I missed the last night of Club Stay Beautiful last night, partly due to feeling utterly drained after a particularly intense and extended Fosca rehearsal (for our forthcoming big concert in Athens), and partly to an inaccountable revulsion at the thought of waiting at bus stops in the night. Which is silly. So I stayed at home, lay on my bed and watched the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000695JR/202-8603749-0328621">"Mapp & Lucia" DVD</a>.

Still, I don't doubt the club will return in some format sooner rather than later. Otherwise where will people like me go when we DO want to get out of bed?

Tonight's intended sojourn will not involve bus stops, being a birthday celebration taking place as it does at The Boogaloo pub, then at the person's own home. Both of which I can see from the window to the right of my computer here in Highgate. The Boogaloo was once The Shepherds, where Coldplay had their secret gig a year or two ago. I was rather hoping that would mean the new Groucho Club was mere yards from my front door, but the owners sold up and it's now more of a low-lighting wine bar with a phoney name. Still, the jukebox has Nick Cave albums on it.

The person whose one step closer to the grave people are cheering is Mr Taylor Parkes, the writer and failed gynaecologist. Providing he can be dragged away from scouring Popbitch for stories about himself.

Happy Easter To All My Adoring And Abhoring Readers:
<img alt="onstage, downstairs at The Garage, Good Friday 2003" src="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brentford1/misc/d.jpg"></img>

(photo by <lj user=mzdt>)

A reminder of the Fosca show this Good Friday, April 18th:

It's Downstairs at The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London N5 1RD. Tel: 020 76071818.

This is the Strange Fruit Easter Special, effectively a mini-festival featuring Ballboy, Bearsuit, Fosca, The Wandering Step, Slipside, and The Cut Outs, plus DJs.

Advance tickets £8, on sale now from Ticketmaster, Stargreen and other agents.

Doors 6pm, first band 6.15pm, Fosca onstage 8.30pm.

More details at http://www.strange-fruit.co.uk/easter.htm

Health Warning: Fosca's performance may include the wearing of bunny ears.

I read with great interest the discussion in the comments box of my previous entry.

Please note I have a blanket policy of never deleting anyone else's comments on my diary, even if they ask.

Doing so ultimately looks like one can't take the heat, so to speak. Not to mention the height of hypocrisy for someone who admits they love being talked about. It's also vital to know how other people see me. I can usually learn something useful, often about myself, from virtually every comment.

My bottom line, and indeed, the line of my bottom, is as follows.

I accept, and am grateful of, my seemingly innate talent to attract unsolicited ejaculations of all kinds. Some think I'm God's Gift, some think I am the Devil. I can't take either seriously, of course, though if pressed I will always prefer the company of the former because they're simply less draining.

Last night, I was standing at a Kentish Town Road bus stop on the way home from the excellent club "Mole In The Ground". A passing group of about eight boys on bicycles shouted "Get him – he's wearing a nice clean suit!", and threw a full carton of <i>milk</i> at me. This surreal tableau is, I presume, what constitutes a drive-by shooting in the World Of Dickon.

The carton missed me completely. My detractors have always been such rotten shots. Perhaps they should have skimmed it.

Instead, it hit the window of Lloyds Bank behind me and exploded, leaving a big semen-like mess dribbling down the sign of the Black Horse.

Symbolism in action.

To the London School of Economics to watch the groups Client, Riviera and Vic 20. Not a drum kit in site. Keep music programmed, I always say. Soft Cell's "Memorabilia" plays over the speakers, the original version. It sounds like it was created yesterday. Matt Haynes whispers to me, "the future's not what it was…" Indeed, there are many people of a certain age who stand around at this gig smugly scoffing "I remember 1981 the first time around". But I for one am extremely happy whenever even a small part of the Real World resembles Dickon's World.

In my world, in the kingdom of The Blond, the one-fingered synth line is king.

Far better this than wanting to sound like The Stooges. Which all the other new bands insist on resembling, being unlucky enough to be saddled with real drummers and no synths. Though that doesn't stop many of these new rock groups still using their guitars like disco keyboards, the Electric Six being a prominent example.

