Monday April 26th 1999

Going nowhere fast, deep in debt and despair, but still I struggle on. I refuse to commit suicide until I have at least one album out. Simon Price thinks I should place one of those begging adverts in the back of Private Eye.”The world owes me a living. Send money now”.

I’ve amusingly attempted to find some way of earning money, applying for writing, internet and jobs where I can just sit at a computer all day and not have to talk to anyone too much. But my joie-de-vivre is such at a low ebb, I radiate such lack of enthusiasm when talking to prospective employers on the phone or in interview rooms, and I don’t expect to be taken up at all. But Fosca can’t go anywhere without money, so I sit here wondering what will happen next, waiting for the next happy accident that will take me to further adventures. I have this overwhelming sense of being properly famous at some point in my life, I just don’t know in what way. Something involving a jail sentence, probably.

Envying Charley’s current employment, I’ve also written to two bands I like that are looking for live guitarists, Spy 51 and Spearmint. I’ve always wondered what it would be like taking a back seat in someone else’s band, where the only thing you have to worry about is your own guitar part. I tried this once before in The Childrens Hour, but that didn’t last long, as I’m not the easiest of people to get on with. I can’t do the “bonding” bit: I tend to retreat to a corner with a good book, and am always the Odd One Out in the band. This was the situation in Orlando, even. And that was seen to be “my” band. It wasn’t, of course. Fosca is my proper, first attempt to do my own band where I’m not someone else’s employee. And I seem to be incapable of getting it together. My oxymoronical quandary: I am a loner who can’t do anything by himself.

I used to think an oxymoron was an idiot in acne cream.

Still, I send tapes of the finished recordings so far to various would-be band members and labels, and there are hopes in the form of a one-song “single” on Shout It Out Loud, an internet-only MP3 label, a song on a compilation CD by Club V, one on a split EP by Ritual Records, and a proper EP on the new label started by Nic Goodchild. She is funding it with the compensation money she received after being run over and hospitalized by a drunk driver. This is a very Fosca thing. I suggested she named the label after the car that hit her.

I also send tapes to the people I like and that I think might appreciate them: Too Pure, Geoff Travis, Shinkansen, Piao!, Blow Up, Stephen Pastel, Cliff Gay Dad (at Charley’s suggestion), Darren Hefner, and Suzanne Rhatigan. None of them have yet gotten in touch. Well, Matt from Shinkansen ums and ers, but he does that in normal conversation anyway, so I can never tell. It doesn’t help that I hate phoning people. My passivity positively stifles.

I get a call from Backyard, who promote gigs around town. They want to put on Fosca at the Lil’ Backyard Club off Great Portland Street. “How many people do you think you can pull?”. “I never pull anyone, except social tourists. And sexual tourists. And tourists.” I tell them Fosca won’t play any gigs until we have a record definitely coming out, to justify doing so. And we have less of a revolving-door line up.

At the Velocette gig I attend with Rachel Stevenson, a group of visitors from Hong Kong recognise me from my former life in Orlando and insist on having my picture taken with them. This is so strange, and only adds fuel to my theory that I’m more of a walking tourist attraction than a capable human being. Orlando were spectacularly unsuccessful, yet this sort of thing happens.

Afterwards, we go to Suffragette City, Debbie Smith’s club night at the Candy Bar. It is my first ever visit to a women-only bar, and I bore most of the regulars with this information. Bizarrely, I’m most taken with how much I notice how small women are. It’s… a bar full of small people. I’m not the only male there (men are allowed as guests), but I am the only one in make up and free of facial hair (including sideburns). There are quite a few “baby dykes”, a Nineties breed of young, friendly, boyishly fresh-faced fun-loving Sapphists who don’t hate men. It’s a new stereotype, perhaps, but a far more welcome one to the humourless, hatchet-faced misandrist clichés of the 80s, and that surely can only be a Good Thing. If only male-only gay bars were more forward-thinking. I think about Fosca playing a gig there, reminded of Huggy Bear (who featured two boys) playing women-only gigs in their heyday. It’s certainly a more novel way of kicking against the pricks.

I’m approached by a girl called Layla (her parents were big Clapton fans). It transpires she is a friend of Tim from Baxendale. I tell her of my search for appropriate bandmates and she tells me the girl she is chatting up is a musician. Vulture-like, I pounce on her potential date, a French girl called Carolyn, and I exchange phone numbers and addresses with her before Layla does. Typical, I go to a lesbian bar and within minutes I’ve swapped numbers with a girl there.

