Tuesday July 21st

Apropos of nothing and everything, here’s the tracklisting of a tape I made for Fiona McCarthy, who works at the excellent Magpie Bookshop in Shoreditch. If you’re ever in the area, pop in and visit the “Keen City” exhibition of comic art upstairs, featuring amongst others Oscar Zarate, Hunt Emerson and Brian Edwards (relation).

It was raining as I made this tape. I was thinking of dusty second hand bookshops, of Highgate Wood and Waterlow Park and long walks in North London, and of e.e. cummings quotes scrawled on satchels. You should really take this into account.

Side one:
MONO slimcea girl, high life, life in mono
VELOCETTE get yourself together
WOULD-BE-GOODS bayswater blues, marvellous boy, velasquez and I
SPIRITUALIZED broken heart
NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY here to stay
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN put the book back on the shelf, if you’re feeling sinister

Side two:
STEREOLAB stomach worm, peng! 33, french disko
BROADCAST the book lovers
VELVET UNDERGROUND what goes on (from “live 1969”)
HEAVENLY three star compartment
CARPENTERS i need to be in love
SUPREMES stoned love
SHIRLEY BASSEY spinning wheel
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD the look of love

Tuesday July 14th

I miss Tim. I feel excommunicated from so much of my recent past, from a whole bevy of social circles, but ’twas ever thus. When I first moved here, he was the only soul I knew in the capital. Today my friends are whoever’s being kind to me at the time, including the cat from next door. He still rings me up to tell when The Style Council are going to be on TV, though. Tim, not next door’s cat.

In my broodier moments, I begin to feel I’m being punished, but am not sure why. Perhaps the crime is being Dickon, and the punishment is… staying Dickon. Or perhaps it’s just that modern syndrome, for which I’m as guilty as others: fair-weather friends, the fine art of blanking, friends come and go. London’s full of it. But nothing can change the fact that I’m really, really alone. Not part of a band, not part of a gang of friends, not part of a couple (surprise!). So I sit here and write. When the songs are ready I’ll start recruiting hapless things to help colour in the music.

It’s my new mantra. CREATE, DON’T SPECTATE. Scrawl it on a decrepit hoarding today!

Another mantra is “I only go where I’m invited”, to put the kibosh on the freeloading frenzy that was my former life. Charley invited me to see Hefner last week. They performed on a tiny stage that could barely fit the three of them. The support band was a four-piece, so one member had to stand in the audience to play. This is always a fun experience: I once saw Jon Slade, former Huggy Bear member and legendary lo-fi face, playing bass for a band, when he spotted someone in the audience he knew. He then walked off the stage into the audience and had a proper conversation with the friend while still playing bass, walking back onstage just in time for the end of the song.

Hefner were very quiet: they played with undistorted guitar and minimal drumkit (brushes rather than sticks), perhaps to emphasize singer Darren’s intelligent lyrics. I completely approve: so many gigs are simply too noisy to make out the words. This way, you also can have a conversation if you want to: why shouldn’t you? Some people put on music to have in the background to doing something else at home, so why not at concerts? I used to believe in that Townshend thing of playing so loud that people had to shut up and listen. I’ve gotten it out of my system now. After all, if I’m going to be singing (and it now looks that way), the music will have to be quiet to match. I have no projection at all. I still have to repeat myself to bus drivers. The three-button speech impediment doesn’t help either..

Cressida Johnson has a new adjective for my sort of brooding, it’s called “Dickonsian”. When she told me, I was so chuffed I nearly sat through a whole football match.

I’m still hell-bent on finding eventual fame as a medical term, though: “Dickon’s Syndrome”. The symptoms being…. this. It can’t be natural to be this ridiculous… it’s certainly not immensely healthy.

I’ve changed my email address. Write me a nice electric missive (with no swear words) about your life, do. What books are you reading? Which is your favourite soft toy? Are you a born victim or a born aggressor? What are your dreams like? Do you wear clothes in them to which you’d never give the time of day in the waking world, even on trips to the laundry?

Came across my copy of Denim’s “Summer Smash”, their EMIdisc (unreleased) 1997 single today. It still had the letter from Lawrence with it. “Dickon: you’ve made a great album, you should be proud.” What are my thoughts on Orlando (at least Orlando 1995-97) today? Flawed but an important experiment in pop. Of COURSE I blow my own trumpet, anyone else’s has got spit on it. We used Boyzone and B*witched’s producer sometimes. He didn’t understand us, but where else would you have Monica/Brandy-style swingbeat married to lyrics based on Henry James quotes? Remember innovation?

