No chance in Cambridge to write diary entries, so today the world gets two.
Sunday, 10pm. Back in Highgate. Phone back an odd voicemail message from an elderly couple, and it transpires they have a wrong number. Could I please go and let my Uncle Jack into his flat as he’s locked himself out? I have to shout down the phone to convince them I’m not the nephew in question.
“No, you’ve got the wrong number, really… I have no Uncle Jack. Well, actually I think there is a Great Uncle Jack in the family somewhere, but he’s either remote or mad or dead or fictional… No, my name is DICKON! DICKON! Do you have a Dickon in your family?”
“Oooh, no. No Dickon, no…”
“Well, there you go.”
I probably shouldn’t have shouted. But they did seem rather confused at the other end. I thought it only proper to alert them to their error so they could re-dial more carefully and chase the nephew in question. Hope Uncle Jack didn’t spend a night on the street.
Travelling on trains on a Sunday isn’t currently the Great British Escape it should be. Sunday is The Day Of Engineering Works, for trains which are already less frequent than normal. One often has to allow an extra hour or more.
I sit opposite a woman with artificially coloured hair who spends the hour-plus journey to Liverpool Street in silence, while I read and a young man to my right enjoys his iPod. I would love to say I wonder what he is listening to, but he’s already made it clear. The volume is high enough for the music to leak out and reach me. I can hear the drum patterns, and the guitars, and what the vocals sound like, if not what they are saying.
It is Heavy Metal, or perhaps Death Metal. And whether from an iPod earphone or not, it all sounds exactly the same to me. After a while, though, what initially threatens to be an hour-long irritation becomes curiously bearable. That the music all sounds the same to my ears means it’s like any other repetitive background noise, like traffic or the ticking of a clock, or the white noise of a fan heater or air conditioner. Its repetition actually becomes soothing, and even helps me concentrate on my reading.
As the train pulls into Liverpool St, the silent woman with the coloured hair suddenly speaks to me.
“I enjoyed your guitar playing.”
The event she means is my slot at the Decadent Cabaret at Cambridge Word Fest on Saturday night, the whole reason for this journey back. I’m thrown by both the unforeseen nature of her utterance and the meaning behind it.
She smiles and gets off the train.
Her words are the only thing said to me by another human being in the last hour and a half, though I’m surrounded by people on a packed train. And I start to go gently insane inside my head.
It’s always a combination of things that start my mad thought-streams off. Thoughts flailing through the haze of post-gig fatique, compounded with walking alone through miles of bicycle-saturated streets in Cambridge with a heavy guitar and overnight bag. Add to which the draining nature of negotiating Sunday Engineering Works on the railways and knowing the Northern Line on the Tube will be similarly affected. Top off with the effects of sleeping and rising in a hotel Family Bed by oneself, and of lately feeling more lost and alone in my life than ever before.
The thoughts gibber and panic, brooding on her words.
Just my GUITAR PLAYING? As in not my singing or the self-penned song I performed? (Rude Esperanto, off the Fosca album Diary Of An Antibody). Does she mean she dislikes my singing and songwriting, that I should do less of that and more guitar playing? How does that equate with the fact I’ve been sacked by three bands in the past for not being a good enough guitarist, and that even many of my guitar parts on Orlando and Fosca recordings are by someone more proficient on the instrument, with my full blessing? Or was she being sarcastic? That I was truly dreadful all round and I should know it, and in particular my guitar playing? I did mess up one of the chords… Was she being patronising and unkind, or kind and taking pity on me? Or was she drunk, and all bets are off?
What the HELL did she mean?
Why can’t ANYONE just say what the hell they really mean to me, for once?
(the universe gets its coat)
This is all temporary madness, of course, and I soon calm down. But it does hint at another reason I’ve set up the Diary Angels. It’s one thing to say “Dickon, I like your diary”. It’s another altogether to pay for it. Money is concrete proof of approval, of confidence, of encouragement, of enjoyment, of worth, of work done that’s not been a waste of time. Of wanting more, and more often.
