(Sorry it’s taken me so long to do this entry. I wanted to get the links and credits right. This one is all-singing and all-dancing…)
Quick alert: Today is Buy Nothing Day in the UK, which I’m observing. I love how it throws up all kinds of questions, and how it dares people to prove they can go without shopping on a Saturday close to Christmas but not too close. Wish I’d posted this with a bit more notice, but anyway.
***
Friday November 20th: I DJ at the British Library in St Pancras. At 6pm, the last readers are thrown out, the reading rooms are closed, and a conference-style stage rig with shiny new PA and lights, plus ultra-professional crew, is set up along one side of the entrance hall. On the opposite wall are trestle tables with caterers manning a bar.
The event is called Victorian Values, arranged to coincide with the Library’s current exhibition on Victorian photography. It’s co-promoted by the Ministry of Burlesque and is billed as a 19th-century themed evening of music, tableaux vivant, skits, can-can dancers, and inspired burlesque disrobing – including an opium-induced vision of a Burlesque Britannia. The MC is Des O’Connor and the acts include Vicky Butterfly (who brings her own wooden theatre booth, hand painted with figures by Lawrence Gullo), Joe Black, Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer, and Oompah Brass, who perform covers of latter-day pop hits in the vintage brass style (tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpets), while decked out in full lederhosen. It’s a lot of fun, frankly.
The oldest recording I play is ‘I’m Following In Father’s Footsteps’ by Vesta Tilley, one of the many male impersonators of the music hall era.
Vesta Tilley
It was released in 1906 on Edison Gold Moulded Records, the world’s first record label. I found it at this website, the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, University of California.
I love how ‘Edison Records’ first meant wax cylinders; actual discs were still some years off. The song itself was also featured in the BBC TV adaptation of Ms Waters’s Tipping The Velvet.
The newest track I play is ‘What Have You Done To Your Face?’ by Marcella & The Forget-Me-Nots, from 2009. A track so new it has yet to be released in any downloadable or physical form. It’s currently available only as a streaming track at the band’s MySpace page, or via this striking video directed by Alex De Campi, which is the way I discovered it. I didn’t realise at first that the singer & songwriter was the same Marcella from the Puppini Sisters – it’s such a different musical style. Which I guess was the whole point of her starting a separate band. Consider me first in the queue for their debut album.
Just before heading to the Library, I read this story on the BBC news site about Linn Products becoming the first hi-fi company to cease manufacture of CD players, in favour of digital streaming and downloading. It’s a milestone in the history of recorded sound, and a firm step towards the end of the CD age.
So while DJing, I think about the various formats the tracks were originally created for: wax cylinder, vinyl disc, CD, celluloid, video, MP3, online streaming, and how I’m playing them together on the same format (specially made CDRs, compiled from MP3s), in a building built for the very act of archiving. It’s the DJ as librarian.
***
This event is packed out, with people lining not just the area in front of the stage but every staircase and balcony in the entrance hall. Rows of faces look down upon the stage (at the side of which are the DJ decks), like a crowd scene in some exotic city square. Emma Jackson is there, and remarks that the audience is noticeably mixed: alongside the young-ish cabaret and burlesque fans are lots of older Ladies Who Gallery. Good, I say. A library is the place to mix worlds.
Judging by the roars of approval – particularly for Mr B – the event is a success. I have one Lady Who Galleries approaching me afterwards. She says she was ‘pleasantly surprised’ that the British Library would put on such an evening, and affirms she had a nice time. And who, she asks, did that song I played about the ‘coin operated boy’, the one the younger ladies present seemed to know all the words to?
Well, here’s the playlist.
MUSIC HALL
I’m playing with time zones somewhat, as music hall songs were written as late as the 1940s, but it is all in the same style.
Ella Shields – Burlington Bertie From Bow
Frank H Fox – Drop Me In Piccadilly (as suggested by Kevin Pearce, taken from his excellent blog on London songs)
Hetty King – Piccadilly (thanks to Mr Pearce again)
Gus Elen – The ‘Ouses In Between
Florrie Forde – Down At The Old Bull And Bush
Marie Lloyd – A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good
Mark Sheridan – I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside (thanks to Ms Crimson Skye)
Vesta Tilley – I’m Following In Father’s Footsteps
Stanley Holloway – Where Did You Get That Hat (thanks to Billy Reeves)
The Andrews Sisters – Beer Barrel Polka
The Beverley Sisters – Roll Out The Barrel
Shaun Parkes – The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. Taken from the film Marie Lloyd: Queen Of The Music Hall. Soundtrack unavailable, so I made an MP3 from the DVD.
