I was going to write about the Fosca gig in Berlin. Really, I was. I kept sitting down to write, listing everything that I did on the trip, looking over notes. But then I found I couldn’t gear myself up to properly compose the thing.

And I think I now know why. An awful amount of travel writing bores me rigid. It’s the prose equivalent of holiday snaps. Big deal, you went abroad. Interesting for you, less so for your readers. How did the gig in Berlin go? It was fine. No one died.

No, I feel like a brattish child sulking at having to write ‘What I Did On My Holidays’ on the first day back at school. ‘We went abroad and it was good’. Find your angle, dear child, find your angle!

Trouble is, when you play a gig or act in a show, you often only tend to recall the flaws, the mistakes, and what went wrong. ‘Ah, yes, that was the gig where my guitar’s B string snapped on the fourth song. I was playing it, then it snapped. So I had to put a new one on. I’ve got a ton of stories like that: stick around!’

***

But of course, now I’ve started writing this at about 2pm on December 21st, with the sun of the Shortest Day already fading at the window, and interesting details are coming to me, and they remind me of further details, and so on.

That’s always been my trouble with writing. Being able to start. And then being able to stop, because writing calls down writing. I’ll have to split the results of this session into easily digestible morsels, or risk getting emails again. ‘You don’t write often enough! And when you do, you write too much!’

***

So: the venue was a clean, cosy and brightly-lit bar in the former East Berlin. It seemed to have once been a tiny theatre – pre-War, I’d say. But the stage was built for vocal lectures rather than amplified bands: no DI boxes, meaning the keyboards and laptop and mikes had to be plugged straight into the mixer directly to our side.

Apparently the neighbours had threatened to call the police if we got too loud, so our guitar amps had to be turned down to the absolute minimum. During the gig, Charley told me she could hear my electric guitar’s unamplified sound – the scratchy, tinny sound of the plectrum against the strings – far louder than the amp it was plugged into. That’s pretty quiet.

Despite this, the venue owner got on stage halfway through our set and asked us to be even quieter, or the police definitely WOULD be called. I decided against making on-mike jokes involving the word ‘Stasi’. Or indeed referencing ‘The Lives Of Others’ – the recent movie about unkind people in East Berlin listening in on their neighbours. But it did mean I went into a whispered rendition of the Fosca song immediately after this warning, complete with ‘Shh!’ noises and a finger to my lips, to the amusement of the audience.

***

Other Berlin memories:

– One of Charley’s Berlin friends apparently saying I looked too good to not be on a stage – and that I should play James Bond.

– Suddenly seeing a huge poster of my face as I open the door to the venue toilets (an advert for the gig, using the cover of the single).

– The man on reception at the hotel literally throwing sweets at us as we check out, in a jokingly grumpy way. ‘Here you go! Have your flipping souvenirs of Berlin, now get lost!’ They were little packets of Gummi bears. Which always makes me think of Hedwig And The Angry Inch.

– Seeing traditional German Christmas markets everywhere I look, reminding me how they’re getting more popular in British cities these days, along with ice rinks. The Lufthansa meal on the flight back includes a chocolate Santa.

– The kiosks on Berlin tube station platforms selling novels which seem second hand, alongside softcore porn mags, which I’m hoping are not second hand.

– As ever, the difference in pedestrian crossings. The red and green flashing man in Berlin traffic lights is slightly rotund and wears a hat. Apparently he’s an actual character with a backstory. Presumably involving a lot of standing about, then walking, then standing about again.

Quick news: the Fosca single is on iTunes now. Those without turntables can go forth and download.

Here’s two Fosca videos from the Bar Academy gig on Sat 13th:

Idiot Savant

I’ve Agreed To Something I Shouldn’t Have

===

Quick other news: Nambucca has burnt down! The nice indie bar and gig venue on Holloway Road in which I saw the New Royal Family and a bevy of other bands the other week. No casualties, thankfully. But if that’s the end of the venue, then it’s a real shame – it was pretty much the only bar on the entire street I felt I could go into without darts pausing in mid-flight. I once walked into there to hear a Fosca song being played by the DJ. I never quite know how to react on the (obviously rare) occasions when that happens – where to look, what expression. I generally wince, hearing only the flaws. Usually my voice.

===

Messages:

I say, did you realise that your blog gets a name check in the current edition of the Chartered Institute of Librarian and Information Professional’s Gazette, as an example of an elegant design? Your fame spreads ever further!