It’s an unassailable reminder that if the better parts of my decade-old online diary were set down in text, say in a newspaper or magazine or book, some people out there do think it’s worth paying for. Most of whom I’ve never met. Ten pounds for 365 entries of at least 500 words each (as detailed in my forthcoming Pledges To The Diary Angels). Works out at 3p an entry, or 20p for a week’s worth. And no adverts, either. And as I have to make abundantly clear at all times I mention the Angels, it’s not even my idea. It’s something two separate readers have suggested. The price is their idea, too.
Next entry, to be posted later today: I finally make my Pledges to the Diary Angels. Plus I meet Billy Bragg, Michael Bywater and Ali Smith. And I tell the latter about something interesting that we have in common. Something she mustn’t hear from strangers too often.
Oh, and the second Fosca album’s title Diary of An Antibody is a reference to the Grossmith book. I suppose a proper antibody in the human world is a police officer or community worker, but I like to think this suits this the double-edged nature of many Fosca song narrators – or so I attempt, anyway. Everyone thinks they’re doing good, even when they’re doing bad. Or doing nothing.
I have a list of Pledges To The Diary Angels which I’m still honing, but it’ll have to wait till I get back from Cambridge tomorrow.
Yesterday: to the Flask pub in Highgate for drinks with Jennifer C, her boyfriend Chris, Bill M, and their friends Kate, Dan and Hannah. Have started to drink strawberry beer, which has begun to pop up in London bars. Terribly faddy of me, like limited edition chocolate bars. But I don’t entirely dislike it, so I drink it for now. If I order something I don’t entirely like, it’ll last longer than if I order a drink I entirely enjoy and wolf down in minutes. This is actually a variation on something in Andy Warhol’s book From A To B And Back Again. The Andy Warhol Diet is to only eat food you don’t entirely like, and therefore don’t finish, or at least don’t wolf down and ask for seconds.
Noted connections from Friday. While writing my diary, a ladybird crawls onto my hand. I pop into Archway Video and chat with Ms M, who mentions she sometimes leaves the house in her pyjamas, if she’s only popping out to the a shop for a few minutes. I presume this isn’t your actual classic stripey ensemble, but whatever casual layers she wears AS pyjamas.
Looking for a lightbulb in Archway Woolworths, I note the shop sound system is playing Savage Garden. That hit single from years ago that goes “I wanna stand… dum-dum-de-dum-dum, I wanna dum-dum-do-be-dum…” It’s the only pop music I hear all day.
Later at the Flask, we’re talking about relationships when Jen C tells me about a friend of hers dating the Savage Garden singer without realising who he was. She is wearing a ladybird brooch. And a kind of shawl affair which she tells me is effectively her pyjamas.
Jen’s friend Kate P co-edits the long-running literary magazine Ambit, which I’ve bought on occasion over the years. She gives me a gratis copy of the latest issue, No 188. As usual it’s a beautifully made, spined affair with colour plates; half magazine, half book. What I didn’t realise is that it’s put together in Highgate, near the woods. They have little literary parties at the other editor’s place there.
Some mail:
I’ve been idly flicking through some early installments of Dickon’s Diary; is there any way I can get hold of the early Fosca recordings you mention (‘Leopard of Lime Street’, ‘Girl Selfish’ etc)?
Not from me. Those are from my 1998 dark-haired rockist period, when I was trying to make music normal people might like. One should always have a go at being normal, just in case you can do it sincerely. It wasn’t really me though, and the bleach soon came out of the cupboard again. And the Nirvana-y rock songs went away. I’d wince to hear those recordings these days, though I have since recycled the tune to one of those two mentioned above, on the next Fosca album. Waste not.
From reader Mr M, whose idea the Diary Angels was (along with Victoria Clarke):
…asking at the end of the month just as people are getting paid by their slave owners was good timing.
My contretemps with the Hoxton venue owner wasn’t entirely represented by the dialogue set down in the previous entry. As with most arguments, there was more to it than the argument itself. I could sense he just didn’t like the look of me from the start, as one does, and I suspect he happily gave a free drink or two to performers he did like the look of. Particularly young women. It was a reminder, apart from anything else, that I’m not for everyone. You find that some people take a complete dislike to you above and beyond the call of duty, continuing to hold their position even when you try to befriend them and be nice to them, and listen to them.
I think the more you try to change someone’s opinion, the tighter they cling to it. People DO change their minds, but prefer to do it themselves, in their own time. The best you can do is shut the hell up. And give a friendly smile. And they may come around.