GILBERT & SULLIVAN
Topsy-Turvy film cast – So please you sir with much regret (mp3 link). The piano rehearsal version which plays under the opening credits: just text on a black background, so the audience has to focus on the song. There is a soundtrack CD, but this track isn’t on it. Cue more DVD to MP3 recording. I love just how this song kicks off the rich, colourful world of Topsy-Turvy before we get to see any visuals. It’s just Sullivan saying, ‘One… two… TWO… two!’ then the song in its purest piano form, with impeccable harmonies by Shirley Henderson and co. Instantly we’re transported.
Topsy-Turvy soundtrack – Paris Galop from The Grand Duke (instrumental)
Linda Ronstadt – Poor Wandering One. From the 1983 film The Pirates Of Penzance. Not released on CD or DVD, so I had to teach myself how to make MP3s from YouTube. Just for this gig. I am the very model of a modern DJ.
Kevin Kline et al – With Catlike Tread. From the same film. YouTube again. Can’t beat a gang of sexy singing pirates.
The Hot Mikado stage cast – Three Little Maids. 1940s jazz style.
Frankie Howerd – The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring. From The Cool Mikado.
The Cool Mikado soundtrack – The Sun’s Hooray (instrumental). The tune of ‘The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze’ covered in a cha-cha-cha style.
The John Barry Seven – Tit Willow Twist (instrumental). Also from The Cool Mikado. Twangy guitar, Shadows style.
The Cool Mikado is a 1962 film by Michael Winner, which sets the G&S operetta in a swinging 60s pop world. It stars Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Stubby Kaye, Lionel Blair, Dennis Price, the John Barry Seven, and Mike and Bernie Winters (whose character names are ‘Mike & Bernie’). I’ve seen it on video… and it’s absolutely bloody awful. But the soundtrack, released on El Records, is a hoot.
OTHER CABARET-COMPATIBLE TUNES
Various Victorian Musical Box instrumentals – Funiculi Funicula, Behold The Lord High Executioner, Valse Des Fées. From Sublime Harmonie: recordings of rare Victorian cylinder and disc musical boxes from The Roy Mickleburgh Collection, Bristol.
Various Player Piano instrumentals – Burlington Bertie From Bow, Nellie Dean, Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. From Mechanical Music Hall: Street Penny & Player Pianos, Musical Boxes & Other Victorian Automata.
Wendy Carlos – William Tell Overture from A Clockwork Orange soundtrack.
London Philharmonic Orchestra – Can-Can (Offenbach).
Moulin Rouge film cast – Spectacular Spectacular, Sparking Diamonds
Michael Nyman – Angelfish Decay
Tipping The Velvet cast – It’s Only Human Nature After All. From the closing credits. Own MP3 recorded from DVD.
The Dresden Dolls – Coin Operated Boy
Momus – Sinister Themes (thanks to Michelle Mishka)
The Divine Comedy – The Booklovers
The Tiger Lillies – The Story Of The Man Who Went Out Shooting. From the Shock Headed Peter stage soundtrack.
Marcella & The Forget-Me-Nots – What Have You Done To Your Face? DJ promo MP3, as kindly provided by the artist.
Peggy Lee – Fever
Marilyn Monroe – Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend (Swing Cats Remix)
Also procured, but not played due to time:
Scarlet’s Well – Mr Mystery’s Mother
Electrelane – Eight Steps
Shockheaded Peters – I Bloodbrother Be
King of Luxembourg – Picture Of Dorian Gray (the TV Personalities’ song, also covered by The Futureheads. This is the most effete version.)
Ciceley Courtneidge – There’s Something About A Soldier
Jessie Wallace – When I Take My Morning Promenade. From the film Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Music Hall.
Jessie Wallace being the actress who plays Kat Slater in Eastenders. Was rather looking forward to playing her (rather good) version of this Marie Lloyd song, particularly alongside Momus et al. However, one of the stage acts covered the song on the night, so I thought it my duty as a Gentleman DJ to omit it. May as well upload it here:
Jessie Wallace – When I Take My Morning Promenade
I don’t think I’ve ever spent so long putting together a single DJ set. But I loved every minute of it.