Still, if it's The Law that all new bands have to either sound like Soft Cell or The Stooges, far better that than having to sound like Radiohead. Which every new band was obliged to do in recent years. Or worse, having to sound like Oasis. Which every new band was made to do in 1995. You have no idea of the <i>relief</i>! I fought in the Romo Wars, you know. On one side was Britpop and Oasism. On the other was Orlando. And arguably, Dubstar.

Dubstar were firm favourites of Orlando, both musically and as people. Their sound was genuinely original. Dreamy widescreen synthpop songs, Cocteau Twins-ish guitars, and Sarah Blackwood's sublimely English singing style. Although they had plenty of actual Top 40 hit singles, I felt the press and public never quite appreciated them as much as they deserved. I always associate their first album, "Disgraceful" with London memories from the mid-90s. The lyrics of the title track seemed to sum up myself and Tim Orlando extremely well, being the haughty music biz hustlers we were:

<i>I know why you came
This time that we've borrowed
Imagine us now talking tomorrow
We're not very big, but we're certainly clever
To go on together… well… what makes sense now?
Disgraceful… will we ever say no?
It's wine that we feel that drives us together
This hormonal vision that won't last forever
We're old enough now & we should know better
To go on together… well… what makes sense now?
Disgraceful… will we ever say no?
This match that I'm burning, two people still looking for something else</i>

Tonight, Dubstar are no more, but guitarist Chris is in the audience watching Sarah onstage, singing with her new band Client. She looks and sounds exactly like she did in 1995. I feel the years melting away.

At the gig, I recognise The One Out Of Depeche Mode That No One Recognises, as he is something to do with the evening's proceedings. The one with glasses that isn't Martin Gore or Dave Gahan or the one who left. Norman Stanley Amelia Fletcher, I think he's called. He resembles an entirely ordinary-looking, dressed-down 40-ish man, but it dawns on me that he must surely be a millionaire. If I were a millionaire, I would at least have the courtesy of looking like one.

To compound the sensation that tonight is 1995 all over again, I stroll into this gig without paying, just like myself and Tim always did. Albeit entirely accidentally: I had mistaken a fire escape for the front door. I tell the promoter Val this, and she doesn't seem to mind too much, presumably grateful that I've alerted her to this potential loss of income.

But I continue to act the freeloading, slightly tipsy, ersatz celebrity that I was in Orlando, because a few hours into the gig I am whisked off to the club Nag Nag Nag by some Friends Who Know Someone On The Door There.

Who needs relationships, or even money, when there's celebrity attention, even on a very minor scale? I have to admit I feel entirely at home with the idea. I feel it's My Place. I look more famous than I really am. I no longer have the nerve or stamina or youthful energy to gatecrash every vaguely interesting London event like I did eight years ago, and I can't use the Next Big Thing card I had then. But on the occasions where I act or am treated like a Superstar, at least in the tragic Warhol definition (eg Holly Woodlawn), I absolutely feel it <i>makes sense</i>. Because nothing else does.

Indeed, lately strangers have approached me to say that two distinct things spring to their mind on seeing my appearance:

1) The club, Nag Nag Nag
2) The band, Interpol.

I'm ashamedly not too familiar with Interpol's music, though I shall remedy this forthwith. But I have seen their photos and approve.

As for Nag Nag Nag, I had been there before the club became so ridiculously hip and popular, but tales of the queue around the block had rather dissuaded me from attending lately. However, if people insist on saying I belong there, then I should really go more often.

The Orlando feeling returns once more. The feeling one gets when walking up to the door of an extremely fashionable club (Nag Nag Nag currently is the Studio 54 of 2003 London), swanning past the head of a queue of people that extends around the block, watching the bouncers part like a Red Sea Of Big Men as I move among them, always looking straight ahead, acting like I own the place. And then getting in for free. Though I do have a genuine reason for being able to do this: I wrote a small praiseworthy piece on the club for a supplement on Hedonistic London that appeared in a recent edition of Time Out magazine. The club people hardly need any more write-ups, but they are kind enough to let me in for free. And I am extremely grateful.