Rather than go into a doomed talk with the bar owner about the nature of work and fun and getting paid, I should have just said I didn’t have enough money to pay for the drink, apologised, and asked for tap water. He was hardly going to change his mind about his no-free-drinks rule, at least for me.
People rarely say “Oh, yes, you’re right, I’m wrong” in arguments. Which is such a shame, as most arguments descend into purely soliciting that very response. Once the different positions have been stated, that should really be it. A third party needs to then step in and change the subject, whether it’s the host of a panel TV programme like Question Time, or a moderator on a web forum. Otherwise it goes on and on and rarely ends tidily or happily. And it stops being about the argument and more about personal pride. Names are called. Apologies are demanded. Coats are gotten by everyone else.
There’s a wry internet adage known as Godwin’s Law, which states: ‘As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’
I would add a new law along these lines: If someone doesn’t like you instinctively, they’ll look for reasons to justify it. Try not to give them any false ones by accident. Better to be disliked for what you are than for what you’re not.
But this also works the other way. If someone likes you instinctively, they’ll look for reasons to justify that too. There’s a Wendy Cope poem that goes something like, ‘You’re my favourite poet. And I quite like your poems too.’
However, it’s hard to dissuade people who like you for being something you’re not, if it’s something flattering that you can’t complain about. I’ve been called ‘flamboyant’, which I really don’t think I am compared to some of my more glitter-loving friends who go to clubs such as Stay Beautiful. But next to the average man on the street, I suppose I must be. Depends which street. Perhaps not Old Compton.
Equally, I’ve been called terribly clever and knowledgeable about all kinds of subjects. Which is nice, but isn’t entirely true. I know little bits here and there, particularly anecdotal connections and nuggets of trivia which light up the odd wirings of my mind. Some people are startled to discover I never went to university or even took ‘A’ levels. I evince the arrogance of the auto-didact. Which is just the sort of ridiculous thing someone like Dickon Edwards would say. It’s just as well I am me. And as Victoria Clarke says, ‘at a mere £10 a year, rather good value…’
Which brings me back to my rather rambling point about the Diary Angels.
Yesterday, I meet Victoria Mary Clarke in the Highgate Wood Cafe for a chat, and I tell her about the diary patronage scheme, which she suggested in the first place, echoed by another reader. She’s delighted about its success so far, consents to being on the Diary Angels list, and thinks I should contact a couple of her friends in the media about it. It might make an interesting story for a newspaper or even one of those ‘And Finally…’ TV news items. Particularly if you tie it in with the tenth anniversary of blogging, and the fact that this is the UK’s longest-running blog, until someone writes in to tell me otherwise. No one has, so I suppose I must be.
Not that I think the diary’s apparent Guinness Book Of Records-baiting longevity matters in any useful sense. It’s just another of those little nuggets of information that light up the odd wirings of my mind. Like the fact that the actress Hedy Lamarr, star of Samson And Delilah, invented WiFi. And Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. And there was a Canadian film about her starring Tilda Swinton which I’ve seen. And tripsolagnia means sexual arousal from having one’s hair shampooed. And I can help out my German friend Claudia when she asks:
They started this really funny 4-part series on BBC4 called Diary Of A Nobody – starring Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Pooter – a pompous Edwardian character who chronicled his daily life. Usually consisting of all sorts of mishaps. Do you know anything about this Mr. Pooter – what was so special about him that they would make a series about his life?
I tell her that Diary Of A Nobody is a work of fiction, a classic of British humorous writing from the late 19th century (so not Edwardian, strictly speaking, but it’s only a few years earlier). There’s even a word – ‘Pooteresque’, which means to be pompous and self-important in that very English, lower middle-class way. One running joke is that he lives in Holloway, which was then – as now – an unassuming, working-class to lower-middle-class district of North London. He is frequently looked down upon for it by those to whom postcodes matter more than personality, an element of Englishness which very much endures today. He also represents an early version of a familiar archetype in British comedy and tragicomic drama: the self-deluding, self-regarding and pompous protagonist. As seen in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads (which has clearly inspired the BBC4 adaptation), or Michael Palin’s Arthur Putey character from Monty Python, or many of Mr Palin’s Ripping Yarns heroes, or Tony Hancock, or Adrian Mole, or Alan Partridge.
