Tuesday March 30th

The new Index Page Picture Stars this time are my better-looking younger brother, Tom, and self, last Christmas in Bildeston. I think I look like Steve Buscemi. No one else agrees. Tom plays guitar on a new disco version of “We Are All Friends Here.”

We mixed half the album at Crosstown, a studio in Fulham where Mark did his apprenticeship. We used a digital editing suite normally suited for making unofficial Doctor Who radio dramas rather than pop music, and it all sounds very Anti-Rock. Oh well. Tapes of the results are sent off to various souls in the hope something happens, and I am rescued from passive DIY hell. I’ve run out of money to finish the mixes at Crosstown, so we back up the remaining songs onto digital computer files, in the hope that Jyoti Mishra can decode them at his place in Norwich and we can mix them with him. I’m keeping my hopes at ground level, though. If we just have to re-record the whole lot at somewhere where there’s someone who (1) knows how to make the equipment work 100%, and (2) has recorded bands on it before, I won’t be at all surprised.

“File Under Forsaken” stands out, nine and a half minutes but feeling like four. Fee’s wordless falsettos towards the end really make it, taking it to spiritual highs and, well, it now sounds like nothing else on earth. Perhaps a bit Mercury Rev without the drugs. “Live Deliberately” is similarly fantastically strange. The in-house engineer, Danny C, says my Juno 6 solo is so beautiful he is nearly moved to tears. Nearly.

I am finally happy with my lead vocals. Danny and Tommy Burton suggest double-tracking and a little echo, and it works. Fosca has finally found it feet. It’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not folk (despite lashings of acoustic guitars and Val & Fee’s singing styles), it’s something else, something… strange. But it’s still pop.

So I’m sending out tapes to people who run record labels, and who can hopefully pay for more studio time. I thought about getting a Job, but the past has taught me that I simply can’t hold down work: I’m either always late, or don’t turn up at all, or sit there all day and do no work. Understandably, I’ve been sacked from every job I’ve had, sooner or later.

I’ve realised two things from the recordings:

1) I am finally confident enough to be the lead singer. The trick is to double track my vocals, add a little echo, and I sound… right. At last. To be honest, I’ve decided that having the various female singers doing lead vocals isn’t the best thing for my personal, Dickony style lyrics after all, but I had to try to see if that was true first. Female backing vocals are fine, though. The mixes we’ve made with girl lead vocals ARE great, though, and I shall put them aside for now, anyway. When I played Matt Haynes (of Shinkansen Records) the mixed songs so far, he said he wasn’t “convinced” by the girl lead vocals. He’s biased, but even so. It’s just a confidence/shyness thing on my part. And I should stop thinking that, just because I’m a big Carpenters/Stereolab/female-singers in general fan, to emulate that is right for my own songs. It isn’t. Um, I think…curse this fickleness and insecurity!

2) I so want to Be In A Band as opposed to Fosca being just Mr Dickon plus Friends And Strangers Helping Out. It’s lonely! I want to rehearse regularly, and record as a band, so everyone knows what they’re playing, chips in with ideas, and feels generally good about being in Fosca proper, and happy being committed to and taking joint responsibility for Fosca. I just manage the organisational things by myself… I need a manager. Or band members that can do the management things. Or a wealthy lover.

So I’m also sending out tapes to various musical souls (some of whom have played on the recordings, and some who haven’t) in the hope they’ll want to join Fosca proper. Rachel Stevenson’s on board (on keyboards), so I now just need a permanent bass player and drummer. And perhaps one other soul on another instrument and backing vocals… but not a singer who does nothing else. I keep thinking of the girl in Deacon Blue. As ever, though, my hopes are at ground level.

Howard and I go to see the film “Gods and Monsters”, and Brendan Fraser in it keeps reminding me of that homoerotic DH Lawrence phrase: “his arm completely filled his shirt”. Mr Fraser’s muscles enter the frame some minutes before the rest of him does. He has the face of the young Elvis and the body of Henry Rollins. You don’t really notice if he can act or not.

Mark P is video-recording the events on the news, day by day. His tapes are labelled, “NATO vs Serbia… Day 1, Day 2, etc”. He is convinced it’s going to escalate into World War III. I thought NATO had been done away with at the end of the Cold War, but no. People seem to be nostalgic for the “good old days”. Nostalgic for war. The UN should be handling Serbia, not NATO. Everyone knows this, but they can’t wait to send in NATO troops… to a country where the last time the whole of Europe got involved in a crisis together there was… 1914. And then look what happened.

I feel like that 17th century Italian prophet, who, convinced that the world was going to end, went up to pregnant women on the street and insulted them for adding to the potential deathcount. All that time, that money, that pain, nine months, and what for? But I’ve mellowed my opinions slightly. Never mind reproduction is pollution. Now, reproduction is anachronism.

Warhol: “I can’t believe people are still pregnant these days.”

But the pain of parents chastising their screaming kids in the street (I always associate parents with scolding), and everyone else’s pain and worries will end: NATO will see to that. And it won’t be our fault.

I think a lot of my problem with people having children stems from my innate solipsism: I keep thinking that “there’s a child that will see a world I won’t”, and am offended. This is, of course, stupid. I’m sure there’s old women about now who will outlive me.