Tags:
British Library,
DJ gigs,
Victoriana
Far be it for me to add to the tiresome anti-Twitter articles out there, but I have to pin at least some of the blame for my diary hiatus on the popular sky-blue social networking site. And now I know I have to wean myself off it in order to write here again.
I’m worried that Twitter’s ubiquity has meant that many bloggers and online diarists with the impulse to say something to the world have evolved – or devolved – from producing well-considered and chewed-over paragraphs rich with their own personal style, into squeezing out cramped, ephemeral if modish ‘Tweets’ of 140 characters.
Now, Twitter is very much Where It’s At, so one can understand the attraction. One doesn’t like to feel that the party is in the other room – that Life is going on elsewhere, even on the internet. My fear is that the impulse to Tweet drains the impulse to write in any other way. Which is fine for those gifted souls who can rattle out a book-length treatise before breakfast then happily switch to chatting about The X Factor over hashtags and hash browns.
It’s because I’m ultimately concerned, as ever, with matters of style. Of becoming oneself through one’s writing. And I’m not convinced you can really do style on Twitter. Not my kind of style, anyway. It’s good for posting alerts, or emergency appeals for help (see below), or linking to entries like this (which my Twitter account does automatically).
Otherwise the most one can manage is a brief aside, a morsel from a running commentary, or an attempt to Join In, which is something I’ve never been great at in the first place. I want to say more, and read more. Yes, Twitter is like a big party. Except for me it feels like a party where there’s a competitive edge to be popular, where the more famous guests have whole armies at their command (heaven help you if you displease the gurus in question), where one can only hear half of so many conversations, where one might try to join in but is ignored, or is a bit late, where it’s all too easy to say something one regrets, or is mistaken due to the brevity of the form, or risks a joke backfiring because context is tricky in 140 characters. All of which is fine… for those for whom it’s fine. But who am I kidding? You’ll always find me in the stand-alone-blog kitchen at parties.
It got to the point where I was honing one sentence for over an hour in order to fit it into a Tweet. At which point it came home to me: I am just not an innate Twitterer. I am an unabashed wordy and rococo writer, and I like space to throw my words about. Just as I like big, sprawling cities with no centre, where the unusual can nestle and escape, rather than small towns whose core is held hostage to the less meek on a Friday night. I like blackening whole pages of A4 with fountain pen ink, full of crossings-out, at a desk or cafe table; rather than jabbing into a handheld device while standing in a queue. No, I can’t Tweet and stay stylish. Not when I have this diary. It’s one or the other. Sorry, Twitter.
***
The postal strike is over, at least until the New Year. Handwritten letters arrive once again to delight the heart, and I reply with equal joy (Proper Letters would be my entry in the current charity anthology Modern Delight – particularly airletters and aerogrammes, of which more another time). Proper Letters also serve to dilute the irritation of less personal missives like the following, received today:
Dear Mr Edwards
Your local estate agent Boorish Grasp would like to draw your attention to a garage we have been instructed to sell in [nearby] Highgate Avenue. It features an up and over door, is ideal for storage… and would comfortably house a car. The asking price is £30,000 and is leasehold.
They know my name and address, but are clearly unaware that I am currently living on £8,000 a year, courtesy of National Assistance once more.
(What happened to the book deal? My interest waned, then returned, then I lost faith in my ability to write it. Then I regained faith, only to lose interest in the project again. Then I procrastinated, and so on. But the fact I’m writing the diary means I’m writing again full stop. Today I put a Post-It note on my laptop saying ‘Do Not Open Until Something Is Finished’. It seems to have worked. I’m typing this up from a day’s longhand work.)
I do not own the bed I sleep on, let alone a car. But the letter is a reminder of the kind of neighbourhood I’m lucky to live in. I suppose I have the illusion of success and wealth by postcode alone – which estate agents go by. They skip to the music of postcode and euphemism. I must be dragging down the average income of this street. Mike Skinner of the popular chart rap combo The Streets lives around the block, as does Victoria Wood. Maybe they should do an album together, given they’ve both turned tales of awkward young love into catchy songs, musical formats aside. Maybe Victoria could have a go at the techno-style rapping, and Mike could play the piano while shrugging his shoulders a lot.
The mere idea of me having £30,000 to spend on anything, never mind a garage, still seems a universe away. When I had the night shift job earlier this year, I was on £19,000 p.a. And it seemed like the most money in the world.
In fact, in terms of what I could do, it was. My rent and normal outgoings are so low by London standards that the night shift funded mini-holidays in Tangier, Gibraltar, Sark, Bruges and New York. Always staying in hotels, too.
