Sunday night: to Kash Point at Moonlighting, Greek Street, Soho. KP has become an occasional event in town, but it’s otherwise unchanged from its days as a monthly club. It’s still a little corner of London that’s forever Leigh Bowery Land (I guess to younger generations, Mr Bowery might be best known as the inspiration for the performance artist character in ‘Spaced’, vividly personified by David Walliams). The usual people dressed in artily outre attire: lots of homemade shoulder pads, dayglo robot androgyny, epicene young men in latex ‘gimp’Â garb with 1950s housewife shades (ie pure Bowery), sci-fi widow veils, frilly mutant Ascot hats, high boys in higher heels. One thinks of the movie ‘Liquid Sky’, or JP Gaultier’s costume designs in ‘The Fifth Element’, or Japanese manga cartoons. For once, I don’t feel the most cartoonish-looking person in the room.
Actually, Heath Ledger’s Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’ wouldn’t be out of place here, either.
The most striking ensemble is worn by the KP stalwart known as Little Richard. He tends to go for the ‘things found in a skip’ approach to dressing up: lots of duct tape, foam sheets, bubble wrap and bin liners. Topped off tonight with one of those mirrors used in Tube station corridors or on sharp bends in country roads: circular and convex and large enough to mask his face entirely. I presume he either has eye-holes (and beer holes) just behind the mirror, or that he genuinely can’t see a thing and is perfectly happy to stay that way all evening. Regardless, he’s a memorable sight, nonchalantly propping up the bar. People use his face to check their make-up.
I heard Kash Point usually provides a dressing room area for people with extreme outfits to get changed, but I still like to think Richard arrives and goes home like this, sitting on buses, standing at bus stops, big round mirror for a head.
Other faces there – at least those I can see – include DJs Bishi (who as a performer was nominated for a South Bank Show award this year), Richard Torry and Matthew Glamorre, whose 40th birthday it is. Patrick Wolf says hi, as does a young lady from Croydon who says kind things about Fosca. Young things: Lawrence G, Nat R, Harry from Club Bohemia. And from my past: Trevor, the drummer from Plastic Fantastic (and Minty, and Miranda Sex Garden). I last spoke to him on the Romo tour, in early 1996. His girlish long hair is now cut to a more boyish floppy fringe-length, but he’s still thin and cheekboney, and decked out in a Manga-style suit and tie.
We talk about the infamous Romo tour. Funny how one can be nostalgic for failure. Except of course, there were more than a few people who did like the band (Orlando), who wrote letters, who sent homemade presents.
There’s having no fans. And then there’s having little sales and meagre audiences, but a small following. Long letters of devotion from more than a few people one doesn’t know personally. Facebook messages a decade later from people who recognise your name and just want to say how much they liked such-and-such a song.
But even having no fans whatsoever (outside of friends and family) isn’t entirely failure, either. True failure is doing nothing at all in the first place – not trying. I’m glad I did, rather than didn’t. But it’s so hard to even talk about this period without getting defensive, and sounding vain (why stop now, etc.)
The trouble with talking about yourself is that you have to declare an interest.
