Loose Ends on Radio 4 last Saturday. A new interview with Stephen Sondheim is followed with a performance by the BMX Bandits. This really happens, and cannot be an aural hallucination engendered by my current illness. I apparently have some kind of carsickness-like strain of flu virus whose symptoms are sporadic burning sensations in the head (often at the back of my head), dizziness and nausea. Plus the usual aches and pains, coughing and snuffling.
At the doctor's:
Doctor: You're the seventh person I've seen today with those symptoms. There is (wait for it!) a lot of it about.
Me: So what can I do?
Doctor: Nothing. Wait until it finishes.
Me: How long is that likely to last?
Doctor: Three weeks.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
I have to go back if the condition lasts longer than three weeks, or if I start <i>staggering</i>. As I'm fond of a good stagger or two of an evening, I may well not notice.
To Kash Point in South London, the latest club to be run by Mr Matthew Glamorre. Mr Glamorre was a member (and for all I know still is) of the exotic performance art pop group started by Leigh Bowery, Minty. In the 90s, Mr G was the MC at a popular London club called Smashing. This was peopled by many a Britpop "celebrity" of the time, and took place in a dark room under Regent Street known as Eve's Club, where the walls, ceiling, and columns were covered with Eden-like plastic vines. I consult the blurred half-memories of my mind, and in them it's 199X, I can see the wet, crowded underlit dancefloor, the tiny overpriced bar, Jarvis Cocker and others from Pulp, Alex James from Blur, pretty much all of Menswear, Courtney Love getting "married" to another Stevie Nicks-like girl, the time when people in there were picked to appear in Pulp's 'Mis-Shapes" video. They didn't pick me. I clearly wasn't mis-shapen enough.
However, mingling with music industry types per se has never attracted me as much as mingling with the fantastically dressed, regardless of who they are. I'd much rather spend an evening with a group of five unknown pretentious art-fag types who don't really "do" anything, than be surrounded by a hundred dressed-down famous and important types. Just because you're famous, it shouldn't mean you should "slum it". Typically, it's the men who let the side down rather than the women. Famous women still tend to dress up in public, even though they don't need to. Famous men often grow ghastly proto-beards, and sport awful trainers and t-shirts. As soon as Menswear became well-known, most of the band ditched their trademark suits at once. This, I thought, was a terrible shame. There really is NO excuse for dressing down in a club known for its dressed-up crowd, but many men still do it. At Trash you can see many a stylish girl on the arms of an absolute gorilla of no woman born. They can't ALL be drug dealers.
[Idea for character in a "cool" film. A drug dealer played by Michael Palin, clean-shaven in a nice suit. Nothing violent happens.]
As a self-confessed narcissist, you might think I prefer those around me to be less aesthetically appealing, in order to make me look better by comparison. But it simply isn't true. I want everyone to look beautiful. Or at least for the men to have had a shave that day. Call me eccentric, then.
At Kash Point, the ratio of the dressed up to the dressed down is, I am delighted to discover, admirably high. Once inside, I am convinced I'm in a scene from one of my favourite films, "Liquid Sky" (now frustratingly deleted on DVD). A colourful mixture of Nu-Hoxton and Nu-Romo peacock style abounds. Extreme hair, extreme make up. Outfits that are created rather than just worn. It's Stay Beautiful with electropop rather than rock, or NagNagNag without the crowds of scruffy dull people just trying to be Where It's At.
On this occasion, Kash Pont is at Crash in Vauxhall. I get off at Vauxhall station, and suddenly realise I am alone, lost and terrified in South London at 11pm. As you exit the station, there's a veritable labyrinth of confusing subways, barriers, scaffolding, roundabouts and dozens of unmarked streets. No signs to help pedestians, except for one apologising for the inconvenience of the road-works.
A typically English trait – to spend energy on apologising rather than on what people affected might really want. After the recent devastating postal strike, London residents received letters of apology from Royal Mail, adding that by way of compensation, the company had donated £1m to the city's bid to host the Olympic Games. The idea of spending this money on preventing future strikes or on improving the postal service must have seemed far less important.
North London has its share of violent crime, but the stereotype about the Dreaded South permeates. I wander in exactly the wrong direction for half an hour, and am convinced I'm a yellow Police Notice sign waiting to happen:
"THURSDAY, 11PM. Did you see a man with bleached hair, suit and make-up being stabbed to death? If so, don't you agree he was asking for it?"
At one point, I find myself outside a huge building marked "British Interplanetary Society". I feel like banging on the doors and shouting "Never mind other planets. Where on Earth am I?".
After much wandering, I eventually find the venue. Echoing across the nameless lanes and darkened railway arches is a siren-like unmistakable electroyelp:
"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"
Turn again, Dickon Whittington… Mr Simon Bookish is clearly onstage.
Tonight, Mr Glamorre looks and comperes like Club Smashing was only yesterday, resplendent in a customised red mechanic's boiler suit and visor shades. Tonight's PAs comprise a veritable electropop festival, with each act doing two or three songs. I manage to watch the likes of Simon Bookish, Cantankerous, Replicant, Silence is Sexy, Baxendale, Bishi, Super Studio, and Viktor. The latter has a couple of go-go dancing girlish boys, with slogans on their chests and enormous false eyelashes. The music is all blips and beeps and backing track-heavy, though far more pop song-based than electroclash. Alex Baxendale ditches his guitar to do some robot dancing. Even Tim Baxendale has a suit on. Everyone looks marvellous, and I adore it all.
Alex Baxendale, afterwards (mock-sniffily): I notice we're the only act tonight with proper middle-eights.
One booked act doesn't turn up, but it's just as well as the bill over-runs and Baxendale leave the stage sometime past 2am. The missing group is the problematically named band Stupid C—, whom I've still yet to see. I am known to the singer, young Mr Martin Tomlinson, with whom I appeared in a fashion show some years ago. Martin is a beautiful boyish dandy and model, and when I bumped into him at the Hidden Cameras ICA gig earlier this year, he told me about his band. When he mentioned their name, I assumed he was taking the mickey. A few weeks later, Stupid C— appears in The Guardian newspaper's list of The 40 Best Bands In Britain.
Back at Crash, and the bar staff and security are all unusually friendly, a welcome change in a London club. There's a Finnish brand of bottled beer on sale for £1.50. It's called Lapin Kula, which presumably translates as "Cheapskate". But Kash Point tends to skip from venue to venue. Its next location is the Purple Turtle in Mornington Crescent on Dec 31st. So that's my New Year's Eve sorted out.
For some reason, there's fair amount of photographers with, appropriately enough, anachronistically large and clunky 80s cameras and tripods. At one point Mr Glamorre cries at them from the stage, "Stop making my club look like Ibiza!".
If anything, I fear my appearance may not be <i>enough</i> for the club. But, once again, I am taken aside by a female photographer, and an imprompu photo session takes place. She asks what I call my "look". I reply, "Twenty-First Century Fop". Later, I realise I should have used a description suggested by Ms <lj user=antiutopia>, "Ice Prince".
Still feeling unwell as I post this. Am comforting myself with the splendid "Saint Morrissey" by Mark Simpson. The first Smiths biography to be well-written as opposed to just researched. About time.
