Work continues apace in the <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> camp. Tickets for the London Spitz concert <a href="http://www.wegottickets.com/gig.asp?3025">are now available to buy online</a>, and the fourth album, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" is released on May 3rd. It may not trouble the Real Charts, but it will delight those in search of some… luminous creatures in their pop music.
In rehearsal, we're now tackling a few select Monochrome Set songs alongside the Scarlet's Well repertoire. The Spitz show will be Bid's first UK gig in eight years, and the spreading of a little happiness to M Set fans who never got to see his old group in concert seems only fair. I wonder what it must be like for the under-25-year-old members of the Scarlet's Well band when one's lead singer teaches you a new song to play, saying, "Here's one I wrote a few years before you were born…"
The new album is sold in typically luxurious Siesta Records packaging: gaudy digipak with full colour 16 page booklet. Visually and aurally, it's utter joy on toast:
When I'm trying to get the album reviewed, the expensive artwork means I can only send out promo CD versions in simple cardboard wallets.
But this is fair enough, I feel. The full package is too beautiful to give away en masse to indifferent whelks of no woman born. Some PR campaigns, like the one for the new Morrissey album, won't even let journalists own a copy of any kind. They have to go to the record company's own office, listen and take notes. When Taylor Parkes reviewed the last Morrissey album in 1997 for Melody Maker, he had to make do with a cassette. It's interesting how the more "important" an artist is, the more paranoid their record company is about losing sales to bootlegging. Yet they are exactly the sort of artists who can afford to lose such sales.
One more interesting way of getting a full, proper shop copy of "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" for nil pounds is by entering the Caption Competition at the SW website, featuring our esteemed accordion player, Mr White (<lj user=martylog>):
To Bethnal Green for the wedding reception and party of Ms Esther and Mr Paul. The venue is the local Working Mens Club, but despite my being a man in make-up allergic to most forms of work, I am allowed inside without there being any kind of anti-matter explosion. I am Worst Man at a wedding.
Bethnal Green at night initially seems scary. But then, I find most modern life scary, walking as I do with a fearsome tremble in my step, ready for the next attack from my fellow man. Very unfair on my fellow man, I know. And in the case of Bethnal Green I feel I owe the area a silent apology. The strangers I meet on the street from tube station to venue are far more polite and friendly than those in the apparently "safer" area of Muswell Hill. At the cashpoint on Bethnal Green Road there is an exchange of "After you", "No, after YOU" which goes on for quite some time.
To consolidate my faith in the better aspects of humanity, the reception is a rather joyous and extremely touching affair. In his Best Man speech, Mr Alex Kapranos remarks how the couple are genuinely, palpably, visibly, impressively in love, and this is something with which no one can argue. Real Love, indeed.
Early on in the evening, the DJs play The Glitter Band followed by The Smith's "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" – a rather inspired segue, give the latter is a lesser Morrissey hit musically akin to the style of Mr Glitter's hits, as well as being appropriate to the noted lengthy engagement period of the couple. Certainly more appropriate than Freda Payne's "Band Of Gold", a song inexplicably popular at weddings, given it's about a marriage breaking up.
Performing live is Ms Sophie Heawood and her impromptu band, formed to sweetly serenade the newlyweds with "Chapel Of Love". Ms Sophie sat next to me at the wedding service (it was the only free seat) but thankfully appears to have suffered no ill effects. She is one of the visionaries behind the new magazine <a href="http://www.planbmag.com/">Plan B,</a> which I've promised to write for. I started some things, and unlike Mr Morrissey I do intend to finish them.
There is also a set from a chap called Ben who wears a cowboy hat and sings in a Leadbelly bluesy- country fashion. Despite, or perhaps because of the occasion, he decides to perform some gloriously inappropriate songs for a wedding reception. One is "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", another is "Goodbye Cruel World", the unsubtle suicide song from Pink Floyd's The Wall (arguably the world's least subtle album as it is), and then <i>another</i> song from the same album, "In The Flesh", the one about a rock star whose Nazi-rally-like arena concerts have made him such a paranoid crypto-fascist that he wants anyone he doesn't like the look of shot at once. It all seems deeply incongruous at first, but it transpires that at least one of the couple is a fan of the album.
