
5:09am 11/3/10

the season may vary but not everyone like me has such an uneven distribution, where are all these Cancers from?!

I want to do an online chat with Destri about his writing, it’ll never happen but I like Dreaming

I don’t believe that time actually exists (and many physicists who work with quantum mechanics not only believe it too, but have proven it in experiments where doing something now changes something that had already happened in the past!).  Sometimes it seems like certain things that have happened to me very far apart in time are so closely related, or so unlikely, it seems like everything happened simultaneously.  One day I’m going to have to write about that in detail but let me give you the short version…

Obviously everything does interact to some extent with a clock or a calendar, but I believe in connections and I believe that they exist without regard to time and distance, through time (and space) and that those connections are what allows us, to an extent, more of an extent than most people realize, to make our own reality. Consider this: there are six billion people on the planet. There was one person among tens of millions of Blondie fans who became friends with the band and ended up making, owning, their official web site — and it is me.

I sent [Blondie guitarist and co-founder] Chris Stein a letter (through Chrysalis Records) that I typed on an old antique typewriter (older than my grandmother) in 1984, 85 maybe…

When I ended up friends with Chris, I would visit him and stay over at his apartment in NYC and sleep in his downstairs recording studio. Around 1992, maybe 93, on one of my first visits staying over, I was looking around, fascinated, all this stuff — everywhere — on the walls, on the floor, on every horizontal surface, in cabinets and drawers and just everywhere. And I was reading stuff on the walls and just shocked: there it was, my letter. Hanging on the fucking wall, next to a letter from the late artist Vali Myers who he named his child after.  So talk about a full circle moment, all of the things that had to happen not only for the letter to even be there, but imagine the fact that *I* ended up there to SEE IT.

Last night, Killola did a short live show that was available to people (like me) who had purchased their new album on the USB “dog tag.” I hadn’t seen this technology before but it was great!

I just plugged the album into a USB port, clicked on an option, and it opened a browser with a video window of the show, expandable to fullscreen, the live audio, and a chat area where fans could type to each other and to the band. It was a nice experience, second only to being there..

This morning, I had a long period of lucid dreams. I was constantly waking up thinking about Killola and in some cases hearing music in my head (which, unlike most people, never happens to me when I’m awake). At 6:22am, I got up and shut the windows and doors because of the noise from the birds. I hate birds.

In the first dream I remember, I was aware of myself walking around in a building, getting ready to go outside. It was night. As I approached the door, a large glass one with two large glass windows on either side, like the door in a business rather than a home, it appeared at first to be foggy outside. As I approached, I realized it was snowing! Visibility was limited; the ground was white. Maybe an inch had fallen; it was fine, slightly icy snow, the kind you get when it’s almost warm enough to sleet or freeze rain. I thought to myself, “Isn’t it July?” For a moment, I believed it was November and felt a moment of fear: Where have those four months gone? Was I in an accident? And that made me realize I was dreaming! I was completely aware of it and could carry on thoughts like I do when I’m awake. I often talk to myself in my mind and I think in my own voice. I wonder if that’s how other people think. But it was just like that.

The realization I was dreaming didn’t make it end like it typically does, and I stayed in that state and it persisted even if I moved around. After a short time, I tried to think a few things and the scene changed. Last night I had a nice call with April and I must have been thinking about her or about how much I miss her, because suddenly she was there, and it made me really happy so I kissed her (not something I normally do) and said, “that’s all,” abruptly finding myself in another scene.

I was listening to Goldfrapp — some kind of a CD-quality live recording that someone gave me and that I downloaded. For those of you who listen to Goldfrapp in real life, Alison can be pretty hard to understand. Very often, even though I’ve read the lyrics to her songs many times, I *still* don’t understand what she’s saying when I listen to them!
It’s a mysterious quality and some people aren’t into it, but I love her voice. Anyway, she was singing in perfect clarity; it was definitely her voice, but all the words were totally clear. It was just perfection, like how I felt when Kato kept the vocal take that Debbie recorded, the one that made me goosebumpy. I can almost remember some line about changing the day to night or about the day becoming night. It was so beautiful, I so wish I could remember the rest of it!

It’s so hot here, it feels like what I imagine a tropical forest to be like. It’s supposed to get much hotter too. And lately it’s been hot. A couple of days not long ago were the hottest in a decade.

I had to share this thought from Barbara Sicuranza’s Facebook page:

Barbara Sicuranza:
“Passing a waterfall today Vali asks, “Is that man-made”?
“No baby, that is nature”, I said.
Akira asks “how come you never hear of anything that is woman-made?”

Laurel Katz-Bohen commented, “Tell her everything is woman made!”

