I've just bought the <a href="http://www.musicismyboyfriend.com">Hidden Cameras</a> single, released on Rough Trade Records this week, on a recommendation that they were "pure Dickon".

They appear to describe themselves as "a fifteen piece Toronto gay church folk band", fronted by their singer and songwriter Joel Gibb. And no, I don't think he's related to the Bee Gees in an Alexis Arquette, queer runt of the litter style.

To these ears the Hidden Cameras are a bit Aislers Set mixed with early Magnetic Fields. Echoey, non-rocking wall-of-sound indiepop. But with more church organs. And they are very gay in every sense of the word.

<img src="http://www.rbebout.com/getfree/pix/bantrio.jpg"></img>

The single is called "Ban Marriage" and takes place at the altar during the protagonist's own ceremony. He is there to marry his boyfriend, but his female best friend rails against coupling of any kind. He has to decide at the altar whether to listen to her or not:

<i>"I was forced to take a stand on one side. It was him or my fag hag, oh well, I guess she was never that good of a friend."</i>

But then the character changes his mind. He ends up raging with new vows of his own against all varieties of marriage, and specifically that:

<i>"There is splendour in the harshness of bum".</i>

Oh yes!

So naturally, my friend Ms Goodchild heard the single and thought of me.

It's a nice follow-up to Belle and Sebastian's "The State I'm In", another God-and-gayness song that was used in the film "Storytelling" to accompany a sex scene between two schoolboys.

By way of contrast to the brash queercore-pop A-side of "Ban Marriage", one of the b-sides, "We Oh We", is a stark, sensitive and beautiful torch song. It gives the singer a chance to show off his nigh-on Jeff Buckley-esque vocal talent, and it's actually quite difficult not to be moved to tears by the performance.

There's a fascinating interview with The Hidden Cameras at <a href="http://www.rbebout.com/getfree/cameras.htm">this webpage</a>.

The band are rumoured to be coming to London soon, but it might well be for a press-only showcase gig. If they ARE playing, and I fail to see them, I shall be even more annoyed than the time last week when I couldn't get into the Momus gig at Wimbledon Library. This was entirely due to my spending too much time on my make-up and arriving late.

I shall be playing "Ban Marriage" in my DJ set tonight (see my previous diary entry).

I am Dj-ing once again this Friday February 28th, although this is my first time solo at a proper night club.

The club in question is <a href="http://www.funcitynights.com/">Fun City</a>, at The Verge, 247 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 8PB. Printable flyers are available from their website <a href="http://www.funcitynights.com/">here.</a>

I am "on" midnight to 1am.

I shall try my utmost not to play every song on the TATU album. Their delicious pop songs would be enough, but the inner CD tray of this album (the UK version, anyway) has a close-up photo of their white socks. This alone meant I had to buy it, frankly. More pop groups should wear white socks.

White Socks Are Top Of The Pops. I always knew it was possible.

The many discussions on "TATU – Right Or Wrong" are rendered somewhat academic in my eyes by the simple fact they and their string-pullers are Extremely Russian. All bets are off. Rumours of terrible exploitation behind the scenes have never affected my enjoyment of girl groups before: I'm a Supremes fan. Plus anything that gets scatty accidental-shoplifter Richard Madeley in a self-righteous moralistic strop has a special place in my heart <i>de facto</i>.

Arguably the most shocking thing about TATU is the standard of the English translation on their <a href="http://www.tatu.ru/eng/news.shtml">official Russian website</a>. You'd have thought with all that international success and number one hits in every parallel universe, they could afford to hire a translator whose grasp of English wasn't a step below those of a "funny foreigner" character from a TV sitcom of a time outworn.

Then again, I'm not sure what a better translated version of this recent statement from their producer (taken from the above link) could possibly <i>be</i>:

<i>"Being a psychiatrist, I have serious suspicions that the British Channel 4 presenter Richard Madeley tends to have pedophilia… It is possible that Richard Madeley could be cured."</i>

How could you not love any band that says such things?

It's the <i>"tends</i> to have" that gets me.

Meanwhile, the UK Top Of The Pops apparently censored the girls kissing… by cutting to a <i>straight</i> couple in the <i>studio audience</i> kissing. Presumably BBC1 were trying to outdo the group with some incredulity-soliciting of their own make. You'd have thought they did more than enough of that already, being a channel that happily commissions "This Week" with Andrew Neil.