One observer might interpret playing such covers as a wry jab at the groom's newfound status as an internationally successful rock star (his band Franz Ferdinand are playing a cavernous arena near you), and a possible warning that he had better not let it all go to his head. On the evidence of this occasion such fears are entirely unjustified. Though Mr Paul and his bandmates are now no strangers to Top Of The Pops, this is not a Celebrity Wedding festooned with the rich and famous, just friends (and a few Friendster Friends) and family. Many here are worryingly skinny indie band types who clearly could do with a few extra slices of wedding cake.
I suppose the one person there, apart from the band, who IS a celebrity of a kind is the DJ Mr Erol Alkan, who turns up to play a wedding set, and he is someone regarded by some baggy jeaned magazines as one of London's most fashionable DJs. But, like the groom's band, he is neither outwardly different or embarrassed by such success, being undoubtably grateful – though, crucially, not boastful (only that way lies accusations of Selling Out) – for being able to make a living from doing what one enjoys and would do regardless.
Now, this is a position to which we all aspire, and goodness knows I aspire to it myself. Being finally, securely able to make a living from Being Dickon Edwards is really something I'm striving to do at present – the only vague "goal" I have beyond basic food and shelter. I am quite happy to reside hand-to-cheap-lipglossed-mouth by myself in a London bedsit for the rest of my life, where there is no room to swing even the skinniest indie form of cat. The world is a stage, and this is my dressing room. What matters to many thankfully doesn't matter in the least to me – owning a flat, speaking fluent Mortgage or Pension, making money, a, dare I say it, lifelong Love Life, or even a nightlong Sex Life. All those things are pursuits which other people seem happy to engage in and perpetuate, though they are as alien to me as terrorism, war and bungy jumping.
But I am happy for such people, if they are happy in turn. All I do want is to be able to answer the dreaded Frequently Asked Question, "What do you do?", with something approaching a confident and definite description. My interviewer may not be able to keep a straight face when I reply "I Am A Professional English Eccentric", but that doesn't matter. My own face must be deadly serious. In fact, what's important is that I am able to not stare at my shoes at this moment, as attractive as my shoes are.
Ideally, I could get paid for writing this diary for a publication (one which kindly puts its content online as well as existing in paper form), as it does seem one thing I find myself doing anyway, which strangers seem to enjoy. If I could get this diary sponsored by Prada, then my life would be complete.
But back to the wedding reception. When I said it was refreshingly devoid of Celebrities, I didn't for a second mean to imply that it was full of Ordinary People. Heaven forfend. Superstardom in the Warhol sense of the word has always been my preferred state of being. Though that's rather unfair on another act performing tonight, Mr Simon Bookish, who unlike many of those notorious peacocks draped around the Bacofoil walls of Mr W's Factory in all those silly films, actually has talent.
Mr Bookish is unlucky enough to have to suffer a day job, which he tells me is something to do with Amnesty International. From all accounts, it sounds like torture.
So the sooner he can make a living from his Art, the better. He not only is capable of singing for his supper, but singing for The Last Supper. Charismatic, engaging, and always a joy to watch, he is one act on "The London Scene" that I fully recommend. If anyone deserves to be on Top Of The Pops, it is Mr Bookish. I can imagine the bored parents of England spitting out their TV dinners in mock-outrage, secretly glad that the TV programme is once again sporting music where "it's just Bang Bang Bang" and "you can't tell if it's a boy or a girl". That, after all, is what Top Of The Pops should always be about. And what pop music should be about.
Tonight's Bookish Set includes a cover version of the homoerotic Franz Ferdinand song, "Michael", performed in his trademark style of intense electronica and direct interaction with the crowd. By that I don't mean he starts fights with his audience, but acknowledges their attention and repays it mutually, dancing with them, or to them, performing as if all that exists is that one location, that one point in time. It may be back to the office with him on Monday, but upon a stage, or in front of it – his real work is done.