That’s marvellous. I should point out the site design is all Neil Scott’s work, with photos by Claudia Andrei. I didn’t seek him out – Mr S found me and rescued me from LiveJournal World, where I wasn’t really best placed. I think I’m better suited to a stand-alone format. Because I tend to stand (or sit) alone with most things. It isn’t necessarily a compliment, but it works for me.

Similarly, some people are better suited to the stage than the audience pit, not because of any vocation to perform, but because they just feel more normal up there. And safer.

====

I need to set down memories of the three recent Fosca gigs before it gets any later.

Hamburg. Fri Dec 5th 2008.
First time in Germany proper, as one can hardly count my previous visit – changing planes in Frankfurt on the way to Japan. First time to try out my GSCE German. Except in the two decades since I passed that exam with an ‘A’ grade, virtually all the knowledge has deserted me through sheer lack of use. Shaming. Still, I have a solution: at this point I happen to be dating a Young American (and he is Bowie-esque too), who can speak it fluently. To NOT bring Boy H along on this short trip seems the height of sarcasm, frankly.

He’s not in the band, so I do the decent thing and pay for his flight myself rather than impose the cost on the record label, who already have the unenviable task of promoting a band who’ve announced they’re splitting up. These two gigs with labelmates Friday Bridge – who are very much a going concern -  are presented as ‘showcases’ for the label, therefore, rather than Fosca gigs per se. Which is fine with me.

From London City Airport (and Lufthansa’s erroneously named ‘Quick’ self-service check-in machines), via a perfectly pleasant flight (free top-ups of in-flight wine), to Hamburg. Our hotel is a hybrid affair: it’s really a large youth hostel with a hotel part stuck on. Lots of backpack-wielding young people in the lobby. A silly lift arrangement involving putting your room’s card key into a slot by the lift buttons, in order to reach the right floor. Why, in God’s name? Isn’t the premise of a locked door on your hotel room enough? Are students in Hamburg so completely unable to resist the urge to play Knock Down Ginger that a card-key system has to be built into the lifts?

A: Hello, travelling student!
B: Hello, other travelling student!
A: Do you know what? I rather wager a game of Knock Down Ginger in the hotel section of this hostel will prove personally satiating at this juncture.
B: You mean, where we run along the corridors, knocking on all the doors, then run away giggling?
A: Why, the very same. Your thoughts are aligned with mine to an almost golden level of symbiosis.
B: Mmm. But isn’t Knock Down Ginger something only small children in Britain aged 12 and under tend to do? Not hulking students aged 19 and 20 whose arms entirely fill their sleeves?
A: Now look here, Susan. I’ll have you know I have taken pains to research this thoroughly, and I think you’ll find that right now it’s the best possible use of our time and energy, all things considered. It will also be Fun.
B: Oh. Fun. Well… If you insist, Clarence. (mumbles) I love you.
A: What was that?
B: Sorry, I mean: Yeahhh! Let’s go for it! Wicked! Etc!

We spend a long afternoon in the city, the air chilly but clear. We’re given a tour by the gig’s promoter and DJ, Jens, taking in the huge blackened Gothic spire of the St Nikolai Memorial. It was built by a Victorian Brit (Gilbert Scott) only to be razed by the Allies during the umpteen firestorms and bombings of the city in WW2. Incredibly, there’s still a lot of pre-war buildings intact, not least the 1920s architecture of the Chilehaus, with its sharp ship-like prow cutting into the sky. I look up at it and am reminded of early 80s OMD sleeves.

We also do the Spiegel building, with its bright orange 70s kitsch cafe, where Charley once was photographed in one of her earlier bands. We blush at the peep show attractions along the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Naughtiest Street. And we see all the Beatles bits, naturally. The Star Club. The Kaiserkeller. The alley on the front of Lennon’s ‘Rock and Roll’ sleeve. The bridge where the Fab Five posed in their shades and quiffs. ‘This bridge used to come in black and white.’ And the brand new Beatles-Platz square, with its thick glass silhouettes of the band holding their instruments. Stuart Sutcliffe is placed slightly away from the main four. The drummer figure is named Pete Best on one side, then Ringo Starr on the other, like a two-headed drumming Janus.

The gig takes place in a tiny bar, where the stage is about five feet away from the front doors. You go in, and the band’s right in front of you. But at least it’s a venue where all the equipment and mixer channels and speakers work, and the engineer knows how to use them. So we play a pretty slick and untroubled set, by our standards.

