One cure for procrastination seems to be occasionally switching my comfortable office swivel chair for my landlady’s less comfortable but non-swivelling wooden one. If you can swivel, you can get away from the desk all too easily. All I want is to do with the so-called adjustable chair is turn the swivel off. It can’t be done; the chair is not adjustable enough. It’s a demonstration of how an excess of freedom can stifle as much as external oppression. Too much freedom just feels better.
The record label have given me till Thursday in which to write a book. Thankfully, I have written most of it already, as it’s a 60 page selection of various writings of mine, to be given away with the first 100 copies of the new Fosca album. Working title: The Portable Dickon Edwards. There will be the complete Fosca lyrics, my favourite Orlando ones, sundry rare bits and pieces from the past, morsels from the diary, the sleeve notes to the new album which turned out to be too long for the CD booklet, and a new essay ruminating on ten years of Fosca. Why Fosca? Why did I bother? Who am I again? Can I get a refund? I’m not the same Dickon now as the one who started Fosca in 1997 (and restarted it in 1998), so it’ll be interesting to contrast these versions of myself.
The Orlando lyrics are copyright the mighty Universal Music corporation. So I made a few enquiries to get the appropriate clearance for printing them in this little book, limited run though it is. I was worried about being either denied or getting no response at all from Universal, but Geoff Travis – who signed Orlando – got back to me at once, said it was fine if it was non-profit, and gave me the correct wording, i.e. ‘Orlando lyrics printed by permission of Blanco Y Negro / Universal Music’. He remains one of the few people I’ve met in the music business who actually likes music.
I checked it was okay with Tim Chipping too. As the editor of a music website, he has to deal with the process of getting permission from labels and publishers all the time, and it transpires some of them are trying to get websites to pay to feature their bands’ videos. I can understand the urgency of finding new sources of revenue in this era of expecting music for free, but that really has to be going the wrong way about it.
Have to take my hat off to Radiohead, who recently played devil’s advocate on the whole digital-versus-CD concern. They released their latest album on the Net for free. Or rather, they asked people to pay what they thought they should, which amounts to much the same thing. A few months later they released the album as a proper CD, available in the shops. And lo and behold, it goes to the top of the charts. It’s the slowest time of the year for album sales, but even so I think it’s proof people really do want to pay for things, if the things have a physical, tactile presence. There’s something innate, even atavistic, about the exchange of currency for something solid. Despite all evidence to the contrary, most people really don’t want to run their lives on the internet.
I recall Matt Haynes of Shinkansen Records mentioning to me circa 2001 that he thought listening to music on computers was ridiculous, and it wouldn’t catch on. He was half right.
The musical focus now is on that most un-downloadable of experiences, the live concert. Ancient bands are reforming every day for money-spinning, nostalgic tours, and promoters have realised they can get away with charging higher ticket prices than ever. I look at the prices on offer, and find myself thinking, ‘£40 minimum for Bjork at Hammersmith? But all she does is come onstage, play some songs, and then leave. No concert is worth £40. Except Barbra Streisand, but she’s different. She’s brought style to overpricing.’
One reason I got into gigs more than going to the theatre was because the former was so much more affordable. Now it’s cheaper for me to sit down and see Jane Horrocks in Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular in the West End, with all its sets and costume changes, diversity of character, humour, narrative, poignancy and social satire, than it is to stand and get a bad view of The Somethings at the Astoria.
But of course, this all says more about the changing world of me than it does about the changing world of anything else.
