Friday 24th February 2000

In answer to your emails, I don’t of course, write these diaries myself. They are the exclusive creation of a Mrs Brian Silt, of Sevenoaks, Kent. I am in fact entirely fashioned from Fuzzy-Felt.

No Moonbase Alpha. No cities on Mars. No perspex bubbles over St Paul’s. No electric, sleek, pod-like cars. No matter transporters. No post-nuclear wastelands. No Statue of Liberty buried in sand. No Millennium Bug riots. The only thing that feels vaguely futuristic about living in the early 21st century is this very medium.

The Internet is unavoidable. The billboard or TV ad break that doesn’t feature a dot.com address is a rare creature indeed. It’s also been a while since watching a news bulletin that doesn’t refer to getting rich on the Net, being ripped off on the Net, selling music on the Net, broadcasting on the Net, shopping on the Net, big companies merging in order to control the Net, buying and selling shares on the Net, dealing drugs on the Net, bidding in auctions on the Net, spying on the Net, stalking on the Net, courting on the Net, marrying on the Net, cruising on the Net (in both the South Seas and the Hampstead Heath sense) banking on the Net, wanking on the Net…

But some people still refuse to admit its accelerating and ultimately permanent effect on the world and everyone’s lives. Certain friends of mine used to scorn my love of the Net, calling it the “CB of the 90s”, storming out of cybercafes with a camp flourish, shouting at the customers “Why don’t you use a bloody phone to talk to people? And while I’m at it, those horseless carriages will never catch on…” Such people are currently scouring search engines for the barest mention of their own name, furious that there’s a chat forum in Arizona that isn’t talking about them.

In one of my current haunts, an all-night Holloway Road cybercafe run by friendly Russians, some inebriated and fully Tommy Hilfiger and Pungent Kebab kitted-up Shouting Men, on the way back from the clubs, put their heads round the door and shout “NERDS! NERDS! GET A FUCKING LIFE!”

Why is it that the sort of people who use phrases like “Get a life” are invariably intolerant fashion casualties and stereotypes kidding themselves they’re individually-minded? “You’re free, to do what we tell you. To be like WE are.” Presumably for the same reason that members of pro-censorship lobbies, complaining about too much sex on TV, are invariably no oil paintings to look at. Unless you count Francis Bacon.

The truth is, the Net is not replacing anything, it’s enriching everything. It’s giving a new lease of life. To those for whom shouting in the street on a Friday night would be… out of character. Some of us just prefer to spend Friday nights surfing Hal Hartley fan sites and replying to emails from troubled 17-year-old misfits in Sri Lanka, that’s all.

Bald Shouting Men want me dead. They kill my kind for our thick pelts.

Why do these people still wear Tommy Hilfiger? Did Ali G die for nothing?

And what is the first Fosca EP’s connection with hip comedy TV? The answer is that while we were mixing the songs, Mark Gatiss, the tallest, thinnest one out of the League of Gentlemen, was in the studio next door performing in a Doctor Who spin-off radio play he’d written, and that would also be mixed by the same engineer as us. Before his comedy career took off, Mr Gatiss was known to me and a small group of what my shouting friends would also have termed as “nerds”, as a novelist, producing cult Doctor Who adventures with one hand, and gay erotica with the other. I was meant to go round his to watch “The Seeds of Doom” with him a while ago. Recently he and David Walliams, another New Acting-Based Comedy name, wrote and performed a few sketches on the BBC’s Doctor Who Night. I am convinced one of them was based on a conversation I once had with Mr Gatiss about my slightly worrying obsession with Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor. In it, two troglodytic fanboys, their appearance and mannerisms a painfully familiar brand of arrested development common at science-fiction conventions, kidnap the real Mr Davison and get him alone in their Dalek poster-covered bedroom…

It was a typical Dickon-like occurrence, bumping into Mr Gatiss in a tiny Fulham recording studio like that, but then this week I also bumped into Bob Stanley of the group Saint Etienne, while going to the cinema in Soho. He was buying tickets for “Limbo” in Screen One, I was off to see “Wonderland” in Screen Two. He was with someone, I was alone. The connection was timely, as I’m about to go into the studio with his old producer, and will doubtless be spending the latter half of March in front of a mixing desk, gazing up at a wall strewn with various gold discs of Mr Stanley’s chart hits….

I mentioned this coincidence, then made my excuses and went out to phone Rachel about rehearsals. This has always been a dilemma of mine, sensing whether the aquaintance one bumps into really wants to have a conversation with you or not. There’s always an uneasy silence before one of us, usually me, has to say “well, must get on”… Am I saying what they want to hear? Are they happy to see me, or irritated that their otherwise pleasantly-planned day has been rudely interrupted? Do they really want to discuss “so what are you up to…”, like wary small-talkers at some hateful school reunion, nothing in common but the increasingly unfocussed past? Exchanging phone numbers out of courtesy, both parties knowing full well such dutiful digits will never be used? Is it any wonder I’m spiralling into a vaguely misanthropic, reclusive existence? Can anybody help me? Do I really want them to? It’s the inner voice again. How long can you keep this conversation up? How long can you keep smiling and nodding, putting on a Brave Face? How can you get through this? Why aren’t those pills working? Why do you have this overwhelming sense you’re hurtling towards something… an ending? A reckoning? A new start? When do you get Your Go? Has it gone for good? Were you looking the other way at the time? Oui, je regret tout…

Calm. Down. Dickon. It’s not artistic temperament. It’s just indulgence. Keep writing the diary. Keep Marking Time, and forget that Time. Marks. You.