I got to Trash, Erol’s club that has moved around the corner to The Annex in Dean Street. It’s a lot bigger than Plastic People, and there’s a section with sofas where you can actually hold a conversation. I bump into Emma (now in the band Rosita), Adrian, David Barnett (who has split up with his ginger-haired girlfriend to go out with a… ginger-haired girl), John the tube driver, Erol’s cousin whose name I always forget, Skinny David Who Works In TV, a girl that recognises me from Orlando, oh, and more. The old crowd. They never call me or invite me out to anything, but they are always friendly when I do see them about. I spend most of the night watching other people, as ever. One couple are wrapped in each other’s embraces particularly tightly. The girl has exactly the same short haircut, t-shirt and jeans that the boy has. His-and-hers haircuts. Opposites don’t always attract. Especially not for narcissists. “Single female seeks mirror image.” Still in a similar pet Fosca subjects vein, there’s also an obviously anorexic girl there who wears a slinky dress so everyone can see her worryingly skeletal frame. Like a road accident, people are simultaneously entranced, annoyed and horrified by her. Much like these diaries.

I attend Club V’s fourth birthday party. Once again, I am chatted up by a tourist of some ilk. But at least he buys me a drink. Like all the best haircuts, he is short, and to the point.

On the night bus home, I bump into Alex, also from Baxendale. I hadn’t recognised him from their excellent concert I witnessed recently, because he wasn’t wearing his stage expression: a sulky Ron Mael frown. Some people have stage costumes. Alex has a stage frown. Offstage, he is all smiles and happy-go-lucky charm. Rather like Russell Senior from Pulp, in fact.

After attending Val Jones’ champagne-saturated birthday bash in Covent Garden (cries of “oy! Spandau Ballet!” from the men outside Stringfellows), I go to a party at Darian’s place off Portland Place. Someone tells me I look like David Bowie. I really must trowl on the foundation more thickly if my skin resembles a 52-year-old’s.

Thursday April 1st

I buy the new issue of Select Magazine because Charley’s in it, and choke slightly on my greased toast when I see they’ve made these pages “Netsite of the Month”. They can stay.

In need of cheering up, I stumble on a website for choosing baby’s names:

“The name of Dickon has made you serious-minded, responsible, and stable. You love the security of a home and family, you are fond of
children, and, as a parent you would be fair and understanding. Although you have good business judgment, you are not aggressive in your
dealings because you do not like to create issues. You would be successful in any position dealing with the public as you have a diplomatic and
tactful manner and possess a charming, easy-going nature which puts people at ease. People are drawn to you because they feel that you are
patient, kind, understanding, and responsive. You would be effective in a career or in volunteer work where you are handling people and serving
in a humanitarian way. While you are honest and responsible, one weakness that is paramount in your life is your lack of self-confidence and
initiative, which causes you to put things off and avoid facing issues. Generally speaking, you have few problems with your health; however,
there is a weakness affecting the fluid functions of the body. ”

Perhaps someone should tell them about me.

A female columnist in some rag I leaf through in the cafe bemoans David Beckham’s new quiff look. She writes “on behalf of all women everywhere”, begging men not to follow suit and spend more time at the mirror, in the bathroom, and generally on personal appearance, than themselves. Calamity! She concludes, “who needs a blond Morrissey?”. Curses! Rumbled!

GMTV runs a story on the world’s first male pregnancy. Later, the “father” pulls up his jumper to reveal a cushion, and the whole team cries “April Fool!”. Gordon Kennedy quickly puts on his “but seriously, folks” expression, and they cut to Kosovo. The viewer is seemingly left expecting Mr Milosovic to give the camera a knowing comedy wink.

At a club, a man with big glasses and a backpack follows me around the dancefloor. I do my best to shake him off, but he later comes up to me and says, “this is going to sound a bit direct, but do you fancy a fuck?”. “That IS a bit direct. Do I have to answer that?” “No.” “Well, then.”

He goes on to say he’s not a regular. I seem to always attract the tourists. If not geographical tourists, then social tourists. And of course, sexual tourists.

I might as well be dressed as a Beefeater. I should put a card in those phone boxes: “London’s Own, Big Dickon: He’ll Troop His Colour For YOU. Euros accepted.”

Someone tells me I look “androgynous”, but I protest. My shoulders are too broad. For a broad.

Jyoti writes about the importance of us getting on as people before working together on pop music: “If I do work with anyone now, it’s after I get to know them and think we can get on. Dry-recording is like dry-fucking : both sides end up frustrated, sore and confused.” I am appalled at his unlikely (and perhaps, personally revealing) choice of metaphor, but secretly impressed.

