Much talk in the press and among friends about Mr Wilson's London concerts at The Royal Festival Hall, temporarily known as The Hall Of Grateful Weeping Men while he is there, spotlighting a Great Lost Pop Album, "Smile".

I am not a Beach Boys devotee (just as well – my wallet couldn't take the strain), but I do have my own favourite Great Lost Pop Album. At least, lost in the sense of never being reissued on CD, or indeed ever available on CD at all. Until this month.

The album is "Bite" by Altered Images from 1983. I've been waiting twenty-one years for this.

The reissue, "Bite… Plus", follows the other two Altered Images album reissues in being very nicely put together, with bonus tracks and sleevenotes, and at mid-price too. But my enjoyment is marred when Track 2, "Another Lost Look" turns out to be an inferior, unfinished, guitar-heavy demo version where Ms Grogan is barely singing at all. As opposed to the full, synth-drenched vocal-soaring version on the original vinyl album that I'm familiar with.

Quite interesting to have this demo version, but not at the expense of the one I wanted. The proper version hasn't been included on any of the group's many CD "Best Of"s, either. Ah well, I shall have to put up with my scratchy-vinyl-to-mp3 version for ever more. I do wish these reissue people would do things properly. But I suspect it's only me who minds.

<img align=left src="http://www.fosca.com/dickon-at-kashpoint2004.jpg"></img>
<b>[<a href="http://www.markusinteractive.com/clubs/kashpoint2">Photo by Tatu Vuolteenaho, used with permission. Click here for more photos from the night.</a>]</b>

Every Thursday night, I'm currently to be found at the club <a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/">Kash Point</a>.

Last week, it took place for the last time at the venue Moonlighting, underneath Greek Street. Festooned with tacky mirrors, Stringfellows-style striplighting, and plush seating, the premises seemed rather more suited to bored businessmen and luckless lapdancers than the colourful New-New-New Romantics of Kash Point.

After taking this week off, the club will be changing venues once again, returning on March 4th at Infinity in Old Burlington Street. So it seemed fitting that the last night at Moonlighting was its busiest there, by a long way indeed.

The reason for this radical swelling in attendees was, it seemed, down to one thing. Fashion. There are all kinds of exciting new pop acts performing at the club every week, but rarely do they draw so many souls that a substantial queue develops outside the building. Announce a Kash Point Fashion Show instead, and the fire regulation limits are met within minutes. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Fashion is officially Better Than Music.

Is this true? Or do Fashion People just have more friends than Music People? It certainly is a curious world. The people behind the scenes in the fashion industry are not any better looking or better dressed than their counterparts in the music industry, yet their work has a more universal quality. Fashion itself never goes out of fashion. Music can often appear the domain of the young. The sight of a man in his thirties carrying a guitar case in the street can be downright embarrassing to all. People have to be Fans of music. Music has to be explained, even defended. Fashion doesn't need fans. It's already accepted. Fashion manages to both feel ridiculous, elitist and closed-off to The Rabble, while soliciting forelock-tugging in even the most resentful of minicab drivers. Fashion is The Royal Family of art forms. "God bless them – they do a good job".

One hears of slumps in the sales of music magazines, but not of fashion magazines. Fashion's connection with advertising is purer than Music's, and so somehow more forgiveable. Musicians lending their songs to advertising campaigns are looked down upon as desperate, but fashion models and make-up designers appearing in commercials are acceptable. Because they're worth it. The model Ms Moss makes fashion-connected adverts all the time, and her appearance in a pop video is seen as a Good Thing. But when a pop star like Ms Madonna appears in a clothes commercial, the world weeps.

Kash Point's own fashion show, held at the end of London Fashion Week, featured, as one might expect, gloriously imaginative, colourful, and often cumbersome creations that the late Leigh Bowery would have approved of. But the thing is, Kash Point really encourages people to come dressed like that whatever the week. The host, Mr Glamorre, always wears an entirely different visually striking ensemble, every week. Another young club staffer, known only as Little Richard, goes in for customized garb usually involving something cheap he's found melded with a large amount of gaffa-tape.

