Work continues apace in the <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> camp. Tickets for the London Spitz concert <a href="http://www.wegottickets.com/gig.asp?3025">are now available to buy online</a>, and the fourth album, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" is released on May 3rd. It may not trouble the Real Charts, but it will delight those in search of some… luminous creatures in their pop music.
In rehearsal, we're now tackling a few select Monochrome Set songs alongside the Scarlet's Well repertoire. The Spitz show will be Bid's first UK gig in eight years, and the spreading of a little happiness to M Set fans who never got to see his old group in concert seems only fair. I wonder what it must be like for the under-25-year-old members of the Scarlet's Well band when one's lead singer teaches you a new song to play, saying, "Here's one I wrote a few years before you were born…"
The new album is sold in typically luxurious Siesta Records packaging: gaudy digipak with full colour 16 page booklet. Visually and aurally, it's utter joy on toast:
<img src="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/booklet-dreamspider.jpg" alt="">
When I'm trying to get the album reviewed, the expensive artwork means I can only send out promo CD versions in simple cardboard wallets.
But this is fair enough, I feel. The full package is too beautiful to give away en masse to indifferent whelks of no woman born. Some PR campaigns, like the one for the new Morrissey album, won't even let journalists own a copy of any kind. They have to go to the record company's own office, listen and take notes. When Taylor Parkes reviewed the last Morrissey album in 1997 for Melody Maker, he had to make do with a cassette. It's interesting how the more "important" an artist is, the more paranoid their record company is about losing sales to bootlegging. Yet they are exactly the sort of artists who can afford to lose such sales.
One more interesting way of getting a full, proper shop copy of "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" for nil pounds is by entering the Caption Competition at the SW website, featuring our esteemed accordion player, Mr White (<lj user=martylog>):
<img src="http://www.bid.clara.net/forum/bamboomartin.jpg" alt="">
Oh yes! Feel free to devise your own caption and post it on the new Forum at http://www.scarletswell.co.uk
