Here’s the latest on the Fosca Swedish dates. Note change to the Stockholm venue.

Friday March 13th, evening: Stockholm – Svenska Musikklubben.

Sat March 14th, noon ish: Stockholm – instore or café gig at lunchtime to please those under the nightclub age limit. This is yet to be booked, so if anyone knows of a suitable Stockholm shop or cafe, do contact But Is It Art Records at info@butisitart.org

Sat March 14th, evening: Norrköping: Klubb Republik.

Twitter, the ‘microblogging’ site where entries are limited to a mere 140 characters, seems to be this year’s Facebook. At least in terms of giving newspaper columnists something to write about which doesn’t need that much research. I got an account in – gosh – July 2007, made a few ‘Tweets’ (grimace) on signing up, heard the sound of tumbleweed, then gave it up. It seemed pretty pointless unless it caught on in a big way.

I felt similarly in 1998 when I found out my new mobile phone could send something called ‘text messages’: I didn’t see the point unless it became a commonplace thing to do. It would have been like buying one of the first telephones, or opening the first Tube station – you need a decent amount of other people on the receiving end first.

Being one of the first UK bloggers / online diarists was different, though. I didn’t have to be part of a ‘blogosphere’ or blogging Friends community, because they didn’t exist. If anything, I started the diary to escape the world of groups and chatter, not link up with it. Starting an internet diary in 1997 had more of an existential appeal to me – I blogged, therefore I was.

Twitter, on the other hand, is very much an audience affair – you don’t have readers, you have ‘followers’. Thanks to a few high profile Twitter members of late – Stephen Fry (since Oct 2008 – unusually late for him), Jonathan Ross (December, while twiddling his thumbs away from the BBC) and a survivor of the Hudson River Plane Crash a few weeks ago, plus an upgrade which made photos and phones more Twitter-compatible (much like the coming of predictive messaging for texts, or Blogger and LJ for online diaries), a pretty decent amount of people are now all a-Twitter.

By its own restricted design, it encourages chatty, ephemeral banalities, and makes me sound as if I’m caught not quite with my pants down but certainly with hair uncombed… for better or worse. But it’s a handy stop gap between proper diary posts:

http://twitter.com/dickon_edwards

Bookings…

Tomorrow night I’ll be DJ-ing at Beautiful & Damned, at the Boogaloo in Highgate.  Also on the bill are Martin White and Vicky Butterfly: pretty top-notch, proper talented fare.

Friday March 13th. Fosca play Stockholm. Debaser Slussen. More dates in that part of the world might pop up either side of the 13th. Last Fosca gigs ever ever ever. Honest. Really! It’ll be the Travel Fosca line-up of myself, Rachel and Charley. Pleased to be able to properly say goodbye to the Swedish Fosca fans. 85% of my last PRS cheque was from Swedish radio play.

May 16th – DJing at a private party with Ms Red.

June 20th – DJ-ing at How Does It Feel To Be Loved.

That’s pretty much the entire commitments list to date. Well, there’s the small matter of The Night Shift Job, which ties up every late night of mine for every other week, but I can get time off if necessary. Thing is, like most employers they only give out a limited amount of Holiday Cards to play – 14 a year. Given I get every other seven days off anyway, that’s pretty reasonable of them. But it does help me sort the ‘wouldn’t mind, oh all right’ events  from those I actually really want to do.

You’d have thought I was hardly Mr Full Diary from the above. Yet I’ve just been offered a DJ gig at the ICA, which I’ve love to do, only to realise it clashes with the Stockholm gig, so I can’t. Heigh ho.

Here’s a clip of Travel Fosca playing Stockholm last year. I’m told it’s only been uploaded recently:

http://is.gd/gJ3m

(I just love the ‘is.gd’ URL Shortener – even shorter than Tiny URL)

***

Barack Obama’s inauguration dominates today’s papers to such an extent that other news doesn’t stand a chance. I feared that today would be perfect for sly government PRs who are keen on ‘burying bad news’, as that Whitehall spin-doctor lady coined it so notoriously on Sept 11th.

