Promo copies of the new Fosca album have apparently been sent to every suitable publication under the sun, but I don't hold out much hope for a review.

Idea for new song: "The Heart's Own Press Release". Utter lack of press as analogy for one's own lifelong ostracisation from life, and from love.

"And whose fault is that…?"

After listening closely to the lyrics on the debut album by <a href="http://listen.to/tendertrap/">Tender Trap</a>, I start to wonder if one particular song is about me.

At Leeds, I confront Amelia and Rob about this, and they come clean:

"You don't mind, do you?"

Needless to say, I'm delighted.

Here's the tracklisting of the album. See if you can guess from the titles which song it is:

<b>Fin
Oh Katrina
You and Me
Face of '73
That Girl
Talk in Song
Chemical Reaction
Son of Dorian Gray
Emma
Dyspraxic
Love Is Red/Green
Brown Eyes
You Are Gone (So You Should Go)</b>

Go on. Take a <i>wild guess</i>.

Feeling very excited about tomorrow, when Fosca play a Leeds indie music festival called <a href="http://indie.flunka.com/index.php?topgroupid=999999999&subgroupid=6&groupid=9">"Gojonnygogogogo 2</a>" (presumably a reference to the League of Gentlemen 'card game' sketch).

We've only played one other festival before, the outdoor "Benno" affair in Sweden last year. It turned out to be our best-received gig to date. The stage was in a forest clearing next to a vast and silent lake, and we got our own chalets. After our set went down so well, I celebrated by going skinny-dipping in the lake by moonlight. This remains one of the rare times in my life I have been close to truly happy.

Sadly, the venue for this Leeds festival, Joseph's Well, is not next to a vast and silent lake. But it is round the back of the Leeds General Infirmary. Just in case.

I note that there's a festival of events and gigs coming up in London called <a href="http://www.ladyfestlondon.org/">Ladyfest</a>, "designed to celebrate and promote the achievements of women".

Going by the list of bands playing (The Gossip, Babes In Toyland's singer, Spy 51, Linus, Tender Trap), it's seems more akin to the edgy, underground Riot Grrl scene of about ten years ago than to the more commercial likes of Lilith Fair.

Although some of the festival's workshops are women-only, the bands playing aren't. Out of curiosity, not to mention my usual boundless vanity, I muse about whether Fosca would be eligible to play. Going by the genders of band members, Fosca are 75% female. Since Kate joined, our songs are created as a group. Most of the instruments on the new album are played by Kate, Rachel and Sheila. However, I suspect it would be hard for us to qualify for playing festivals of women in music, due to the male 25% – me – being the lead vocalist, rather than, say, the drummer. The lead singer of any band is always perceived as the group's ambassador, regardless of who creates the actual music.

In fact, Fosca are a rare reversal of the old girl-fronted band line-up cliche. We're three girl musicians backing a boy lead singer who wears more make up than the rest of them put together. I modestly like to think this is a refreshing change, in a world of umpteen bands and dance acts where dressed-down anonymous male musicians back glamorous female singer. How often is the reverse true?

Men in female-fronted bands were once given a designated term by the mid-90s music press: "Sleeperblokes", after the Britpop band Sleeper. Everyone knew the girl singer's name (Louise Wener) and what she looked like, but when forced at gunpoint to name any of the rest of the band, or pick them out from a crowd, few could oblige.

Sleeperblokes were there – <i>are</i> still very much there (Garbage for one) – to make up the numbers in photo shoots, to keep the singer company, and, oh yes, to do the icky manly business of playing the actual music, when not putting up shelves and reading road maps. This set-up is commonplace. But the reverse is extremely rare.

Why is that?

Comments in the usual box, please.

Especially if you can name ANY other band (that's released at least one album) where, like Fosca, a male singer is backed entirely by female musicians. NOT just female backing singers. NOT where there's an auxiliary male musician drafted in on drums for gigs only. And NOT that Robert Palmer video.

Perhaps Fosca are shyly, and indeed slyly, radical. For this reason.

And for the fact we have a ban on any band members wearing trainers.

Fosca's gig intro music, by the way, is Lesley Gore's "Sometimes I Wish I Were A Boy".

When people ask me what I "do", I sometimes reply that I collect unsolicited remarks from strangers in the street.

The most common comparisons are "OY! Andy Warhol!". Or "OY! Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!". Once it was "OY! Kim Novak in 'Bell Book and Candle!' ". That last remark was from an aging American gay man, needless to say.

It all depends on what culture they've been exposed to, and how old they are. Sometimes the commentators may only know of one famous man with bleached hair, even if I couldn't be less like him in other respects if I tried. Yesterday I got this response to my appearance from some schoolgirls in Archway:

"(shrieks) Look at him! Ewww! EMINEM WANNABE!"

Tim C recounts a conversation overheard at a bus stop in Camden last night, at about 10pm:

Man: Do you know the comedian Jerry Sadowitz?

Girl: No

Man: Well that's him over there.

Girl: (silence)

Man: You don't recognize him off the telly?

Girl: No.

Man: He's on Channel 5.