At a recent party, I met a forty-ish man who said wistfully, ‘Oh I’d love to have a holiday in New York… Maybe one day, when I can afford it. When the mortgage’s paid off.’ He had a full-time job – I suspect earning more than £19,000 – and a house. It was then that I realised I’d rather stay living in a rented furnished bedsit and be able to travel the world than own a whole house and not. Plus I cannot speak Mortgage.
When one reaches one’s death bed, one doesn’t want to be saying ‘At least I saved lots of money’. Or ‘At least I owned a house’. I realise I’m speaking for myself, though.
***
It’s all very well living to please oneself like this, but when bumped down to hand-to-mouth status once more, I find it very hard remembering that being unemployed is a full-time job. That one has to count every penny coming in, and going out, and keeping tabs on when they do, and that one has to hold all these things in one’s head at all times.
So a week or two ago I suddenly realised why I was finding it unusually easy not to run out of money. I had forgotten to pay the rent. For two months. I quickly needed to find £600 from scratch, or risk homelessness, a state from which I doubt I’d ever really recover.
I snapped into action – by my standards – and announced to the world (or at least, Facebook and Twitter) that I was selling off all my musical instruments and equipment. It was something I’d been meaning to do anyway, so now was the time. After 48 hours of sales and donations – the latter which I never solicited but was in no position to turn down – I had cleared the debt. Seeing friends email me anything from £5 to £100, or haggling UP the price of a dusty four-track recorder, quite overwhelmed me. It felt like the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. A thousand heartfelt thanks to everyone who bought or donated.
Mind, I realise this bail came with a condition. Can’t do it again. I’ve used up my ‘Ask The Audience’ option, my ‘Get Out Of Debt Free’ card.
***
I’m particularly delighted that my vintage synthesiser, a 1982 Roland Juno 6, went to Leo Chadbourn, aka Simon Bookish. Who will not only use it to make new music, but just the sort of music I like.
My brother Tom is the star of this rescue, offering to take away my guitars and get them fully ‘set up’ and serviced for resale, using his own Ebay account. He’s a full-time musician and speaks fluent Used Guitar far better than me. I didn’t even know my ‘Strat’ was a Japanese make, and was thus worth less than a USA one, but more than a Strat copy. That sort of thing. It’s taken me seventeen years of playing guitar to realise I’m just not a guitar person. Can’t say I didn’t give it a go.
I can write music; I just can’t play it very well. So if I do feel the need to write songs again, I can easily buy or borrow a cheap right-handed guitar. On recordings, I’ve always preferred to use proper musicians as it is: producers who are also programmers and instrumentalists. For the Fosca albums, the guitar parts were mostly played by Ian Catt, Alex Sharkey, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan, or Tom. Not only would they make fewer mistakes, but I’d get the writer’s thrill of hearing the sound in my head brought into the world via more expert hands and gaining in translation; just as playwrights delight in actors bringing flesh to their boney, tentative words.
I’m also relieved to be spared the whole Ebay selling process: the questions, the chasing for payment, the delivery. It’s too much like taking on work in order to avoid work. If Tom can’t sell the guitars, I’m tempted to just set fire to them ceremonially, like Hopey Glass does in this frame from Love & Rockets. What cathartic bliss…
One guitar – the Orlando Strat – has already gone, but my Gibson SG (the main Fosca guitar) and my Yamaha electro-acoustic are still on sale. Please tell your guitar-playing friends. Both are left-handers, which makes finding a buyer harder, but Tom is confident there’s no need for firelighters. I’m hoping to be proved wrong about the Hopey Glass option. I do need the money.
Now, for the first time in seventeen years, I find myself coming home to a room with no musical instruments in it. My very first guitar was a 21st birthday present from Tom. So it’s fitting he should take the last guitars away. A sad day? No. A brave step into the future day. An anti-nostalgia day.
What now? I’m enjoying doing what I want with my days, though frustrated at having to say no to anything that might involve spending money, like going for a drink more than once a week. And I’m hoping I’ll find something – the abortive book, a different book, anything, which will bring in slightly more than £8,000 a year. Not too unrealistic a goal, I hope. I don’t need £30,000 for a garage. I now have even fewer possessions to put in it, after all.
My most expensive item used to be the Gibson SG, bought new in 1997 for £1000. Now? Bespoke suits. Which for this Dickon Edwards, is as it should be.