The bad news back then was to do with councillors’ expenses. This time, one story that looked like slipping through the net was a similar attempt by MPs to exempt themselves from disclosing their fiscal outgoings. In today’s news (somewhere under all the Obama stuff), they’ve had to back down. This time round people aren’t so easy to hoodwink, and the Internet helps to spread the word and get people on board. A campaign by MySociety on Facebook ralled 6,000 supporters against the expenses plot. And now they’ve won. It’s so cheering. The dominance of the Net these days makes Getting Away With Things so much harder. The same zeal to uncover plot points in Battlestar Galactica can be channelled into monitoring those who write the story of the real world.

My workload at the Coalface of News last night was a fraction of its usual volume. Partly because most of the Obama coverage isn’t UK related, but also because there was little else in the press. The newspapers today choose to devote their already thinning pages (the recession’s fault) on saying exactly the same thing again and again: Obama’s Inauguration: a Historic Moment. Turn the page: interviews with people in the street. ‘ Do you think it’s a historic moment?’ ‘Yes.’ Repeat. Turn to umpteen columnists. ‘Why Today Is A Historic Moment, and Why I Was Right About Obama Before You Were.’

Can we news-miners take it easy and leave on time with everything finished? Yes, We Can.

Thanks, Mr O. All the best with the new job. Try not to kill anyone.

Sunday – lunch in Clapham at Heather M’s place, Claudia A accompanying me. Then straight to Angel to see ‘The Reader’ at the Vue cinema, with Shanthi S.

Once it becomes clear that the film is entirely made up of English actors playing German characters, who speak to each other in English – but with a German accent, I just can’t  get on with it.

With me, it’s purely the choice of accent that grates, rather than the usage of English. Had Kate Winslet and co spoke in BBC RP – that so-called ‘non-accent English’ – which is really Southern English-posh (but not too posh), I’d have no problem. RP is the convention I’m used to: RP is The British Drama Accent. If you choose convention, you have to follow through with it. But English with a German accent – to represent Germans speaking to other Germans – seems an attempt to have one’s strudel and eat it.

On top of which, the lines they speak sound like German In Translation – stilted, stagey, and too ominously aware of the gravity of the subject matter. It’s a tale connected to the Holocaust, so one hardly expects a bundle of laughs. But just a tiny twist more realism is needed – a little roughening up, a little less polish.

I think of ‘Conspiracy’, the TV movie where Kenneth Branagh and others play various top Nazis at a secret conference, deciding upon the Final Solution. They use BBC RP with a touch of the vernacular and everyday. They chat, in other words. As they would have.

At one point a character says, ‘Do the Jews believe in hell?’ and Branagh replies, ‘They do now. We provide it.’ He tosses this chilling line out casually, lightly, with the fake-matey smirk of an unloved office manager. And it works brilliantly. People who made history didn’t declaim in a ‘Making History’ tone, not when they were just speaking to each other behind closed doors.

Bruno Ganz pops up in ‘The Reader’ too, recalling ‘Downfall’, the German film where he played Hitler. Again, another WW2 film where people in conversation actually converse rather than declaim.

The other convention that irks me is the question of characters aging. When we first see her in the 1950s, Ms Winslet – playing a thirtysomething – frolics with a teenage boy. Then it moves to the 60s, where he’s in his twenties, and she’s in her forties. Cue slight aging make-up for Kate, and college clothes for the young man. Come the 1970s and 1980s, she gets the full old lady make-up, while the young man… turns into Ralph Fiennes.

Again, it’s the inconsistency of dramatic convention that risks dividing the audience into those who don’t see these things as distractions, and those who can’t think of anything else.

Why didn’t they age the young male actor as well? Or replace Ms W with an older actress?

I’ve seen ‘Iris’. I know that if you leave Kate Winslet alone long enough, she turns into Judi Dench.

John Mortimer has died. What a life – defending the Sex Pistols’ ‘Never Mind…’ sleeve and Oz magazine’s ‘gay Jesus’ case with one hand, while writing all those Rumpole stories and plays and screenplays with the other. Someone who never fell into the easy trap of becoming a grumpy old man, his 2003 memoir, ‘Where’s There’s A Will’, about how to write and indeed how to live,  is a real inspiration.  He wrote it as a kind of last message to the world, but still managed to squeeze in five further novels between ‘Will’ and the grave. Another message, then: keep doing it till you really do drop dead.