Afterwards, Mr B remarks how strange it was singing "Michael" knowing that the person the song is based upon, the real Michael, is in the room. The muse in question is pointed out to me. He is wearing white dancing jeans – what else?
Another song on the Franz Ferdinand album is a similar example of the Artist As Magpie, taking from Life what should be preserved in Art, or in Song. It's the track "Jacqueline". When I first heard it, I wondered it it were based upon a Scottish indie girl called Jacqueline I've met a few times, whose old London flat is still in my address book. I am happy to have this confirmed by Mr Kapranos – it's the same girl.
Again, it's like the Warhol Superstars, immortalised in song by Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side, or by The Monochrome Set's "Goodbye Joe". "Michael" and "Jacqueline" are Franz Ferdinand song characters based on real people, but they also represent a modern archetype, a mini-scene, made up of stylish outsiders that are mini-celebrities in their own social circles (or even just "famous" for one other person), past and present. Social Legends, if you like. And it's the duty of The Writer, and The Songwriter to record this.
Whether it's Alan Bennett writing down the utterations of The Lady In The Van, or Christopher Isherwood making more use of Sally Bowles's life than she ever did, paying homage to The Secret Celebrity is a common theme in all the best art, music and literature. Mr Paul would, I imagine, have a Franz Ferdinand song written about him if he wasn't already in the band.
I try to use this public diary in a similar manner to Mr Isherwood, documenting not just my life, but the lives I see around me at the places I am invited to go. I often spend hours upon a single entry, and try to take pains not to write anything or photograph (badly – I Am An Out-Of-Focus Camera) anything I think might offend the people unwittingly dragged in. There's only been three occasions in this diary's seven year history that I have received requests to remove a reference to someone, and I've happily complied each time.
At the wedding party, I told Mr Kapranos about my diary. In the same way that (I think) he checked with the real "Michael" and "Jacqueline" if it was okay to immortalise them in song, I said I hope he didn't mind I'd written about the wedding. I added that if there was anything in my diary he objected to, I'd remove it at once.
To his undying credit, he shrugged and replied "You write what the hell you like, Dickon." Truly, a living saint. Franz Ferdinand records are available to buy now, folks.
For me, and I suspect Mr K understands this too, the greatest honour is to be written about, photographed, or even sung about, as has happened to me in the case of "Son Of Dorian Gray" by the band Tender Trap. One of the greatest sadnesses of my life was the time Momus told me he'd written a song about me… only to not release the thing. Even if it's unflattering, inaccurate, mocking or cruel, attention has been paid. Your mark has been made on the consciousness of an Artist, no mean feat in this world of a million distractions and corporate advertising inciting you to pay attention to anything but a person with no PR agent.
A quick glance at any magazine rack or TV channel will tell you that many so-called Real Celebrities fail to evince the slightest degree of anything interesting or intelligent whatsoever. Indeed, their careers are so carefully stage-managed, they cannot give a single answer in a single interview without a Press Officer being on hand to consult first, in case any signs of Personality are allowed to leak out.
Mr Warhol said in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. He was slightly wrong. It is now the future, and everyone is on television, which is an entirely different thing. As it is, that quote is so over-used and over-interpreted, that someone really should have shot him for saying that.
People who would make much better celebrities are, more often than not, entirely unknown beyond their social circle. Looking around and chatting to the people at the wedding reception, seeing "Michael", thinking about "Jacqueline", I could see many more such unsung superstar types in abundance. Perhaps they will all have songs written about them one day. Perhaps many of them already have.
In this sense, it was a Superstar Wedding indeed. It finished with the superstar couple themselves given a proper send-off outside their flat by the gathered crowd, covering them with rice and "Chapel Of Love" in a multitude of harmonies. Happy Honeymoon, Paul and Esther.
A very modern day. I receive a free digital camera in the post, which I suppose is a fairly modern thing to receive. It is in response to a coupon I sent off months ago for some product whose name escapes me. It does not have one of those handy screens at the back where one can instantly check the picture, and has no flash facility, but then it is free. I look upon it as a sort of digital Lomo, the analogue vintage toy camera favoured by arty sorts, and take it with me to my first engagement of the day.
