To darkest East London for Andy Roberts’s funeral on a day of sunshine, lightning and eventually Biblical rain. Someone I used to see around is no longer around. Underlying sense of horror in the air, which I’m not prepared for. I’ve been to funerals before, but those were for my grandparents, both elderly. Death is not the great leveller if someone has died far too young, in a road accident. There is normal grief, and there is shock-grief.

It’s hard to say things like ‘superb turn-out’, and ‘fantastic service’ without sounding like you’re actually envying the deceased, or judging a life by counting heads at a funeral, but those two things are certainly true, and it’s proof that Mr R was certainly famous for more than 15 people. Touching, beautiful and poetic tributes, and an Order of Service that comes with a pull-out comics supplement – comics by Mr R, of course. A terrific touch.

I repair to a pub in Limehouse for the wake, drink too much and say too much. At once point I start a sentence with the Freudian slip ‘My boyfriend’s girlfriend…’. (meaning to say ‘my brother’s girlfriend’) Possibly a title for a song. Music played at the wake includes the Hidden Cameras excellent b-side ‘Heavy Flow Of Evil’.

Walking my way up from East Ham tube, I turn a corner too sharply and collide with a large Asian gentleman whose swagger involves swinging his arms. The result is his hand connects directly with my crotch as I pass. He apologises at once, and of course so do I. As I think John Cleese put it, England is where you say sorry to the person treading on your foot.

At the funeral, I relate this incident to Tim Chipping. He imagines the man being far more horrified than I, rushing home to scrub his fingers at once. To some minds I must resemble the sort of person who would rather enjoy such a collision, or even arrange it deliberately. All I can say is it’s the closest thing I’ve had to a sex life for some time.

A Poem for Glastonbury by Dickon Edwards

Pictures of teenagers wallowing in E.coli
Make me feel so terribly lone-li

An email from yet another Swedish Fosca fan:

I was wondering if Fosca was planning to do any Stockholm dates in the near future?
I know that you went to Gothenburg and Malmo, but that’s a bit far away from here.

Well, we’d love to play Stockholm right now, but like any gig outside of London, until we get an international booking agent and decent support from a record label, we have to be asked by a promoter over there.

It’s not like this sort of request is like some lone fan writing:
‘When are you going to play my home town of Tinyville, Ohio? You’ve cruelly overlooked it so far’
(Answer: Because you would be the only person in the audience!)

But with Sweden, Fosca do have this intense little following, and the emails from that part of the world do keep coming. I can’t help thinking that, with a decent professional Swedish-compatible agent and record company behind us, we could even be having proper hits over there. That we’ve played Sweden five times entirely due to fans becoming promoters of their own volition, investing much of their own time and money, purely in order to see us play must surely count for something.

I did hear of a travelling music festival that Plan B magazine was affiliated with, calling at Stockholm and Gothenburg. Perfect for Fosca, so I emailed the people at once. Turns out the chap in charge is a kind Englishman I’ve met years ago, Mr Gooch. But too late – the bill’s full.

All I can suggest to Swedish fans out there is to put the name of Fosca forward to local promoters and festival organisers. Approach them to approach us, and we’ll do it.

At least now Fosca have a manager. And we’re looking into getting merchandise made. Badges, bookmarks and pens. Not t-shirts, though, obviously.

Onwards and upwards.

Some people enjoyed the My Favorite song I shared with the world the other day, so here’s another offering from a Current Music Artiste I like.

This time, a brand new video offering from Toronto’s Gentleman Reg, aka the ultra-blond singer-songwriter Mr Reg Vermue. Mr Vermue is part of that entrancing Toronto scene that includes Arcade Fire, Hidden Cameras, and Final Fantasy. In Canada, he’s appeared on the radio and on the cover of magazines, and has provided several songs for the soundtrack of the US TV series Queer As Folk.

I liked his last album Make Me Pretty so much that last year I got out of bed and did something about it. I helped to organise his first UK live dates, even getting to play 2nd guitar for him onstage.

This video is for The Boyfriend Song, from his latest album Darby & Joan. It appears to be entirely filmed in someone’s flat via ‘night vision’, rendering it rather like a scene from Big Brother. All kinds of naughty goings-on in the background, but poor Mr Vermue can only look on with his acoustic guitar and sensible jumper. A familiar predicament indeed.

http://www.mymeanmagpie.com/boyfriendsong.html

Wednesday 22nd June – A historic date for some. The head of the UK Civil Service announces the wearing of ties as no longer mandatory for male employees. As long as they’re still smart, office boys and men alike can now wear their shirts open-necked as they oil the cogs of government. Must be a relief for those suffering under the current heatwave in offices built before the invention of air conditioning.