(Girl gets up from bus stop and moves to the other side).

Today's word is <b>logophobia</b>. Fear of words.

<img src="http://www.shink.dircon.co.uk/fadinghands.jpg"></img>

Today's word is <b>pteridomania</b>: an intense desire for ferns.

Proof that life is not meant to be taken seriously #378: The news bulletins on Channel 4's breakfast programme "RI:SE".
Newsreader stands in front of screen displaying the six stories of the bulletin. The screen reads:

"1.CRASH 2.TERROR 3. VIOLENCE 4.CANCER 5.DOG 6.STARS"

Watching Big Brother, I am appalled at many of the housemates' propensity for reducing the entire spectrum of human emotions to just two words:

They are either feeling:

"wicked"

or:

"gutted".

And that's it. It's gotten to the point where I feel physically sick every time I hear one of them say "gutted".

There are so many other words to choose from. Words are great! Use them! Learn a new one every day!

I'll start you off. Here's one: <b>tripsolagnia</b>. That's sexual arousal from having one's hair shampooed.

Please leave your favourite English words in the comments box. Nothing fictional. And not "elbow" either, because, yes, I too have seen <i>The Singing Detective</i>. Or "serendipity", because that topped a recent national "favourite words" poll, and is therefore disqualified.

Matt discovers a good review of our first album, from <a href="http://www.musikexpress.de/">"musikexpress"</a>, which apparently is the biggest German music paper. It also acts as quite a good "Dickon Primer", for those of you stumbling upon this diary, and indeed me, for the first time. I'm clearly having a self-aggrandising day.

Kate D translated it. Her notes are at the bottom.

——
<i>FOSCA
"On Earth To Make The Numbers Up"
(Shinkansen)

Cool, elegant British electropop between Pulp and Pet Shop Boys – without spectacular gestures and compulsive rhythms, but so charming and intelligent that it's irresistable regardless. Dickon Edwards is an incurable romantic. He lost his heart sometime in the early 80s and since then has sought the future in the past, knows himself to be forever misunderstood and apart from the teeming everyday run of things – "I nearly had a T-shirt made saying: Lose Friends in Days – Ask Me How", he sings in "Storytelling Johnny". Dickon is also a great dreamer, who has never relinquished the hope deep inside of one day living in a world full of intelligent, tasteful beings who mix volubly and insightfully with one another – one of his most melancholic songs is called "Live Deliberately", including the immortal line: "I found the truth, and it was of no use."

Dickon hit the big time</i><b>[*]</b> <i>a couple of years ago. Then the revival of the cool Britain of the 80s under the slogan "Romo" ("Romantic Modernists") was going like a cold wildfire through London, and Dickon's band Orlando belonged to the innermost circle and the most joyful phenomena. Their album "Passive Soul" was numbered by the critics of the Melody Maker as amongst the best of 1997, and the singer, lyricist and co-songwriter kept a safe foot on the parquet of vanity. His meticulous appearance filled the gossip columns, he wrote much-observed essays on the Style Council and Manic Street Preachers, appeared as an eccentric fashion model – and disappeared overnight into thin air after the Romo fashion disintegrated like an Autumn lichen.</i><b>[**]</b> <i> From 1998 he appeared under the name Fosca – more a project than a band, with changing lineups, sole live shows, a pretty self-produced single ("Nervous", 1999) – and wrote an internet diary enjoyed with great, silent admiration by insiders.

Without haste Fosca took shape step by step – Rachel Stevenson came as (also singing) keyboardist, cellist Sheila B and multi-instrumentalist Alex Sharkey completed the line-up. After a highly regarded debut outing supporting the spiritually incestuous</i><b>[***]</b> <i>Trembling Blue Stars at London's Spitz club, in April 2000 the band worked with St. Etienne and Kylie Minogue producer Ian Catt to record eight songs that for me beyond doubt number amongst the most beautiful and intelligent of this year – from the fragile joy of the dance-hymn "The Agony Without The Ecstasy" to the intimate, tearless September-Sunday-melancholy of "Assume Nothing", from the 80s disco masked ball sounds of "It's Going To End In Tears (All I Know)" to the hymnal warmth of "On Earth To Make The Numbers Up" – a potential hit, a favourite song like the others, with lyrics that Jarvis Cocker would be very proud of. "I dreamt the film of my life as directed by Joseph Losey / It was eight minutes long, and cast as me was Parker Posey / It had a limited run in the small hours on Channel Four / And all of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor." – that's just the beginning of "The Millionaire of Your Own Hair".

There aren't many bands whom I can love without reserve and in every detail – here is one of them.
5 and a half stars.
Michael Sailer</i>

I don't know out of how many stars that is, though.

Kate's translation notes:
<b>[*]</b> <i>"hatte eine grosse Zeit" = "had a big time". you go figure</i>
<b>[**]</b><i> it's actually Autumn mushroom but I think something gets lost in the translation!</i>
<b>[***]</b> <i>yes, definitely something getting lost in the translation.</i>

Actually, I think it <i>gains</i> something in the translation.