Pooter’s co-creator George Grossmith was also a famous comedian and actor of his day; he was in all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas as the one who gets the patter songs like ‘Modern Major General’ and ‘I Have A Little List’. He’s portrayed in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy as a haughty star with his own dressing room and a secret drug habit, and was played by Martin Savage. Who in turn is better known as the overly camp scriptwriter from Ricky Gervais’s Extras… and so on.
All these little bits of information, whether useful or useless, just spill out of me.
(The generosity of the Diary Angels has spurred me into increased productivity. But no daily diary entry should be longer than 500 words. I shall stop at 1, 205 and continue tomorrow. Which is a very Pooter-esque thing to say.)
The list of Dickon’s Diary Angels has begun to grow, and my gratitude to those who have already sent donations. I’ll put up a Page For The Angels on the site shortly. Like the ‘angels’ of showbusiness, ie the investors in a new production, I am keeping careful records and intend there to be a proportional return, whether taking the form of free or exclusively discounted copies of future DE products, or something special in the vein of those fan club-only records some bands do. Perhaps a Diary Angels Christmas card is in order.
I’m truly honoured by the response from these Patrons, most of whom are people I’ve never met. I could say that, like Blanche Dubois, I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. But that would be enormously insulting to the long-suffering generosity also shown to me by my friends and family.
A couple of people have said setting up what is effectively a DE Fan Club is a “great wheeze”, that it made them laugh with its own sheer nerve, and that to do so was worth £10 alone. I like the idea of stretching that to an extreme elsewhere. An audience of U2 fans in a stadium, all of whom are there out of sarcasm. People queuing up to get the latest Harry Potter book purely because they think JK Rowling has such a nerve, writing those books and expecting anyone to pay for them. “We only buy them and read them in order to humour her, the tragic, self-deluding booby.”
In discussions about work, money and fun, an example I always drag out is the famous fence-painting scene from Tom Sawyer. Tom manages to get out of a day’s work whitewashing a fence by implying to a group of passing boys that it’s the most enjoyable fun in the world, and they’re missing out. Eventually, the other boys not only paint his fence for free, but pay him for the privilege of doing so. I like the double way of looking at this scenario – the idea that anything that seems exclusive and fun can’t be work and vice versa, and then turning that around to comic effect.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while — plenty of company — and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger- coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
I once brought up a similar line of thinking in a disastrous conversation with the owner of a certain Hoxton venue, where I was performing for free.
Me: A glass of wine please.
Bar Owner: (pours it) £4.50, please.
Me: Um, am I allowed it for free? I’m onstage tonight, I’m not getting paid, and I can’t afford a drink otherwise.
Bar Owner: No, you can’t. You have to pay for drinks. But anyway, you perform for fun, don’t you?
Me: Well, yes, but entertaining is what I do. And one should get paid for what one does. Even if it’s only in drink.
Bar Owner: Ah, but you enjoy it. This is work. I have to make a living. So I can’t give drinks out for free.
Me: Well, how do you expect performers to perform for free?
Bar Owner: They enjoy it. In fact, I’m thinking of asking them to pay me for performing in my bar.
Me: Well, I’m asking you to pay me for entertaining your patrons. If only in drink, which costs you less than money.
Bar Owner: But you ENJOY doing it! So you shouldn’t get paid.
Me: Do you hate running a bar so much, then?
Bar Owner: Well, no, that’s not the point! Running a bar is hard work. I do it because I need to do something, I’m my own boss, the money’s good, and I really enjoy it.
Me: Well then.
An awkward pause. The bar owner grabs my arm, and takes me through to a room behind the bar.
Bar Owner: (menacingly) Look, you can buy this drink, or you can f— off out of my bar and stop taking f—ing liberties. I don’t need this.
He tips the £4.50 glass of wine down the sink. I go onstage, perform with zero enjoyment, then quietly leave, never to return. On the long bus ride home, I start to think about my life.
There was an article in the Guardian the other day about blogging celebrating its’ tenth anniversary, the term coined in 1997. I do wonder if this diary is the UK’s longest-running blog. If anyone knows of a British online diary that ‘went live’ earlier than December 1997 and is still going today, please do tell me. It would be interesting to find out.
