Tuesday July 21st

Apropos of nothing and everything, here’s the tracklisting of a tape I made for Fiona McCarthy, who works at the excellent Magpie Bookshop in Shoreditch. If you’re ever in the area, pop in and visit the “Keen City” exhibition of comic art upstairs, featuring amongst others Oscar Zarate, Hunt Emerson and Brian Edwards (relation).

It was raining as I made this tape. I was thinking of dusty second hand bookshops, of Highgate Wood and Waterlow Park and long walks in North London, and of e.e. cummings quotes scrawled on satchels. You should really take this into account.

Side one:
MONO slimcea girl, high life, life in mono
VELOCETTE get yourself together
WOULD-BE-GOODS bayswater blues, marvellous boy, velasquez and I
SPIRITUALIZED broken heart
NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY here to stay
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN put the book back on the shelf, if you’re feeling sinister

Side two:
STEREOLAB stomach worm, peng! 33, french disko
BROADCAST the book lovers
VELVET UNDERGROUND what goes on (from “live 1969”)
HEAVENLY three star compartment
CARPENTERS i need to be in love
SUPREMES stoned love
SHIRLEY BASSEY spinning wheel
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD the look of love

Tuesday July 14th

I miss Tim. I feel excommunicated from so much of my recent past, from a whole bevy of social circles, but ’twas ever thus. When I first moved here, he was the only soul I knew in the capital. Today my friends are whoever’s being kind to me at the time, including the cat from next door. He still rings me up to tell when The Style Council are going to be on TV, though. Tim, not next door’s cat.

In my broodier moments, I begin to feel I’m being punished, but am not sure why. Perhaps the crime is being Dickon, and the punishment is… staying Dickon. Or perhaps it’s just that modern syndrome, for which I’m as guilty as others: fair-weather friends, the fine art of blanking, friends come and go. London’s full of it. But nothing can change the fact that I’m really, really alone. Not part of a band, not part of a gang of friends, not part of a couple (surprise!). So I sit here and write. When the songs are ready I’ll start recruiting hapless things to help colour in the music.

It’s my new mantra. CREATE, DON’T SPECTATE. Scrawl it on a decrepit hoarding today!

Another mantra is “I only go where I’m invited”, to put the kibosh on the freeloading frenzy that was my former life. Charley invited me to see Hefner last week. They performed on a tiny stage that could barely fit the three of them. The support band was a four-piece, so one member had to stand in the audience to play. This is always a fun experience: I once saw Jon Slade, former Huggy Bear member and legendary lo-fi face, playing bass for a band, when he spotted someone in the audience he knew. He then walked off the stage into the audience and had a proper conversation with the friend while still playing bass, walking back onstage just in time for the end of the song.

Hefner were very quiet: they played with undistorted guitar and minimal drumkit (brushes rather than sticks), perhaps to emphasize singer Darren’s intelligent lyrics. I completely approve: so many gigs are simply too noisy to make out the words. This way, you also can have a conversation if you want to: why shouldn’t you? Some people put on music to have in the background to doing something else at home, so why not at concerts? I used to believe in that Townshend thing of playing so loud that people had to shut up and listen. I’ve gotten it out of my system now. After all, if I’m going to be singing (and it now looks that way), the music will have to be quiet to match. I have no projection at all. I still have to repeat myself to bus drivers. The three-button speech impediment doesn’t help either..

Cressida Johnson has a new adjective for my sort of brooding, it’s called “Dickonsian”. When she told me, I was so chuffed I nearly sat through a whole football match.

I’m still hell-bent on finding eventual fame as a medical term, though: “Dickon’s Syndrome”. The symptoms being…. this. It can’t be natural to be this ridiculous… it’s certainly not immensely healthy.

I’ve changed my email address. Write me a nice electric missive (with no swear words) about your life, do. What books are you reading? Which is your favourite soft toy? Are you a born victim or a born aggressor? What are your dreams like? Do you wear clothes in them to which you’d never give the time of day in the waking world, even on trips to the laundry?

Came across my copy of Denim’s “Summer Smash”, their EMIdisc (unreleased) 1997 single today. It still had the letter from Lawrence with it. “Dickon: you’ve made a great album, you should be proud.” What are my thoughts on Orlando (at least Orlando 1995-97) today? Flawed but an important experiment in pop. Of COURSE I blow my own trumpet, anyone else’s has got spit on it. We used Boyzone and B*witched’s producer sometimes. He didn’t understand us, but where else would you have Monica/Brandy-style swingbeat married to lyrics based on Henry James quotes? Remember innovation?

It’s not to do with Warp Records. They peddle a different kind of classical music, that’s all, like Mogwai. You might as well stay at home and put the record on. I went to that Meltdown thing. Was bored witless by Autechre and their cronies, but liked Broadcast. Doesn’t anyone else understand the importance of STYLE, and WORDS as well as music? Maybe I’m wrong, I have different criteria to some people.

Music that is currently cheering my slippers: that Bran Van 3000 single, Beck-ed, sure, but I actually prefer it to Beck: the humour is more self-deprecating: sheer slacker disco lyrics (feeling kinda groovy/working on a movie/”YEAH, RIGHT!”), McCarthy, the new Spice single, Thee Headcoatees, Hefner… Reading matter includes “popgirls”, a terrific fanzine by Amanda McKinnon (also known as Manda Rin from the band Bis), featuring interviews with Amelia from Heavenly, Sleater Kinney, Mira from Disco Pistol, Lois Maffeo… and most interestingly, lots of writings about her own life, much of it personal. Autobiographical fanzines are always a winner with me. Anyone can write about some band, but the one subject a writer can be a genuine authority on is their own life. As long as you don’t lie or whitewash, how can it fail to intrigue? Popgirls is available for $2 (inc postage), or one U.K pound + 50p postage. to – Amanda MacKinnon, P.O Box 3821 , Glasgow, Scotland, G46 6JY, UK.

Something else I should recommend if you’re in London on a Tuesday night: an excellent club night called Pin Ups, at the WKD Cafe in Kentish Town Road, near Camden Town tube… the DJ is Debbie Smith, who is always nice to me for some reason. She wants to give Fosca a gig there.

New song title: “How To Tell Taxi Drivers They’re Wrong”.

Last weekend I became extremely, painfully ill. Sadly, I recovered.

I spend most of the time I’m not at home in cafes listening to “characters”. It’s only a matter of time before I become that weird person, smelling slightly, flaunting my bad teeth and insane elbows, buttonholing strangers in cafes to tell them my thoughts for no reason. What am I saying, it’s already happened! Care in the community part 374, Dickon Edwards…

I was reading a book about the Smiths, when the phone rang. It was Geoff Travis. He wanted to know what I was doing. I wanted to ask him about the Smiths. He said that Ultrasound were the new Smiths. Later on I went outside and saw a squirrel.

The day before I had a boy and girl to visit. I made them cups of tea while they read one of my magazines and listened to Momus. To their dismay, the magazine had a big picture and interview of a trendy girl singer-songwriter that had stolen my girl visitor’s boyfriend. The same magazine also had a big picture and interview of a trendy techno group, one of whom had stolen my boy visitor’s girlfriend.

This I why I try not to have people round much. Or at least hide the magazines beforehand.

Today my knees are hurting, and all for the wrong reasons.