One one memorable evening, Richard was decked out in a child's lobster costume, picked up in an Archway discount shop for a tenner. A desperate attempt to cash in on the film "Finding Nemo" was probably the shop's intention. The costume was the most unlike a lobster, or indeed any creature, that it was possible for a costume to be. A better description would be a tube of three hula-hoops covered with pink nylon, with a hinged lid at the top by way of a mouth. Sad, spongy lobster arms drooped uselessly from the sides, and cheap plastic white goggle-eyes on the lid completed the costume, at least as far as its woeful manufacturer was concerned. In addition, Richard had improved the thing by gaffa-taping a couple of old pillows to its front. And then proceeded to walk around the nightclub and dancefloor in the costume all night.

When he danced, the costume began to disintegrate. It may have been a natural process, or aided by its wearer, or both, but every time I glanced at the dancefloor, the lobster had devolved into something else entirely. Its bottom half vanished fairly early on into the night. Then, as Richard went into a frenzied pirouette, one of the pillows span off into the crowd. The other found its way up the costume, and into the lobster's mouth. I've seen many sights on London club dancefloors, but the vision of an unconvincing giant dancing lobster swallowing a pillow is, I firmly admit, exactly the sort of thing I postpone suicide for.

The following week, Richard recycled the lobster's thorax, wearing it horizontally on his head. Thorax On The Dancefloor.

In the packed Boogaloo pub the other night, my local here in Highgate, where on Tuesdays there's a faintly legendary rock and pop quiz. Sometimes mildly famous pop people drop in. Tonight there's Bernard Butler, and, more impressively, Shane MacGowan, if only to confirm he's alive and not locked away in some institution. Mr MacGowan scares me.

I am later informed that Carl from the Libertines is also present. I've yet to be swayed by his group, but I do approve of them reciting Mr Sassoon's Suicide In The Trenches at a recent award ceremony.

I join Ms Senay, Ms Anna, Ms Jen and Ms Jane and as usual find most the of questions far too difficult. However, I do know that:

(a) The director of Curiosity Killed The Cat's video for "Misfit" was Andy Warhol.
(b) The acting debut as nuns in a 1968 episode of "Tarzan" was by Diana Ross and the Supremes
(c) Bob Hardy and Paul Thomson are the rhythm section in Franz Ferdinand.
(d) Rattlesnakes was the debut album of Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, who are reforming.
(e) Rescue Me was by Fontella Bass, NOT Aretha Franklin.
(f) Joan Baez looks like that.

I am absolutely useless at everything else. When questions begin "Which reggae producer…", I laugh with giddy abandon and nip out to set fire to a squirrel.

Mr Butler's team wins. We come about halfway. But frankly, we have the best hair collectively, and that's the main thing.

All harmless competitive fun. No one got hurt, no beauty was despoiled. It is possible.

I mention this latter point, because I'm still reeling from hearing that the notorious <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,385956,00.html">Blue Peter Garden vandalisation</a> of the 80s was carried out by the millionaire footballer Les Ferdinand (not a patch on his musical relation Franz) and his friends. Mr Ferdinand now dismisses it as "just a bit of fun". A terrible, depressing catch-all phrase, also favoured by louts, bullies and rapists.

Far be it for me to suggest that's my view of all professional players of "The Beautiful Game", but the reader must understand that my prejudice is ingrained from school PE lessons, where my attendant Proustian sensations are akin to the stark terror of a Vietnam conscript.

One of the few joys about adult life is not being forced to play wretched football anymore. At school, sport is restricted to a few merciful hours per week. In the adult world, it's everywhere. The world is a World Of Sport. People wear trainers and other sportswear despite not even being professional athletes. Sport is The Default Interest. I've never understood why. Even many perfectly intelligent people, who would never dream of vandalising a fly, seem to like football. It makes no sense.

As soon as I am made King, I shall ban All Sport. Why? Just a bit of fun.

These sort of quizzes are usually beneath me, but this one deserves a mention.

<img src="http://images.quizilla.com/E/easternmantra/1065403515_bid.jpg" border="0" alt="HASH(0x83630d8)"><br>Bid, frontman of The Monochrome Set. Fuelled by<br>cabaret and sexual innuendo, he's mean, moody,<br>and can still be Asian. He can spell his own<br>name, too.
<br><br><a href="http://quizilla.com/users/easternmantra/quizzes/What%20Legendary%20Post-Punk%20Era%20Frontman%20Are%20You%3F/"> <font size="-1">What Legendary Post-Punk Era Frontman Are You?</font></a><BR> <font size="-3">brought to you by <a href="http://quizilla.com">Quizilla</a></font>

<img align=left src="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/bid-sml.jpg"></img>
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>

When Mr Burns wrote "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us", he was clearly dreaming of the Internet.