Am more penurious than usual. I could go into detail, but reading about other people’s lack of money bores me to tears. Suffice it to say that I write stiff letters to the various bodies and authorities who owe me and are dragging their heels, but take it no further. I suppose I could sit in some waiting room all afternoon and try to speed things up, or be put on hold on the phone for an hour, but really I’d rather spend this time doing something else. Stiff letters are my limit. I can pay the rent and just about eat, but anything else I have to be careful about.
I wonder if I’m the poorest person to book a table at the Ivy? I rather like the contrast of phoning the Ivy from a furnished bedsit where the larder only contains packets of noodles, 29p each from the corner shop. The booking was on behalf of Mr MacG, of course, but even so. There’s a certain tragic glamour to it all.
I mention to Rowan Pelling that I’m perhaps the most destitute person she knows. She buys me a few glasses of champagne and presents me with a full bottle of Hendricks Gin as payment for my DJ-ing stint a few months ago. This is at the Academy club in Lexington Street, Soho, and we’re here to discuss the Cambridge event on Saturday.
Haven’t been to the Academy before, but I love it. It’s one of those old-fashioned first floor Soho clubs which you have to know about rather than stumble into off the streets. Once you find the unmarked door, which could be to someone’s flat, you ring one of an ancient line of bells to be buzzed in and walk up a staircase past a ground floor sign on A4 paper pointing down the corridor, saying ‘Merchant Ivory Productions’. Yes, the same film company who make all those lavish costume dramas. I like the idea of ringing the wrong bell and ending up in some high-collared EM Forster adaptation.
Upstairs, the Academy Club turns out to be a lot like the Colony Room, with a cosy little bar area plus a few tables. Full of character and characters, with shelves of books, and a general air of unchanged 50s and 60s Soho. People at one table are playing a game of bridge on green baize. There’s a small terrier in a corner, which at one point lets out an unearthly yelp, presumably because someone’s trodden on his tail. It’s a noise only small dogs can make.
At one table, a man called Brock Norman Brock and another called Sam rehearse some songs for the Cambridge gig on accordion and banjo respectively, and it suits the Academy to a tee. I am told that one night here the tables were moved aside and Mr Brock wrestled the writer Sam North on the floor, half-naked, Fight Club style. Not over any disagreement, just for the members’ entertainment. Maybe that’s the next step for Beautiful & Damned – all-in wrestling. Or maybe not.
John Moore is also there for the meeting. I’ve been listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain singles compilation, and ask him which ones were his era. “April Skies“, he says. What a truly great song that is. And what great hair the band’s guitarist William Reid had: an impossible pile of gravity-challenging tousles.
Mr Moore currently writes for the Guardian music blog, who pay. I suppose I should really hustle and pitch to write a paying blog for some professional body too: my friend Rhodri Marsden does one for the Radio Times site. Or rather will be at some point – according to his personal blog, they’ve just put it back by six weeks. That’s the trouble with working for other people.
I’d rather just do this blog alone, where I choose what appears and where I’ve got uncensored control, and pursue some sort of sponsorship or patronage for the times I’m more hard up than usual. One idea suggested by a reader is setting up a Patrons Of DE page at dickonedwards.co.uk. People could become Diary Angels. The idea being, in return for their investment, I would promise to keep the blog up daily, and the patrons could have a say in the sort of things I write about. Within reason. And then when I do put out books or CDs or perform at events, they could get free or discounted copies. Maybe a minimum of £10 for a year, said reader proposes. Victoria Clarke has also suggested something similar.
Anyone who thinks I should just get a job clearly isn’t a regular reader. The World Of Work has never gotten on well with me, and the sentiment is mutual. Everything should be in its place. I may not be certain where my place is, but I do know where it isn’t. Being DE and writing about it has rather become my job. At least, at present.
So for now, here’s a Tip Jar in the form of a PayPal button. If you like this diary – all ten years of it – and you’re feeling kind, please consider showing your appreciation. Anyone sending £10 or more is automatically enrolled as a Diary Angel, and I’ll compile a list of names. Just like they do in fringe theatre programmes. You too can join Shane MacGowan and my parents in possibly the only thing they have in common.