It may just be the Civil Service, but I suspect the trickle-down effect for the world of work will be ineluctable. When a similar guideline was made with bowler hats in the past, the trademark headwear of the English businessman soon disappeared from the streets and onto the naughty head of Ms Minnelli in Cabaret.

I personally welcome this news. Soon, when a man is seen in public wearing a tie, he will no longer be accused of having come straight from work. Tie-wearers will at last be deliberate tie-wearers. All ties will be nice ties, not ugly arrows of drudgery.

This apparently follows an industrial tribunal where a man claimed the forcing of ties upon male workers but not their female colleagues was tantamount to sexual discrimination. He won. The times are indeed a-slightly-changing.

==========

In the afternoon with Ms Silke to see the excellent Batman Begins at the North Finchley Lido VUE. Tickets are 2 for the price of 1 – a welcome discount due to my ownership of a Orange phone. Orange are one of those curious companies who pay to admit their product can be thoroughly annoying, at least when used without consideration for others. Their adverts are getting a bit annoying in themselves, though. Don’t let a mobile phone spoil your ad break, I say.

There’s currently a campaign to promote UK cinema going, as opposed to DVD renting at home. I certainly agree that watching Lord Of The Rings on a small screen really isn’t the same experience as seeing it at a proper Odeon, but I have some suggestions to make to cinema chains if they want to increase ticket sales.

Firstly, please make the outing more affordable. The Orange Wednesdays thing helps, but what about the food and drink? A Coke and a packet of popcorn for more than the price of the cinema ticket? To me that’s a profit margin worthy of investigation by a trading watchdog, but it’s been like that for years.

Secondly, O Cinema Manager, if you want to save on your overheads, how about replacing the sound system with a cheaper, older one that doesn’t physically assault me? Sometimes the rush to upgrade can go too far. After all, digital watches didn’t quite replace the analogue variety. New doesn’t always mean better.

My father has to take earplugs to the cinema, and I may follow suit if this goes on. Do people really appreciate surround Dolby sound at immense volume? The other day in a cinema I had my ears blasted apart and my seat submitted to intense shaking every other moment. And that was just Ladies In Lavender.

Still, I’m grateful for the air conditioning.

Jen Denitto reminds me of an amusing Andy Roberts-connected memory that we share, this time from the late 90s.

After spending a pleasant afternoon at a Spitalfields small press comics event Ms D, Mr R, Mr Darren Hayman (of the band Hefner) and I repaired to a local hostelry. It was a Sunday evening, and we had found ourselves wandering around in that weekend no-man’s-land part of London where the City merges with the East End. The only bar we could find open on these deserted streets was a rather bare and uncarpeted little room, brightly lit with bare wooden walls, taped music playing in the background but not too loud. There may well have been sawdust on the floor. A dozen or so drinkers were scattered around barstools and tables. It seemed homely enough, and we really had failed to find anywhere else, so we picked a table, got in a few drinks, and sat down to continue our conversations.

One of us remarked how odd it was there were no other female customers. Or even other groups or couples. Just ordinary-looking lone men, mainly in their forties or older, having a quiet drink. We were also aware that some members of this sullen clientele were openly staring at our little party. I’m quite used to that, of course, and dismissed the attention accordingly. It must be just me they’re staring at, I presumed.

After a short while, we were comforted to see a woman enter the room. Thirty-something, a bit washed-out-looking, fairly ordinary. Someone’s wife, I thought. She went to the bar, got a drink and chatted to the bar staff.

Then she stepped onto a little dais in one corner of the room and proceeded to take off her clothes in time with the music.

Our little group’s chat about sensitive indie guitar bands, Riot Grrrl scenes and compatible comic strips had been rather compromised by a strip of a entirely different kind. Martyrs to our embarrassed smirks, we drank up rather quickly and left.

At least now we knew why the pub solely contained staring lone men being a little bit too quiet.

A gentleman I’ve known, liked, admired and approved of was killed by a motorcycle this week.

I knew him as Mr Andy Roberts of Oxford and London, of the band Linus, and of many artistic scenes spanning music and print, genres and countries, appreciation and creation. A beautiful, kind and talented man is now senselessly, needlessly, pointlessly dead. Many people I know are upset, and I’m rather upset too. In the sphere of public media, I think it’s better to breed support than breed grief, and I want to do whatever I can to help those closer to him. Not least writing this diary, which is the one thing many say I am good at or good for.

