Wednesday 12th July 2000

Hello again. It’s your Host with the Least. And today you find me harbouring graphic designs. On a graphic designer.

I’ve been asked why I’ve adopted the soubriquet of “Dickon Angel”. As usual, it’s never one sole reason. I was in a bar with Stevenson earlier this year when I decided on it. I was discussing how less and less I felt like “Dickon Edwards”, especially now that the other Dickon Edwards, an actor, had started cropping up in magazines: he’s even the same age as me, has an equally sexy square jaw hinting at unbridled manliness within, and who has the temerity to also come from East Anglia. I occasionally receive e-mails getting the two of us confused. Plus I felt more and more that the human “Dickon Edwards” was dead, and engraved on his hypothetical tombstone were these words:

“Here Lies Dickon Edwards
Cancelled due to Lack of Import.
Still, at least he never worked with Dave Stewart”

With my new white suit, and being a fan of “Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)”, the original series with Kenneth Cope mind you, I toyed with the thought of being my own ghost.

But for some reason I’d also been watching a lot of films which had angels in: “Barbarella”, “Wings of Desire”, “Dogma”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Suddenly, the analogy was obvious. Angels appealed more than ghosts: they had never been human in the first place. Angels had never “gotten a life”…

And I thought how much more I identified with the concept of being an angel (a fallen one, naturally) than as a human. Specifically, angels as lonely, pontificating, sidelined observers, lurking in the wings (rather like… online diarists), doomed to never take part in the action, in the Real World, while still stuck with actually being in the damn thing, being at its mercy, watching on, watching on…

Orlando was a failed attempt to affect the Real World, directly speaking to people from my point of view, with my then current concerns as a fellow human, albeit a pretty strange excuse for a fellow human: a human with no life to speak of. Fosca songs, however, are more removed. After wailing “I coulda been a contender!”, I’m now resigned to being a Non-Participant in the grand scheme of things, and yet I’m still here, still a Big Fan of the world, still hoping to influence it, if only in a very small way. And so, my own present existence being little more than a vacuum (abhorred by Nature, it says here in Magnetic Poetry letters on some Islington fridge), Fosca songs are inspired by other sources: either by observing people I know in modern London (helplessly!), or finding my own childhood and memories of growing up in Suffolk have started to haunt me more than they used to, as if my distant past has taken up the section in my brain really meant to deal with my present life. But, of course, for me there is no present life. And so, when not in Samuel Pepys mode, I find myself in Brideshead Revisited and A La Recherche… (the Ladybird version) mode. One of my most abiding and happiest memories was playing the Archangel Gabriel in Bildeston Primary School’s nativity play. I was the only boy who wanted to be an angel rather than a Shepherd or Wise Man. I led a choir of girl angels. I can even remember the dance moves.

It’s since occurred to me that the bar in which I made this decision to go with “Dickon Angel” was the Heavenly Social…

Oh, all right. The real reason is because I was hoping Robbie Williams would be loving me tonight…

Matt from our record label wants me to go out and shamelessly network with the movers and the shakers on the London music scene, securing much-lacking reviews and publicity for the Fosca records. I did it before with Tim for Orlando, up there in the networking-as-an-art-form stakes with Menswear, so why can’t I do it again now? I feel like telling him things are different, I’m not a inside participant and face on that scene anymore, I’m an External Angel, old thing. But that would sound silly on the phone. To put it Wildely. Because Fosca had zero press coverage at the time, Matt asked me to unearth a handful of glowing Orlando reviews to help convince the shops to stock the record, much to my chagrin. Since then, Fosca has finally made its press debut in Melody Maker this week, albeit as a standout track on the Shinkansen label’s various artists compilation album, “Lights on a Darkening Shore”. The rest of the album gets damned, but we emerge relatively unscathed (it’s like Romo all over again…), made officially Okay To Like, and get called “beautiful.” Not a bad start.