Apropos of nothing, I watch the film Fight Club for the second time since it came out. This time, I view it with knowledge of the big plot twist, so it really is a different film. The twist itself is utterly ridiculous and doesn’t bear close inspection, but then one could say that about the entire film. It doesn’t matter, because the ideas themselves are so brilliant and original, thinking one step ahead all the time, that whether or not they could happen in real life is entirely by-the-by. You just sit in awe of all the dazzling ideas and aphoristic wit. Wit of a rather different stripe than Oscar Wilde, certainly, but wit all the same. It’s a film that’s entirely high on its own world.
It’s also a brilliant adaptation of the Chuck Palahnuik novel: the director Mr Fincher takes his murky, jittery Seven palette and paints the novel onto the screen, happily ignoring the popular film-making tip about never using a narrator. I think Mr P has said he takes a shop window-dressing approach to writing novels. You stuff the story with as many ideas as possible, with no padding. The more over-the-top, the better. He’s not to everyone’s taste, but I admire the way he writes. It’s as if he’s constantly terrified of the reader giving up and reading someone else’s work. You imagine a Chuck Palahnuik book that’s just been put down shouting “No! Wait! Come back! How DARE you!”
The opening idea in Fight Club of someone perfectly healthy attending support meetings for the terminally ill, out of a need to feel grateful for living, and then meeting a woman who’s doing the same, is enough in itself for many lesser writers and directors. That Fight Club then fidgets and ploughs onto further ideas while the previous one is stilll sinking in, is all part of its brilliance.
I mentioned here the other day how much I get upset at any show of aggression in public, and here I am celebrating a film that’s rather full of aggression. Well, that’s they way I like it. In its place, in inspired and imaginative stories. Fight Club is as much a glittering fantasy as Lord Of The Rings.
A news story I rather enjoy, if only because of the closing quote (source: pinknews.co.uk):
The songwriter-cum born-again preacher George Hargreaves has accused the “pink press” of peddling hatred of Christians. Mr Hargreaves is standing as a candidate for his Scottish Christian Party in the Scottish parliamentary elections on May 3rd.
“This is not about gay rights, it’s about gay wrongs,” he told The Times. Mr Hargreaves has funded the SCP with royalties he continues to receive for co-writing and producing the 1980s anthem So Macho, sung by gay icon Sinitta… He defended the thousands of pounds he continues to earn every month from the hit song.
“It says in the Bible that so long as Earth remains there shall be seed time and harvest. You could say that So Macho was the seed I sowed and now I’m reaping the harvest,” he said.
Haven’t gotten off the Internet yet. Can’t resist posting a few more YouTube videos. Particularly as the previous two were of Welsh and American people. This is meant to be England Day, so here’s some video examples of some very splendid English things.
And here’s New Order playing ‘Temptation’ for a live radio session in 1984. I find this clip adorable for many reasons. Let me count the ways: cute singer, great song built around simple loops and riffs, obscene shorts, bleached 80s hair, forgetting how to play one’s own guitar, getting bad tempered in public, drummer playing like a computer, the old Radio 1 logo. Likewise ‘Age Of Consent’.
One of London’s celebrations tonight is an open-air screening of Monty Python And The Holy Grail in Trafalgar Square. But I know the film so well I can pretty much run it in my head at any time.
Mr Dan Rhodes sends me a compilation CD. It’s the second time this year I’ve been sent music by an acclaimed author, following a two-cd affair by Scott Heim.
In fact, Mr Rhodes sends it to me care of The Boogaloo, which is something else that’s started to happen to me. Just as well I go in the pub fairly often.
At his book event there the other week to launch his new novel Gold, he provided his own choice of music for the bar’s CD player. There was one song I rather liked but was unfamiliar with, so he’s sent me a few tracks. I’m now pretty sure it’s My Heart’s On Fire by Richard James. Not the Aphex Twin one. The one from the now defunct Welsh indie band, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.
And I’ve just found out that another Richard James is the inventor of the popular Slinky toy. It’s discovering this kind of information that puts a spring into my step, ho ho.