Me: ‘I’m terrified of saying anything Inappropriate.’
The Reader: ‘Why break the habit of a lifetime?’

Cliches are so very hard to avoid when writing about somebody who has just died. Andy Roberts was an anti-cliché. And then of course, I find myself writing ‘in so many ways.’

There goes any attempt to be entirely sombre. Someone told me the other day that my public diary was ‘so delightfully funny’, which was all very flattering. But then she quoted an entry I had thought entirely sober and sedate, bordering on despair. I pictured her reading my future suicide note in fits of helpless laughter.

Regular readers will know that when I walk innocently around London, it’s quite usual for strangers to openly point and laugh at me. More now than ever before. On an Old Street tube platform last Friday night, three tall black gentlemen in Hawaiin shirts and shorts stopped their conversation as I passed, paused, then broke into fits of mirth. One of them shook his head and said, ‘Only in London. Only in London.’

What’s important to me is that the speaker was smiling as he said this, and it was a smile without cruelty or malice. Although it is never my intention to be a walking, waking source of public hilarity, I am pleased that I can spread a little accidental happiness as I go by. The same applies to my diary. If I were told today that I was actually the tragicomic figment of a bored German science-fiction fan’s unbalanced imagination, my life would finally make sense.

It’s probably better for me to stay accidentally rather than deliberately funny, too. There’s been many occasions where I’ve made what I thought was a highly amusing joke, only for people to not laugh, or worse, take it the wrong way, even finding the joke offensive. We do, after all, live in a culture of supreme carefulness, huddled around words like crystal. Words like ‘inappropriate’ and ‘offensive’ now bandied about with the kind of frequency the word ‘rations’ must have had in the 1940s. ‘Inappropriate’ is off the ration book.

My own sick and twisted taste in humour means that my primary reaction to all the Live 8 philanthropy was to consider having a wristband made with the slogan ‘Make Coldplay History.’ Once again, I apologise to Coldplay and their mothers. Though I do wonder if the mothers of the non-Chris Martin members could recognise their sons, were they not standing next to the singer at the time. (And again, I apologise.)

Mr Roberts had a distinctive and beautiful face, and only ever liked music that was interesting. He could never have been in Coldplay. No greater tribute. (That’s the last time, I promise. Sorry.)

So, stifling another cliche, if the sad clown hat fits – and for me, who I am kidding – wear it. I’d much rather be the ringmaster, a stately trapeze artist, a sexy acrobat, or at the very least Third Zebra, but so be it. I know I am disfigured with a certain innate clumsiness of both body and mind. I can only hope that this clumsiness more often pleases than upsets.

I say something solemn, turn to leave, then fall over. That’s fine. I just want people to smile when I fall over.

***************

And when it comes to my abiding memories, Mr Roberts really did have a great smile. A gentle, kind, wry, welcoming, intelligent smile. I could never imagine him with a smirk or a sneer or a malign rictus. In fact, the latter sounds far more like the name of a band he would have raved about, than an expression his countenance would entertain. I can imagine him buying the first Malign Rictus EP when it came out in 1992. On, oh I don’t know, Dworkin Records 10″ dogtooth vinyl or something like that.

I couldn’t possibly presume to have been anything more than an occasional and peripheral part of his life, but I have to confess feeling a certain admiration – or do I really mean envy? – for what I did know of him. Like me, he dipped his feet into many pools of experience: band culture, book culture, feminism scenes, radical theory scenes, DIY music scenes, fanzine scenes, comic scenes, and the UK small press comic scene that my father Bib is a fan of. Mr R managed to befriend my father and myself separately, before rapturously realizing the connection. This happened on an occasion when Edwards Senior and Junior were both in attendance at some DIY small press do. ‘Guess who Dickon’s Dad is!’ he told others excitedly. Or to some it might have been ‘Guess who Bib’s son is!”

Added to that were his equally inspiring commitments to adult education, proper jobs, and proper relationships. But unlike the dabbling dilettante, fence-sitting likes of myself, Mr R ensured he got his feet wet. When it came to the things and people he found involving, he got involved. And, incredible to me, he managed to have the energy and know-how to keep all such sides of his life in balance, alternative and mainstream; sensible adult worker, inquiring student gabbling to me at gigs about philosophy, and playful cat-like fanboy. For me, he was The Talented Mr Roberts: not just a talented guitarist and artist, but talented in knowing how to get and keep friends, how to be kind without keeping score, and how to live. I certainly envied him that.