The one defining comment on TATU has to be the one Ms Lena Katina (the red-haired one) recently made, on hearing another such kiss had been cut out of their performance on the US Jay Leno show:

<i>"It is Fuck!"</i>

Foreign countries are foreign countries. They do things differently there. To each other, mainly.

I would just like to assure the friends and immediately family of Mr Luke Haines that my previous entry was in no way intended to be an unkind slight on Mr Haines' physical attractions. I just don't think I look like him, that's all. I realise all too well that I am hardly an oil painting myself. Well, I suppose I could be one of those more grotesque Francis Bacons. But not a Young Man By Bronzino, anyway (click here to see my favourite painting at the National Gallery.).

Although I've never quite adored The Auteurs, I do admire Mr Haines' other band Black Box Recorder, and today I bought their latest single, "These Are The Things". Last time around the band happily confessed wanting to make records as good as those of Ms Billie Piper, a statement which would make the Radioheads and Coldplays of this world explode in rockist umbrage. Now they appear to have gone in, and I wince to say it, an bleepy Ladytron / electroclash "direction". The song is instantly memorable, and I can't think what it reminds me of, which is probably a good thing. But I do rather like it. It'll be interesting to see if it makes The Proper Charts like "The Facts Of Life" did a few years ago.

At Stay Beautiful last night, a stranger buttonholes me.

"I just wanted to say you look like…"

(Place your bets now, dear reader!)

"…Luke Haines."

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/lukehaines.jpg"></img>

Much as I admire Mr Haines' numerous musical incarnations, I am aghast at this physical comparison, and am compelled to leave the club at once in a state of pronounced mortification.

I have just posted my one and only Valentines card.

It's to myself, naturally.

In it, I have written:
<i>
Dear Mr Edwards
You are a sad and pathetic man.
But you're basically a Good Person.

Love,
Dickon.
xxx</i>

Ms Minnelli advises:

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come, hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chum.
Come to the cabaret.
Put down the knitting, the book and the broom…"

She is mistaken.

Brooms aside, it is in fact entirely possible to have a cabaret with both knitting and books.

I was at one last Sunday.

<a href="http://www.barket.info/">"Barket"</a> is a knitting and sewing-heavy craft fair, with readings, DJs (of which I was one), and alcohol. It was effectively a market in a bar, hence the name.

You'd have thought that these criteria would make the event unusual enough, but on top of that the bar in question was Public Life, a converted underground public convenience in Spitalfields. Despite this, it was far less of a toilet than most of the other new bars in this most achingly fashionable district of London (bars which, the more unkind and uncouth might add, are already full of shit and frequented by wankers as it is).

The area will be familiar to students of Jack The Ripper, as the bar is located halfway between the site of the Mary Kelly murder (the one in the bedsit) and the Ten Bells pub, where you can buy <a href="http://homepages.tesco.net/~Richard.Tarrant/jtr/ten.htm">Jack The Ripper keyrings</a>.

I neglected to ask if the Barket venue's former incarnation had been for Ladies or for Gentlemen, but would love to think it was the latter. In an area steeped in ghosts of Ladies Of The Night suffering violent deaths at the hands of an anonymous and far from Gentle Man, it seemed fitting that those very female-associated activities, sewing and knitting, should reclaim some prime anonymous male territory. Stitch that, Mr Ripper.

Some of my readers would rather I comment on the impending Men's War, than by rattling on about Some Women's Knitting Event. I'd have thought nothing could be more anti-male violence and pro-peace than knitting and sewing en masse in the heart of an area made famous by that iconic architect of modern male brutality.

What on earth do you think the women at Greenham Common were doing to pass the time? Talking about cars and football and what a great film Goodfellas is?

I realise that war isn't entirely a male preserve, and Mrs Thatcher and now Ms Rice of the White House spring immediately to mind as examples of exceptions to the rule, but I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that the perpetuation of war and terrorism, and of the mass killing of innocents in general, is predominantly the fault of those in possession of Y chromosomes. Stop the presses, I don't think.

I'm also aware that it's possible, if unlikely, that Jack The Ripper was a woman too. Though perhaps not in the manner suggested by one of my favourite 70s Hammer Horror films, "Doctor Jekyll And Sister Hyde". In which Mr Ralph Bates of TV's "Dear John" fame changes into a woman and commits the infamous Whitechapel attacks in order to extricate female hormones, with which to sustain his transformation. This silly film concludes with an inevitable mob-chasing-the-monster scene, and Mr Bates falls to his death because Sister Hyde decides to make her appearance while he is clinging precariously to a high window ledge. "Don't – you'll kill us both!" he screams as the change takes hold, but it is too late. He ends up a hermaphroditic corpse on the street below. The implied moral of the film is that women can be murderous too, but the poor dears are rubbish at holding onto window ledges. Suffice it to say, I don't think it's one of Ms Germaine Greer's favourite ever films.

