Bit of a gap in my diary, but I’m back now. So what have I been up to?

I’ve just written the phrase, ‘days of wine and poses’ by way of a response and as a title for the entry. Then I realised it’s the Wrong Kind Of Pun. Puns can make you sound like a matey fake-everyman playing to an imagined gallery (the literary equivalent of a corny wink). I am not that kind of writer. At least, I like to think I’m not.

If I’m worrying about a pun, it’s probably a sign I should take it out. Rewrite it. Fiddle with it. Try reversing it. Poses And Wine? Sounds too much like a Cliff Richard song. Poseur With Wine? Too hard on myself. Pose With Wine could be the title of a painting, like Figure With Meat by Francis Bacon.

You see, these are the things that bubble around my brain on this rather chilly day in September.

Last week: I am pulling off a Pose With Wine at Mr Bacon’s old drinking and posing hole, The Colony Room in Soho. I am there with Clayton Littlewood, having first met for coffee at Bar Italia, then dinner at Stockpot. Pure Soho stuff.

Clayton used to live in a basement flat under Old Compton Street, which fascinates me. He could hear the prostitutes upstairs plying their trade. He says it was always noisy, unsurprisingly, and almost impossible to get any sleep at night. But that the mornings made up for it: Soho at 7am has this incredible atmosphere. The quiet after the storm, sobriety kicking in, people with proper jobs starting to get up and go to work. Streets caught naked, clear of teeming crowds. Small children go to school here too,  not always something you associate with Soho (just been watching this video about Soho Parish School). A sense of recovery, of the sun getting its own back on decadent humans, of pores getting a chance to breath.

We visit the Colony Room in Dean Street at a critical point in its 60-year history. A party of regulars, including Salena Godden, have just been to the private view of a much-feared auction, where some of the Colony’s art is being sold. Michael Wojas, the manager, plans to move the club out of its Dean Street premises, in order to save it from escalating rents. To this end, he’s selling off the artwork on the club walls, including a 1950s mural by Michael Andrews. Some club members have protested, both about the move and the art sale. There was even a story in Private Eye about it all. (Interview with Mr W here)

I initially lent my name to the rebel members’ ‘Save The Colony’ campaign, but have now changed my stance to a neutral onlooker, having understood more of Mr W’s point of view. It won’t be the same away from 41 Dean Street, but then it wasn’t the same after the smoking ban, anyway. I hope it continues in new premises, as long as it’s still in Soho.

[Update after the auction: The good news is that the Michael Andrews mural sold at a good price, according to the Independent, to ‘a representative of the Andrews estate… in the hope it can be placed in a museum.’]

Clayton L tells me it’s about time I pitched a non-fiction book to agents and publishers. ‘The Manesake Diaries’. ‘Boy With A Too Many Track Mind.’ ‘Secret Diary Of A Fallen Boy.’ The secret being there’s no sex in it whatsoever.

I could focus on the ‘modern dandy’ episodes, the music biz and DJ adventures, my veteran blogger status, the unlikely Shane MacG capers, and the general Being Dickon Edwards philosophy. Whether such a volume would draw a decent book-buying crowd or not, I don’t know. Only one way to find out. All I have to do is… work hard at it. Ah. The W word. Okay.

***

RIP Paul Newman, giving the newspapers a good excuse to print huge close ups of those famous eyes. Far nicer to see those in the corner shop, first thing on a Sunday, than anything more to do with banking or the ‘credit crunch’. The latter phrase being as tiresomely over-bandied about in the press as the word Facebook was last year. ‘Tortoise Breeding & How The Credit Crunch Will Affect It’, that sort of thing.

RIP also Bryan Morrison, music biz manager and publisher, whose clients included Wham, Pink Floyd, and very nearly, Orlando. We went to his office for a single meeting, during our mid 90s hustling days of being The Next Big Hubristic Thing. Mr M turned out to be the proper personification of a rock ‘n’ roll  impresario: cigar in hand, which he used to make a point, gold discs on the office wall, 1960s anecdotes about The Pretty Things. As we walked in, he pointed at me and said, ‘LOVE the look!’

