Tuesday March 10th 1998
I spend a lot of time pacing about in my room. This helps me think. Ideas for songs and lyrics tend to come to me when I’m walking, whether it be traipsing down Archway Road in the middle of the night, or strolling through Alexandra Park on my way to the Marxist vegan cafe tucked between the trees there. And now I have my new mobile phonic indulgence, I talk and think creatively at the same time, pacing around my room, miniature Erikkson in hand, as I enthuse about musical possibilities, life, and sollipsist philosophy whether the poor listener wants to hear about them or not.
Charley manages, on this one instance, to get a word in edgeways. She tells me that, while surfing the Internet at her friend Ronnie’s place, she stumbled on something called the AMG Database, an ambitious on-line project of Herculean proportions, based in Michigan, USA. Their plan is to document everything musical released ever in a constantly expanding directory, with biographies and at-a-glance opinions, presumably those of the Database’s philanthropic New Age editors. This way, the curious can look up an artist, find out a bit about them, and get an idea about which releases they could investigate. I know there’s a few similar encyclopaedias of pop on the bookshelves, but an on-line one hasn’t entered my consciousness, until now.
“I typed in Salad, and there was only a cursory entry,” Charley goes on. “But when I typed in Orlando, there was this huge wedge of text about them, and you in particular.”
Succumbing to my vanity, I take a look. Sure enough, the Michigan holistic, astrology-loving editors have gone to the trouble of writing more about little old Orlando than they do about… well, quite a lot of more successful artists really, albeit with a few erroneous assumptions (“explicitly gay”? ). Much of it is flattering, particularly the idea that I play keyboards. I don’t, but I’m about to try.
I’ve recently been listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen (particularly his later “wordy doom disco” period), early Pulp (particularly the gleefully misanthropic “Dogs Are Everywhere”), Daniel Johnston, Stereolab, Piano Magic, Broadcast, Trembling Blue Stars and minimalist composers like Philip Glass, Michael Nyman and Steve Reich. And I’m now keen to experiment with odd-sounding keyboards and melodic loops myself, while reverting to making my lyrics more aesthetic, and less lazy like I was beginning to get in the now former version of Fosca.
On my way through Highgate Tube station this evening, I saw a familiar-looking man getting hauled over the coals by the desultory ticket collector for not having a valid enough travelcard. It turned out to be Mathew Parris, ex-Tory MP turned TV broadcaster, political commentator, columnist and writer, and possibly the only Tory supporter I’ve ever felt friendly towards: he is still to date the only Tory to have come out and was in the Pink Paper last year (as was Orlando at one point), just before the general election, urging the readers to vote for John Major for the best deal for homosexual citizens. Talk about a lone voice in the wilderness! I’ve read and enjoyed his books on famous putdowns (“Scorn”) and political gaffes (“Read My Lips”), which convey the man’s endearing sense of wryness and charm, however your political bent. And here he was, charming his way out of a £10 fine in my local tube station. I shook his hand and went on my way.