Still, it's no less a plausible theory than the one promoted by Ms Patricia Cornwell in her recent book. Ms Cornwell was so convinced that The Ripper was the painter Walter Sickert, she even spent millions buying whole Sickert masterpieces, purely in order to tear them up for forensic examination. Despite still not uncovering one scrap of conclusive evidence that the painter and the Ripper were one and the same, she remains "100% convinced" that he was. She, like Mr Michael Jackson, demonstrate that once you become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, you can always move onto buying infinite shares in Denial.

But I digress. My point is that the Barket event was anti-war <i>de facto</i>. But if this STILL wasn't clear enough, there was also an enormous Stop The War banner on the wall behind me while I was DJ-ing. And I turned the music down so people could hold civilised conversations. I'm a DJ who doesn't like loud music.

So, I've just DJ-d quietly at a knitting event full of women, in a front of a big Stop The War sign. How much more peace-loving do you want me to be? Yet I'm still being chastised for declining to attend the approaching Stop The War demo.

Believe it or not, I am against Bad Things. I think Bad Things are… what's the word? Bad. I'll happily sign petitions, but I refuse to go on ANY marches or demonstrations. That's personal policy. There is danger in numbers. I have a fear of crowds as it is, but I especially resent following other people quite so wantonly. Being at the sheep-like mercy of others, whether they are leaders of a march, or the police out for a spot of protestor-bashing that day, I am still at their mercy. And that's what I mainly resent. My whole philosophy is based around NOT following the herd, however well-meaning.

There's also the fact that the Stop The War stance has rather become the <i>cause celebre de nos jours</i>. War is sexy, whether pro or anti. When Mr Blair was heckled about Iraq by a student on TV recently, the student did so at a conference on education. Mr Blair retorted, rightfully, that the heckle was out of context and that, believe it or not, there are other, less sexy issues to discuss aside from war with Iraq. Like education.

But the student is forgiven. Students and anti-war demos have a long history together, after all. It's the additional celebrity endorsements that have proved especially irksome, making Stop The War the new Red Ribbon. The Mirror newspaper is running a campaign where they get celebrities to sign their cut-out-and-throw-away Stop The War forms, which are admittedly a work of triple-marketing genius. They manage to promote the anti-war cause AND the celebrities-uber-alles cause (they've got to sell newspapers after all), AND the Mirror brand itself all at the same time. One recent front cover reported that they'd managed to get, separately, the signatures of both Zoe Ball AND her estranged husband Fatboy Slim, as if they'd somehow reunited for the cause. Maybe if they'd actually physically gotten together and posed for a photo, that would at least have been a little bit more impressive. But no. Zoe and Norman want to stop the war, but not THAT much.

I hesitate to have myself thrown in with the reactionary naysayers too. Mr Tony Parsons wrote in his Mirror column about how he was put off the cause by all the self-righteous celebrity token endorsement solicited by his colleagues at the newspaper. By doing this, of course, he emerged as equally self-righteous. So please be aware that I don't think marches are pointless or that people shouldn't go on them, but they just aren't the thing for fragile fops like myself.

As far as I'm concerned, warmongers, peaceniks, celebrities, politicians, and tabloid columnists all bore me equally, whether pro or anti-war. My reaction to terrorism is to not display any signs of terror. And protest marches terrify me, I'm afraid. I'll hold the coats.

I would only go on a march if I were in charge. In which case, I would impose a dress code, banning trainers, unkempt beards, white-man dreadlocks and whistles. And I'd also ban shouting, acoustic guitars, or noise of any kind. Everyone would have to whisper. It would be a REAL peace march. In fact, it would be a "Waugh – Not War" march. Everyone would have to come dressed as a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel. THEN I'd go marching. Well, sauntering. A protest saunter.

My DJ set went well. It was my first proper solo DJ experience. I had over two hours with which to foist my listening tastes on the unsuspecting Barket traders and shoppers, and managed to not get any complaints this time. In fact, one woman took my details with a view to a possible future booking.