I also admired his sincere and lasting dedication to feminist band culture and alternative queer culture, particularly for a straight male. According to one such lady’s lady, Mr Roberts seemed to know more lesbians than the average actual lesbian. He would often use words like ‘cool’ and refer to some spoken word performance artist by saying ‘she rocks’. Whereas these are phrases I would have to employ a stunt double to use myself, Mr R. could pull them off without sounding a snob, an American wannabe, or an ingratiating twit. I felt that the music and fanzine scenes he frequented could sometimes breed a degree of snobbery and wariness of outsiders. For me, Mr Roberts would often be the one person in a room of intimidating ‘scenesters’ that I felt I could approach and chat to safely, without feeling I’d get told off for NOT using the word ‘cool’. He was never, dare I say it, ‘up himself’. And that’s coming from me.

One last abiding memory. I was never the recipient of one of his famous compilation tapes, but I did once pop into Camden Waterstones, where he worked, to buy the latest Alan Bennett spoken word CD. Mr Roberts insisted on giving me a sly staff discount, even though I hadn’t come to any of his gigs for ages, or even seen him much full stop. I was taken aback by this, and I remain grateful. The CD was ‘Alan and Thora’, a compilation of Thora Hird’s Bennett monologues about dying. Paradigms of English tragicomedy. Which is where we came in.

Andy Roberts – the missing link between my father, Bikini Kill, and Thora Hird.

Splendid boy, all of him. I’ll never forget him.

Having acquired broadband, I’ve started to enjoy mp3 blogs. Everyone’s a DJ nowadays. With mp3 blogs, one gets to asks oneself, ‘if I could play the world one track right now, what would it be?’ Or at least, that’s what they should be asking themselves.

Treasures I’ve enjoyed lately include a live recording of The Arcade Fire performing the Talking Heads song Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place). With guest vocals from none other than its author, David Byrne. Then there’s Final Fantasy’s dreamy cover of the Joanna Newsom song Peach Plum Pear.

I’m tempted to join in a little myself. So today my finger points to the NYC group My Favorite. I first encountered them on the bill at the 2001 Benno festival, which also marked Fosca’s Swedish debut. The event was held in a forest clearing, next to a vast and silent moonlit lake. Instead of dressing rooms, we had our own chalets. The wine flowed, the crowds danced and sang along. Like Fosca, My Favorite seemed to be a band that Swedish music fans had particularly taken to their hearts entirely of their own accord.

My Favorite have a winning line in well-crafted, heartfelt and catchy indiepop. One song they played at Benno was so memorable to me that I could still remember it four years later. Michael from the band emailed me last week to say they’re playing the UK, so I finally asked him to identify that song he’d invaded my mind with so successfully.

It’s called Homeless Club Kids (link expires in 7 days), and is the song I’ve chosen to broadcast to you, Dear Reader. Please enjoy.

As should be the case with all mp3 downloading, if you enjoy the music, do buy the proper CDs. This track is taken from the double CD compilation The Happiest Days Of Our Lives (on Double Agent Records), which includes remixes by the likes of Future Bible Heroes, ie The Magnetic Fields in synthpop mode.

There’s more audio and video at the band’s website. I particularly like the small dog in the rather adorable video for the song ‘The Happiest Days Of My Life’.

My Favorite play a rare concert in London this Friday 17th June, at Club Hemisphere @ Underbelly, 11 Hoxton Square, N1. Support from Plans and Apologies and Strange Idols.

I’ll be there.

Shocked to hear about Andy Roberts’s accident via Jenni Scott.

Fosca are looking for a stand-up violin or viola player to join the band. Pass it on.

I’m tempted to ask Dickon of the Tindersticks. Partly because they appear to be resting at the moment, but mainly because I like the idea of speaking to someone else called Dickon.

Rather impressively, Plan B magazine is now on sale at my local newsagent of choice – Northwood News in Northwood Road N6. Filed next to The Wire, but I’ve never been attracted to that more long-running publication. It takes lesser-known music very seriously indeed, which is fine, but without any sense of joy or playfulness, which for me is less fine. The writers of The Wire like to celebrate music, but without evincing any signs of actually enjoying it. So much for Delighting The Heart.

As for Word magazine, well, it follows up an issue with a Bruce Springsteen cover with one, er, featuring ‘On Tour With Bruce Springsteen’. Any colour as long as it’s Bruce. I suppose someone important must have told them they had to pretend to be Mojo, or die. Such a shame.

‘And what do you bring to the party?’
‘A sense of trying to be someone else.’