It’s not to do with Warp Records. They peddle a different kind of classical music, that’s all, like Mogwai. You might as well stay at home and put the record on. I went to that Meltdown thing. Was bored witless by Autechre and their cronies, but liked Broadcast. Doesn’t anyone else understand the importance of STYLE, and WORDS as well as music? Maybe I’m wrong, I have different criteria to some people.

Music that is currently cheering my slippers: that Bran Van 3000 single, Beck-ed, sure, but I actually prefer it to Beck: the humour is more self-deprecating: sheer slacker disco lyrics (feeling kinda groovy/working on a movie/”YEAH, RIGHT!”), McCarthy, the new Spice single, Thee Headcoatees, Hefner… Reading matter includes “popgirls”, a terrific fanzine by Amanda McKinnon (also known as Manda Rin from the band Bis), featuring interviews with Amelia from Heavenly, Sleater Kinney, Mira from Disco Pistol, Lois Maffeo… and most interestingly, lots of writings about her own life, much of it personal. Autobiographical fanzines are always a winner with me. Anyone can write about some band, but the one subject a writer can be a genuine authority on is their own life. As long as you don’t lie or whitewash, how can it fail to intrigue? Popgirls is available for $2 (inc postage), or one U.K pound + 50p postage. to – Amanda MacKinnon, P.O Box 3821 , Glasgow, Scotland, G46 6JY, UK.

Something else I should recommend if you’re in London on a Tuesday night: an excellent club night called Pin Ups, at the WKD Cafe in Kentish Town Road, near Camden Town tube… the DJ is Debbie Smith, who is always nice to me for some reason. She wants to give Fosca a gig there.

New song title: “How To Tell Taxi Drivers They’re Wrong”.

Last weekend I became extremely, painfully ill. Sadly, I recovered.

I spend most of the time I’m not at home in cafes listening to “characters”. It’s only a matter of time before I become that weird person, smelling slightly, flaunting my bad teeth and insane elbows, buttonholing strangers in cafes to tell them my thoughts for no reason. What am I saying, it’s already happened! Care in the community part 374, Dickon Edwards…

I was reading a book about the Smiths, when the phone rang. It was Geoff Travis. He wanted to know what I was doing. I wanted to ask him about the Smiths. He said that Ultrasound were the new Smiths. Later on I went outside and saw a squirrel.

The day before I had a boy and girl to visit. I made them cups of tea while they read one of my magazines and listened to Momus. To their dismay, the magazine had a big picture and interview of a trendy girl singer-songwriter that had stolen my girl visitor’s boyfriend. The same magazine also had a big picture and interview of a trendy techno group, one of whom had stolen my boy visitor’s girlfriend.

This I why I try not to have people round much. Or at least hide the magazines beforehand.

Today my knees are hurting, and all for the wrong reasons.

Thursday June 11th

Oh, how time flies when Satan’s having fun.

It’s Summer 1998 and the scent of apocalypse is in the air. Perhaps not just yet in the real world, but this week NME announces the beginning of the end for the mainstream UK music industry. It’s all over! The Phoenix Festival has been cancelled! Bands are being dropped by major labels left, right and centre! The Rolling Stones have to cancel gigs because they can’t afford their tax bills! Ah, calamity!

Apparently pop music is going to be sold entirely online in a few years time. I’m already way ahead of them. I buy CDs via mail order from online CD stores like Rough Trade and IMVS, from various indie labels’ own websites, or even from band homepages. Apart from anything else, I just love to get nice pop things in the morning post. But we’re now told even physical “product” will be a thing of the past: new music will be downloaded off the Net and collated on to one’s own CD-R along with printable inlay artwork. We’ll see. I remember something similar was predicted in the early 90s, that videos and video games were taking over from music full stop. It didn’t happen. Anyone want to buy a used CDI player?

More importantly, “thoughtful” music is going underground again, like it was in the 80s with labels like Rough Trade, Creation, 4AD and Blast First catering for those who couldn’t care less about the mainstream charts: mainstream was just not cool. Now a new pop revolution is inevitable. The careerists will be out on their arrears.

