The Sadie gig was fun, although the sound was rather poor, and the bass player seemed to get all of the available sound waves. It would be good to hear the singer more next time…Still, I’m glad I went, and the bar ‘Veruka’ in Soho was an interesting place to hold a gig. Oh, and I bought some used CDs in Kim’s before the gig.

Free Design: 'Cosmic Peekaboo' (CD; Marina; 2000)
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Hmm. I'm really not sure what to say about this album. It maintains many of the beautiful elements which made me like the band a lot in the first place - great vocal arrangements and group vocals, charming, light song etc. But I'm finding it hard to 'give myself' to this record, probably due to the rather polished arrangements, which are full of synthesized piano sounds and rather cheesy saxophone. Set in this context, the songs (which really aren't bad at all) seem to lose their charm. 'Younger son' might be great if it was an acappella, with its cute little nod to 'kites are fun' near the end. But the recording and in particular the sax sound ruin it for me. 'McCarran Airport', written by Bruce Dedrick, brother of the leader Chris, is one of the better tracks - a charming, very light pop number. Another good one is 'Springtime', with a gentle bossa nova guitar going on in the introduction, and some quite excellent vocals. The whole thing has a very 80s feel though, and I guess what has emerged for me is that a lot of what I loved about Free Design was the context - the totally late 60s feel which surrounded them. Set outside of that, even with some good songs, great vocals and a nice package (designed by my favorite record cover designer, Stefan Kassel, I can't imagine I'll be listening to this that often. What I'm trying to say is: this isn't a bad album; it's just not for me.