I’m sure among the obituaries and tributes there will be those lovers of a good myth-buster (like myself) who will point out that Mr M never actually wrote the screenplay to the 80s TV version of ‘Brideshead Revisited’. It was the director and producer, Derek Grainger, who penned the adaptation, pretty much leaving the Waugh novel intact – which is why it took so many hour-long episodes. Mortimer was contracted to submit a script, so although it wasn’t used they had to keep his name on the credits.

I’m currently reading Russell T Davies’s excellent ‘The Writer’s Tale’, his epistolary account  about writing for and executively producing the present Doctor Who. As with ‘Brideshead’, he also mentions the occasional discrepancy between the names on the writing credits and those who actually supply the words. One Who story in particular, ‘Human Nature / The Family Of Blood’, is credited to Paul Cornell, adapted from his novel, though Davies says:

‘I had a whole Sunday of people saying ‘What a brilliant script. Paul is a genius.’ Which he is. But I’m thinking, if only you knew how much of that I wrote! …People know that I polish stuff, but they think that polishing means adding a gag or an epigram, not writing half the script.’

The obsession with the writer as sole auteur works fine with books, but falls apart when it comes to most TV programmes and films. The nature of the medium encourages creation by committee – Doctor Who itself was created by a BBC focus group in the early 60s, rather than by a single writer. There’s a fascinating in-house report from the period, stating why the Corporation should make science fiction drama at all- and what the point of science fiction IS. The works of Ray Bradbury are cited, demonstrating the importance of blending engaging, inspiring sci-fi ideas with sympathetic human characters.

***
Last Wednesday – to Barden’s Boudoir in Stoke Newington Road, to see the bands Deptford Beach Babes, Sexton Ming, Tropics Of Cancer and Rude Mechanicals. All are vastly enjoyable. Lots of bluesy madness, twangy guitars, mad scattershot drumming, brimmed hats, costumes. The Tropics of Cancer feature Ms She, who I remember once kept me company at the club Lady Luck, where she worked behind the bar.

Rude Ms singer Jo Roberts is unforgettable: cartoonish whiteface make-up, dusty grey beehive wig, vintage ballgown and bare feet. She’d be visual attraction enough, but there’s also the violinist – a transvestite in a tight skirt who occasionally plays with the bow between their legs, while the drummer is a deadpan butch android. Like the Deptford BBs, both wear sunglasses, thus straddling the line between deadpan cool and deadpan comedy – and deadpan comedy IS cool, after all.

Sunglasses onstage always work best as part of an overall costume. Dressed-down rock bands who wear shades are so tiresome. ‘Listen to me, don’t look at me’ is an attitude I’ve never understood. Why get on a stage if you don’t want to be looked at?

Barden’s Boudoir is a newish venue, and one of many signs that Stoke Newington is becoming a bigger part of the capital’s cultural life. Only thing is, the venue is too new for my liking. One complains about grotty small venues, then one complains when they’re not grotty enough. As usual, I want things both ways: I want unbattered, working equipment AND thick layers of graffiti. I enjoy my suits not smelling of other people’s stale cigarettes the day after, yet I’m suspicious of sobriety.

Chat to Vicki Churchill, who sings with the Deptford BBs. Years ago, we once signed a couple of dollar bills in a semi-drunken pact, promising to each other to get to New York before we die. Last year I made it there (thanks to Mr MacG), and it turns out that she did too, visiting the city a few months later. Pact completed. Next goal: published books. She’s beaten me to that one, though, having brought out a children’s picture book a few years ago. I think it’s about a vole.

On the overground train from Camden Road to Dalston Kingsland, I bump into Roger from the band Exile Inside. He recognises me from the time Fosca played with E.I. at the Purple Turtle in December – gosh – 2005. Turns out we both listen to BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, both finding it a suitable substitute for John Peel’s show. In Stoke Newington Road, before we part company, he points out the Turkish restaurant where Gilbert & George usually have their evening meal. They’re not in tonight, but I don’t mind – I was glowered at by Victoria Wood in the High Tea tea rooms earlier.

Regarding the Orlando reissue on iTunes, I now understand it’s only on iTunes UK, rather than iTunes USA or iTunes Elsewhere. So profuse apologies if people in other countries can’t buy it. I’m not sure what’s the best way around that, short of asking a UK friend to download it, burn it onto a CD, then put it in the post.