That’s really all you need. Things not broken. A radical concept for far too many places I’ve gigged in over the years.

Having done my usual trick of failing to get to sleep the night before a morning flight, I spend an awful amount of dozing off in the moments when I’m not standing up or walking, such as in cafes or in Jens’s flat, which becomes our dressing room. Thank goodness for being looked after by the label and the German promoters, who return and retrieve my nice red scarf when I leave it behind at places, not once but twice.

Next: Berlin.

I’ll write a proper entry when I’m back from the last Night Shift of the week. Till then, here’s a couple of photos from last night’s Last Fosca Gig taken by Jennifer Denitto.

I do like this blurry Francis Bacon type number. Scarily beautiful, or beautifully scary, or both:

Here’s a more realistic rendering of me, Charley S and Kate D. Kate is playing my cherry red Gibson SG. It’s a left handed model strung backwards, because I originally learned to play by borrowing my brother’s normal right-handed instrument, and just turning it upside down. I never learned to play the proper way. Kate’s a right-handed player, so she’s turned my guitar upside down in order to play the strings the right way up. Confused and proud at every level.

A last reminder: I’m playing my last ever UK gig with Fosca this Saturday. Line up is myself, Rachel Stevenson, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards.

Here’s the details:

Date: Sat Dec 13th
Venue: Bar Academy, 16 Parkfield St, N1 Centre, Islington, London.
Tube: Angel
Club night: Feeling Gloomy
Doors: 8.30pm.
Fosca onstage: 10.15pm-10.55pm.
Admission: £6 on the door.

We’ll also be selling copies of the new 7″ single, ‘The Man I’m Not Today’. It’s been given a nice review by Alternative Ulster magazine here.

Emails:

Any news on when the single will be available in digital format?

If you order the vinyl online, you should be emailed a code to download the two songs as free MP3s. I see But Is It Art haven’t released a stand-alone digital version yet, but presumably it’ll happen soon.

Thanks for writing your inspiring and great diary. It always makes me smile and it helps me improve my English at the same time… By the way: will you ever perform in The Netherlands?

I’m retiring from indiepop stages for now, but am still keen to perform doing something or other. Maybe something along spoken word lines, or readings, or talks.  I’m going to get voice lessons first, though.

===

Mon and Weds this week: rehearsing with Fosca as a five piece. On Monday we use Fortress Studios in Old Street, which has a fantastic room – large, clean, sensible, civilised, everything works. Not too blokey, not too Rock. Even better, there’s a secret bar tucked away upstairs, dimly lit with friendly bohemian types loafing about. If I ever need to book a rehearsal room again, this will be the one.

Weds evening is Bona Fide Studios in Curtain Road. A bit more of a return to the typical rehearsal room set up: graffiti on the walls, battered equipment. But it all works okay – Kate Dornan takes sound engineer duties for both rehearsals, for which relief I’m much thankful.

The five-piece Fosca line-up sounds fantastic, with Tom playing Thin Lizzy-type guitar harmonies against Charley’s lead guitar, though I’m careful to respectfully request Not Too Much Rock, Please.

Charley is exhausted and miserable at the start of the Weds session, but cheers up when my mic stand comes apart and I strut around with half a stand a la Freddie Mercury. I even badly attempt that ‘Day-oh!’ improv from Queen At Live Aid purely to please her, much to my own utter crushing embarrassment. Still, it makes Charley happy, which makes me happy.

Am in the Cafe Royal venue in Berlin, having soundchecked very quietly indeed. Something about not annoying the neighbours. Just went to the toilets only to be confronted with a huge poster of my face – the gig’s advert.

In the brief hour to ourselves, Boy H and I went to look at the Brandenburg Gate, and the recent holocaust memorials nearby: Jewish (the enormous maze of stone blocks that shifts and changes as you walk inside), and homosexual (a single cube screening a looped film of two men kissing).

In Charing Cross Road, a man passes me talking loudly on his mobile phone. As is usually the case, just one phrase leaps surreally out of the background chatter:

‘…bring it to Danny’s thong auction?’

***

Sorting out final preparations for the Fosca trip to Germany. Boy H is coming along: he speaks German fluently and is a general Germany-phile, so it seems a ridiculously natural thing to have him join the travelling party (at my own expense, though – that’s always the unspoken deal with Other Halves Who Are Not In The Band).