Mr Rhodes also provides me with Blue Flower by Slapp Happy, the eccentric German band of the early 70s. And again, my mind makes little trivia connections and I think of the two rather good cover versions of this rather good song. Like buses they appeared within months of each other, in the early 90s. One by Mazzy Star and one by the Pale Saints.
Here’s the video to the Pale Saints version, spotlighting singer Meriel Barham’s striking countenance. The Pale Saints belong to that rare subsection of bands who replace their lead singer with one of the opposite sex, in the midst of their recording career. She took over from Ian Masters, who had a beautiful, girlish voice and indeed a rather feminine hairdo. So I like the symmetry of Ms B’s boyish hairdo in this video.
(checks YouTube link)
Oh, it’s not on YouTube anymore. Surely this is a common sensation of the day? In which case, someone must come up with a word to describe it. It’s a very 2007 feeling.
YOUTUBESOLATION,n. Disappointment on finding a YouTube video has been removed.
I listen to some tracks by the USA band My Favorite before watching a movie on DVD called Another Gay Movie. It’s a John Waters-esque bad taste romantic comedy, putting a gay spin on those American Pie type films. Jokes about quiche in that same capacity. Has its moments, not least Scott Thompson of The Kids In The Hall playing a gay version of the Eugene Levy embarrassed-dad role. Graham Norton also appears as a Russian teacher lusted after by one of his pupils.
During the film, I hear a song I rather like playing in the background and look it up. Turns out to be The Happiest Days Of My Life by My Favorite:
This is diary is nothing if not a record of the way my brain works. Trivia, ephemera, connections, tangents, androgyny, twists, degrees of separation, coincidences, synchronicity and symmetry. Little thought-dances.
And here’s that Richard James song, assuming I can get these links to work.
Last night – to the Boston Arms Music Room in Tufnell Park, for Lea Andrews’s birthday bash. The building is a something of a small legend for gigs: I remember seeing Amelia Fletcher, Comet Gain and other indie bands here before I even moved to London. Billy Childish and his various bands have played his particular brand of raw garage rock here for years, and it also saw a packed early gig by the White Stripes in the height of their Next Big Thing period, due to their association with Mr Childish.
These days The White Stripes are one of those bands whose works can be found on karaoke machines. Which is as good a measure of success as any. For Ms Lea’s birthday, she’s booked a curious melding of karaoke and a party band: Live Punk Rock Karaoke. Like the usual kind of karaoke, a screen provides the lyrics to sing along to. But instead of the backing music tinkling away on a backing track, it’s provided by a live band: a guitarist, bassist and drummer. The drummer wears headphones to keep him in sync with the lyrics screen, and the band plays along.
Their repertoire favours punk classics of the late 70s, but also a few recent rock hits of note. Such as Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, whose riff is arguably as timeless as Smoke On The Water or My Sharona. I think the actual stage in the Boston Arms has been moved from one part of the room to the other since The White Stripes played here, but I like the historical link.
I drink too much, talk a lot of nonsense, dance about to the DJ sets, and discuss autobiographical graphic novels with Jenni Scott, as she was doing on Radio 3 lately. I also say hi to Ms Anna S, Ms Charley S, Mr Phil of Club V, Ms G the professional wrestler who was once in Stereolab and who has taken me to a Cage Rage event, plus Ms Other G who was once in My Bloody Valentine, who hasn’t. Plus Mr Ed of the Soul Mole club, who is slightly surprised I’m here and asks how I know the birthday girl, Lea Andrews.
It’s a perfectly good question. In fact, Ms Lea said to me a few months ago that she’d just realised I was one of the London people she’s known the longest. I can’t quite remember the first meeting, but it would have been around the Leyton Queercore scenesters with whom I had associations circa 1993. Bands such as Sister George and The Children’s Hour and Kidnapper, from whom Lea’s own band, Spy 51, is directly descended.
En route, I pop in for a drink at The Boogaloo, and chat with the Dean Sisters, Ms Rachel and Ms Emily. I mention I’m reading Neil Gaiman, and Ms Emily tells me she knows him personally, via her friend Ms Jane who adapted his book Stardust for the big screen. Shane MacGowan is there too, wearing a rather nice suit. I say hello to Miss Red, who assures me now that in the interests of my blood pressure she WON’T be booking The Anne Frank Peep Show for the next B&D, although it’s apparently a genuine act doing the cabaret rounds. Instead, she’s hoping to get a male voice harmony group or something equally unusual but universally inoffensive.
