[photo from Smash Hits Productions of Taiwan]

The new Fosca album, The Painted Side Of The Rocket, is released today as a legal download at the iTunes Store:

You can also get it on MP3 at Klicktrack Music:

http://www.klicktrack.com/shop/release.jsp?r=71172

Here’s a free MP3 of ‘Confused And Proud’; the new, dreamier version:

http://www.butisitart.org/downloads/Fosca_Confused_and_Proud.mp3

In the US, Entangled Records have the CD, plus the book and some older Fosca releases:

http://www.entangledrec.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=fosca&x=0&y=0

I note the album is at No. 10 in their Bestsellers list, just behind our old friends Trembling Blue Stars.

The CD will be given a proper UK release via Forte Distribution next month, date to be confirmed. We’ll play an album launch gig in London some time after that.

Otherwise, it’s available via mail order from the label (based in Sweden), here:

http://www.butisitart.org/order/

I’m looking into the possibility of having the London launch somewhere slightly unusual yet suitable, eg a bookshop, library or museum. This might mean having to sort out hiring a PA and organising our own wine and beer and soft drinks, much like a book launch or private view. Never done such a thing before, but I’m willing to give it a go.

What I’d love is to do is play a UK festival. There do seem to be so many new ones starting up these days. But how one gets to play them without an agent, short of rudely sending festival organisers CDs and hoping for the best, is beyond me.

I do get bookings as a DJ, but it’s not really done to reply along the lines of ‘thanks for wanting me as a DJ, but can you book my band as well, or instead?’

Thing is, I’ve never felt quite so cut off from the UK band scene as I do now. I’d like to think this makes the Fosca album all the more interesting: music out of time, genuinely uncaring of the scenes and musical fashions, as opposed to bands who pretend to be unique, but take pains to ensure they’re compatible with the current XFM sound or whatever it is. But I fear it just means we might as well be an unknown bunch of entry-level nobodies, and thus the album doesn’t stand a chance in the country of its makers. Worse than that, as youth is not exactly on our side.

And yet the other day in Highgate Avenue I was collared by a young man who was going from door to door, distributing leaflets for a curry house. As I walked past, he eyed me and called out:

‘Excuse me, mate. I couldn’t help noticing that you look like you work in the music industry.’

I stopped, somewhat dumbfounded by this remark, and tried to think of a suitable response.

‘Er…’

‘It’s just that I’m a singer-songwriter trying to network. Do you have any advice?’

‘Well… I’m in a band.’

‘And you’re signed, yeah?’

‘Um… (feebly) We’re playing a tour of Sweden.’

‘So you must have management, an agent and so on, yeah?’

‘Actually, no… Look, I’ve got to go… (walking away quickly, blurting desperately) Er, use the internet! MySpace!… Facebook! Er… MySpace again!’

***

Do I really look like I’m ‘someone who works in the music industry’? To the point where struggling musicians feel the need to accost me in the street for advice?

There MUST be some way of converting this ‘talent’ of looking more successful than I really am, into an iota of an income. Suggestions to the usual address.

What I now realise I should have told the young leafletter is that the best way to earn a living in the music industry is to do anything else BUT be in a band. Be an in-house sound engineer, or run a rehearsal studio. All Fosca’s earnings – and we do make some (if always three figures rather than four)- go straight back into studio fees. When you realise that asking – and getting – upwards of £40 for providing three hours of broken PAs, battered mic stands and dented mics, you soon find out that the rehearsal room business is a buyer’s market.

There ARE one or two reasonably-priced places in London which actually care more about pleasing customers than making money for its own sake, but their weekday evening slots are impossible to secure unless you’re a band who rehearses every week, all year round.

Me: One of these days I’m going to open my own rehearsal room business, with flowers in every room, and well-maintained shiny new equipment.

Charley: Dickon, it would be trashed in one day!

Me: Not with me. I’d only allow nice, gentle people to use it. I’d ask for references.

***

I’m told Sonic Magazine in Sweden has just called the album ‘a triumph’ and ‘a much welcome return… 8 out of 10’:

http://sonicmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2053&Itemid=85

I’m also told ‘Confused and Proud’ is on rotation on some college radio stations over there.

An email from Bandung in Indonesia:

Hi Mr. Dickon Edwards… I’m one of your fans from Indonesia, is there any chance to release Fosca here..and is there any chance to get Fosca play some gigs here?? Love you, Joz.

You see, I wish this kind of thing made the slightest bit of difference when trying to get Fosca any kind of radio play, press coverage or festival booking in my own country whatsoever. But I’m still grateful to get the emails.

Last Monday was the first rehearsal for the Swedish tour. It did me the power of good – certainly more so than any CBT therapy or painkillers. I felt I was getting somewhere again. We’re airing an old song that hasn’t been played live since 1999, the Cohen-meets-Abba title song from ‘On Earth To Make The Numbers Up.’ Having Charley Stone on guitar really adds a oneiric texture and scope to the sound; we’re taking old songs somewhere new: a more aurally androgynous sensibility.

We rehearsed at a place called Enterprise Studios, in Denmark Place off Charing Cross Road. It’s like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter: one of those hidden London streets you walk past all your life, until it’s specifically pointed out that it exists. There was a huge huddle of fashionably dressed young people outside, and I passed adverts on the walls for bands seeking members ‘under 25 only’.

I know I’m rather biased, but it seems more acutely important than ever for bands to be younger and derivative, than older and unusual. Unless you’re on the level of REM or Nick Cave, you’re the wrong kind of Not Young.

But this is all starting to sound like typical Grumpy Old Man talk, and I’d hate to be a typical anything. I have songs to get on with and write, as we’re recording a new single in Sweden during the tour. Pressing on and making new stuff is the only answer. Everything else one just has to shrug off.