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Bid is now keen to do <a href="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/">Scarlet's Well</a> properly and take on the Music Biz World, something he hasn't done since the Monochrome Set were on Warners nearly 20 years ago. He's seeking proper Scarlet's Well management, booking agents, PR, higher-profile record distribution and so on. There's definitely thousands of people out there who would adore SW if they only got to know about them.

It helps that people don't need to know about the Monochrome Set at all. The latter are a veteran UK group in a No Future Plans state, while SW are, to all intents and purposes, a very much alive band from a foreign shore (indeed, from another world) where the sky's the limit musically, inviting the listener into the world illustrated by the songs. Though, for admirers of the MS, one could say SW is sometimes a Doctor Who-like regeneration, as a few SW songs are unrecorded MS numbers, and the live band will definitely be performing a MS "hit" or two at concerts. But Bid is in Scarlet's Well for the international long-haul now.

I firmly believe SW could be on the Magnetic Fields / Tindersticks / Divine Comedy / Nick Cave, broadsheet-compatible level within a year of Getting Going Properly. Concerts at Shep Bush Empire, articles in colour supplements and arts sections, Jools Holland, Radio 4's Front Row, Loose Ends. The time feels right, the music is right.

The music is very good indeed. Bid, after all, is one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the English language, and with the gloriously unfettered world of SW, he's at the peak of his powers.

But that's not enough. Music alone is never enough. Not when it comes to getting people to listen to it. One must learn to speak the language of The Music Business Mandarins.

By which I refer to phrases like The Pitch, The Spin, The Idea, The Concept, The Buzz, The Soundbite, The Angle. Dirty words indeed, but an essential part of getting people to have heard of a band. One thing Bid and I have in common is having had our fingers burned, though not bitten off, by the music industry in the past. But there's now a renewed sense of optimism in the air, and an overwhelming desire to get Scarlet's Well the attention it deserves. Blood has been dripped upon Bid's media profile grave, and an elegant hand has shot up through the soil…

So, how to sell Scarlet's Well? As well as lazy, but not unhelpful comparisons with younger but more widely known upstarts like The Divine Comedy (fop-pop crooning), Tindersticks (exotic, atmospheric arrangements) and Magnetic Fields (eccentric, but accessible songwriting, a multitude of styles and genres), other names that spring to mind are The Tiger Lillies (the band from the opera "Shockheaded Peter"), Kurt Weill, Tom Waits covered by girls and girlish boys, and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods (non-ironic, gothic fantasy songs laced with metaphor, wordplay, symbolism, soul, and love).

A phrase I've started to use when speaking to people about the group is "His Dark Materials – The Musical". But then stressing that it's ultimately peerless and original stuff, which one can't get anywhere else. Wordy, pastoral, folkish, fine-crafted classic-sounding songs, more of a whole fictional world to escape into than just a band, laced with the language of E Nesbit, Poe, and Lewis Carroll. Defiantly anti-fashion and anti-rock. Pro-vocabulary, pro-creativity, pro-wit, pro-beauty. And, as I shall no doubt repeat further until the right people take notice, led by one of the greatest British singer-songwriters alive, at the peak of his creative powers.

The Scarlet's Well initial plan is to do a few choice gigs in nice venues (Bush Hall in London is ideal), and get a raised profile going among the likeminded areas of the music biz.

The pressing concern, right now, though, is to secure a manager.

Consider this entry an advert for one. If you, Dear Reader, know of a suitable cigar-chomper, please do <a href="mailto:dickon@virgin.net">get in touch.</a>