Today's engagement is a wedding. It's the second wedding I have been invited to in my thirty-two years. The first was of my cousin, who married a TV chef from the Carlton Food Network. I feel a little sad that I'm not invited to more weddings. It's true that I rail and rant against coupling of any kind when given the air space, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good wedding. At base, after all, I am a romantic. A new-new-new romantic.
I received my wedding invite via Friendster.com on the Internet. This, surely, makes it a very modern wedding indeed. A marriage made in Friendster.com.
The couple in question are a Ms Esther and a Mr Paul. Mr Paul is the drummer in the band Franz Ferdinand, who are that rare thing – I band I like who manage to be liked by real people too, even though they don't wear trainers onstage. My faith in humanity is tentatively restored.
Despite being Scottish, Mr Paul has not brought his weather with him, and today appears to be warm, dry and gently pleasant. Spring finally starts in London.
Like any self-respecting fictional scientist, I try out the camera upon myself first, in Moorgate Tube station:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd19.jpg"></img>
The ceremony takes place at Bromley Public Hall in Bow Road, well within the sound of Bow Bells. This is deep within London's East End, and so signs of this kind, a few steps from the hall, almost have a sick, romantic tinge of their own, if you're in a dark, Kray Brothers mood.
"Mug me, mug me do! It's been so long since I last felt the touch of a man…"
Inside the registry office, Mr Paul is sporting a rather fetching hat with a feather in its band, and signs the marriage register with the gorgeous Ms Esther. Then, fully bonded within the eyes of The Law, they retire to the grounds outside for more photographs. I have rice in my pocket ready to throw. An American Girl tells me this is bad for pigeons, and makes them explode. This makes me throw the rice with more gusto than ever.
Many more photos are taken, some with myself ("Okay, now, let's have all the people who like The Monochrome Set").
I spend time chatting to everyone who will speak to me, and retire to the nearest pub with Franz Ferdinand's manager, Mr Cerne. Apropos of nothing, he shows me the latest list of Franz Ferdinand merchandise awaiting approval. It includes mugs, dart flights, and underwear for both genders. I suggest he adds pens and ties – not ties with a logo (far too tacky), but ties in the logo's striped colours, a la Eton. If such articles become reality, you heard it here first.
Disembarking at Highgate Tube Station, I call in at the Boogaloo for an ill-advised additional drink:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd20.jpg"></img>
My flu appears to have vanished, and I am keen to go out tonight. Club "Soul Mole" at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm it is, then.
<p><i>Postscript, April 6th.</i>
I originally illustrated this entry with more equally atrociously blurred photos from the wedding, but on discovering they had been featured elsewhere, out of the diary context and without my knowledge, I thought it was better to remove them. Also, on reflection, my photos really didn't do the occasion an iota of justice. Far superior snaps were taken by others present. So, my apologies.</i>
Hit rather heavily by a bout of flu, I find myself confined indoors for most of this week, and have to give any clubs a miss for the time being. Which includes Kash Point tonight, much to my chagrin.
Snuffling and coughing, I remember that it’s time to set the world to rights with another instalment of the Scarlet’s Well Mp3 Singles Club.
This rather beautiful, jaunty uptempo track is as good at relieving cold symptoms as anything Mr Beecham might muster. Titled Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor, it’s sung by some of the motley Hesperus crew walking back to Mousseron from the Underworld… via the sea bed. The Spearman being the sea god Neptune, the Big Dipper being the constellation of The Plough.
Bid takes lead vocals on this one, and it features a rather gorgeous E-Bow-like soaring instrumental break.
Link:
Like the previous mp3, it’s taken from the album The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse, released on May 3rd on Siesta Records.
In the current issue of Q Magazine, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex suggests a track listing for the ideal Art-Rock CD compilation. He includes The Monochrome Set’s “He’s Frank”, written by Bid circa 1978, and played by me at the club Stay Beautiful when I DJ’d there. From the same songwriter twenty-six years on, “Big Dipper…” may not be Rock enough for some, but it’s definitely Art. And I know what I like.