Further to the previous entry, the BBC, Guardian and other UK news sites did get around to mentioning David Foster Wallace’s suicide after all, albeit a full day after this diary did. I feel the same way I did when returning from the Haringey Council elections in 2006 and publishing the full results to the diary, only to find that I was ahead of the council’s own website by several hours. And even then they got the numbers slightly wrong: I had to email them their own correct results.

Despite appearances, my feeling in both cases is not the smugness of the amateur reporter scooping the professionals, or the grumbling of one of those armchair experts who seem to write with one finger endlessly wagging till the grave (‘and another thing…!’).

No, it’s more the vague annoyance at being annoyed per se, when there’s far more deserving matters to give a hoot about.

***

Diary catch-up. In bits.

Friday Sept 12th: Fosca’s trip to Madrid for a one-off gig.

Highgate, early hours. The taxi is due to collect me at 5.30am, and as usual I can’t get a wink of sleep beforehand. All I can think about is the entirely possible horror of the doorbell ringing while I’m in bed, with me having slept through the alarm. Add this worry to the excitement and nervousness of the trip, and it seems pointless going to bed at all. But I still give it a go, lying there in the dark, utterly awake until the alarm goes, feeling foolish.

Our taxi driver is slightly played by Ray Winstone. I think it’s fair to say this, because the first thing he tells me as I emerge from the house is:

‘Blimey – you look like Thomas Dolby.’

I groggily attempt a smile – well, a smirk – and shove my suitcase in the boot. I can see Charley inside the car, trying hard not to laugh.

‘I guess you get people telling you that all the time, eh?’

‘Well… I often have people saying who I remind them of…’

‘Nah. It’s DEFINITELY Thomas Dolby. Definitely.’

And he says this is if it’s the most reasonable and useful thing in the world. Off we go.

Back in Highgate, to read the shocking news that David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, has hanged himself.

Zero coverage on the BBC, or even the Guardian. I know he’s an American author and it’s a Sunday, but even so. Come on BBC, if you can report today that Kazakhstan has bought the rights to The Vicar of Dibley, you can flipping well manage a sentence or two to mark Mr Wallace’s passing. He’s hardly obscure.

Just as well I subscribe to 3AM:

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/dfw-rip/

Thursday eve: To the Bullet Bar in Kentish Town Road, to see the band The New Royal Family, comprising Charley Stone, David Barnett, Jen Denitto and Rob Whose-Surname-Is-Unknown-To-Me. It’s Rob’s 30th birthday. He’s wearing a floppy blond wig and handing out free toy plastic dinosaurs. I’m not sure why (perhaps the answer is ‘why not?’). They’re enjoyable and fun and more like rock stars than many of those who do it for a living, frankly.  They also do a pretty faithful cover of Adam Ant’s ‘Young Parisians’, which is as old as Rob – from 1978.

The band on before them are outrageously loud and tuneless and depress the hell out of me when I enter the venue. I wonder if I’m Too Old, or they’re just Too Loud, or both. Thankfully the Bullet is one of those bars who’ve had to sprout a ‘beer garden’ from nowhere (really a back yard), in order to retain their smoking clientele. This way, not only can people sit down and have a cigarette with their drink, but they can actually hold a conversation without having to shout in each other’s ears over a loud band (or a loud jukebox, or loud football on TV). You can’t smoke AND listen to the bands, of course, but it’s a small price to pay for the ‘quiet carriage’ of the garden, in my book.

I read recently that outdoor music festivals are now more popular and lucrative than ever. So I wonder if the smoking ban is at least part of that equation, too.