Okay, then. Distract, distract. You’re not the only one. Stick to what you’re good at: being the doomed loner. Doomed because, aside from anything else, I can’t sleep if there’s someone else in the bed.

“Will you go to bed with me?”

“But what if you toss in your sleep?”

Melody Maker has gone up in both circulation and price this week, now costing more than NME. Railing against the British music papers is such a tired, lazy action, like despising tabloid newspapers while reading them in order to “keep up”. Still, I must wean myself off the weeklies, they are too expensive and too quick to read. If I limit myself to only buying one when there’s something about me or an act I like in them, that should mean I only buy an issue once every… five centuries.

But it’s true, magazine buying has been a vice of mine that’s proven particularly hard to break off. Along with the Net. I am a self-confessed information junkie. And overdosing leaves one nauseous… I must have read dozens of pieces connected with the film The Beach, and now I can’t do what they want me to do, which is actually go and see the wretched film. Because my head is fit to burst with it all. Why is there this relentless rush for the media to all cover the same single product, while others, often of greater worth, vanish into the night unnoticed? The arts scene is more diversified than ever, but why doesn’t the media reflect this?

This relentless rush is more than simple hype, it’s downright in-breeding, And that can’t be healthy. Just look at the Royal Family. Like them, magazines just become increasingly unattractive, chinless and thick. But no one minds, everyone buys it and will continue to buy it, fearing they’ll be stuck for a common talking point come the next social gathering. Is Posh eating enough? Here’s your limited list of what to talk about. No, you can’t deviate. Get a life. As long as it’s not your own. Get off the Web and choose our ways. You are free. To conform. It’s the natural order of Things. “The failure of the English Revolution is all around us”. That’s from “London”, a film you’ll have trouble finding in Blockbusters. Because the media barely touched it. J’accuse, J’accuse, the weekly news…

The tone of many reviews of the new Oasis album leaves me equally jaundiced. And I don’t want to be, honest. No one can actually bring themselves to actually give it a bad review. They instead opt for… constructive criticism. Of Oasis! Presumably still terrified they’ll lose their Oasis privileges, meaning they won’t be able to get a circulation-upping cover story and interview with the Krays ever again. The last album was sent out to journalists with a legally binding agreement preventing the hacks from looking at it in a funny way. It worked: not one review was damning. Now, of course, the world and Noel’s wife has virtually disowned “Be Here Now”. So if their judgement is that wavering, should we believe the consensus this time? Oh yes. Some boys can cry wolf for as long as their lungs allow. Time Out: “[one song] tells of the emotional turmoil Noel suffered because of his coke habit…you can’t help but feel sympathetic… the two new members [drafted in post-recording] will hopefully add a new depth to the one already hinted at… Oasis might deliver another classic yet.”

The gist of the review, like many of the others, is that one should buy the album… because the next one might, that’s “hopefully” might, be actually any good. And that we should be sympathetic of millionaire rock stars. What’s the point? It’s a bad record, be honest. And that’s okay. No one will lose their jobs. Really. It’s okay to bring yourself to dislike a record. You’re a reviewer. Let me help you with that all that fear and received opinion, I can see it’s weighing you down… Oasis aren’t important any more, and if you all stop pretending otherwise, they just might go away. No one will mind. It’s okay. But you will so insist on minding, won’t you?

A: “Get a life!”

B: “Get your OWN wretched life!”

What would I miss if I stopped getting the music press? Muse. Terris. Travis. Bevis. Hovis. These careerist, bland little bands are like buses. I shouldn’t worry my fluffy little head about them. There’ll be another one, exactly the same, along in a minute. And they have the gall to slag off chartpop boybands for looking and sounding the same…

I comfort myself with Old Music. A little vintage Orange Juice. The Postcard Records releases on the compilation “The Heather’s On Fire”. Wise and witty lyrics, knowing grins, camp strangeness in the mix… “No More Rock And Roll For You…” Alex Sharkey says I sound a little like Edwyn Collins when singing. By that he means I can’t hit a single note without wavering a semitone or two both sides.