I haven’t had an e-mail that dirty since the time someone wrote and volunteered to split my colon in two. Presumably making it a semi-colon.

Tuesday March 30th

The new Index Page Picture Stars this time are my better-looking younger brother, Tom, and self, last Christmas in Bildeston. I think I look like Steve Buscemi. No one else agrees. Tom plays guitar on a new disco version of “We Are All Friends Here.”

We mixed half the album at Crosstown, a studio in Fulham where Mark did his apprenticeship. We used a digital editing suite normally suited for making unofficial Doctor Who radio dramas rather than pop music, and it all sounds very Anti-Rock. Oh well. Tapes of the results are sent off to various souls in the hope something happens, and I am rescued from passive DIY hell. I’ve run out of money to finish the mixes at Crosstown, so we back up the remaining songs onto digital computer files, in the hope that Jyoti Mishra can decode them at his place in Norwich and we can mix them with him. I’m keeping my hopes at ground level, though. If we just have to re-record the whole lot at somewhere where there’s someone who (1) knows how to make the equipment work 100%, and (2) has recorded bands on it before, I won’t be at all surprised.

“File Under Forsaken” stands out, nine and a half minutes but feeling like four. Fee’s wordless falsettos towards the end really make it, taking it to spiritual highs and, well, it now sounds like nothing else on earth. Perhaps a bit Mercury Rev without the drugs. “Live Deliberately” is similarly fantastically strange. The in-house engineer, Danny C, says my Juno 6 solo is so beautiful he is nearly moved to tears. Nearly.

I am finally happy with my lead vocals. Danny and Tommy Burton suggest double-tracking and a little echo, and it works. Fosca has finally found it feet. It’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not folk (despite lashings of acoustic guitars and Val & Fee’s singing styles), it’s something else, something… strange. But it’s still pop.

So I’m sending out tapes to people who run record labels, and who can hopefully pay for more studio time. I thought about getting a Job, but the past has taught me that I simply can’t hold down work: I’m either always late, or don’t turn up at all, or sit there all day and do no work. Understandably, I’ve been sacked from every job I’ve had, sooner or later.

I’ve realised two things from the recordings:

1) I am finally confident enough to be the lead singer. The trick is to double track my vocals, add a little echo, and I sound… right. At last. To be honest, I’ve decided that having the various female singers doing lead vocals isn’t the best thing for my personal, Dickony style lyrics after all, but I had to try to see if that was true first. Female backing vocals are fine, though. The mixes we’ve made with girl lead vocals ARE great, though, and I shall put them aside for now, anyway. When I played Matt Haynes (of Shinkansen Records) the mixed songs so far, he said he wasn’t “convinced” by the girl lead vocals. He’s biased, but even so. It’s just a confidence/shyness thing on my part. And I should stop thinking that, just because I’m a big Carpenters/Stereolab/female-singers in general fan, to emulate that is right for my own songs. It isn’t. Um, I think…curse this fickleness and insecurity!

2) I so want to Be In A Band as opposed to Fosca being just Mr Dickon plus Friends And Strangers Helping Out. It’s lonely! I want to rehearse regularly, and record as a band, so everyone knows what they’re playing, chips in with ideas, and feels generally good about being in Fosca proper, and happy being committed to and taking joint responsibility for Fosca. I just manage the organisational things by myself… I need a manager. Or band members that can do the management things. Or a wealthy lover.

So I’m also sending out tapes to various musical souls (some of whom have played on the recordings, and some who haven’t) in the hope they’ll want to join Fosca proper. Rachel Stevenson’s on board (on keyboards), so I now just need a permanent bass player and drummer. And perhaps one other soul on another instrument and backing vocals… but not a singer who does nothing else. I keep thinking of the girl in Deacon Blue. As ever, though, my hopes are at ground level.

Howard and I go to see the film “Gods and Monsters”, and Brendan Fraser in it keeps reminding me of that homoerotic DH Lawrence phrase: “his arm completely filled his shirt”. Mr Fraser’s muscles enter the frame some minutes before the rest of him does. He has the face of the young Elvis and the body of Henry Rollins. You don’t really notice if he can act or not.

Mark P is video-recording the events on the news, day by day. His tapes are labelled, “NATO vs Serbia… Day 1, Day 2, etc”. He is convinced it’s going to escalate into World War III. I thought NATO had been done away with at the end of the Cold War, but no. People seem to be nostalgic for the “good old days”. Nostalgic for war. The UN should be handling Serbia, not NATO. Everyone knows this, but they can’t wait to send in NATO troops… to a country where the last time the whole of Europe got involved in a crisis together there was… 1914. And then look what happened.