More info: http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/
Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor
Can you see the Dipper, the twinkle of the Dipper
Look up to the ceiling of the vasty deep
It points the way to where we’ll find our sleep
If you hear a fiddle, the scraping of a fiddle
Coming from the hull of a passing yawl
It’s just a jolly, praying for us all
I hear my love a-singing far away
Calling me back to my door
And till I tread my earth
I’ll march the Spearman’s floor
Don’t be caught a-slacking, talking to the mermaids
Don’t be making sports for the rays to play
You’ll fall behind and surely lose your way
You may meet a mako, lurking in the darkness
He may ask to join you for a little while
Don’t answer, lest you want to see him smile
I hear my love a-singing far away
Calling me back to my door
And till I tread my earth
I’ll march the Spearman’s floor
Can you see the fishes, the spangle of the fishes
Casting inky shadows across our heads
They point the way to where we’ll find our beds
If you hear a tinkle, a merry little tinkle
Coming from the deck of a sunken sloop
It’s just the verger, counting out his loot
I hear my love a-singing far away
Calling me back to my door
And till I tread my earth
I’ll march the Spearman’s floor
For the benefit of my friends, enemies, stalkers, and potential murderers, here's where to find or avoid me in Nocturnal London this week.
Monday – Launch party for Modern Painters magazine, Photographers Gallery.
Tuesday – Daytime – Visiting the Gaston exhibition with my father. Evening – The Dreaded Music Quiz, Boogaloo pub, Highgate. Ms Frost's team, and at her invitation.
Wednesday – The Siren Suite, Atlantic Bar. Kash Point one-off spin-off night with classical music. 8pm to midnight, thankfully.
Thursday – NFT1 – "Teknolust". Camp sci-fi arthouse film, with Tilda Swinton. <a href="http://www.llgff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=188">After party at Kash Point, the listing says</a>. Which I would go to anyway.
Friday – Visiting Ms Denitto and Ms Spivack for the Camden Mews Film Club – "Carry On Screaming".
Saturday – Ms Gonzalez's birthday party in Collier's Wood. This means I have to decline an invite to another birthday party in Finsbury Park (Mr Robin's – invited by Ms Ellen). Ms G booked me first (some weeks ago), and like all sad clowns, I must honour my bookings. There has to be a system. Besides that, I'm fairly certain I've never been to Collier's Wood before. SW19 – the path less travelled. The unkind will doubtless add "With reason."
Sunday – Daytime – Scarlet's Well rehearsal, Stockwell. Followed by my first free evening in 7 days.
The Teknolust film on Thursday night is the only event I have invited myself to, and thus have to pay. I am a great admirer of Ms Swinton and her serenely aloof, endlessly watchable features.
So, very quickly, and not quite knowing how, I find my week mapped out for me. Living on benefits I have to budget my limited finances accordingly. Being unemployed is a full-time job. I'm meant to be staying in more often, working on Fosca songs, Bid's songs, the novel, generally sorting out my clutter (both physical and mental), and chasing up possible means of getting paid for being Dickon Edwards. I will have to start saying "No" more regularly, with the utmost care, so as not to quash the possibility of future invitations. Just not this week, though. This week, I am a shamelessly grateful tart.
Still, a diary mitigates indulgence, and I shall try to write about the events worth reading about.
A request from the Swedish indie fanzine, “Ettnollett”, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary.
Most fanzines I’ve been aware of barely make it to twenty months of existence. Twenty years demands some sort of applause.
They want me to name my five favourite songs of the past two decades, for their anniversary issue. A difficult task indeed, so I decide to whittle down my short-list by removing any proper pop songs (e.g. Swing Out Sister, Kylie Minogue, Take That) and keep my selection restricted to fanzine-friendly indie-pop. Even then it takes me a while before I decide on the following:
Morrissey “Girl Least Likely To”
The Pastels “Comin’ Thru”
Galaxie 500 “Strange”
McCarthy “Keep An Open Mind Or Else”
Scarlet’s Well “The Return Of The Hesperus”
The last choice sounds gruesomely biased, but it is genuinely my favourite Bid tune of the past 20 years, pipping “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Reach For Your Gun”, “Up” and “I Love Lambeth” at the post.
