Thursday June 11th

Oh, how time flies when Satan’s having fun.

It’s Summer 1998 and the scent of apocalypse is in the air. Perhaps not just yet in the real world, but this week NME announces the beginning of the end for the mainstream UK music industry. It’s all over! The Phoenix Festival has been cancelled! Bands are being dropped by major labels left, right and centre! The Rolling Stones have to cancel gigs because they can’t afford their tax bills! Ah, calamity!

Apparently pop music is going to be sold entirely online in a few years time. I’m already way ahead of them. I buy CDs via mail order from online CD stores like Rough Trade and IMVS, from various indie labels’ own websites, or even from band homepages. Apart from anything else, I just love to get nice pop things in the morning post. But we’re now told even physical “product” will be a thing of the past: new music will be downloaded off the Net and collated on to one’s own CD-R along with printable inlay artwork. We’ll see. I remember something similar was predicted in the early 90s, that videos and video games were taking over from music full stop. It didn’t happen. Anyone want to buy a used CDI player?

More importantly, “thoughtful” music is going underground again, like it was in the 80s with labels like Rough Trade, Creation, 4AD and Blast First catering for those who couldn’t care less about the mainstream charts: mainstream was just not cool. Now a new pop revolution is inevitable. The careerists will be out on their arrears.

I don’t know about that. All I know is that I like jumping up and down with a guitar on a stage, playing songs that mean something to me and hopefully others. I could do it every now and then at Archway St John’s Tavern forever like The Headcoats, but I also want to go to wherever people want me to come. Actually the idea of becoming an underground legend like Billy Childish or Stephin Merritt appeals to me. I want to be a sort of English wordsmith’s Andy Warhol. But I suspect I’m actually Valerie Solanas.

Fosca needs a female singer. But I’m still determined to see David Barnett front a band, and if there are no other takers, I shall have to do it myself. Working title for this new group is Caligula.

I’ve been hitting the town for the first time in weeks. Inactivity breeds inactivity: the more you mope indoors with little more to occupy your time than admiring yourself in the mirror or having a good cry, the more you do nothing else. But once I go out, I find people inviting me to this, that and the other. And more often then not I sat up very late indeed, so the next day only really stars with… the evening. And so the cycle begins again. I charge myself with the following recent offences:

Weds 27th May: Garage: Marine Research, the new group formed by members of Heavenly. Amelia is more of a star than ever. Also on the bill are Milky, the new band formed by members of Posh.
Thurs 28th May: Islington: Rob Newman’s warm-up show for the Edinburgh Festival. Patchy, but he’s still a star too.
Friday 29th May: Farringdon: joint birthday party for Cathy Rogers, 30 (ex-Heavenly, now of Marine Research) and Vicky Chester, 26, another childlike girl who is not in a band but should be. Am mainly there to meet up with Julian Lawton and Simon Kehoe (both late 20s), two nice indie boys from my immediate past. There are cakes and sweets aplenty, giving the slightly spooky impression (in an Angela Carter way) of a childrens’ party. I don’t think anyone here is a parent, despite the majority of them being over 25, and some over 35. This, I assume, must explain it. Why have children when you can keep the good parts of being a child yourself? I’m not complaining, naturally. I’m the most guilty culprit myself. Afterwards we go to a Chinatown Mod club, where the boys look like Paul Weller and the girls like Twiggy. For once, my three-button suit isn’t so out of place.
Saturday 30th May: Camden Falcon: Diablo, the band featuring young Darian and Dan, freshfaced associates of mine. Then to Soho’s club Blow Up to catch Spearmint, who are as wonderfully odd in their pariah-pop way as ever, if still a little drably dressed. Their new single rips off both The Style Council’s “My Ever Changing Moods” and Dodgy’s “Good Enough”, which is a Good Thing. Then onto the club “Where It’s At” to say happy birthday to DJ Erol.
Monday 1st June: “Chicago”, the West End musical, with Charley. There were lots of “Cabaret”-isms like slinky, snake-like women in fishnet stockings, bowler hats etc. Which was fair enough, as it was the far less well-known follow-up musical to “Cabaret” in the first place, with the same writers and directors. Two of the songs “All That Jazz” and “Razzle Dazzle ‘Em” are so classic, “standard”, sounding (you probably know them without realising it), it’s difficult to accept they were written in the 70s, and not by Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.

After the show we went to Tower Records (open to midnight!), and because she was a little drunk on the interval wine, she was running around the shelves of CDs like, well, a little boy, and I felt like the “responsible” elder relative in charge. Affects tired adult voice: “Put it back, Charley, I’m not buying you anything till you start behaving…” We both spent too much: it’s always a danger to go shopping when you’ve had a few bevvies. Still, I snaffled the Cardigans last album, and Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” re-release… I think Charley also got some Duran Duran album she’d been after. The ironic thing about being mixed up in that “romo” palaver a while back is that I seem to be the only person in my variable circle of (non-romo) friends that DOESN’T like Duran Duran and Japan…maybe one day, though.

Wednesday 3rd July: Kenickie at the Electric Ballroom, Camden, with young Sir Kendall, whom I constantly embarrass by asking people if he looks like my double. My narcississm really amazes even me at times. The band are terrific, playing virtually all unreleased songs. This reminds me of The Field Mice, who rarely played released songs at all at their concerts, so their live bootlegs were always in demand. I think I’ve still got their Borderline show from 1990 (god!) somewhere. I think Tim still has all his Field Mice bootlegs, too. Anyway, Kenickie… I get physically dragged to the aftershow party, even though I’d promised myself those days were over. Then I drink far too much, and have difficulty remembering the rest of the evening. I can recall dancing and falling over, and saying to Paul Heaton “you da man”, much to my later chagrin, but that’s all. Later it transpires that I was dancing to everything except Kula Shaker. It’s good to know that even in the midst of wild, uncontrolled alcoholic amnesia, I still have my principles.