Her: How would you describe what you play?
Me: Um… eclectic camp pop?
Her: Oh yes, I suppose it is. What's your DJ name?
Me: I don't have one. People have said I should get a comedy DJ pseudonym, like Jon Pleased Wimmin. Perhaps I should be Dickon Displeased Wimmin. No, I'm just DJ Dickon Edwards…
Her: (laughing) "Dickon"?
Me: (sighs) Yes, I know. My given name is comedy enough.

When I handed over the DJ booth to Hannah, a DJ who wore white bunny ears, I couldn't resist ending on "The Killing Moon" by Echo And The Bunnymen.

Me: As in the theme song to Donnie Darko.
Her: Oh, I haven't seen that.
Me: Um… well, it's got a bunny theme to it.
Her: (not impressed) Right.
Woman coming up to DJ booth: Oh I get it, Donnie Darko. Bunny ears. Very good.
Me (pathetic smug expression).

My set was loosely based on a theme of "love songs for those in a marriage to themselves", as the whole event had a Valentines theme. <lj-cut text="click here for a track listing">

Here's some of what I played, not in any order:

Sparks – I Married Myself (thanks to <lj user=suicideally>)
Tatu – How Soon Is Now (which I actually prefer to the original – and I'm a Smiths fan)
Shirley Bassey – Spinning Wheel
Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Abba – When All Is Said And Done, S.O.S
The Smiths – Ask
Mama Cass – Make Your Own Kind Of Music
Bobby Gentry – I'll Never Fall In Love Again
Take That – Could It Be Magic
The Kids From Fame – High Fidelity
Milky – Just The Way You Are
The Shangri-Las – Past, Present, Future; Give Him A Great Big Kiss
Belle and Sebastian – I Don't Love Anyone
The Crystals – He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)
The Sundays – Here's Where The Story Ends
The Supremes – Stoned Love, Nothing But Heartaches, The Composer, Come See About Me
Diana Ross – I'm Still Waiting
Altered Images – Don't Talk To Me About Love
Air – Remember
Betty Boo – Hangover
Pet Shop Boys – You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk
The Carpenters – Goodbye To Love, Solitaire, I Need To Be In Love
Daft Punk – Digital Love
Olvia Newton-John & ELO – Xanadu
Kylie – Better The Devil You Know
Prince – Raspberry Beret
Liza Minnelli – Cabaret
The Delgados – Coming In From The Cold
Carol Williams – Love Is You
Lesley Gore – Sometimes I Wish I Were A Boy
The Avalances – Since I Left You
April March – Chick Habit (theme to "But I'm A Cheerleader")
Freda Payne – Band Of Gold
</lj-cut>

I bought a hand-made Valentines Day card at the market, to post to myself on the 13th. It says "I Love You" on the front.

I'm next DJ-ing at <a href="http://www.funcitynights.com">Fun City</a>, at the Verge, on Friday February 28th. I am also doing a set at <a href="http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk/">How Does It Feel</a> in March. More details for each event nearer the time.

Going back to "Cabaret", it'd be nice to be like Michael York in the film, the Englishman who gets to sleep with both Liza Minnelli and Helmut Griem, then trashes a Nazi leafletter's stall in the street. "That, sir, is what I think of your party!". Only the film then cuts to him lying in hospital. And I have enough natural facial imperfections to cover with make-up, without adding those inflicted by others. If I can at all help it. I'm not saying the Stop The War demo is at all likely to be marred by violence, but the possibility of it at any march is another factor to keep me at bay, as well as the aesthetic reasons and my general phobia of crowd situations.

Call me a vain coward if you will, because I suppose in this context, that is exactly what I am.

And besides, I'm more of a cross between Mr York and the Joel Gray character. With maybe some of Ms Minnelli thrown in. Not the coke habit.

In the afternoon of this coming Sunday, February the 9th, at the invitation of Miss Sonja Todd of <a href="http://www.sewkits.co.uk/">Sewkits</a>, I shall be playing the role of Disc Jockey at an intriguing event called <a href="http://www.barket.info">Barket</a>.

Barket is a monthly craft fair with an alternative bent ("for crafty boys and girls"), held at the Public Life bar, Spitalfields. The bar's entrance is right in front of Christ Church, that Hawksmoor monstrosity that, having read Mr Moore's "From Hell", I shall never look at in the same way again.