A collector writes:

I must hopefully enquire whether the iTunes availability of Passive Soul is likely to translate into a physical reissue at any time? This sort of thing has happened with a lot of reissues lately – first download-only, then later on CD. I’d love to hear the unreleased material, but being so terribly sniffy about sound quality I can’t bear listening to MP3s, and anyway I much prefer to have an actual artefact, even if it’s largely a compilation of other artefacts that I already own. I enjoyed your “programme notes” and feel that with the addition of Tim’s comments these would make excellent sleevenotes if and when Orlando return to the shelves.

Well, what I do know is that Tim C says he’s setting up a MySpace archive of Orlando things. And that he’ll be writing his own sleeve notes there. The iTunes reissue is entirely down to him – all I did was say yes.

I think it’s unlikely that Passive Soul would be released again on an actual official CD. Then again, one does see ancient and obscure major label albums turning up on indie reissue and collector labels, such as Cherry Red or LTM.

But it’s one thing for an artist to hawk a brand new release to a label unsolicited, and quite another to hustle a reissue. I’d feel very uneasy about doing so. I couldn’t dare instigate the negotiations – the approaching, the rights, the licensing, the approval, not to mention all the convincing. Still, I would say yes if others made it actually happen, and all I had to do was, well, say yes.

The great thing about those aforementioned indie reissue labels is that they clearly believe in just putting the material out there, in the spirit of pure faith. A balm to both the curious and the collector. Rather than thinking ‘but will anyone buy it whose name I do not know?’

So, then, Doctor Emo…

I said, Doctor EMO!

That’s better.

This young fellow, Matt Smith, has just been announced as the next Doctor Who. I’m rather pleased with that. Particularly as the programme introducing him included clips from the drama Party Games, where he was shown singing and dancing to ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down’ by The Style Council.

The least one can expect from a New Doctor Who is an awareness of Paul Weller’s 80s soul-pop combo, frankly. That’s the FIRST thing I look for. In… oh, everything.

Going by the young Mr Smith’s interview, I’d have picked him, too. Young in exterior, but there’s something in his eyes, his body language and style of speaking that’s not only older than his years, but otherworldly with it. More Tom Baker than David Tennant, or even Peter Davison. Multitudes under the skin. Which is what you want.

At first glance, I thought they’d gone with another choice of mine, Jamie Parker. He played Scripps, the Catholic piano-playing pupil in The History Boys, in the original stage cast and in the film. Very much another old mind in a young body, Mr Parker is facially similar to Mr Smith, though without the mad hair:

Hairdo aside, Mr Smith also reminds me of the young Trevor Howard (as does Jamie P):

And also, let’s face it, he looks a little like a singer in an alternative rock band, the type that the Melody Maker used to label ‘Intensely Intense’ in its joke pages. I’m too out of touch to be familiar with the current ‘Emo’ crop of bands, those latest takes on the Chatterton image – the attractive yet angsty young poet figure. But the frontmen of a couple of 90s bands – who shared fans with Orlando  – spring to mind. Patrick Duff from Strangelove:

And Crispin Hunt from The Longpigs:

Add a sprinkling of Helmut Berger in the 1970s Dorian Gray film. How’s this for a Doctor Who costume:

Is it Outer Space? Or just Chelsea in the early 70s?

Actually, why hasn’t anyone written a pre-Dorian Oscar Wilde / Doctor Who crossover story yet?

Wilde: I must say, you have such youthful, boyish beauty, Doctor.

The Doctor: Awfully kind of you. Actually, I’m much older than you think. I just don’t look it.

Wilde: Really? Now there’s an idea…

One thing’s for sure. The 11th Doctor will have no trouble appealing to teens and twentysomethings. They’ll either think:

‘He’s so Intensely Intense with curious hair. I want to be with him.’

Or:

‘He’s so Intensely Intense with curious hair. I AM him.’

They’ll be fine. It’s winning the hearts of the under-13s that’s important. It’s a family show, after all, not a teen show. Doctor Who should never become Skins In Space.

He needs to be friendly and kind and fun to be with, across the board. So I hope they play up the ‘funny and cool older brother’ side of him, and let the ‘sulky yet sexy poet’ aspect take care of itself.

I am sitting here as the direct result of Brian Blessed singing in a leotard 28 years ago.

