Saturday November 27th 1999
Six days before I finally get to meet Quentin Crisp, and he must have heard I was coming, because he ups and dies. The easiest way out of being in the same room as me. Not to mention the easiest way out of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
Kept from many of the front pages by Jeffrey Archer’s troubles, The Guardian manages, in time-honoured fashion, to get all the dates mixed up in its little piece, saying he moved to New York in 1972…. Even the Pink Paper consigns him to page 3.
I’m happy that Quentin has finally embraced Death, “the only friend” he spoke of meeting for so long. I just wish he could have postponed the meeting for just one more week. So he could embrace this friend first.
There’s people I’ve admired whom I’ve never actually wanted to meet. I’ve been in the same room (as opposed to concert venue) as, say, the Spice Girls, Laurie Anderson, Ivor Cutler and Lou Reed, but I’ve not wanted to ask them anything in particular. With Quentin there was so much to ask, and yet I’d had his phone number in my book for years, between Taylor Parkes and my dentist. I should call them more often, too.
I’m hoping they’ll now reprint his many out-of-print and never-published books like “Love Made Easy”, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Spearmint job has so far taken me to many wonderful places I’ve never been to before: Tokyo, Amsterdam, Middlesborough…
The flight to Japan is ardous, stressful (ten hours in economy class, cramped seats, fruitless attempts at sleep, tempers frayed) and delay-strewn. But the rest of the trip is an absolute joy. In Tokyo, we all go off to Club Pop It!, where the walls are covered with Spearmint sleeves and posters, and we are all but mobbed as we go in. I’ve never signed so many autographs in my life, and not just as a Spearmint member: I am handed several Orlando records to put my inky scribble on. Turns out they often play “Some Day Soon” there, and they do so on the night I am there, following it up with McCarthy’s “The Well of Loneliness”, Haircut 100’s “Favourite Shirts” and Aztec Camera’s “Boys Wonder”. I sign the back of someone’s mobile phone.
After one in a long series of TV and radio station idents (“Hi, We’re Spearmint, and you’re listening to….”), one interviewer offers us some dried, salted prunes packaged like boiled sweets, which we accept graciously if gingerly. Ronan the drummer stands there chewing, then after a while says, “Does it get any better?” This becomes my personal motto for the whole tour (UK included), sometimes said optimistically in the face of despair (or Hastings), sometimes joyously amid the surreal scenes of pop-fandom in Japan. People waiting outside the hotels and venues, Jemina the sound engineer having to drag us away from the Nth autograph or photo so we can all actually go and get something to eat. In Japan, Spearmint are as big as Catatonia and Supergrass. Being bigger in Japan, it’s an old cliche. But it’s a nice cliche.
At Osaka’s Quattro Club, the dressing room walls are covered in the usual band graffiti, but this time going back for the best part of a decade. On the other side of the world I realise I am standing on the same bit of stage as Charley must have when Gay Dad played there the month before. Not to mention the Manics…. in 1992. There’s still some of Richey’s and Nicky’s graffiti there… “I HATE NEDS ATOMIC DUSTBIN”… and from Carter USM: “GERIATRIC TERRORISTS”…
One morning Spearmint play a special acoustic instore at SYFT Records in Osaka, which reminds me of Rough Trade Records in Covent Garden. The band play without microphones, just acoustic guitars, glockenspiel and melodica. They stand up at one end of the shop, the audience are seated on the floor. I get to introduce each song. Afterwards Shirley describes it as a school assembly hosted by Kenneth Williams. I buy the Girlfrendo album on vinyl before leaving. Contrary to what I’d previously thought, vinyl is still very popular in Japan.
One fan gives me a heartfelt letter comparing me to Rimbaud. It comes with a Hello Kitty plectrum. And a portable ashtray that goes round your neck like a Jim’ll Fix It medal. In Japan, cigarettes are £1.25 a packet. There’s a brand called Caster Mild that are particularly nice.
The 24 hour convenience store nearest our Tokyo hotel stocks hair bleach for men. It’s called Gatsby. The concerts are sponsored by a Gap-type store called XXYY, who give me a brand new cream-coloured suit for nothing. I like Japan.
The Japanese Times has a motto printed on the top of ever issue: “All the News Without Fear or Favour”.
On our night of departure, we go to a proper Karaoke bar, where you book into a hotel-like room for just yourself, your friends, your own singing machine with mics, and all the drink you can phone down for. I get to do The Carpenters’s “I Need To Be In Love” and Abba’s “Thank You For The Music”, dedicated to the rest of Spearmint, naturally. “I’ve been so lucky/ I am the girl with golden hair/I want to sing it out to everybody/ What a joy, what a life, what a chance!”.
In Amsterdam, I meet up with Simon Kehoe, who gives me his non-tourist tour. I am nearly run down by fleets of cyclists at every turn. You’re never quite sure which bit is the pavement: there’s a bike lane, a tram lane and a car lane. In that order. Everyone dresses casually, ie badly. When you go to the pub, you sit at a table and wait to be served. The beer comes in smaller measures, but is far more potent. We stay in a hotel that is a glorified hostel: the TV remote control is attached to the wall by a chain. At the Rijksmuseum, you can buy Rembrandt mousemats.
Next stops with Spearmint:
30.11.99 Paris, Elysee Montmartre
2.12.99 Nantes, Olympic
11.12.99 Stockholm, Fritz Corner
18.12.99 London, Blow Up (The Wag Club)
Before boarding the superfast (and super comfortable) Shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya, I buy a toy version of the train from a platform kiosk, to give to Matt of Shinkansen Records of Lambeth. And clearly it works, because Fosca are now going to release something on the label, hopefully a single and mini-album.
We play the Bull and Gate with a drum machine and Sheila B on cello for the first time. And myself as a proper lead vocalist for the first time, as on one song I don’t play guitar and have just the microphone to hold onto for dear life. I am paler than ever. But it feels right. We’re also looking for a fourth permanent member to join myself, Rachel and Sheila, perhaps on guitar, bass or keyboard programming. Write here if you know of someone suitable.
I spent the last weekend in Chipping Norton, partaking in the vivid, dayglo video for Spearmint’s next single, “We’re Going Out”. Naturally, I hogged the make up chair, despite my role being limited to Strange Postman in Scene 42. We all had to attend special choreography lessons. Samanthi, who stars in the video as Woman Going Out, was especially good, and got to wear all the best frocks. I haven’t seen the results yet, but I have a feeling it will look like the video to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”. Having been re-written by a deranged Mike Leigh fan on too much coffee.