Boy H is part Companion, part Voice of Student Youth. Younger but wiser, he’s forever surprising me with his unexpected cultural references, shifting gear between highbrow and lowbrow worlds so fast, I feel in danger of getting the cultural bends.

In what I presume is a very modern but fairly common scene for couples who have friends and readers online, I’m typing this on my main desk computer while Boy H is across the room with my mini-laptop on his knees. He’s keeping five AIM chat conversations going at once, talking to friends in the US, Germany and Mile End, all in the same screen, and in different languages. He’s just broken off from absentmindedly singing the latest Sugababes hit to call over, ‘You know Einstuerzende Neubauten, right?’

More choice Boy H-isms.

In the V&A, glancing over at a piece of silverware: ‘Isn’t that Actaeon?’

Then moments later, as we’re walking to the tube and passing a poster advertising a popular console game:

‘Ooh – Abba Singstar!’

He’s now watching rare Nick Cave videos on YouTube. I’ve just asked him about the Eurovision contest, and what he thinks of TATU.

‘They’re horrible, imho.’

‘You do realise you’ve just said ‘IMHO’ out loud?’

(IMHO: internet chat for ‘In My Humble Opinion’. Not that humbleness is a quality one necessarily associates with comments left on the internet.)

Just come back from seeing various friends’ bands at Nambucca on the Holloway Road: The Sex Tourists (Rory, David and Jeremy), The New Royal Family (David, Charley, Richard, Jen), Richard A’s new band. Due to being busy plying Boy H with chocolates in Fortnum and Mason, I managed to miss Charley S’s Abba Stripes band, who play the songs of Abba in the style of The White Stripes.

They’re all excellent and enjoyable bands, though I still can’t fully work out how to enjoy myself in the presence of something enjoyable. Admiring a band used to mean they made me want to jump up onstage and join in with them, usually on guitar. Now that I’m less keen to play in a live band myself, I can no longer consult this handy inner Pavlov.

So… how DO I know if I’m enjoying a gig or not? Is rock music taking its place in my heart alongside, say, ballet?

‘I know you’re obviously a fantastic ballet dancer. I just don’t like ballet. And I feel bad that I don’t like something that’s unarguably good.’

(Except this has changed too. ‘The Red Shoes’ is starting to overtake ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ in my heart…)

Tastes change. Interests change. So why do I feel guilty?

(I still don’t care for olives or truffles, though.)

****

As for being in a band myself, it’s the nuts and bolts side of things that irks me the most these days: the endless procuring of amps and keyboard stands, the eternal fiddling with mixer levels, and all the heavy lifting. I really like the idea of a band splitting up due to too much heavy lifting. Boy H is on roadie duty for Germany.

I realise some people think I’m strange (why continue this sentence?) for not wanting to do A Supposedly Fun Thing anymore. Truth is, if the Fun you pay to do – at up to £70 per rehearsal – now feels more like Work than the Work that pays for your Fun, something has to change.

I also keep thinking of a line from the 90s Peter Cook / Chris Morris spoof interviews, ‘Why Bother’:

‘Poor old Eric Clapton. It must be hell for him, having to play the wretched guitar all the time.’

I’m rather enjoying the office job, not just for the rumuneration, but also the way it connects me with the world, forcing me to be aware of what’s going on outside of my little bohemian bubble, even if it is through the surreal prism of a night shift every other 7 days. I feel I could sit a quiz on the work of the UK Environment Agency (building flood defences, helping the endangered British crayfish and the black poplar tree) to the state-funded projects and start-up enterprises of the East Midlands. I know all about the Curve Theatre in Leicester, and the Quad Cinema in Derby, though I’ve never been to those places in person. New York, Tangier, Stockholm, Paris, yes. Leicester, not yet.

Favourite fact about the Curve: the piazza area in front of the theatre has been christened Orton Square, after the playwright of naughty diary fame.

Favourite Orton tidbit: In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, John Cleese’s centurion arrests Brian with the words ‘You’re f—ing nicked, me old beauty!’ As Mr Cleese says on the DVD commentary, this is a deliberate quote from Orton’s Loot. Richard Attenborough delivers the line in the 60s movie version.

Slept from 9am till 6pm today. Much needed after a few days when sleep deprivation was starting to make me hallucinate around the corners, Fight Club style. So I’m more connected to the world in information terms, yet more out of phase with it physically.

Have gotten up, replied to emails and filled out some work-related paperwork (tax declarations, printing out, reading and signing forms for health and safety and computer usage), and written this entry. And now it’s time to go to work… again. Time just leaks away. I need to get faster… at everything.