I don’t know about that. All I know is that I like jumping up and down with a guitar on a stage, playing songs that mean something to me and hopefully others. I could do it every now and then at Archway St John’s Tavern forever like The Headcoats, but I also want to go to wherever people want me to come. Actually the idea of becoming an underground legend like Billy Childish or Stephin Merritt appeals to me. I want to be a sort of English wordsmith’s Andy Warhol. But I suspect I’m actually Valerie Solanas.

Fosca needs a female singer. But I’m still determined to see David Barnett front a band, and if there are no other takers, I shall have to do it myself. Working title for this new group is Caligula.

I’ve been hitting the town for the first time in weeks. Inactivity breeds inactivity: the more you mope indoors with little more to occupy your time than admiring yourself in the mirror or having a good cry, the more you do nothing else. But once I go out, I find people inviting me to this, that and the other. And more often then not I sat up very late indeed, so the next day only really stars with… the evening. And so the cycle begins again. I charge myself with the following recent offences:

Weds 27th May: Garage: Marine Research, the new group formed by members of Heavenly. Amelia is more of a star than ever. Also on the bill are Milky, the new band formed by members of Posh.
Thurs 28th May: Islington: Rob Newman’s warm-up show for the Edinburgh Festival. Patchy, but he’s still a star too.
Friday 29th May: Farringdon: joint birthday party for Cathy Rogers, 30 (ex-Heavenly, now of Marine Research) and Vicky Chester, 26, another childlike girl who is not in a band but should be. Am mainly there to meet up with Julian Lawton and Simon Kehoe (both late 20s), two nice indie boys from my immediate past. There are cakes and sweets aplenty, giving the slightly spooky impression (in an Angela Carter way) of a childrens’ party. I don’t think anyone here is a parent, despite the majority of them being over 25, and some over 35. This, I assume, must explain it. Why have children when you can keep the good parts of being a child yourself? I’m not complaining, naturally. I’m the most guilty culprit myself. Afterwards we go to a Chinatown Mod club, where the boys look like Paul Weller and the girls like Twiggy. For once, my three-button suit isn’t so out of place.
Saturday 30th May: Camden Falcon: Diablo, the band featuring young Darian and Dan, freshfaced associates of mine. Then to Soho’s club Blow Up to catch Spearmint, who are as wonderfully odd in their pariah-pop way as ever, if still a little drably dressed. Their new single rips off both The Style Council’s “My Ever Changing Moods” and Dodgy’s “Good Enough”, which is a Good Thing. Then onto the club “Where It’s At” to say happy birthday to DJ Erol.
Monday 1st June: “Chicago”, the West End musical, with Charley. There were lots of “Cabaret”-isms like slinky, snake-like women in fishnet stockings, bowler hats etc. Which was fair enough, as it was the far less well-known follow-up musical to “Cabaret” in the first place, with the same writers and directors. Two of the songs “All That Jazz” and “Razzle Dazzle ‘Em” are so classic, “standard”, sounding (you probably know them without realising it), it’s difficult to accept they were written in the 70s, and not by Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.

After the show we went to Tower Records (open to midnight!), and because she was a little drunk on the interval wine, she was running around the shelves of CDs like, well, a little boy, and I felt like the “responsible” elder relative in charge. Affects tired adult voice: “Put it back, Charley, I’m not buying you anything till you start behaving…” We both spent too much: it’s always a danger to go shopping when you’ve had a few bevvies. Still, I snaffled the Cardigans last album, and Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” re-release… I think Charley also got some Duran Duran album she’d been after. The ironic thing about being mixed up in that “romo” palaver a while back is that I seem to be the only person in my variable circle of (non-romo) friends that DOESN’T like Duran Duran and Japan…maybe one day, though.

Wednesday 3rd July: Kenickie at the Electric Ballroom, Camden, with young Sir Kendall, whom I constantly embarrass by asking people if he looks like my double. My narcississm really amazes even me at times. The band are terrific, playing virtually all unreleased songs. This reminds me of The Field Mice, who rarely played released songs at all at their concerts, so their live bootlegs were always in demand. I think I’ve still got their Borderline show from 1990 (god!) somewhere. I think Tim still has all his Field Mice bootlegs, too. Anyway, Kenickie… I get physically dragged to the aftershow party, even though I’d promised myself those days were over. Then I drink far too much, and have difficulty remembering the rest of the evening. I can recall dancing and falling over, and saying to Paul Heaton “you da man”, much to my later chagrin, but that’s all. Later it transpires that I was dancing to everything except Kula Shaker. It’s good to know that even in the midst of wild, uncontrolled alcoholic amnesia, I still have my principles.

