Pausing between sifting through the many boxes of clutter in my Highgate room. I’m looking for any lyrics or essays which might be worth including in The Portable Dickon Edwards.
Making steady progress, bumping into paper ghosts as usual. Found the clippings of Simon Price’s Fosca reviews in the Independent newspaper, in 2002. He reviews one gig and the second Fosca album. Although not keen on my singing voice – to put it mildly – he does say nice things about the lyrics.
It’s not yet clear if the new album will be getting any kind of UK distribution. The label will do their best, that’s for sure. They said they were turned down by one indie distributor, who refused to touch any band with no clear UK press profile. He’s never heard of Fosca, so no deal. Rather depressing, and says something about the supposed solidarity of the UK indie scene in 2008. So maybe I should get this Independent review to them. Might make all the difference.
But – oh… My heart sinks when the whole hustling element has to come into it. The pitching, the self-justifying, the pleading for reviews. For a so-called narcissist, it might seem odd that I absolutely hate having to tell the world just why they should bother with me and my work. I was only too happy to do this in the early days of Orlando and Fosca, but ten years later, I feel rather uneasy about jumping through those particular hoops once again. But ah well, I’ll do what I can.
So what do I want for this album? Just that people can get hold of it, really. It’ll be on iTunes and available as a CD (plus book!) from the label, at the very least. I’ll play this March tour in Sweden, maybe do one last London gig, and take it from there.
I appreciate the way industry people work, though. It’s all very well saying ‘my music should sell itself’, but of course that’s not the way it works. You need to speak fluent Spin and Pitch and Label and Angle. Get a Received Opinion, a snappy pitch-phrase which is just right, and it makes all the difference. And then people might listen to the music. If there’s the time.
Maybe in my case I’d better not go with ‘The New Amy Winehouse’.
Though she does appear to have stolen my bottle of peroxide.