Among others, I chat to Vicki Churchill, Seaneen M, Anna S, Alex S, and Rhoda B. Charley wasn’t sure if she could get me on the guest list, but as it turns out the gentleman on the door knows me anyway, and simply waves me inside on sight alone. I suppose I’m an Old Face On The Scene to some. And I recall that Fosca played the Bullet Bar in its previous incarnation as The Verge.

I’m listening to a friend’s mix tape of new-ish music, and one track I really enjoy is ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ by Love Is All. I Google them and discover they’re from Gothenburg. In fact, they used to be the band Girlfrendo, whose records I bought and loved while they were going. Love Is All is a world away from that unabashed twee / C86-inspired incarnation: they’re now very much of the CSS / Franz Ferdinand school: muscular and rhythmic. I know so many bands sound like that at the moment (with that slurping disco um-CHUH um-CHUH beat, as ubiquitous now as the ‘Funky Drummer’ style was in 1989), but they do it better than most:

Love Is All – Busy Doing Nothing (Video)

The hired Fosca-mobile is coming to pick me up at 5.30am. Then it’s off to Gatwick, and Madrid.

A Fosca London gig announcement. Oh yes!

It’s the much-threatened Fosca Farewell show. Saturday December 13th at Feeling Gloomy, Bar Academy, Islington. Stage times to come.

The line-up will a five-piece, three-guitar and two synths (plus laptop) assault: Rachel S, Kate D, Tom E, Charley S and myself.

***

Two DJ gigs of mine, at somewhat shorter notice.

I’m DJ-ing on Sat Sept 20th, at a plush dress-up event called The Magic Theatre. This takes place in an Art Deco ballroom in Bloomsbury. Here’s what their website says about the dress code:

“Ladies: The perfect place for all you Cinderellas and Style Queens, Pink Princesses and Leggy Latex Babes… Audrey Hepburns and Barbarellas, TV’s, Saucy Secretaries and Rock Chicks…Whether you’re a Goth Girl, Dowager, French Maid or Precocious Teen Queen, Marie Antoinette, or Marilyn Monroe, the Magic Theatre is YOUR stage. Gentlemen: Retro Glamour, Uniforms, Lounge Lizards, Gentlemen of the Cloth, Fauns, B-Movie Stars, Prince Charmings, Pirates and Dandies of all kinds…Arise, Sir Galahad, kneel before Zod, come out, come out you Peter Pans, Dick Turpins and Darcys…”

I’ll be doing two DJ sets between 8.30pm and 11.30pm. Ticket details at www.magic-theatre.co.uk.

***

I’m also putting in a brief DJ appearance at The Beautiful & Damned on Thursday 18th, at The Boogaloo (near Highgate Tube). Martin White & The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra will also be playing. The B&D isn’t ‘my’ club any more, as I’m forever correcting people, but it’s still going strong under the auspices of Miss Red and The Boogaloo team. They’ve reinvented it into a kind of cabaret / club night / music hall booth affair. It’s great to see unwitting Highgate pub goers wander in off the street, and wonder just what weird, time-hopping universe they’ve stepped into. Part Red Room in ‘Twin Peaks’, part Sapphire & Steel…

***
Back to the diary.

Wednesday evening: to Trash Palace in Wardour Street, for a club night called ‘Polari’. It includes Jamie McLeod’s exhibition of modern dandies, which in turn includes me. Always nice to swan into a club to see a large framed photograph of oneself on the wall. The club also supplies free quiche.

On this occasion, special guest Sebastian Horsley takes the mic, and prowls and provokes and reads from his book, to a packed and appreciative crowd. Including his mother. He’s in his red sequined suit and brandishes a matching sequined bottle of vodka. Well, a sequined bottle cosy.