“You’re a bloody bugger”, says Peter. He is, like others, rather frustrated by my current lack of activity and willingness to get Fosca up and fighting again. With no one like Tim around to goad me into action (Tim would give me deadlines for providing the goods in Orlando), I am ashamed to report that I have been tending to not so much seize the day as let it slip sinfully through my pampered paws. Perhaps it’s a fear of the future, a fear of action, a glut of passivity and indulgence and a new surge in hermit-like isolation in Highgate, being part misanthropy, part agoraphobia. On the odd occasions I’ve stepped outside the house, I’ve been careful to avoid going anywhere I might bump into someone I know and, heaven forfend, have to speak to them. Why be actively creative when there’s so much creativity to passively enjoy? Why go out and see some derivative band in a Camden cave when I can lie in bed and listen to the wonderful Orange Juice album “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”, recently published on CD? I weakly justify this as taking a Holiday in Heaven: being by myself in one room in a quiet leafy avenue of North London with all my favourite things. But it has to stop, and it will stop.

One of the songs we recorded with Sav, “Leopard of Lime Street” looks likely now to appear on a forthcoming indie compilation CD, one of the “Snakebite City” series on Bluefire Records.

Meanwhile, the other Fosca cohorts are playing gigs you can troll along to if you’re in the UK:

Doctor David and Prince Peter are performing in the band Ackercocke on Sunday 3rd May at London’s Islington Red Eye, billed as “Satanic Death Metal” so bring the favourite of your mothers.

Lady Charley is on tour in the UK with the band Gay Dad, supporting Superstar, taking in a town near you (Leicester, Chelmsford, Middlesborough, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford, Brighton, Bristol, Exeter, Birmingham, Reading and London’s Garage) from April 22nd to May 11th.

If you’re going to one of these gigs, do approach the above alumni and tell them Dickon sent you.

My Least Liked Words at present:

Career
Professionalism
Bluetones
Musician and Musicianship
DUH! or WELL, DUH! (and other USA slang banalities threatening to prevail on these shores)
CD1 & CD2
Millennium Bug
Busy
Person Under A Train
Waiting List
Paisley
Sophomore
Why Did You Leave Orlando They Were Good

My Favourite Words at present:

Snog
Abba
Juno 6
Rebate
Nit
Twist ‘n’ Squeeze
Baudrillard
Jude Law
Discount
Chuffed
Keep An Open Mind Or Else
Aren’t You Dickon?

Here’s the working titles of some Work In Progress.

“Clearly I’m Going To The Wrong Sort Of Parties”
“Banned From The Cutie Disco”
“Minimum Wage Love”
“Speech Therapy Junkie”
“Stalker Of The Century”

I hasten to add that it’s not the songwriting that’s taking up the time. Johnny Marr wrote “Still Ill”, “This Charming Man” and some other early Smiths gem in one evening. Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday” before breakfast one day. James Joyce took ten years to write “Finnegan’s Wake”. And it’s rubbish.

Tuesday March 10th 1998

I spend a lot of time pacing about in my room. This helps me think. Ideas for songs and lyrics tend to come to me when I’m walking, whether it be traipsing down Archway Road in the middle of the night, or strolling through Alexandra Park on my way to the Marxist vegan cafe tucked between the trees there. And now I have my new mobile phonic indulgence, I talk and think creatively at the same time, pacing around my room, miniature Erikkson in hand, as I enthuse about musical possibilities, life, and sollipsist philosophy whether the poor listener wants to hear about them or not.

Charley manages, on this one instance, to get a word in edgeways. She tells me that, while surfing the Internet at her friend Ronnie’s place, she stumbled on something called the AMG Database, an ambitious on-line project of Herculean proportions, based in Michigan, USA. Their plan is to document everything musical released ever in a constantly expanding directory, with biographies and at-a-glance opinions, presumably those of the Database’s philanthropic New Age editors. This way, the curious can look up an artist, find out a bit about them, and get an idea about which releases they could investigate. I know there’s a few similar encyclopaedias of pop on the bookshelves, but an on-line one hasn’t entered my consciousness, until now.

“I typed in Salad, and there was only a cursory entry,” Charley goes on. “But when I typed in Orlando, there was this huge wedge of text about them, and you in particular.”