Left to right:
– Martin White (<lj user="martylog">) – accordion. Responsible for accordion versions of chart hits at <a href="http://popjustice.com/">popjustice.com</a>
– Alice Healey – vocals. The main SW female singer, who features on all four albums so far.
– Kate Dornan (<lj user="serious_k">) – keyboards, vocals. Also plays in Fosca, Butterfly Stitch, and Madam.
– Bid – vocals, guitar, musical captain. Former frontman of <a href="http://www.bid.clara.net/mset/">The Monochrome Set</a>.
– Jennifer Denitto – drums. Formerly of Linus and Long Good Luck. Currently also in <a href="http://www.picturecenter.co.uk/index2.html">Picture Center</a>.
– D.E. – guitar, vocals. Formerly of Orlando, currently of <a href="http://www.fosca.com/">Fosca</a>.
– Toby Robinson – Bass guitar. Producer of the SW albums, and Krautrock veteran. Worked with Can and Stockhausen.
And here is the new SW press biography, researched and written by myself.
<b>Scarlet's Well – The Yarn</b>
Originally conceived as a studio project in 1998, Scarlet's Well is less a pop band than an exotic secret world, a walled garden whose ivy-covered door implores the curious to try its handle.
From within, three lavishly-packaged albums have emerged, released on the <a href="http://www.siesta.es/">Siesta label</a>: "Strange Letters" (1999), "The Isle Of The Blue Flowers" (2000), and "Alice In The Underworld" (2002). Word-of-mouth recommendations have abounded, and Drowned In Sound.com declared "Isle…" as a <a href="http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/1539.html">bona fide Classic Album</a>.
2004, however, sees the first tentative raising of the Scarlet's Well profile in The Real World, determined to reveal the band's existence to the thousands who might adore them if they only knew they existed. As well as the release of a fourth album in May, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", a live band has been put together and the first Scarlet's Well concerts are starting to be booked around the world. Finally, the secret is out.
On paper, they're the musical incarnation of Bid, the handsome, enigmatic, quietly legendary London singer-songwriter, accomplished fop-pop pioneer and former front man of cult New Wave dandies The Monochrome Set.
"I didn't really intend Scarlet's Well to be a band. I wanted this to be an Atmosphere, created by any method available, and I thought that I would have greater freedom by using a variety of different singers, musicians and writers."
Bid's Scarlet's Well collaborators have included living modern rock star Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, lately in the charts with "Take Me Out"; and dead Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, constantly in church services with the hymn "In The Bleak Midwinter". All of which is very Scarlet's Well.
"I wanted the feeling of an open-ended musical with a partly ever-changing cast. The identity of the albums had to be strong enough to allow these changes, without them seeming like compilations. I like the variety, and it gives me more leeway as to the subject matter of the lyrics."
And what lyrics. Archaic and arcane, literate and witty, cinematic and surreal tales of doomed pirate crews, ghostly parrots, lusty werewolves lurking in leafy glades, flirty jellyfish, water-shrew shuffles, demons and cobbled streets. Lead vocals are approached like roles in a story, with Bid's voice taking turns with a diverse cast of girlish young ladies, mostly recruited from local school musicals. The archetype of the petticoated girl wandering matter-of-fact among the fantastical and mysterious sets Scarlet's Well in the cultural company of Lewis Carroll, E Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, "Picnic At Hanging Rock", and more recently, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials".
The music, meanwhile, is a gorgeous, intoxicating form of defiantly non-rocking, timeless and folkish fop-pop. Stunning, ornately-crafted melodies arranged for accordions, mandolins, brushed drums, summer guitars, smoky pianos, banjos, fiddles, ukuleles, and bouzoukis, most of which are played on the records by Bid himself.
