Fosca are now likely to be gigging in March, starting with Milan. This rather galvanizes me into Fosca work, and I find myself alive with new chord patterns, melodies and lyrics again.
Sunday: to the Windmill to see Gentleman Reg. Walking up Brixton Hill some people shout at me, so I increase my pace. One of them runs after me and taps me on the shoulder. I turn around, fearing the worse yet again.
It’s Reg and his band. I apologise and point out that I’m used to being shouted at in the street, and have learned to ignore it. Which rather makes it hard for one’s friends to signal to you in the street, but I suppose that’s the price I have to pay. But for what, exactly? For being an increasingly wary rabbit-like figure, wrought with anxiety?
It turns out that Reg’s London contact for accommodation and borrowing equipment is Sheila Chipperfield, who remembers me from the times we’ve met in the past. She’s always friendly and fun company, with what pigeonholing music journalists probably dub a Minor Britpop Past, as Elastica’s other bassist.
She’s hanging around Brixton Hill with Reg and the band in that fidgety gap between soundcheck and stage time, thinking about getting something to eat. The time-honoured gig ritual. Sheila tells me she’s working on new music with Stuart from Menswear, plus she does a fair amount of DJ-ing.
At the Windmill, she films the bands for YouTube, the popular internet video website that currently fills so many column inches. A very 2007 thing to do at a concert.
Also at the gig is another friend I’ve seen on and off for years, Howard Mollett, and Reg’s ex-pat Canadian friend Ms Mar. Ms M has spent the two years since I saw her at Reg’s last London gigs building up new London friendships. Including Ms Mira Manga, who I’ve also vaguely known for years. And Mira’s there too. She says Ms Mar is now her Best Friend. Canadians are usually pretty good for friendships. They tend to have a less hysterical, more considered response to the world than Americans or Britons. Comparatively.
Only unctuous whelks use phrases like ‘it’s a small world’. But I get a small frisson when I see people I’ve previously known separately come together like this, whether as creative collaborators or friends or lovers. And it helps to remind me that the people don’t disappear or pause on freeze-frame when I leave a room.
Reg says the single most noticeable difference between Toronto and London is seeing (and smelling) people smoking indoors. Another sign of early 2007, as opposed to later. The England smoking ban comes into place on July 1st. These are the Last Days of Smoking.
Gentleman Reg’s set is suitably joyous, and I’ve raved about him enough before. But the two other support acts at the Windmill are quite unusual and deserve a mention. Lyndsey Cockwell is a solo performer, armed with a polka-dot dress, a vocal mic, a bass guitar and a loop-sampling pedal. She does that impressive party trick of building up a backing track of loops and playing against them, all live. In this case, layers of bass lines and vocal harmonies. Owen P of Final Fantasy also does this with his violin. Such a set-up limits your form of songwriting somewhat, being unable to switch tempos or keys easily, but working with limits and parameters gets the creative muscles toned. I regard Final Fantasy songs as better written than many efforts of traditional bands.
Sheila C suggests that if I married Ms Cockwell, and decided to take the surname change instead of her, I’d have a doubly rude name. I fire back that I’ve previously envisioned the same with Louise Wener. Sheila says she’s often thought about the result of marrying Tim Wheeler from Ash. Sheila Wheeler.
The other band is The Bronsteins, three young women who look very New York but are apparently from London. The front woman sports big glasses and pink leggings, the drummer resembles a Flamenco dancer, albeit in jersey and jeans; all exotic cheekbones and bun hair. She drums in that curious Mo Tucker-like way, percussive rather than fluid, on the toms when most drummers would hit cymbals. I think about that Lou Reed quote, ‘cymbals eat guitars’, and wonder if they’re aware of it.
At the gig, I chat to a man from Toronto. He asks me, ‘What part of Europe does your accent come? I can’t pinpoint it, but I can tell it’s not your first language.’
What IS my accent? I didn’t take to having the Suffolk accent of my surroundings, so I grew up with what I thought suited me. A kind of non-specific Southern English middle-class accent, not quite posh but not quite matey. It always sounded to me like a geeky, nigh-autistic lisping teen monotone, though I’ve never really been much of a geek either. Now I’m in my thirties, the teenage inflection has morphed into something deeper and odder. It’s the accent of someone who isn’t entirely of this world, but is happy to stay here. If it’s okay with everyone else.