Succumbing to my vanity, I take a look. Sure enough, the Michigan holistic, astrology-loving editors have gone to the trouble of writing more about little old Orlando than they do about… well, quite a lot of more successful artists really, albeit with a few erroneous assumptions (“explicitly gay”? ). Much of it is flattering, particularly the idea that I play keyboards. I don’t, but I’m about to try.

I’ve recently been listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen (particularly his later “wordy doom disco” period), early Pulp (particularly the gleefully misanthropic “Dogs Are Everywhere”), Daniel Johnston, Stereolab, Piano Magic, Broadcast, Trembling Blue Stars and minimalist composers like Philip Glass, Michael Nyman and Steve Reich. And I’m now keen to experiment with odd-sounding keyboards and melodic loops myself, while reverting to making my lyrics more aesthetic, and less lazy like I was beginning to get in the now former version of Fosca.

On my way through Highgate Tube station this evening, I saw a familiar-looking man getting hauled over the coals by the desultory ticket collector for not having a valid enough travelcard. It turned out to be Mathew Parris, ex-Tory MP turned TV broadcaster, political commentator, columnist and writer, and possibly the only Tory supporter I’ve ever felt friendly towards: he is still to date the only Tory to have come out and was in the Pink Paper last year (as was Orlando at one point), just before the general election, urging the readers to vote for John Major for the best deal for homosexual citizens. Talk about a lone voice in the wilderness! I’ve read and enjoyed his books on famous putdowns (“Scorn”) and political gaffes (“Read My Lips”), which convey the man’s endearing sense of wryness and charm, however your political bent. And here he was, charming his way out of a £10 fine in my local tube station. I shook his hand and went on my way.

It’s been a week of divorces for me. I cut the cord with Tim formally, this being the scribbling of a few signatures in a Harley Street office; and I told Sav I would be trying out other singers for Fosca.

The former was no surprise, though I can’t pretend that it was not a little strange and sad to sign a piece of paper saying I can no longer record or perform under the name Orlando. What would the Dickon of 1993 say, beavering away in his sordid room in Bristol with only a borrowed four-track and a friend called Simon Kehoe and calling the results Orlando, dreaming of recruiting a series of guest boy vocalists, eventually procuring only one, name of Tim Chipping? It’s a form of passing the baton, I suppose. Unkind critics might say passing the buck. I’m riddled with freedom, and it feels both exhilarating and terrifying.

Freedom, like any other positive sensation, is thoroughly addictive. Not content with detachment from one colleague, I spontaneously did the same with another, at least for now. The idea of trying out different vocalists appealed to me once again only recently. Fosca can never be a band in the gang-mentality sense, because I refuse to bond with other human beings. I am at best a social tourist, at worst a sociopath. So Fosca is really the name given to whatever Dickon does musically (as once was Orlando), in any shape or form, and with whatever other people getting involved. I prefer the name “project” to “band”…

It’s really a case of to “to thine ownself be true”. When I recruited Sav, it was with the express purpose of presenting someone that was so completely different to me in every way, as an experiment of the Laddish Lion lying down with the Limp-wristed Lamb. After five gigs and four songs recorded, I decided that maybe this experiment wasn’t working so well after all. Sav is a truly great vocalist and a kind man to others, so it wasn’t an easy decision. At least it wasn’t if you view Fosca as a band. But it isn’t a band, it’s an unpredictable, shifting project. And Sav, through not being an immediately apparent misfit, with consummate irony didn’t fit in Fosca.

So tomorrow Fosca rehearse with a different singer, not to mention an extra guitarist, Charley, who seems to be sticking around to everyone’s delight. So now Fosca is a supergroup of Glamourous London Millennium Misfits, because as well as myself (the Michael Crawford of Rock), Ms Charley Stone (the Helena Bonham-Carter of Rock), Mr Peter Theobalds (the Lukas Haas of Rock) and Mr David Gray (the Julian Sands of Rock), all strange denizens of the capital radiant (or doomed) with their own individual styles, we will now be trying out Mr David Barnett on vocals.

Mr Barnett is a suave, feline boy from Dundee that knows of Sarah Records, Belle and Sebastian and Doctor Who. He works by day for a management company that handles the likes of Suede, and by night attends many a glittering and hip social function. “Who is that boy”, one hears, “the incorrigible foxy Scots flirt with the cheekbones, the one getting drunk all alone on the dancefloor? Is he a pop star?”. He is known to many a fanzine writer trying to set up a piece on Suede. He sings like Bowie circa “Hunky Dory” and Morrissey circa “Strangeways Here We Come”, with the sexier elements of The Only Ones’ singer Pete Perrett (who?).