I have been alerted to the following messages at the website for "Trash", the popular London club.

Subject: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: David Pleat
Why are there at least 2 photos of him on the gallery section of this website?
The man looks like a robot for gods sake! Don't take that the wrong way, it was a compliment!

Subject: RE: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: lady D.I.E
i have never seen the man look anything apart from dashing. well done! xx

Subject: RE: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: chipped Varnish
Hey! Leave poor old Dickon alone, he's my good buddy. ponce or no ponce! x

Subject: RE: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: tranq
i hesitate to publicise it here, but his live journal is v.funny and worthy of publication. respect.

Subject: RE: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: Sophie Sticklebrick
Livejournal? What kind of a fool keeps one of them? Perish the thought.

Subject: RE: Dickon Edwards
Posted By: lady D.I.E
nah. wouldnt catch me doin a live journal. they are for ponces :p xx

To Stockwell again for a Scarlet's Well rehearsal. Today, the group is Mr Bid, Ms Dornan, Mr White, and myself. Mr Robinson is not available to play bass. He is busy next door recording a Judge Dredd audio drama.

We start to work more closely on the arrangements. The session is a happy and relaxed one, and Mr Bid has provided his workers with sandwiches and biscuits. The latter are Fox's Viennese Temptations, which I am more than happy to endorse. Their label features on of those little coats-of-arms with "By Appointment To Her Majesty Queen II, Biscuit Manufacturers". Next to that is one for The Queen Mother. It's gratifying to know that a little thing like decomposing in a Windsor Castle tomb can't diminish one's appetite for Viennese Temptations. What will Death be like? Who cares, as long as there's biscuits.

<i>Mark the green-eyed yellow idol, on her mantelpiece, a-gloating</i>

My first Scarlet's Well rehearsal at The Moat studios in a snow-covered Stockwell, and I finally meet the reputably eccentric, mysterious Bid. He is short-haired, charming, handsome, sickeningly youthful for someone that was releasing records in 1978, and wears a black bowler hat to the session. It transpires he once made hats for Alice Cooper. In his presence, I at once feel at ease. Which for me is a rare sensation indeed. These Scarlet's Well performances will be the first time Bid's played live since the hibernation of the Monochrome Set some years ago.

<i>I see it now, I see that I must belong here
How many years, how long have I been away?</i>

The Moat Studios is a fairly large, joint rehearsal and recording complex deep in South London, with crisps, cakes and Connect Four at the disposal of its denizens.

<i>Lend me; lend me your body to cohort in Picardy
Don't let me stay a willy wisp
I want to have a funny lisp, like you, like you, like you</i>

I am equally delighted to learn that the mention of four candles in "Clop's Birthday" (from the second Scarlet's Well album) is, yes, a reference to the Two Ronnies sketch:

<i>From Goldenear, there came a box
Of many cogs and wheels and handles, with four candles
When he cranked it, it played Mozart
Ting!
And from a hatch, there hopped a monkey
Very toothless, deaf and dusty, slightly musty
Screeched thus, tunelessly, with gummy grin
Happy Birthday, Clop
We wish you many sorts of wild adventures
Happy Birthday, Clop
And when we're into port, I'll buy you dentures, 'cos
I've just nicked yours</i>

We begin, just Bid and myself on acoustic guitars and vocals (I deign to do a bit of backing singing), by trying out most of the 40-odd Scarlet's Well songs recorded so far, including the contents of the forthcoming fourth album, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse". It's a shame they'll have to be whittled down to a mere 40-60 mins' worth, including one or two Monochrome Set favourites (the audience would demand it, after all). But, then, SW was orginally designed to be a purely hermetically sealed, studio-bound affair, and it quickly becomes apparent which songs can survive the transition to the greasy concert world of soundchecks, bar table chatter, the need for immediacy and engagement, the need to communicate beauty, soul, magic and joy to a room of strangers. But the resulting shortlist is still not nearly short enough, and further agonising decisions over which tunes get the chop abound.