I say hello to David Benson, Anne Pigalle, Jason Atomic and Ms Ruta, and meet Clayton Littlewood, author of the ‘Soho Stories’ column in the London Paper. The window by his writing desk (or rather,  laptop perch) looked out from the clothes shop he worked at, Dirty White Boy in Old Compton Street. A particularly good spot in London to watch people and gather (or imagine) stories: Soho media types, the famous, the homeless, the vicious queens, the prostitutes, the tourists, the tramps, the old survivors, the new blood. He’s put together a book version: ‘Dirty White Boy: Tales Of Soho’, which I’m rather looking foward to.

More details at his MySpace page, with excerpts, readings and so on: www.myspace.com/dwbsoho

After Polari, Mr Benson takes myself, Mr H, Mr L and his friend Ms Lois for dinner at one of the Chinese restaurants in Gerrard Street. Sebastian invites me to an orgy on Friday. I politely decline. I’ll be busy playing indiepop songs in Madrid. Many of which are about, well, not going to orgies.

Okay, so Elizabethan Serenade was by Ronald Binge, not Eric Coates. I got my British Light Music composers in a twist. Mr Coates did the themes from ‘The Dambusters’ and ‘Desert Island Discs’. Mr Binge did ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ and ‘Sailing By’. Right, got that.

***

There’s a photo of me on Page 96 of the current Time Out, as one of the exhibits in Jamie McLeod’s exhibition on Modern Dandies. The pic’s also in my website Gallery, though Firefox does that washed-out thing to the colours which I don’t understand:

http://dickonedwards.co.uk/jamie-mcleod/

***

Have just been trying to write about my birthday, only to go into a 2000 word rant / ramble about the nature of adult birthdays, the guilt trips, the obligations, the switch from paper cards to Facebook greetings, how I equate them with New Year’s Eve in that there’s no way I can’t feel anything but uneasy about them. I also have learned that if you DO want a gathering of friends around you, you HAVE to organise the gathering well in advance, and tell EVERYONE in EVERY possible way. A successful birthday is, like most types of success, just a question of hustling and PR.

I’ve found that the best thing for me to do is to stop moping about at home, go out to someone else’s social event (there’s always SOMETHING on), casually mention it’s my birthday, then find that the friends I’m with will kindly buy me a few drinks, or even take me for an impromptu meal round the corner.

‘So how are you?’

‘Well, today’s my birthday.’

‘Really! I didn’t know. So what are you doing for it?’

‘Well, this, now.’

‘Oh. Well, would you like a drink?’

But – oh – some people do birthdays better than others. I’ll stop that rant right here in the interests of positive thinking.

***

I’m just having an ARGH time of things lately. Forgive me. Writing’s not coming, or if it does, it’s all complaints and whining and cynicism and general self-pity. ARGH, and indeed, ARGH, frankly.

As proof you never know who’s reading, and that one must be careful in a public diary when naming times and places as well as names, I’ve received an email from a chap from the band Red Atlas, regarding my previous grumpy entry. They want to know if it was them I was referring to as The Most Awful Band In The History Of Humanity, playing too loudly in the rehearsal room next door:

I too was rehearsing at Audio Underground on Monday in the uncoveted 7-10pm spot. I’m hoping that the aforementioned Most Awful Band In Humanity next door were the fifty strong thrash rockers who peppered the evening with chirrupping “rock and roll”s and squawling twin guitar salvos – with the doors open yet! – and not our own resolutely British Pop Stuff.

Oh yes, it was definitely a thrash rock outfit. Or perhaps they called themselves ‘Sludge Metal’, a term I saw in a ‘Drummer Wanted’ ad on the studio noticeboard. Charming description: I’ll take two!

But I was more bemoaning the seemingly eternal rule of rehearsal room life: that the band next door will always be (a) too loud despite soundproofing, and (b) play the most unlovely sound in the world.

That said, it’s funny how even a sound you might quite like to hear leaking out through the walls – say, ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ by Eric Coates – is unfailingly rendered unpleasant by the process. Loud music from next door is just always unwelcome, regardless.