Amazing.

I originally wrote this in an email on April 30:

I have been working ALL DAY on Blondie’s new Links page (deploying Monday) and I wanted to link in the rock and roll hall of fame, and they have added really great content since my last visit, and they had — fuck me — a transcript of Shirley Manson’s beautiful induction speech. I have never seen anything so lovely and sincere. I can’t even *read* it let alone watch it. It just shreds me up into little pieces in the first three sentences.

http://rockhall.com/inductees/blondie/transcript/shirley-manson-inducts-blondie/

The beauty of this is not constrained to humans. This is why I believe in aliens. plus the fact that Debbie revealed it to me in a dream, and Chris had already taught me that those you meet in dreams, they are real.

There is no one on the planet I would have rather had induct Blondie than Shirley Manson.  Perfection.  Another dream come true.

A friend who I met online asked me today if I had the new Hole CD, Nobody’s Daughter. This brought back a really beautiful memory that I want to share.

Those who know me surely have a clear perspective of how important music is to me. It hasn’t always been that way. The first show I ever saw was Blondie in 1982, just after my high school graduation. It changed *everything* and as that band became a central part of my entire adult life, I came to realize that what I had been missing all my life was the emotion and meaning and insight that I derive from music now. It’s not entertainment for me, it’s life itself. That said (again), I’m also very sentimental and lucky enough to have received a few truly great gifts over the years, things with real meaning and a deep and irrevocable emotional connection. I keep these things near me all of the time and when I see them, I realize that these gifts are so great it made me actually integrate the person who gave it into my self, into what I am.

so just off the top of my head, here are a few…

a lovely and brilliantly insightful girl whose humor, wit, and inspiration is dearly missed, gave me a black refrigerator magnet with a Carl Jung quote printed in white but could just as easily have been printed in my own love and blood:
“the meeting of two personalities
is like the the contact of two chemical substances;
if there is any reaction,
both are transformed.”

Chris Stein, by putting me on the guest list for four shows on June 28, 1990, gave me a lifetime of Blondie experiences, and his personal insights about so many things started an avalanche of self-discovery and ambition and the realization that the only thing that was limiting what I could accomplish is me myself.

my friend of 26 years, REB, knowing how much I love Blondie, gave me free hosting of blondie.net and debbieharry.net since the mid 90’s, and a plane ticket to England in 2005 so I could go see them on tour.

someone I met in Debbie Harry’s front row in 1993 gave me a red silk rose because it was what I needed at that moment. (Twilight Zone: “What You Need”)

the lovely Apes gave me a Debbie Harry postage stamp from Mali and the inspiration to fly around the world chasing my dreams before I had realized that was the right thing to do every day.

Killola gave me the last fragment of what I needed to demarcate the end of the previous part of my life from the beginning of the next part. That one is going to gets its own article here when I figure out how I can express it. It is unreal what they gave me.

Now with that all in perspective, I want to talk about what my dear friends in the band Cilver (on the original date of this still known as Me Talk Pretty) gave me on May 2 when I went to see them play at the M-Room in Philadelphia (the same place that Killola played on TMI Day (March 28). Both Me Talk Pretty and Killola are two of the three bands that searched my music preferences on myspace (back when it used to be good… not like now, just a dumbed-down version of facebook that limits how much you can say at a time… one of the primary motivators of me doing this site, in fact) and afterward, when I listened to them, I loved them immediately and bought everything they had for sale. I have been into them for years and to watch them, all of them, make it, is fabulous. Why two of those three are from California isn’t clear since I hate California with a passion. But I digress, so back to the story, mostly quoted out of an email I wrote the next day:

first of all it is always supremely exciting to see Me Talk Pretty, and the fact they had advance copies of their new CD that won’t be out for months already was already sufficient to make me burst.

so I wanted to know what time the show was and brought up the bar’s website and fuck me! The Action Design is playing!! I like hem. They are also from California, and played with Killola the first time I ever saw them live, on my birthday in 2008… I didn’t know about them, but Killola Johnny said that day, “you should check out this next band, they’re good and you’d probably like them.” A hot grrrl was waiting for me at the beach in NJ so I figured, okay, I’ll check out a few songs and split, but she had to wait: I ended up staying for the whole set and buying their CD (and a second one that came out a year later). I love their songs “Pale Horizon” and “Landmines” (oh so relevant!) , plus they covered Hanging On The Telephone (had it on their site). Imagine the chances they’re actually playing the same night. WTF?!! they were good too, luscious. I got some stickers and got to tell them how happy I was to see them here! that is so crazy. but not so crazy as this….

so Me Talk Pretty (guitarist) Leon, my friend, says, “I have something for you. Don’t leave.” That was rather early and I’m like “I won’t leave until there are no more bands here.” Then they played, it was soooo good 🙂
they were hungry and I guess it’s the owner who was working the bar (and maybe cooking?) is Greek, and Me Talk Pretty (singer) Uliana’s sister lives in Greece and is married to a Greek man, so he made her a really nice salad for free and gave her some more drink tickets, one of which, to my delight, she placed in my hand. the others in the band ordered food as well; I think they were eating while I was watching The Action Design.