(The Blockquote button in WordPress is really very awkward to use. I just want to indent a paragraph so it looks like a quote from an email. But highlighting the text and pressing the button just chews up the entire entry, moving bits of text all over the place. Italics seem to be a less anxiety-inducing option. Any advice from WordPress users out there?.)

From the mail box:

Dear Mr Edwards, regarding the new single… can we have MP3 versions of the new songs too? I have dutifully ordered the single, but it would be nice to round off my ipod’s fosca playlist with the new songs.

I’m told the songs will also be available to download via iTunes and KlickTrack, from December 5th.

I’ve also suggested to the record label that they provide free mp3 versions to those who buy the vinyl. They say it’s not as easy to automate on the website as it might sound, but that they’re looking into it. Something to do with getting a password…

Oh, and the vinyl is limited to 300 copies.

We were rehearsing the new single in Rooz Studios, Old Street last night, so all being well we’ll play the songs on this Extended Farewell Tour. I might actually learn the lyrics, too.

The lyrics to ‘My Diogenes Heart’ were written on a sheet of hotel notepaper earlier this year. The Crystal Plaza, Stockholm, to be precise – their logo sits prettily at the top of the page. Charley thinks I should sign it and put it up for winning in a competition. Maybe on the next Swedish tour…

Speaking of which, returning to Sweden one last time now looks like a probability. Plans are being drawn, pins stuck in calendars in early 2009… We’re looking at Stockholm and Gothenburg, obviously, but also Uppsala, Malmö, Norrköping, Linköping and Jönköping. That’s a whole lot of coping (sorry).

Dear Mr. Edwards,
I am sitting in my living room listening to “The painted side of the rocket”. An exceptional album I must say. I just want you to know that it would mean the world to me, and other Swedish Fosca fans, if you came here! Know that you do have a fan base here… And the other thing I wanted to say, is that if you really do
come here, and if you have any influence, please try and make it accessible for people under 18 too?

Hopefully we’ll be playing some sort of instore gig in Stockholm, where there won’t be any age restriction.

Good to see Taylor Parkes is writing about music again, even if he does think ‘waggish froth’ is a bad thing.

Speaking of which, Fosca have a new single out. Just one more. It’s called ‘The Man I’m Not Today’ and comes backed with ‘My Diogenes Heart’. Available on vinyl only from the But Is It Art website.

Funny how as we’re winding up the band, we keep doing new things for the very first (and last) time. This is our first time on vinyl. We’re also playing Germany for the first time, just like we played Spain for the first time a few months ago. Then we’re performing in Islington with a five-piece line up that’s never played before and probably won’t play again: me, Rachel Stevenson, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards. It’s our last UK gig ever.

FOSCA – CONCERT DATES

Friday December 5th: Hamburg -  Astra Stube.

Saturday December 6th: Berlin -  Cafe-Royal.

Saturday December 13th: Islington, London – Feeling Gloomy club at Bar Academy.

There’s a possibility of us extending this faltering farewell tour to include Sweden one more time in early 2009. And perhaps Finland too. And then that really WILL be it for Fosca. Best to go out while I’m still passingly pretty, in a certain light:

Favourite news story from last night: a company who makes signs for estate agents is seeing a drastic drop in revenue. The ‘For Sale’ signs are no longer selling.

The piece comes with a photo of the company boss in his warehouse, frowning at the camera while surrounded by endless piles of orphaned boards, like that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or if you’re like me and can’t stop yourself adding this tidbit, that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark that rips off – sorry, pays HOMAGE to – that scene from the end of Citizen Kane. The warehouse of infinite hubris.

I’m always puzzled why people oblige the press by not just indulging their lust for a quirky story on the recession, but posing for a photo too. Similarly, the young lady involved in the Russell Brand / Jonathan Ross / Andrew Sachs hysteria. Lots of specially-taken photos of her looking sad. Make-up on and hair done as for any other photo shoot, but asked to pull an unhappy expression. Stage-managed tristesse, titivated outrage. What does umbrage LOOK like, after all?

The sign man’s appointments diary: ‘Photographer coming round to capture me in the warehouse looking sad.’

I suppose getting your face in the press just feels flattering, whatever the reason. One for the family scrapbook.

‘Here’s your Uncle Dave in the local paper a few years ago. He complained about a speed camera. That’s why he’s in front of a speed camera, pointing and looking sad. He had his hair cut specially.’