Later, I am taken aside and asked to have my photograph taken. It's for a new club called The Egg that is starting up in Kings Cross soon. They want me to be on the flyers or some such publicity.

Them: Can you look away from the camera, and look really pissed off?

Me: I can look away from the camera.

There’s an article in the Guardian on “curated compilation albums”, citing New Order’s already-released “Back To Mine”, Morrissey’s forthcoming “Under The Influence” album, and a curious new series called “The Date Tapes”, based on personal compilations made with the sole intention of getting the listener to fall into the tape-maker’s arms.

Frustratingly, full tracklistings of the latter two are not yet available, as all the songs on shop-released compilations have to be cleared individually with the various licensees, a tiresome process which can ensue right up until the release date. This is where the proper hand-made comp tape (or “mix tape” as they say in the US) has the edge. Not only is it far more personal, but you don’t have to ask the wretched band’s permission to include their song. Some groups, like The Beatles, appear to be far too mean to let their songs appear on any various artist compilations at all, so that instantly compromises many “my favourite songs” selections.

As intriguing as finding out what songs Morrissey would want to DJ to the world with, it just wouldn’t be a patch on Mr M making a comp tape for you personally. Not only could he put on whatever he wanted without having to get clearance, but he could tailor it to whatever he thinks about you and what he thinks you alone should hear. And you could have fun reading too much significance into his selections. Does that song title mean something? Is he trying to tell me something with that song’s lyric? That’s the whole point of the home-made comp tape.

The Guardian article neglects to mention EMI’s “Songbook” series, a curious project of 1999 which comprised ten beautifully-packaged albums, each representing the choices of a fellow of cultish repute. It was a rum assortment: US cartoonists Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Peter Bagge jostling with the likes of writers Clive Barker, Hunter S Thompson, and Iain Banks, plus the Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson, illustrators Ralph Steadman and Savage Pencil, and the poet Ivor Cutler.

Why those ten men were chosen in particular, I have no idea. But the appeal of such albums can only be limited by definition. First of all, you have to be interested in the person doing the selection. And then you have to care about what they like to listen to. For instance, I quite admire Mr Crumb’s comic work, but I’m not in the least bit interested in his ragtime jazz record collection. If I was, I’d read an interview to find out just who his favourite artists were, and then go out and procure the records myself. Which I’d then enjoy far more.

The trouble with curator compilations is that they are made for no one in particular. More often than not, they can become the aural equivalent of some bore at a party telling you the entire plot of their favourite film. “Have you not seen it? Well, it starts with this man…” It never occurs to such people that the reason you haven’t seen that film is because you didn’t want to. They don’t care who you are. You are just a random pair of ears.

Proper, personal, home-made comp tapes (and now, CDRs) are a different matter altogether. I’m in the process of whittling down my possessions in general, but it will be hard to part with the many comp tapes made for me over the years. It’d be like throwing out old letters. Each one represents a time in my past, a place, a friendship. In fact, I’d rather part with most of my proper CDs and records than those tapes. The way things are going, I may well do just that.

If I were to make a comp tape for anyone right now, I would put all of “The Smell Of Our Own” by the Hidden Cameras, on Side One. And then put it on Side Two as well. It’s out today, in fact. Their new album. You really shoud hear it. Whoever you are.

Actual “date tapes”, however, are not my cup of tea. It’s interesting to glance at other people’s date tape selections, and to read tales of date tape woe, but the idea of making a tape purely to get the intended listener to rub up against you at some point in the near future is really not me. I wouldn’t know where to start, for one thing. But I do have friends who have confessed to using, say, certain songs by the Cocteau Twins as a form of musical Rohypnol. “Play this song to them, and they will be yours. It never fails”. I can’t remember which songs in particular they used.

Just as well. The words “seduction” and “Dickon Edwards” are not likely to crop up in any word association game.