Afterward, we all had drinks together, and later, Leon had me follow him to the van and as we were walking there, I asked him what he thought he of the Hole show he’d said he went to on April 27, the day before I saw Hole at Terminal 5 in NYC with Steph “front row grrrl”, and Debbie Harry saw me there. Leon was describing how she did four songs acoustic and that everyone had to buy the CD to get in, then how there were 100 people waiting in line to get their CDs signed and when they got their turn, Uliana asked Courtney Love if she could give her a sticker from her band, and Courtney was like “sure” (really nice about it) and liked the name. Just at this moment, reaching across the front seat, Leon produces his signed copy of Nobody’s Daughter and handed it to me and said, “I want you to have this. It is a gift from us.” It was a complete surprise, so there I was standing next to him holding this disc with both hands and just looking at him, frozen. I think the word “Seriously?” was the only one I managed for like the next two minutes, maybe three. He asked me not to be speechless, but I couldn’t help it. Courtney Love lives in fucking California and never does anything where you can meet her, I would never be able to get an autographed disc, and these lovely people bought this disc and waited for a hundred people ahead of them to get it signed and give it to *me*. When I got home at almost 3am, I took a photo of myself with the Hole disc, my arm signed by Uliana (how lovely!), and holding their new album We Are Strangers. Their new video Wake Up came out that same day. Leon said it would be on MTV in about 3 weeks or a month from now. Looks like I’m not the only one who likes them heheheeeee.

This is one of those gifts.

Today is Alison Goldfrapp’s birthday and the new moon (which Chris Stein says is as powerful as the full moon), so I figured there could be no better time than now to finally start writing publicly again…. I finally did it.

The layout here *will* improve but I have to evaluate what I’m going to use that will let people comment and leave me with ownership of my content. I’m not sure how the free sites get away with claiming ownership on content written by someone else without paying them, but I don’t want involved in that. “Include me out.” Yesterday, I was doing some research and someone had “guidelines” for writing on the internet (they called it a “blog” but I despise that term; in fact it is on the LSSU List of Banished Words, so I will not use it). This person suggested that because there are so many people out there writing, that one should write on only one topic you are knowledgeable and passionate about. And to that, I say this:

I am knowledgeable and passionate about a lot of topics, I’m funny, and I’m a better writer than most. Sure, I’m no Diablo Cody (except maybe the diablo part;)… more on my favorite crazygrrrl another day… but I’m going to write about whatever I feel like writing about, and say it’s like a smut magazine: If you don’t like it, don’t read it! As for the rest of you, I hope I can bring some Blondie stories, laughs, insight, magic, bizarrely skewed reality, new music, and weird shit into your life.

The title of this thing is “10 Minutes After Midnight”, which is a line from the song “Mid-Day Rebel” off the new Killola album Let’s Get Associated. I love Killola. I love their music and the talented, intelligent, caring people who are Killola and who I am beyond delight to call my friends. And I love what they and their self-published status represent. I will discuss them in vivid detail another time soon…. for now, I’ll just say that is one of only three bands: Blondie, Goldfrapp, and Killola, who I would die without. These three, together with Crossing The Rubicon by The Sounds dragged my ass out of the darkest place imaginable. Goldfrapp turned out to be right: “What you thought you’d lost was just mislaid.”

For those readers of my past work who, like me, are very observant and recall a lot of detail, you might remember that After Midnight was the working title to the movie Intimate Stranger starring Debbie Harry. I’m a creature of the night, and she has an 11 in her email address, and 11 minutes after 11:59 is 10 minutes after midnight. That’s about as appropriate and personally relevant as it gets… just like naming my Debbie Harry fanzine Fan Mail.

BLK 2:22pm
May 13, 2010

—

I don’t often edit my older posts with new information, but on “site launch day”, November 3, 2013, I’d like to point out one other strange development: the coincidence that 12:10 also happens to be my lovely girlfriend Steph’s birthday.  I had met her when I wrote the above and had already chosen the name, but I didn’t know her birthday and I certainly had no idea we’d become what we are now!

This is actually an exact copy of an email I sent to Debbie Harry.   I can never find it when I want to, so here it is.