New Fosca badges, made by the record company:

It’s their idea. ‘We Won’t Get On’ is a reference to the Fosca song ‘Square In The Social Circle’:

‘You’re wearing a badge that reads We Won’t Get On / Because you think it’ll save you time in the long run’

Another review in Swedish, this time from Nojesguiden. Four and a half out of six, plus a smiley face:

http://www.nojesguiden.se/skivrecension/fosca-painted-side-rocket

Interview and scary pic of me here:

***
Completely lacking in energy today. Tonight’s Fosca rehearsal is best described as a ‘jazz session’. As in the old musician’s joke, ‘I did not make a mistake – I was playing jazz.’ Towards the end of the rehearsal, I can barely play the guitar properly (no change there). Fingers seem unwilling to push down strings, left arm heavy as lead. Just sheer baffling fatigue, completely unearned after a day of lounging about at home or walking in Crouch End with Jennifer C. Charley says she feels the same, and I wonder if the rehearsal room itself (Enterprise, off Charing Cross) has some mystical energy-sapping qualities about it. Well, we’re back in Camden’s Zed One next week for one last practise before the Swedish tour. Just as well.

Have had the most terrible trouble getting new songs finished in time to record them in Karlstad next week. Lots of sitting at my desk clawing melodies and lyrics onto the page, only to shout ‘Argh!’ at regular intervals. There’s been a lot of ‘Argh’ moments. Not so much the gasp of frustration at writer’s block, more annoyance when a song is either not good enough, or good enough but too much like somebody else’s song for comfort. I started playing a lovely melody the other day, thinking it was a little bit like ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ by Mr Dylan, but not too close. Just to check, I then went on YouTube to play the Dylan song and realised that not only had I unconsciously copied the song chord for chord, but that it was even in exactly the same key. Back to the drawing board, or rather the ‘Argh!’ Board.

But playing Rachel and Charley the little I had come up with – and hearing them say nice things back – made all the difference. One vamping tune is somewhere between Jonathan Richman’s Egyptian Reggae and the theme from the game Tetris. That kind of ersatz Eastern folk melody – a bit Morocco, a bit Russian Cossacks, a bit Fiddler On The Roof -  that lends itself easily to danceable pop music.

The other song is a cute cyclical melody – the b-side, I guess – a bit like the sweeter moments of the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. I’ve been humming it for ages, and the only way to get it out of my head is to put it on a record.

So that’s the two new Fosca songs sorted. Before next Tuesday’s rehearsal, I need to finish the song structures, add lyrics, and program the bass and drums using Garageband on the iBook. I’ve never used the program before, or indeed done any computer-based song programming entirely by myself. Up till now I’ve always sat with a producer in a studio, told them what I’m hearing in my head, and they’ve done all the actual clicking and pointing with the computer mouse in question. Unfortunately Tom Edwards  – now a busy  session musician – and Alex Mayor, the most recent Fosca programmers, are both unavailable this week. So I have to bite the digital bullet and work out how to do it myself. How do I feel about that? I feel more bouts of ‘Argh’ are on the way.

Tom’s excuse is worth noting: he’s playing Greece with Fields of the Nephilim.

***

Morning – shamefully lounging about listening to local radio phone-ins, I’m afraid. I note this in the hope it will stop me doing it again. Today’s subject: is Heather Mills setting back womankind thirty years? Have to admit that like so many I find the whole McCartney divorce as engrossing as any soap opera. It’s none of the public’s business how much of Mr Beatle’s millions she’s been awarded and how much she wanted, of course, but the basic narrative fits everything from Dynasty and Dallas to the mythical Furies. There’s something superhuman about Ms Mills and her all-conquering ire. Her sheer nerve keeps people agog. If the press truly despised her, they’d just ignore her entirely.

Afternoon spent with Jennifer C in Crouch End. She’s quit her job with an organisation who do humanitarian campaign work. It was her dream job, but their more spiritually-inspired working methods – involving some kind of guru – made her feel out of place. Her boss upbraided her for not contributing to the ‘natural team telepathy’.

Her poor cat Vyvian has developed some kind of inflammatory illness, and has lost a shocking amount of weight. He’s not eating his food, and while I chat with Jennifer in the kitchen, the cat keeps coming in and approaches his food bowl, but only to give the morsels light licks without taking any into his mouth. Vyvian’s had a tough enough life as it is: including being rescued from an abandoned litter, and accidentally being trapped inside a moving tumble dryer (not by Jennifer, one must add). Nine lives, and then some.

On Crouch End Broadway, we go to the Spiazzo Italian cafe (plus food hall and deli) with its comfortable booths. The place used to be a large electrical shop selling TVs and so on, and can still be seen in the opening credits of Channel 4’s Peep Show. In fact, the comedy connection goes further: in Shaun Of The Dead, it’s the electrical shop where Simon Pegg works.  Now it’s utterly transformed into its present cappuccino-based incarnation; the 80s whiteness and space of the TV shop giving way to fashionably cluttered wooden shelves of expensive chocolates and deli meats. From striplighting to stripped pine.

***

New routine: I’m going to try writing a diary entry at the end of the day, associating it with the things one has to do just before going to bed. Previously I’ve either spent much of the day itself thinking about what to write, and then either spending hours writing it, or worse: hours NOT writing it. I’ve already overdone this entry. But considering I felt unable to barely do anything at all when I sat down to type this, I feel capable and, yes, happier for it. Unfortunately, I’m with Dorothy Parker on this one: ‘I hate writing; I love having written.’