Sadly, it really isn’t enough to just make records, send them to journalists, even with nice personal covering letters reminding them of that promise they once made that time you rescued their Pomeranian from a hedge, and be confident of a review, even a damning review. The message comes back that the record isn’t getting a review, because it isn’t “important” enough. Promotion, or rather, the right kind of promotion, is sadly as important as the music. The right Press Angle, the right PR backing, the right press officer, the right media pitch, the right deal, the right people behind you, the right “buzz”, the right radio airplay (the Fosca single being played by John Peel thrice and counting? Not good enough!), the right pre-sales orders interest from the shops, the right midweek chart position, the right Received Opinion, the right consensus, the right target market in the right media campaign, the right amount of money behind it all… all just as important as the right vocal take, the right chord change, the right lyric… And in, say, Coldplay’s case, why bother making an even half-decent record if you’ve got the publicity part sussed? My dog can write better songs than Coldplay, and he’s a snappier dresser. He just hasn’t got the right PR.

The upshot of this depressing state of affairs is that you get critics writing about bands with piles of money behind them (or piles of money about to be behind them) , saying they’re “promising”… “this time next year they’ll shine, or at least be on a Shine compilation”…. “the fifth album will be a corker, probably”… Meanwhile there are exciting groups out there NOW who already are delivering their potential, in spades. But there’s no money behind them, so they’re Not Important Enough to get written about. I realise this is not a wholly original complaint, that it’s the Order of Things, it’s the Name of the Game, but that doesn’t stop me gritting my teeth in foppish frustration behind my fluttering fan. I don’t want to be a kind of powdered Billy Childish for the rest of my life, but if the Arab Strap fits…

And here I’d like you in indulge me in quoting a Sondheim song about this dilemma, “Putting It Together”. It’s the version sung by Barbra Streisand on “The Broadway Album” (I once parted company with a guitarist because he said Moonshake were better than Barbra Streisand, but I digress). This one goes out to the New Wave of Ikea Rock: Coldplay, Doves, My Vitriol, Crashland, Badly Shorn Beard… etc etc ad badly-dressed over-rated corporate lager-sponsored major label alt-rock three-year-development deal festival tour-support-funded-free-CD-stuck-on-the-cover nauseam…: You have to advertise your music as having money behind it, so it can get a decent expensive promotional campaign to advertise it further, and one day, if you’re very lucky, you’ll get chosen to soundtrack an Ikea advert on TV. In order to pay back all that record label promotional campaign money that they couldn’t recoup. Serves yer right.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you. As that Nike advert used to go.

Be NICE, girl
You have to pay a price, girl
They like to give advice, girl
Don’t think about it twice, girl
Art isn’t easy
A vision’s just a vision
If it’s only in your head
If no one gets to hear it
It’s as good as dead
Putting it together
That’s what counts
Takes a little cocktail conversation
But without the proper preparation
Having just the vision’s no solution
Everything depends on execution
Link by link
Making the connections…
Drink by drink
Taking every comment as it comes
Learning how to play the politician
Like you play piano, bass and drums
Otherwise you’ll find your composition
Isn’t going to get much exhibition
Keeping at a distance doesn’t pay
Still if you remember your objective
Not give all your privacy away
A little bit of hype can be effective
Long as you can keep it in perspective
Even when you get some recognition
Everything you do you still audition
Art isn’t easy
Overnight you’re a trend
You’re the right combination
Then the trend’s at an end
You’re suddenly last year’s sensation
All they ever want is repetition
All they really like is what they know
Bit by bit
Putting it together
All it takes is time and perseverance
With a little luck along the way
Putting in a personal appearance
Gathering supporters and adherents
Even if you do have the suspicion
That it’s taking all your concentration
The art of making art
Is putting it together
Bit by bit
Beat by beat
Part by part
Sheet by sheet
Chart by chart
Track by track
Reel by reel
Stack by stack
Meal by meal
Deal by deal
Spiel by spiel
and THAT
is the state of the art.