"I pick up whatever instrument is lying about in the studio and attempt to play it. I used a bouzouki because Toby Robinson (the studio owner and co-producer) had just come back from a trip to Greece and had been hood-winked by a canny shepherd."
Attempts to pigeon-hole Scarlet's Well musically are ultimately frustrated, though the desperate might invoke comparisons with upstarts like The Divine Comedy (fop-pop crooning), Tindersticks (exotic, atmospheric arrangements) and The 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 stage show "Shockheaded Peter"), Kurt Weill, Kate Bush, Tom Waits covered by girls and girlish men, as well as Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods (non-ironic, Gothic fantasy songs laced with metaphor, wordplay, symbolism, soul, and love).
<b>A BRIEF HISTORY OF BID AND THE MONOCHROME SET</b>
Descended from a long line of Indian kings ("It's still, technically, an offence for the British Queen to step on my shadow."), Bid began his musical career while a teenager in giddy Punk Rock London. He played in The B-Sides before they became Adam and The Ants, and then founded The Monochrome Set in 1978 with early Ants refugees Lester Square and Andy Warren. Their first singles appeared on the original Rough Trade label.
Influential, articulate and unique, The Monochrome Set delighted cultish hearts and critics alike. Their admirers include Morrissey, who used to write fan letters to Bid in his pre-Smiths days, and who once remarked "How can anyone go through life without the dear, cuddly Monochrome Set?"
Andy Warhol's Interview magazine described them in 1982 as "…possessed of a very bright wacky eclecticism… they have a very charming way of fusing seemingly incompatible styles of music that makes their songs fresh, instantly familiar and pleasantly alien…psychedelic mannerisms with California Byzantine pastiche….the dilemmas of aristocratic genetics…an ominous minstrel air….. Martinis refracting Mount Everest…"
After 20 years, 9 studio albums, 6 compilations, 2 live albums, one stab at the UK pop charts with the 1985 single "Jacob's Ladder", one reformation, a number one single in Bolivia ("Eine Symphonie Des Grauens"), and a bout of genuine success in Japan, Bid finally felt The Monochrome Set had run its course and looked elsewhere for a suitable context for his estimable talents.
By way of a prologue to Scarlet's Well, he worked as a producer for many Monochrome Set-admiring groups, including the Would-Be-Goods and The Karelia, the underrated former band of Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand). Crucially, he also produced the 1996 acclaimed compilation "Songs For The Jet Set", celebrated by NME as "escapist pop music of the highest calibre; a tapestry of delights…8/10", and by Melody Maker as an album of "poise, balance, charm – with oodles of class added."
Escapism was the key. Whereas The Monochrome Set were always restricted to reflecting and inhabiting The Real World, whether it cared or not, Bid now realized he could instead let The Real World come to him. His creative imagination was utterly unleashed, unbound, and unfettered for the first time in his life. Scarlet's Well was born.
The Scarlet's Well songs are so classic-sounding, so infectious, and so unlike everything else around the musical firmament right now, that they could well appeal to small children and old ladies alike. The group remains defiantly anti-fashion and anti-rock. Pro-vocabulary, pro-creativity, pro-wit, pro-beauty. A band led by one of the greatest British singer-songwriters in the English language alive, at the peak of his creative powers.
Now, a London-based live Scarlet's Well band has been formed comprising Bid (vocals, guitar), Alice Healey (vocals), Toby Robinson (bass), Dickon Edwards (guitar, vocals), Kate Dornan (keyboards, vocals), Martin White (accordion) and Jennifer Denitto (drums). <b>Their début will be at the Spitz in London on May 26th</b>.
Blood has been dripped upon Bid's media profile grave, and an elegant hand has shot up through the soil…
<b>SCARLET'S WELL – THE STORY</b>
"I envisaged a village somewhere in the South-West of England. I called this little place "Mousseron" (a particular type of French mushroom), and further imagined a nearby magical well, called "Scarlet's Well". About a year after the release of the first album, I heard about a <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cornwallpics/bodminwells/pages/Scarletts%20Well%20Sign.htm">real Scarlet's Well</a> near <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cornwallpics/bodminwells/pages/Scarletts%20Well%201.htm">Bodmin in Cornwall</a>. I seem to also recall that nearby Boscastle used to house <a href="http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/">the only witch's museum in the country.</a> I am irritated by the fact that Real Life continually strives to emulate my twisted and bizarre psyche.