Suzy Woods told me at school “Your trouble is you think too much”. No one likes a smart-ass. Look at Momus. The new Aqua album gets a slating for being too “knowing”. This country likes its thickies. But don’t be liked, be wise. Fame doesn’t have to equate with being liked. You’ll enjoy your own wisdom more than your apparent popularity, which will only be fleeting and suspect anyway. And remember that the adjunct of intelligence is wit. Anyone can be serious. Only the wise can be witty. And vice versa. Nicky Wire of the Manics goes on about how intelligent he is, yet his lyrics are rarely anything to smile about. So by all means be profound, but don’t forget to tell a few jokes. And don’t be fashionable. Be stylish. Fashion is following others, Style is following yourself. Suede is Fashion, Bowie is Style. Vengaboys are Fashion, Aqua are Style.

I will end this entry on a note of hope. Ask for more. Live beyond your means of cross-media cultural rationing. Deviate, experiment, be strange, be the most like thyself. What was it Norman Tebbit said in the 80s? Get on your bisexual and look for work.

Thursday February 17th 2000

I spend Valentine’s Day 2000 in a cramped van full of tired Spearmint types, traipsing across Europe. It’s not terribly romantic or glamourous, the touring life at the lowest, and necessarily most economical level. No one gets to see any of the three Scandinavian countries the band is touring in apart from the view from the tourbus window. All spare time is taken up driving from venue to venue: the concerts are spaced far apart and there is no day off.

My one abiding memory of travelling to, from, and within Scandinavia: there is a branch of McDonald’s everywhere you look.

One girl comments, after the sold-out show in Stockholm, “It’s such a shame you were all so tired… I mean, people PAID…” Despite her words, she is smiling in a friendly, sincerely approachable fashion.

The Swedish, on evidence of a week spent in their country, tend to say what they think with a lack of tact that never fails to startle. Having gone to the trouble of learning technical fluency in English, it appears that incorporating the language’s normally attendant and essential attributes such as tact, diplomacy, euphemism, politeness and manners of any sort is overdoing it.

Perhaps this would go some way to explain that, of all the people who have attempted to chat me up, most of them have been Swedish girls. In Camden, usually.

In Stockholm, I meet up with Rory, Linda, Simon and Mel, people I’ve known from London gigs and house parties who by coincidence are visiting the Swedish capital on the very day I play a concert there. I am …. very tired. They invite me out to a club elsewhere, but there’s no time. We have to do an overnight drive to Malmo for the next day. Still, I’ve brought my Abba video with me to watch on the bus. And there’s a nice picture of me with Spearmint on the cover of a Swedish newspaper’s weekend supplement. With my newly-shorn haircut. The blond has gone for now, in order to let my hair breathe a little after two years of solid punishment. It is the first time my hair has been like this since the photo shoot for the Orlando album sleeve. I look … normal. Which is, of course, extremely misleading. So the make-up goes on even thicker than before.

I am approached only once on this little tour: by a boy in Malmo who is a fan of the 1995 Shelley single. He has not heard of Orlando. I get back to find Tim Chipping has emailed me the URL of a particularly articulate review of the same record, on a webzine. It all augurs strangely for Fosca’s imminent appearance on the record label that descended from Shelley’s label, Sarah: Shinkansen.

We are currently preparing to record the debut album “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up”, with Ian Catt, producer of Trembling Blue Stars and St Etienne. Alex Sharkey, once of the Sarah band Brighter, is also involved. And Fosca play their next concert supporting Trembling Blue Stars on Thursday, March 23rd, 8pm, at The Spitz Club, Old Spitalfields Market, 109 Commercial Street, London E1 (Aldgate East or Liverpool Street tube).

Discussions on the new Fosca songs. Question: is it possible to make a modern dance pop song with (deliberately, naturally) soulless male vocals and not make it resemble New Order? “This above all, to thine ownself be true…”

People keep inviting me out, but I keep not going. I had to spend the Christmas and New Year period in Bildeston, with my parents, away from it all.

My New Year’s Resolution: Read fewer Greta Garbo biographies.

Go to see “Dogma” at the new Ipswich multiplex, by the big McDonalds. Disappointed. Would have made a better comic book than a film.

The fuss over the Government’s plans to repeal Section 28 depresses me immensely, particularly the fact that the House of Lords have just bounced the bill back at them. And websites like this one.

Apart from the fact that the Section is nothing short of legalised bigotry, anyone who has ever been a schoolchild knows full well how cruel kids can be to each other, and how much the word “gay” is used as a term of abuse, of humiliation and of intimidation. Anyone who, like me, finds themself today surrounded by schoolkids simply by accidentally catching a bus in North London between 4 and 5pm, knows that despite that post-AIDS and post-Thatcher, things have changed very little in the trials of the playground:

“Urgh – you don’t like football… you must be gay.”

and, of course, the classic:

“Urgh – you hang around with girls… you must be gay.”

Schools, private and public, are by nature homophobic: it’s the default sentiment whenever you shove a group of disparate kids who just happen to live in the same area together. The scrapping of Section 28 is not nearly enough: it should be replaced by active education in sexuality and toleration from the off.

Thank god we only have to survive school at the beginning of our lives, because there’s no way we’d survive it any later.