I feel like that 17th century Italian prophet, who, convinced that the world was going to end, went up to pregnant women on the street and insulted them for adding to the potential deathcount. All that time, that money, that pain, nine months, and what for? But I’ve mellowed my opinions slightly. Never mind reproduction is pollution. Now, reproduction is anachronism.

Warhol: “I can’t believe people are still pregnant these days.”

But the pain of parents chastising their screaming kids in the street (I always associate parents with scolding), and everyone else’s pain and worries will end: NATO will see to that. And it won’t be our fault.

I think a lot of my problem with people having children stems from my innate solipsism: I keep thinking that “there’s a child that will see a world I won’t”, and am offended. This is, of course, stupid. I’m sure there’s old women about now who will outlive me.

Saturday March 6th

A shock of blonde hair, heavy black panda-eye make up, the Queen of the Mods, a thin but emotive and immeasurably English singing voice, an ambivalent cagey sexuality, a string of the hippest musical collaborative partners, song after song extolling the world of secret loves and frustrated longing…

But enough about me. Dusty Springfield died this week. For all our sins. In tribute, I consort alone with tears and a bottle of red wine and put on “Dusty In Memphis” at immense volume at 3am. My neighbours wouldn’t dare complain.

I seem to spend my life being indebted to immensely kind people called Tim. Tim Mauve answers his Finchley door in an immaculate tweed suit and lends me his reel to reel 8 track. Tim Burton from the pro-pop band Baxendale (named after cartoonist Leo, not actress Helen) and who also plays in the band Astronaut (and who also just happens to live three doors down from me) lends me his VS880. I lend the latter my copy of the Future Bible Heroes album (the US version on Rykodisc rather than the UK Setanta release, naturally), and he seems to be pleased. It’s right up his avenue: you have to complete word puzzles in order to work out the lyric sheet. His 8-track isn’t fully operational, though. Some faders are broken because he spilt treacle on them. A true sweet-toothed Pop Kid. His colourful house is festooned with pictures of Spice Girls, Kylie, All Saints, and he bought the Britney Spears single rather than the new Blur one. I joke that as soon as I leave, he tears them all down, revealing Ocean Colour Scene and Bob Marley posters. But no, Tim is… for real. Treacle included, sadly.

We talk about the sincerity of kitsch and camp, the fact that there are those who seem to have to choose between the likes of Belle and Sebastian and Mogwai and Steps and Aqua. You can swing both ways. It’s more fun. It’s all melodies and tunes, it’s all pop music. Life’s too short for irony. And ironing, too.

Actually, I don’t like Mogwai. No lyrics. Even Steps have lyrics. And they make the effort to dress up a bit. Or perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps Mogwai and Arab Strap normally walk around with neat flattering haircuts, well-toned and moisturised skin and nice clothes, only slapping on the big ugly sideburns and getting the stylist to give them a Slovenly Scottish Gritty Indie Guitar look, come the photo sessions?

Mark’s friend Abba, an American boy with a huge… Shirley Bassey collection, comes to stay, and keeps calling me Ridiculous Edwards. I tell him I don’t like football. “But do you like feet? Do you like balls?”

We visit Tommy and Taylor and play them a few of the new Fosca songs. “Galaxie 500 with Morrissey-ish lyrics?” In my defense, I proclaim that Galaxie 500 are my Beatles. Tommy mutters contemptously, “well, the Beatles are my Beatles…” We listen to the first Wings album and drink far too much black coffee. Mark thinks that Taylor looks like Damon Albarn’s sulkier brother.

Sunday February 28th

Not a great day. The digital 8-track on which we’re recording the album, a Roland VS840, decides to suddenly wipe a whole song completely. Everything is lost: it was a seven minute Hal Hartley-ish epic called “Storytelling Johnny” that was nearing completion. I don’t mind so much about my own vocal, guitar, bass guitar and keyboard parts, but there +
was also Laurence’s keyboard part, Cressida’s flute part, Fiona’s violins, Sheila’s cellos, Marnie’s drums, Tom’s guitar…

Suffice it to say I felt a deep, yawning pit of doom in my stomach. A familiar one.

Mark Partridge and I are frightened to do anything else with the machine in case it does the same with the other nine songs. So today I’m writing frantically to everyone I know with an 8-track, digital or otherwise, hoping they might be kind enough to lend us their machine with which to “back-up” the other songs, hoping also they might even be kind enough to lend their machines to actually finish the album on too. And angrily taking the VS840 back to the shop where I bought it. Maybe it’s faulty, maybe it’s a design fault.

I suppose in retrospect I should have investigated investing in some kind of external back-up system when I bought the wretched thing. But I never was very good with knowing which computers and recording equipment to buy. And I certainly can’t afford to buy anything extra now.

This DIY recording principle isn’t so great sometimes.

Fiona also recorded some choirboy-type vocals on a song that DIDN’T get wiped. “I had to unclasp my bra to reach the really high notes”. I think Pavarotti uses the same technique.

I can’t afford to keep a mobile phone anymore. Which isn’t such a bad thing. Mark tells me that London is the worldwide capital of mobile usage: go to New York or any other major city and the trilling epidemic of elaborate electronic yelps from record bags is noticably less abundant. People elsewhere tend to prefer to be contactable when they want to be. Answering services are more than enough.

What do I think about “Queer As Folk”, the “shocking” new gay drama on Channel Four? Well, it had the Daily Mail in fits of umbrage and censorious apoplexy, so it must be a Good Thing, by definition.

Some gay men don’t like the fact that the show portrays them in a bad light (one character is predatory, selfish and irresponsible, one is underage and lets himself be exploited by the former, and one is, well, a Doctor Who fan…). But this IS what many gay men are like in the real world, rather than the saints, martyrs and token ciphers that exist everywhere else on TV and in films. It is possible to be gay and be a less than wonderful person. I was going to put in a reference to Peter Mandelson here. Oh, I have.

And I did like the line from the mother of the selfish man’s newborn baby: “so… we both had a child tonight…”

Sunday February 21st

The Fosca album, now called “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up”, is coming together slowly and strangely in a borrowed art storage room in Hammersmith. Made entirely by people who are, how shall we say, not the world’s biggest fans of football.

The sessions drag on, and we miss all the things we were hoping to do like catch Hefner playing at Borders Bookshop, or going to see Mouthfull at Club V. But we do manage to take in “Room 2”, the dirt-cheap indie night at Heaven every Monday, and I bump into virtually every person I’d expect to be there: Howard, D, Laurence, Andy from Mouthfull. D tells me he is getting married, Green Card convenience style. I accuse him of trying to copy the plotlines of “Gimme Gimme Gimme”.

I get approached on the dancefloor. “My friend really fancies you. He’s the one at the bar. With the glasses.”

Epicene Epics.

Because many of the songs go on for about 8 minutes, due to me having far too much to say, so many words and verses. I’m torn between my two Rules For Albums:

1) Albums must have Ten Songs. That’s not too many or too few. I hate records that outstay their welcome.
2) Albums must last just under 45 minutes, so you can tape them on one side of a C90 for your walkman or your friends.

But the way things are going, it’ll either have to be a ten song album that lasts too long or a 9 song album that doesn’t.

Some writers from Select Magazine have emailed me, wanting to put Fosca in their new bands section, “Ignition”. And we haven’t even put anything out yet. But if it was Mojo or Q, I would have been worried. Those are magazines for people who buy records in order to have a Good Music Collection. Pop music should be listened to, not collected.

Some of the staff from the Riverside Arts Centre and Studios pop in. “Do you like David Syvian?” one asks, referring to my bleached side-parted haircut. I get this a lot from strangers approaching me.

If they are over 40, they say I look like Andy Warhol.
If they are between the ages of 25 and 40 and know nothing about music, they say I look like Gary Numan.
If they are between the ages of 25 and 40 and know TOO MUCH about music, they say I look like David Sylvian.
If they are under 25, they laugh and shout at me “Oi, Blond Bastard”.

I also get the occasional Sick Boy off “Trainspotting” or Bob Downe comparison. Or Dracula played by Michael Crawford.

One evening I was on the Tube, caked in make up and in a suit, and a gang of big drunken boys jeered amongst themselves. After a while they started pointing to the part of me that actually inspired their mirth. To my white socks.

I wear white socks for personally dubious reasons: schoolboy fetish, roughboy fetish. “The White Sock Brigade” was what we called the equivalent of rednecks when growing up in Ipswich and Colchester: they were always the regulation issue for those ready to beat you up in the precinct of an evening. So it’s a little “reclamation of territory” on my part as well (or so I thought), like some gay men shaving their heads and looking as hard as possible. But now it’s just me being a little perverted.

When I was getting the keys for the studio yesterday, a gaggle of teenage girls saw me, pointed and laughed loudly. I had to hide in the cafe section until they had gone. I still wonder if they think I look famous or just silly. I look more famous than I really am.

Some of Fosca have terrific facial mannerisms when they record. Rachel dances and bobs about at her keyboard, mouthing the words. Marnie tilts her Canadian head and gazes at the ceiling in calculated concentration. I jump about and the click-track packs its bags.

Another visitor remarks on the work in progress, “hmm, very Belle and Sebastian.” I foresee both good and bad things from this unhelpful comparison. Belle and Sebastian are quickly becoming a lazy byword simile for anything indie-ish by anyone who doesn’t know that much about indie music. I envy such people. What am I saying, I envy most people.

Then Charley starts singing a U2 song along to “File Under Forsaken”, just to tease me. She is pale and poorly, and we have her coughs on the record for posterity. Before she went for the cropped look, her hair used to be a Pre-Raphaelite cascade of tousled curls, and references to Shelleyesque “consumption” and TB are bandied about. These pale English romantic types, they never really went away. Like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number…

We listen to Frazier Chorus’ first album, the anti-rock classic “Sue”, for distraction, inspiration and keyboard sounds. One band that should have stayed on 4AD rather than taken the major label shilling and blanded out. I note for the first time that it was recorded at the same place as the Orlando album, which I also think sounds too clean and… produced. But don’t start me on that one!

Indie bands that sign to a major don’t always lose it, mind. I think the first Polydor album (“You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”) by Orange Juice is infinitely preferable to their earlier Postcard Records offerings, whose scratchy naive charm is, well, just that and no more.

Production-wise, I prefer to think more Joe Meek rather than “lo-fi”. I can just imagine me going the same way as him too, dying in a bizarre shooting incident involving one’s landlady.

We are later told that the paintings that are stored in our new temporary “home” are those that didn’t make the final selection for the Riverside’s current exhibition next door. I imagine what euphemisms were used in the heartbreaking dismissal: “They’re very good, but not quite what we’re looking for… and lack of wall space sadly prevents us from…” On one day, a quiet man in black with a beard (presumably an artist) comes in, collects his rejected masterpieces, perhaps his life’s work, and forlornly shuffles them out to his car.

Tuesday February 16th

Such a strange day. In the morning, Mark Partridge and I trek up to Wood Green to help take Justin Paton’s drum kit down to Hammersmith. On the Tube. All three of us are penniless, and of the two people we know in London who both own cars and would be free to help, one has no license, and the other no tax disc.

The dilemma of transporting instruments and equipment about is a recurring scenario in London bands’ lives. Or at least mine. Most people I know in London simply don’t own cars, even if they can drive. Some used to, but on moving to the big city the first thing to get sold is the vehicle. The high cost of living is bad enough without all the extra overheads a car incurs. And the fact that you can’t have a drink in town. And the fact that other people tend to treat you like a chauffeur.

This is put into stark contrast later in the day when Charley turns up at the studio, regaling us with tales of touring with Gay Dad and the attendant trappings of proper pop band life, where stage crews handle all the mucky, menial, tedious bits of being in a group, and all you have to do is wait for the taxi to take you from hotel to soundcheck to bus.

Some lucky bands in this position don’t even attend their own soundchecks. Now that’s a smooth running machine. Lo-fi, schmo-fi!

Though I’ve always had my suspicions about bigtime bands that do benefit concerts for causes of equality and The Little Man Against The System: “We’re playing this benefit for the workers, they’re just like us… Roadie! My guitar!”

Charley will, though, be bringing her stardust guitar on the Tube to the Fosca sessions tomorrow… and Jyoti Mishra (White Town)’s recruitment into the Fosca Collective makes me feel, ooh, nearly good about being alive. Nearly.

On the news, Kurdish people around Europe protest outside Greek embassies over the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan. Some (heart-wrenchingly) set themselves on fire. After the news there’s an advert for Heat magazine featuring…. people on fire. And then a report on the Brit Awards, featuring a Manics video where they appear to be… on fire. All in the same chunk of TV.

Sunday January 31st

I hereby conclude: I am a member of the TENTH sex.

1. Manly Men
2. Womanly Women
3. Boyish Boys
4. Girlish Girls
5. Boyish Girls
6. Girlish Boys
7. Male To Female Transsexuals
8. Female To Male Transsexuals
9. The Intersexed
10. Arch Misanthropic Pansexual Alien Compassionate Curmudgeons (With Bad Teeth).

I only have friends in gender groups 2 to 10. I don’t know any Manly Men. Shouting from moving cars. Jangling keys. Swaggering. Big puffy sleeping-bag-like coats. The ones who murmer “seems like a nice boy” when I’m buying a bag of chips. And I’m not even wearing any make up. I may as well be a different species to them.

Archway, 3am. A man dashes across the darkened street to me, only to stop himself: “Sorry. I thought you was my wife.”

I’m only male because it’s the default gender. The vanilla pronoun. Worldwide. 51% of the globe is female, but they still have their own Minorities Section in bookshops.

Jo Brand on the differences between male and female stand-up comedians: “If men have a bad gig, they blame the audience. If women have a bad gig, they blame themselves.”

Tomorrow Fosca moves into The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. Or at least, an old studio annex. Three weeks to do the bulk of the album. Budget: less than nothing. Or rather, Budget: Love. New recruit Val Jones has already delighted us with her Natalie-Merchant-from-Hull vocal style on “He’s No Help”, which I wrote on the bus back from Oxford the previous day. Appropriately, the song contains a Philip Larkin quote.

Must try hard not to be too influenced by Orange Juice’s album, “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”.. Archness and whimsy are all very well, but I also like lyrics you can cut and paste onto your own life. Useful lyrics. Sympathetic vicar lyrics. Lyrics that are your only true friends. “Everything’s awful, but this song is on my side”. Songs for the waif-like and the wraith-like. For the well read and ill fed.

Terribly excited about the record. Geoff Travis said I was writing a new chapter of the book Morrissey started. Presumably one where the pages are stuck together. And all for the wrong reasons.

Monday January 4th 1999

In the end, I made such a mess of rounding up Fosca types for the one night in the year that most people have already made plans for, that Fosca played as a brand new three piece: myself, plus Farzana and Marnie, the rhythm section in Anglocanadien. They were very good about it.

Afterwards, someone said we were like early Talking Heads. This pleased me no end, of course. The first couple of Talking Heads albums are incredibly good. Beautiful yelps, scratchy undistorted, anti-rock guitars. Songs about buildings and food. And haircuts. And, and, and…

The set was beset by technical problems, like Farzana walking off halfway through “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up”. I thought it was because she had had enough of me jumping about onstage, or thought the band was so awful she had to leave it then and there, or that she was sick. She later said it was because her bass guitar strap broke. I didn’t mind too much, though: we only had one more song to do and that needed no bass anyway. “File Under Forsaken” worked quite well, though. I got to do my Dean Wareham act. Laurence really liked this one, which was good because it’s very Galaxie 500, and he hates Galaxie 500. So it can’t have been too Galaxie 500 when we did it.

A small girl with dark floppy hair and a foreign accent must have liked it, because she asked me afterwards where she could get our records from. I said there weren’t any yet, but she didn’t believe me. “Well, where WILL they be available?”. It was a good sign though: a stranger stopping you to ask about your records.

Cliff Jones, a tall boy with floppy blond hair who sings with Gay Dad was really nice to me. He recommended I should read a Cyril Connolly book, and that the songs needed to be worked on. I agreed.

It worked out quite well in the end, because I didn’t have to buy any drinks all night. After the rider was polished off, people kept buying me drinks. Charley’s friend bought me one because she thought I looked sad. This is what happens when your default expression is one of utter misery most of the time. She talked about how she wanted to leave her breasts at home, taking them off as if they were attached with Velcro. “They’re a pain when playing squash. And when you’re running for the bus”.

The club was full of beautiful people with great haircuts. A medium-height boy with a #1 crop and a red t-shirt said I was reminded him of Marilyn. “Monroe?” “No. Boy George’s friend. Without the smack, though.”

A tall girl with a shaven head played with my hair when I was dancing. A thin black boy with a #2 crop called me his baby. An immensely tall girl called Jackie who said she was 40 and worked for the Financial Times said I reminded her of Andy Warhol. Or was it David Sylvian? Jenni Scott, who is a small girl with pixie hair that writes articles about Jinty Comic and runs “small press” conventions was there. I’ve only ever met her at New Year’s Eve parties. She’s like my own personal Father Time, but with face glitter and a navel piercing rather than a scythe and a big hourglass. She gave me little white pieces of paper with her face and email address stamped on using a specially-made self-inking rubber stamper. They were like acid tabs for narcissists.

I had been invited to other parties that night: Amelia’s, Emma and Marie’s, and the Uncle Bob’s one. But it would have meant trying to get across London on New Year’s Eve with my guitar and big bag of pedals. It was okay, I was more than happy to stay at Club V all night, with all these pretty people and great haircuts, and getting paid to be there in the first place. They played Urusei Yatsura’s “Tiger”. And they didn’t play Prince’s “1999”.

It was a Good Haircut Night.

Saw the new Star Trek film. Dull as ditchwater, but it had the line “It’s been 300 years since I’ve seen a bald man,” spoken with lusty relish. Saw “The Acid House”. Got annoyed that I couldn’t understand one in every three words of the dialogue, so heavy are the Edinburgh accents. And I’m British. It says a lot about my cultural conditioning that I can understand films and TV programmes with heavy American and Australian accents far more. If they try and make it a hit in America, like the previous Irvine Welsh film, “Trainspotting”, I’ll be interested to see if they use subtitles, like they do for Oasis interviews on MTV. It didn’t have Ewan McGregor in it though, which made a change for a recent British film. There’s actually a book out about the last few years of the UK film industry, and it had so much Ewan McGregor in it that in the end they had to sell it as a Ewan McGregor biography instead.

Saturday December 19th 1998

Fosca are playing Club V’s New Year’s Eve party, Upstairs at the Garage (I’m a creature of habit), playing with Linus and “The Lesbian and Gay Community”, a band who apparently use instruments made up of bits of guitars I smashed in the former noisy Fosca. I wondered what happened to those guitars.

I’m mainly doing this for myself. I hate trying to Enjoy Myself for it’s own sake. So for once, I can think about rehearsing and singing rather than the dreaded Stroke of midnight, where everyone Strokes each other with all the sincerity of a politician kissing babies. And I sit hugless in some corner. Not this time. It’s the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd. New member this time is Ms Farzana Fiaz, who also plays in a band called Anglocanadien. She’s recently cut her hair short, something people seem to be doing a lot since joining Fosca: Rachel and Cressida both now looking not unlike Twenties flappers. Farzana tells me of the time she sported an actual quiff at school, being a big Morrissey fan. She hums me an old Morrissey tune that’s bugging her that day, over the phone to me, and I name it, “Break Up The Family” off the album “Viva Hate”. She nags me about getting my act together, and I have to listen because she also takes classes in boxing.

I go dancing at Uncle Bob’s Wedding Reception Xmas Bash, where we play Pass The Parcel and, like Nero, bop the night away while war is raging in the wings, innocent Iraqis maimed and dying in this season of peace on earth and goodwill to all men, their crime being born into the wrong place at the wrong time. Taylor remarks that if Iraq gassed us all right now, in the throes of juvenile party games, it’d be a interesting and apt way to go.

Shouting on the bingo-caller’s mic is Billy Reeves, who formerly wrote wonderfully urbane and wry lyrics in the band theaudience, and is now doing similar Svengali-like pop activities with the likes of Martine McCutcheon off Eastenders (who, pre-fame, used to be in a pop group called Milan…. I bought their single, “Lead Me On”… it wasn’t bad, either) and Fosca’s own Cressida Johnson. It’s difficult to imagine the writer of such excellent lines as “the car was never tested/and neither were you” is the same rowdy DJ shouting “NO, that’s the BOYS’ present, give it to the GIRLS, now quick, the music’s stopped, unwrap it, …. hurry UP!”. The boys’ prize turned out to be a toy Uzi.

I go to see Charley play with Gay Dad at the swanky bar of the New London Theatre off Drury Lane. It is a building I was last in at the age of 13, to see “Cats”. Well, Mr Lloyd-Webber’s silly show is still going strong there, and as I walk to the venue, I have to sidestep clusters of German tourists marching the other direction, singing “Oh well, I never, did you ever see a cat so clever”

Got abused by a stranger with a ponytail and bad breath.

Him: “Weren’t you in that shit band on Warners? What were you called again?”
Me: “R.E.M.”

He knew Orlando’s label, but not the name… that’ll give you an idea of what sort of people were at the gig. Charley is a star as ever. Quite cat-like, in fact.

I enjoy The Pastels at the Garage immensely, and Marine Research days later at the Dublin Castle, mainly because both bands are enjoying themselves so much, and it’s hard not to be uplifted by unfettered onstage exuberance. Stephen Pastel even puts his guitar down and dances for “Speeding Motorcycle”. Amelia gives me a homemade Christmas card after her band, Marine Research, play. I’ve already made her one. It’s a photo of me. On the Wilde memorial. Hosanna In Excelsis!