I’ll write a proper entry when I’m back from the last Night Shift of the week. Till then, here’s a couple of photos from last night’s Last Fosca Gig taken by Jennifer Denitto.

I do like this blurry Francis Bacon type number. Scarily beautiful, or beautifully scary, or both:

Here’s a more realistic rendering of me, Charley S and Kate D. Kate is playing my cherry red Gibson SG. It’s a left handed model strung backwards, because I originally learned to play by borrowing my brother’s normal right-handed instrument, and just turning it upside down. I never learned to play the proper way. Kate’s a right-handed player, so she’s turned my guitar upside down in order to play the strings the right way up. Confused and proud at every level.

A last reminder: I’m playing my last ever UK gig with Fosca this Saturday. Line up is myself, Rachel Stevenson, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards.

Here’s the details:

Date: Sat Dec 13th
Venue: Bar Academy, 16 Parkfield St, N1 Centre, Islington, London.
Tube: Angel
Club night: Feeling Gloomy
Doors: 8.30pm.
Fosca onstage: 10.15pm-10.55pm.
Admission: £6 on the door.

We’ll also be selling copies of the new 7″ single, ‘The Man I’m Not Today’. It’s been given a nice review by Alternative Ulster magazine here.

Emails:

Any news on when the single will be available in digital format?

If you order the vinyl online, you should be emailed a code to download the two songs as free MP3s. I see But Is It Art haven’t released a stand-alone digital version yet, but presumably it’ll happen soon.

Thanks for writing your inspiring and great diary. It always makes me smile and it helps me improve my English at the same time… By the way: will you ever perform in The Netherlands?

I’m retiring from indiepop stages for now, but am still keen to perform doing something or other. Maybe something along spoken word lines, or readings, or talks.  I’m going to get voice lessons first, though.

===

Mon and Weds this week: rehearsing with Fosca as a five piece. On Monday we use Fortress Studios in Old Street, which has a fantastic room – large, clean, sensible, civilised, everything works. Not too blokey, not too Rock. Even better, there’s a secret bar tucked away upstairs, dimly lit with friendly bohemian types loafing about. If I ever need to book a rehearsal room again, this will be the one.

Weds evening is Bona Fide Studios in Curtain Road. A bit more of a return to the typical rehearsal room set up: graffiti on the walls, battered equipment. But it all works okay – Kate Dornan takes sound engineer duties for both rehearsals, for which relief I’m much thankful.

The five-piece Fosca line-up sounds fantastic, with Tom playing Thin Lizzy-type guitar harmonies against Charley’s lead guitar, though I’m careful to respectfully request Not Too Much Rock, Please.

Charley is exhausted and miserable at the start of the Weds session, but cheers up when my mic stand comes apart and I strut around with half a stand a la Freddie Mercury. I even badly attempt that ‘Day-oh!’ improv from Queen At Live Aid purely to please her, much to my own utter crushing embarrassment. Still, it makes Charley happy, which makes me happy.

Am in the Cafe Royal venue in Berlin, having soundchecked very quietly indeed. Something about not annoying the neighbours. Just went to the toilets only to be confronted with a huge poster of my face – the gig’s advert.

In the brief hour to ourselves, Boy H and I went to look at the Brandenburg Gate, and the recent holocaust memorials nearby: Jewish (the enormous maze of stone blocks that shifts and changes as you walk inside), and homosexual (a single cube screening a looped film of two men kissing).

In Charing Cross Road, a man passes me talking loudly on his mobile phone. As is usually the case, just one phrase leaps surreally out of the background chatter:

‘…bring it to Danny’s thong auction?’

***

Sorting out final preparations for the Fosca trip to Germany. Boy H is coming along: he speaks German fluently and is a general Germany-phile, so it seems a ridiculously natural thing to have him join the travelling party (at my own expense, though – that’s always the unspoken deal with Other Halves Who Are Not In The Band).

Boy H is part Companion, part Voice of Student Youth. Younger but wiser, he’s forever surprising me with his unexpected cultural references, shifting gear between highbrow and lowbrow worlds so fast, I feel in danger of getting the cultural bends.

In what I presume is a very modern but fairly common scene for couples who have friends and readers online, I’m typing this on my main desk computer while Boy H is across the room with my mini-laptop on his knees. He’s keeping five AIM chat conversations going at once, talking to friends in the US, Germany and Mile End, all in the same screen, and in different languages. He’s just broken off from absentmindedly singing the latest Sugababes hit to call over, ‘You know Einstuerzende Neubauten, right?’

More choice Boy H-isms.

In the V&A, glancing over at a piece of silverware: ‘Isn’t that Actaeon?’

Then moments later, as we’re walking to the tube and passing a poster advertising a popular console game:

‘Ooh – Abba Singstar!’

He’s now watching rare Nick Cave videos on YouTube. I’ve just asked him about the Eurovision contest, and what he thinks of TATU.

‘They’re horrible, imho.’

‘You do realise you’ve just said ‘IMHO’ out loud?’

(IMHO: internet chat for ‘In My Humble Opinion’. Not that humbleness is a quality one necessarily associates with comments left on the internet.)

Just come back from seeing various friends’ bands at Nambucca on the Holloway Road: The Sex Tourists (Rory, David and Jeremy), The New Royal Family (David, Charley, Richard, Jen), Richard A’s new band. Due to being busy plying Boy H with chocolates in Fortnum and Mason, I managed to miss Charley S’s Abba Stripes band, who play the songs of Abba in the style of The White Stripes.

They’re all excellent and enjoyable bands, though I still can’t fully work out how to enjoy myself in the presence of something enjoyable. Admiring a band used to mean they made me want to jump up onstage and join in with them, usually on guitar. Now that I’m less keen to play in a live band myself, I can no longer consult this handy inner Pavlov.

So… how DO I know if I’m enjoying a gig or not? Is rock music taking its place in my heart alongside, say, ballet?

‘I know you’re obviously a fantastic ballet dancer. I just don’t like ballet. And I feel bad that I don’t like something that’s unarguably good.’

(Except this has changed too. ‘The Red Shoes’ is starting to overtake ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ in my heart…)

Tastes change. Interests change. So why do I feel guilty?

(I still don’t care for olives or truffles, though.)

****

As for being in a band myself, it’s the nuts and bolts side of things that irks me the most these days: the endless procuring of amps and keyboard stands, the eternal fiddling with mixer levels, and all the heavy lifting. I really like the idea of a band splitting up due to too much heavy lifting. Boy H is on roadie duty for Germany.

I realise some people think I’m strange (why continue this sentence?) for not wanting to do A Supposedly Fun Thing anymore. Truth is, if the Fun you pay to do – at up to £70 per rehearsal – now feels more like Work than the Work that pays for your Fun, something has to change.

I also keep thinking of a line from the 90s Peter Cook / Chris Morris spoof interviews, ‘Why Bother’:

‘Poor old Eric Clapton. It must be hell for him, having to play the wretched guitar all the time.’