The London Library’s new wing, TS Eliot House, opened this morning. As I came in at 9.30am, I was told by the staff that I’m the very first member to use it. The redevelopment is still very much ongoing: so far there’s just this Wifi enabled Temporary Reading Room, which looks out onto quiet little Mason’s Yard. It’s a view dominated by the White Cube gallery, that towering, slightly menacing sugar lump of the London art scene. But just one room in the new wing is enough to get me excited. Walking through the familiar old stacks of the main Library – Fiction, 2nd Floor – then stepping through a previously hidden door into the Eliot annexe, I’m breathless with anticipation. It might as well be a childhood birthday. What kind of a person gets excited over library annexes?

TS Eliot House has been named not just to honour the great poet and former Library President, but also to mark his widow Valerie’s gift of £2.5 million from his royalties. It’s the single largest donation to the Library, which exists without state funding. And of course, the lion’s share of Eliot royalties these days is not from sales of The Waste Land but from the enormously successful Lloyd-Webber musical Cats, based on Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats. It opened in 1981 with Brian Blessed and Elaine Paige in the original cast of warbling felines, all decked out in furry leotards.

There’s also some new toilets in the Eliot block. Very modern and shiny, with a range of pretty multi-coloured floor tiles designed by the Turner prize-winning artist Martin Creed. The lightbulb man. As I try the loos out, mindful of who paid for them, I think of that schoolboy anagram of the poet’s name: toilets.

More seriously, though, and as it’s the New Year and a time for resolutions and self-reflection, I muse on that famous line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:  ‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.’ So arresting, so sad, and so sobering. How one’s life gets measured out one way or another whatever you do, and how you’d better make sure it’s measured in something you’re happy with. Or at least, don’t mind too much.

So for 2009, the plan is to try to take charge of the year, rather than just let the year happen. I won’t say yes to doing something out of sheer politeness any more. I spent too much of 2008 agreeing to things, only to find myself pacing Archway Road for weeks afterwards in a blind fury, scolding myself for committing to a project or booking I didn’t actually want to do, whether it was a DJ gig or a music gig, or a writing gig where I wasn’t in the least bit interested in the subject matter (and in the case of reviews, I’ve done more than enough for a CV anyway).

***

Something I have been asked to do recently is to talk about the Orlando album, Passive Soul. Thanks to Tim Chipping and his Herculean persistence, it’s now been given a digital reissue on iTunes, making it officially available for the first time in ten years. He also ensured the album comes topped up with all the b-sides from the same period. Including demos and a cover of the Kenickie track ‘Acetone’.

A quick Google reveals that the album often has a kind of flattering default opinion hovering about it, with people on message boards using it in arguments to show off their knowledge of Great Lost Albums Of The 90s. Which is fine by me, though obviously I’m biased. Regardless, it did pretty well with the proper critics on its release in 1997. NME gave the album 8/10, while Melody Maker included it in their Top 20 Albums Of The Year.

And at about 4AM on January 1st 2009, while staggering drunkenly outside the Boogaloo, I am stopped by a young couple.

‘Are you Dickon Edwards? We’re big Orlando fans…’

It’s the first time I’ve been recognised as Dickon From Orlando in years.

I’ve also just remembered that ‘Prufrock’ is half-quoted in an Orlando song, ‘Contained’ (‘In this life that is measured out / in bus stops and rain’).

Is it a sign of things coming together? Well, it’s a reminder I should write about the album.

Here’s the link to Passive Soul on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=299601661&id=299601510&s=143444

Tim wants to know how I feel about the songs now, particularly the lyrics. I’d quite like to know too. Let’s find out. Off we go with the iPod…

Furthest Point Away
Hah – this now makes me think of the Go Team, of all people… A case of throwing everything into the mix at once. Dexys, soul records, Spector bluster. Lyrically – the misanthropic socialist, wanting a revolution as long as it doesn’t mean talking to people – and ‘soul-cialist’, too. ‘A wink begets a sigh / you won’t pre-empt so why should I’ is pure Edwyn Collins verbose camp. Am I playing guitar on this one? Probably struggling if I am.

Just For A Second
Great pop song, forged by the producer of Cliff Richard’s ‘Wired For Sound’. Definitely playing guitar on this one – weird, out of time chords strummed upside down. Fantastic vocal performance from Tim. ‘Through no real fault of your own / You were born with a withering tone / You’re out on the town / Making people impress you” is actually more Fosca than Orlando. Going out to impress or trying to impress people is one thing, MAKING others impress YOU is a less expected line. So I’m showing off  on the lyrics front with little bits of wordplay and arch reversal, at the risk of losing the listener.