<i>Her sails were all a-puff-pride bloated
Sweet singing, were the bell-bottomed scurvy scum
And on the prow, the red-eyed captain, banging on a wolf-skin drum</i>

Soon, Toby Robinson, the genial, Santa-like in-house engineer, producer and owner of the studios enters, freed for a moment from the rigours of producing a Chinese rock band, and plugs in a bass guitar. For the moment, everything is open-ended. I refuse to use words like "organic" without feeling the need to go and stand in a dark cupboard for an hour afterwards, but for now Bid arranges things around who can make which rehearsals and concerts. Scarlet's Well is less a band, more a fictional world illustrated by Bid's songs. Journeying on the tube to Stockwell, and even trying to sleep the night before, my mind is convinced I am preparing to enter another world, not just rehearsing with a band. It's a truly exhilarating feeling.

<i>We leap down cobbled alleys
Catlike
We've come from battling many
Laden galleys
My heart's a flame inside a ring of jet</i>

When making music or creating any other kind of art, one must always strive to provide something one cannot find elsewhere in the world, rather than just Joining In and diluting instead of adding. Nowhere is this maxim more vehemently embraced than in the songs of Scarlet's Well. At no point is the group about to go into a sub-Stooges garage rock workout, the likes of which blares out from every other dank dark gig venue in London. O, sweet relief.

<i>This glade is full of purling strains
Some are sighs, some are sobs
Some are hunger pains
And when you take another trail
You hear a tiny throat bewail
Don't turn so quick, my frail
Don't you want to join me playing</i>

A second rehearsal a few days later, and the trio is joined by Mr Martin White (<lj user=martylog>) on accordion, and Ms Kate Dornan (<lj user=serious_k>) on keyboards. Instantly the songs come alive a thousandfold.

<i>Spin your dreams above our heads
Weave the tunes into the threads</i>

My acquaintance with Ms Dornan, a Fosca bandmate who manages to hold down positions in two other bands as well (Madam and Butterfly Stitch), stretches back to the days of Orlando. Mr White, however, I only met once before. It was at a gathering of mutual friends in a Tooting gay pub, a few days before Christmas. I had heard he was an accordion player, one whose arrangements of modern chart pop hits had garnered a level of attention elsewhere, not least in some new Men's Magazine list of Cool Things To Download.

It may not be the same publication, but I'm reminded of a current TV advert for a typically garish new men's journal, "Nuts". The commercial goes on to highlight four areas of interest, seemingly boiling down all male experience everywhere to this grimace-inducing quartet of selling points:

-"GIRLS!"

-"CARS!"

-"FOOTBALL!"

-"SHARKS!"

Modern Man entirely summed up, there.

I particularly like the idea that it's JUST sharks, out of all God's vivid and diverse animal kingdom, that's meant to appeal to men. Not penguins. Not lemurs. Not kakapos. Just sharks. They're a Man's Fish.

The Tooting pub in question was the most straight gay bar I've ever been in. Perhaps that's a sign of the times, as one can see men kissing in any kind of London bar these days. It's difficult to tell whether such conjunctions are a genuinely gay couple, or two heterosexual male TV producers greeting each other. The only vaguely Uranist evidence in sight at the Tooting hostelry was a modest, wall-mounted rack of issues of "Boyz". Which is an altogether different kind of mens' magazine.

I chatted with Mr White and found him engaging, friendly company, with a shared interest in the works of Neil Innes of Bonzo Dog and Rutles fame. Then, a few weeks later, when Bid nailed the blood-stained note to his Internet tree advertising for musicians, specifically an accordion player, the fact I was now newly acquainted with just such a fellow, and one who owned a Monochrome Set album at that, seemed too, too perfect. If there was a higher power involved here, I sincerely hope it looks like a shark playing football.

On top of this, at the rehearsal Mr White revealed he'd been to see the National Theatre production of Mr Pullman's His Dark Materials saga. With its talking animals, piratical voyages and brave girls travelling through the Underworld, it's a work that certainly comes in handy when describing the colourful, sprawling world of Scarlet's Well.

<i>And we say: "Row the boat ashore!"
And we say: "Tie him to the door!"
And then we'll "Nail him on the floor!"
O, bring him up, o, bring him up</i>

[All italicised lyrics in this entry are from Scarlet's Well songs currently being rehearsed]