"In making these albums, I am walking through a thick fog, lit here and there by fireflies, and have little idea of where I'm going. Storylines develop between songs and albums, and I sometimes make an effort to guide them, but mostly end up following some silly sprite into a puddle.
""Strange Letters" is "set" in the village, with the penultimate song being about a ship sailing out to sea (thereby inadvertently establishing Mousseron as a port).
""Blue Flowers" is partly set somewhere off the coast of South America, with the crew of the ship from the previous album now on the trail of the lost Lord Fishgarlic, a native of Mousseron. Some of the words on that album are spoken by him, some by the girls sailing after his memory, and some have nothing to do with any of it! The penultimate song is the reading of a parchment written by Lord Fishgarlic and found on the floor of a temple by the girls, describing his opening of a secret doorway within and entry to a foul place beneath the earth.
"On "Underworld", Alice and her friends journey back to Mousseron through the Underworld." The Return…" is the ship coming back by itself. "Macaw" is about a ghost on the ship haunting one of the two macaws that sailed- this one flew back, after betraying the others. The other parrot walks back with Alice's (much reduced) party. Most of the other songs are about encounters and dialogues Alice has with the dead and the cursed. "Cerberus" sees Alice cheat the guardian of the Underworld and escape (by putting him to sleep, q.v. Orpheus and the Lyre). "Diary" is Alice's exit from the Underworld into the Mousseron annual steam fair, where she is unnoticed in the mayhem.
"In "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", a group of people sing songs and tell stories in an inn ("The Laughing Horse") on the outskirts of Mousseron.
"Some may think that this is a little excursion; far from it. I can't see myself doing anything else for the foreseeable future. I can't help it."
<img align=left src="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/dr-spid-l.jpg"></img>The new <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> album is called "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", and is released this May on <a href="http://www.siesta.es/">Siesta Records</a>.
It's a glittering gem of a record, and features more cinematic fop-pop from legendary songwriter Bid, at turns wry, arcane, evocative and ornate.
Bid describes the album as "A happy pig walking through the forest, looking different through the varied foliage and dappled light."
As no singles are to be released from "Dream Spider…", I thought it would be a nice idea to make some of the songs available in advance, one by one, as mp3s. People can treat them as singles of a sort. Bid has now granted me permission to do this, and each song will be available to download for a limited period.
Needless to add, if you like what you hear, do tell others. And please <b>buy the album</b> when it comes out.
So, here is the first such release <a href="http://www.fosca.com/Scarlets-Well-How-The-Cypress.mp3">(click here for link)</a>.
This is a rather gorgeous slice of androgynous English Psychedelia, called <b>"How The Cypress Made Apollo"</b>. Written by Bid, vocals by Florence and Bid, and, I feel, the most dreamy and sensual song in the Scarlet's Well repertoire.
<i>Green leaf for his tongue
Petal make his lungs
Breathe deep, scents in the air
Live, live, live
Mute swan weave his hair
Starling make it fair
Curls kiss his golden brow
Live, live, live
Through woods far away
Forget-me-knots will play
Leap high, up to the sun
Live, live, live</i>
An open request for advice from my UK readers, as I suspect most of them will know all about the subject.
After being treated like a leper once too often for the crime of not owning one, I have tentatively decided to get a dreaded mobile phone, to use discreetly and carefully.
It has to be one that can be switched to some kind of absolutely silent alert, which I suppose means a vibrate function. Not one that just makes a loud vibrating sound, mind. It must be also able to easily send and receive text messages composed of proper sentences, and doesn't have to make that ghastly beep noise when such a message arrives.
Additionally, bear in mind that I'm keen to spend as little money as possible.
I thoroughly resent having to do this, but look forward to my life being made a lot easier once I do.
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.