Nature’s Hated
Prefer the more raw demo version (included with the reissue) but only slightly. Excellent contrast to ‘Furthest Point’ in the arrangement, as it lets the song breathe. The self-pitying in the words grates with me now. Very much a younger Dickon’s lyric. I’m no less free from bouts of feeling sorry for myself these days, but back then even my miserableness had a certain naïve charm. I envy his youth – what right has he to moan with skin that good?

On Dry Land
Never cared for this at the time. Probably out of vanity: I just supplied the words while Tim came up with the music entirely separately (no idea how to play it myself), but today it sounds right up my street…The kind of record I’d track down if it wasn’t by a band I was in. Brilliant stuff. A real 70s musical feel to the music. Stephen Schwartz, A Chorus Line, Paul Williams…

Contained
Okay, this is pretty much one of the best things I’ve ever helped to make. Please, please, download this if you download any one Orlando track. No false modesty here. A ton of influences (TS Eliot as mentioned, but also Billy Bragg, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, The Beatles’ ‘For No One’, The Style Council, Jimmy Webb). Tim sings his heart out, I actually play the guitar without falling over.

Afraid Again
The album is just showing off now. Excellent songs, beautifully realised. I remember coming up with the main riff on guitar, and Tim transferred it to a synth. Very much the  sound of a band who are free from external fashions. Actually, it sounds a bit like Take That are NOW – dreamy, mature pop without being cloying.

Happily Unhappy
This completes the trilogy of ‘showing off’ songs. I came up with the chords in my Bristol bedsit when learning the guitar for the first time. I think I was trying to learn a Carpenters number, and ended up with this flowing ditty instead. Lyrics are a bit lazy – apart from the bit about thinking too much all the time. That’s actually quite a strange thing to hear in a pop song. Of course, that’s the narrator’s dilemma – his mind is out of sync with his heart, and he can’t even relax his own words into the simple language of a ballad.

Don’t Sleep Alone
A rather raunchy sentiment by my standards… Lyrics are rather like late Abba, in that aloof and disdainful way of commenting on a relationship, or the want of one. Fabulous brass solo. Anyone got Mark Ronson’s phone number? Nods to Sondheim’s ‘Being Alive’ in the lyrics towards the end.

Save Yourself
Very much Late Orlando. Thoroughly fed up with all things, and angry with it. Uneasy and personal listening for me – I can hear barbed remarks of the day set down here – from letters, from arguments.

Three Letters
The darkest and most selfish lyric I’ve written, brilliantly arranged by Tim into a desolate torch song turn. Gripping, cathartic.

Here, So Find Me
The one with the big orchestra, Tim outdoing McAlmont & Butler. My position in the band at this point was pretty much faxing lyrics to the studio then going back to bed. Lyrics are about walking the most dangerous possible streets on purpose – hoping to be mugged or worse, purely to get some kind of human contact. Proper orchestration rather than just turning the keyboard bits into strings. Closing piano is sublime.

Hero
The secret track. A cover of the Shelley track from the Sarah Records EP. A surprise from Tim to me.

And of the B-sides:

Something To Write Home About
A very shy song, very proudly sung by Tim. KG RIP.

Fatal
Orlando do TLC-style R&B. Pretty damn well, really. No, really! Lyrics are a bit unwieldy. Sorry, Tim.

Up Against It
I absolutely adore this one. So beautifully realised and performed. Lyrics are possibly a bit too overwrought. And that’s coming from me.

Someday Soon
A favourite lyric: ‘I wish I was a girl / Because you’re only nice to girls…’ Imagine the likes of Oasis singing that! I do, nightly. Should be ‘were a girl’ if you’re a stickler for formal grammar. But ‘I wish I was…’ sounds better here.

You’ve Got The Answer Wrong
Oh god – I’ve just remember this is actually a song I wrote for the Queercore punk band The Children’s Hour. Transformed and vastly improved into this well-dressed cocktail jazz setting. Perfect for El Records.

A Life’s Aside
I’m very fond of this one. It’s rather beautifully strange and otherworldly and woozy.

All in all, Orlando were a pretty varied band. And indeed, invariably pretty. We were restless, fearless, luckless and, sadly for us, commercially hopeless. But never pointless.