There will be alcohol, stalls, wool, dancing, sewing kits, knitting, hand-made things to buy, and so forth, so I shall literally be playing Music To Cast Off By. There will also be storytelling when the music stops, in the form of readings from a new anthology of short stories by women on love, Strictly Casual (published by Serpent's Tail).

I'm really rather looking forward to it.

I myself have crafty blood. My father is an artist, illustrator and art teacher, while my mother is a professional patchwork quiltmaker and member of the Suffolk Crafts Society. She also teaches techniques of quiltmaking, has published books on the "cathedral window" style, and one of her more general "how to" titles, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715313088/qid=1044533315/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/202-3000683-4418237">"The Sampler Quilt Book"</a> (also known in the US as "Making A Sampler Quilt"), is considered the definitive book on the subject, and has sold tens of thousands of copies. And she's appeared in craft videos, being interviewed by Una Stubbs. So now it can be told.

This month's Barket has a Valentines theme, and my set is entitled "Songs For Those In A Lifelong Marriage To Themselves". Needless to say, you can expect at least one Carpenters number. I'll be on at about 4pm.

I'm also told that the event is Critic's Choice in Time Out Magazine's Around Town section. Below the Star Trek exhibition.

To Battersea Arts Centre to see a performance of "Talking Cock", a one-man show (or rather, show-and-tell) in which the comedian <a href="http://www.richardherring.com">Richard Herring</a> talks for ninety minutes on the subject of, as he puts it, The Honourable Member For Fuckinghamshire, illustrated with slides and a really nice typeface. Using the results of an <a href="http://www.talkingcock.co.uk">online questionnaire</a>, much research at the British Library, and a trip to the world's only penis museum in Iceland, Mr Herring takes the Michael Moore approach to this universal subject.

Avoiding the predictable cheap jokes (some of the questionnaire responses include upsetting confessions of entire lives destroyed over anatomical insecurity), he instead uses humour to educate and inform, provoke thought, and to posit a few serious, constructive and liberating theories and conclusions of his own (what Quentin Crisp would call 'Messages Of Hope'). All of which he does terrifically well.

Before now, the only male response in the <i>seven years</i> since "The Vagina Monologues" was premiered has been "Puppetry Of The Penis", a depressingly popular show in which two Australian men stretched their genitalia balloon-animal-style into deeply unfunny shapes. And that was it. The implication being that cheap humour is the only possible response to anything concerning the male member. Thank heavens for Mr Herring.

It's astounding that such an obvious concept for a show hadn't been attempted before. Even more so that it fell to a short-legged smiling Englishman to do it. As Mr Herring says, "I saw a gap in the market… and like any man, felt driven to fill it."

At one point in the show, he presents the question for women,

<i>"How do you feel when a man cannot get an erection with you?"</i>

One response is, and I quote:

<i>"ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"</i>

…which he displays on two large screens behind him.

It gets a big laugh from the audience, but Mr Herring goes onto present the more compassionate responses from women, and also is at pains to point out that, in his survey, they outnumber the less kind ones.

And yet he never once stoops to worthiness or political correctness. He'll still include the sort of jokes you'd get from any stand-up observational comedian, for example, "If size doesn't matter, how come you never see any tiny, pencil-thin dildos?". But then he'll follow that up with real life testimonies from men worried over being too small, or too big (one man worries about his 7 inches being inadequate), tales of women in relationships with men who physically ARE too small or too big, and then shows all the figures on what actually IS the "average" size.

Also touched upon is the subject of male circumcision, a topic where Mr Herring confesses he has to sit on the fence, as it's still one of the most contentious issues around. Female circumcision, as carried out in some cultures, is rightfully regarded as a horrific and cruel mutilation. Why isn't the same thought of the male version, decades after the "more healthy" arguments have been rubbished? Why do many American women still find uncircumcised penises revolting?

<img src="http://www.allied-europe.it/images/taste/david.jpg" ALT="Americans: is this revolting to you?"></img>

Mr Herring gets through so many facts, statistics, questionnaire results and third-party accounts that one feels as if one's been on a degree course on the subject. But cheaper and shorter. And with jokes.

If anything, the show is downright Utopian. It's no mean feat. And the pre-show music includes Momus.

I urge everyone to <a href="http://www.talkingcock.co.uk/gigs/">see "Talking Cock" at once</a>, or failing that, buy the book he's writing of the same name. With it, Mr Herring deserves to have the same success as Michael Moore and Eve Ensler. I sincerely hope he gets it. More power to his "Cock".