The band Billy Ruffian email me. They request permission to include Fosca’s “It’s Going To End In Tears” on their downloadable mixtape of influences. I say yes.
Am rather excited about procuring a copy of the RSC Shakespeare. It’s a major new edition of Mr S’s complete works, updated to include all the latest research and arguments over which lines should read what, and so on. But it’s also designed to be reader-friendly rather than academic and part of the furniture. Seems pretty much the perfect all-purpose Complete Shakespeare, and there’s a quote from Judi Dench on the cover to that effect. One of the book’s editors is Ms Lucy Munro, who’s been on tour with Fosca. Though I don’t think she mentions that in her notes.
I watch a clip on YouTube of John Lennon performing Instant Karma. It’s in a TV studio, presumably circa 1970, in the Top Of The Pops style. John sings and plays piano, and Yoko is knitting onstage, while wearing a blindfold. They both look fantastic: matching black polo neck jumpers with neat blue jeans, and matching cropped hair. Which in 1970 is quite unusual – everyone else in the TV studio has the more fashionable long hair of the day. For all my protestations against mass jeans-wearing, I do approve of deliberate jeans ensembles like this one. I once knew a couple in Bristol who always dressed like that: it was black polo necks and blue jeans wherever they went. And it suited them. I used to imagine them having long discussions about jazz.
I really must write about that Cage Rage event sometime.
From the Dickon Edwards revision of The Devil’s Dictionary:
MIXED FEELINGS, n. An alibi offered by an abject coward and fence-sitter.
More thoughts on last Thursday night’s Beautiful & Damned.
Even though I didn’t book the live act in question (as some Smart Alex put it, “Dickon was only obeying orders…”), and my mixed feelings on heckling aside, notwithstanding my stance on confrontations outside of wrestling matches, I do feel bad for anyone who had a less than nice time. If the club wasn’t free entry, I’d offer them their money back. And assuming My Friend The Heckler ever speaks to me again, I will buy him a drink.
For all my perceived haughtiness and disdain at current modes of fashion, I do want everyone to be be happy, one way or the other. Without anyone getting hurt or upset. Unless that’s what they’re into. My doctor is still convinced I’m a classic S&M case in denial. Heigh ho, anything for an interesting life.
At the end of the evening Miss Red told me, “You should see what I’ve got for next month. It’s called The Anne Frank Peep Show.” She was joking. I hope she was joking. There’s only one way to find out. For the March B&D, she booked a wonderful act called Kitty La Roar, a more traditional but perfectly stylish and entertaining cabaret singer. I should really plug her website:
I’d quite like to book a few acts myself, as I know all kinds of glamourous performers from various London scenes. None of them impersonate known figures of genocide in an allegedly entertaining fashion, but I still think I’d feel personally accountable if they went down badly. I realise that anyone who agrees to performing in a bar must also know how to handle a crowd. And they are adults, after all. But I’m not sure if I could take the stress by proxy.
Mum muses that this sort of anxiety runs in the family. My Uncle Mike wrote on his call-up papers for National Service that his religion was ‘devout coward’. She emails to remind me of The Cowslip Incident:
I think you were witness to my only ever face-to-face confrontation with anyone publicly, when I leapt out of the car to harangue that man picking cowslips from the bank between here (Bildeston, Suffolk) and Hadleigh. I know there were plenty, but they are protected so we can all swoon at their numbers on a passing bank, not screech to a halt to grab a few personal trophies…
I remember that well. Again, a stomach-tightening experience. Mum stopped the car on a country road, got out and heckled a man for picking rare flowers. I sat in the car and stared at my shoes. If the man had responded violently to my mother, what would I have done? Wars have started for less. But my mother is an experienced teacher of both children and adults, and I rather think that helps.
I now have a picture in my mind of Prince Harry, dressed as Hitler, picking cowslips from a roadside, while Bryan Ferry looks on and applauds. And running to accost him, the audience from that Python sketch about the cannibal undertaker.
It’s about time I posted some photos. Here’s one from Young Miss Seaneen, who writes a blog about her bipolar disorder. It’s been nominated for awards, and can be found here:
