During that week we (Olaf Saddeler, the photographer, and I) made a lot of interviews for three 90-minute episodes for Michael Naura’s „Jazzlaboratorium“ including meetings and tea time with David Toop, Max Eastley, Robert Hampson (Main) a.o., at their homes or records companies. As these names may tell some of you, Naura gave us all the freedom to leave the jazz fields and dive into the experimental London „underground scene“ (not exclusively, we also talked to a street musician playing, well, „Heart of Gold“, which I think, is the no. 1 evergreen in London tubes and railway stations). Olaf says it was 1995, in my memory it was 1997. I’ve always loved long dark coats (s. photo), and it was nearly always raining. When we came to David Toop’s place, thousand records, many book shelves and an uninhibited sadness filled the room – not long before David T. has lost his wife, and I’m quite sure writing and listening and making music were essentials in his his survival kit – we talked about his instant classic „Ocean of Sound“ which broke so many frontiers between the ancient and the avantgarde. It was the time when coffee shops in big numbers seemed like being built over night. We had a knack for Indian restaurants, and finally, for the rain. We loved wet clothes, wet hair, wet microphones. We loved walking through Hampsted Heath in the rain. Though it was London, we felt like living in two fucking genius John Fogerty rain songs.