Actually, my upstairs neighbour plays loud 1920s Ivor Novello-type records, but as the recordings from that era all have zero ‘bass end’, the sound hardly makes it through the ceiling at all. Very considerate of him.

On the bus home last night, a Young Person was playing some loud music from their phone’s speaker – a recent common annoyance which I persuade myself to not mind by remembering the cassette-playing ‘Ghetto Blasters’ of the 80s. They were far, far worse. From the 90s till about two years ago, there was a gap between the ghetto blasters going out of fashion (with the switch to CDs) and the new phone variety coming in. So there’s been a whole generation of youths who actually didn’t play loud music on public transport, purely because there wasn’t a desirable gadget around at the time with which to do so. Portable CD players were just too mumsy, I suppose: one associates them with aerobics classes.

The phone music in this case was modern hip-hop, rather than ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ or Ivor Novello, disappointingly enough. Actually, I have heard Morrissey songs blaring out from an open topped sports car on the Archway Road, which I suppose is about halfway there.

Here’s ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ on YouTube. Whenever there’s a gang of angry bears at my door, demanding they come in and eat my face while delivering a credit card bill, it’s a perfect piece of music to reach for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbLNigDZai8

There. All better.

Monday eve – to Audio Underground studios in Stoke Newington, for the first of three Fosca rehearsals. Myself, Rachel Stevenson and Charley Stone. We’re just doing a one-off gig in Madrid on Sept 12th – barely 24 hours out of the country. But it’s been months since the last gig, so we need a decent amount of practice (1 rehearsal is too little, 2 is risking it, 3 is just about okay).

After Madrid, there’s talk of us possibly playing Berlin and Hamburg. It would also be nice to play just one more London gig, by way of a proper farewell to Fosca. One likes to properly draw a line under things, rather than let them peter out, if at all possible. I think Fosca were always going to be a Three Album Band, like Galaxie 500 and McCarthy. I’m still interested in writing lyrics for other people, though, so hopefully there’ll be some sort of new musical adventures to come.

As for a last London gig, I’ve now changed my mind about not playing club nights. In fact, I’d also be happy doing a support slot, even fourth on the bill at the Bull & Gate with some twelve-year-olds in Trilbys headlining, because I like an early night. We shall see.

Monday: I’m reminded why indie band life suits me less than ever. The rehearsal room mixer has a broken channel, there’s no ventilation, and I have to sing with a battered, filthy vocal mic which I’m still tasting hours later. The band rehearsing next door are, of course, the loudest and most awful band in the history of humanity. What’s worse is that Charley’s amp picks up some of their PA output when we’re having moments of quiet discussion, like a Minicab Radio from Hell.

Apart from that, it’s quite enjoyable.

***

Afterwards, at about 10pm, Charley and I are wandering the Stoke Newington streets to find the right bus stop home. Suddenly, a man brandishing a can of booze starts shouting something very loudly (thanks to Charley for reminding me of the details), but to whom it isn’t clear:

“Alistair! Alistair! Alistair!”

We look around at the zebra crossing, trying to see if this Alistair person is nearby. The man goes on.

“Oy, Alistair! Hello Alistair! HELLO DARLING!”

‘Darling?’, I muse. Is he addressing Charley? Or alluding to my apparent lack of butchness?

By now he’s standing right behind us, and is just shouting continually.

“Alistair Darling! ALISTAIR DARLING!”

The penny drops. Another name to add to the long list of Things Strangers Shout At Me In The Street.

File it alongside Rhydian, Max Headroom, Billy Idol, An Extra From The Mighty Boosh, The Albino Assassin From The Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase Movie ‘Foul Play’, That Woman In ‘Liquid Sky’ When She Plays A Man, Paul Bowles (a literary reference from Shane MacG), Bob Downe, Andy Warhol, David Sylvian, Max Headroom, and (still my all-time favourite) ‘Oy! The Eighties!’

***

I turn 37 tomorrow. I’m not entirely happy about this, but prefer it to the alternative.