I’m hoping he’ll fit in. Thanks for bearing with me.

I’ve also just seen and been smitten by the film Clueless, a kind of Heathers with more Jane Austen-style social satire and less “Comedy of Cruelty”; and have hence exchanged my pager for a beautiful pocket-sized mobile phone. Though I’ve promised myself I’ll be using it mainly as a portable message checker, rather than suddenly have a loud one-sided conversation on a bus or in the street. This phone stays private. Until the irritation factor associated with such instruments of the Devil wanes a little more in the public consensus, it’s not good to talk.

Monday February 16th 1998

Another London gig, but we do intend to acknowledge there’s life elsewhere before very long. Fosca play downstairs in the main Garage on Tuesday February 24th, doors 8pm, onstage 10pm. The venue address is The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London N5, opposite Highbury & Islington tube. It’s £3 with a flyer, which I can send to you as ever.

Hopefully we’ll be featuring young Ms Charley Stone on Other Guitar, and Sav will be attempting to sing and play an acoustic at the same time himself… I’ve found that it’s all very well throwing yourself about the stage, arms flailing in the breeze, but there are times when strings must be strummed as opposed to missed…. and Charley and Sav will hence help to bolster the sound somewhat.

See some of you there.

The first Fosca interview appears in the e-zine Viva Paraguay.

From reading it back, it occurs to me that my worldview and perspective on most things is so massively different to the others in the group, that in future it’s probably best to be interviewed separately. The endless dilemma is trying to strike the balance between not going over people’s heads with outrageous thoughts and theories and run the risk of being misunderstood (as I’ve learnt only too well in the past), and overdoing the “common touch” line of rock interviews, saturated with swearing and unoriginal arrogance. One-to-one is usually best. The old Frank Zappa quote about music journalists being “people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t speak for the benefit of people who can’t read” holds as true as ever, and if I am to prevent Fosca towing the Great Dumbing-Down line and end up sounding like just another band I have to keep my social hermitage intact. So be it. I have to Know My Place.

It’s one of the great tragedies of the human condition. No one ever speaks like or looks like the way they write.

But as I type this, The Carpenters, playing on Melody FM, remind me “we’ve only just begun / we’ll start out walking, and learn to run…”, and I am instantly filled with confidence for the future and for Fosca.

Melody FM is a favourite radio station of London cabbies, being as it is pure back-to-back easy listening and MOR, the only pop station whose DJs sound more like Radio 3 continuity announcers, all cosy whispers and reassuring placatory tones, almost embarrassed to be breaking up the music. It’s a perfect antidote to the onslaught of noise that carpets the capital’s streets. And as its playlist tends towards the likes of The Carpenters, The Style Council, Abba, classic soul, Bacharach and Sondheim, it’s right up my street. One of my many soundbite answers to the question “what do Fosca sound like” is “Barry Manilow being fisted by Sonic Youth”: noisy packaging of anthemic showstoppers… I always thought that No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” was more a showtune than the sweaty ska-rock that the band otherwise specialise in. On the way home from Fosca rehearsals, Sav puts on tapes of Bread in his car… “something mellow so I can come down from the noise.” It occurs to me that you can have both, and I start work on a new Fosca song, Weightless, to be given its world premiere at our next show at Club Revolver, Friday 30th January, Upstairs At The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London N5. Admission is £4 with a flyer (available by emailing me). Nearest Tube station is Highbury & Islington, and we take the stage at 9.30pm…

There’s also just been a Fosca Message Board set up on the Web for you to peruse and add to at your whim. Take a look, say something outrageous.

David Gray has devised a questionnaire for all four Fosca members, the results of which are available for you to read here at “6” as soon as I can type them up. He has also submitted his own thoughts on Fosca in a piece called “Last Night I Dreamed I Was Christ”, up shortly. We hope you enjoy your cyber-stay.

Today Pete phones me. Things are happening. He’s moved to E1, we’ve got people interested in managing us, and we’ve been asked to play again. And I STILL haven’t sent out any demos to venues unsolicited!

We next play on Friday January 30th, Upstairs At The Garage, Highbury Corner, London N7.

We’re second on the bill of a three band night, so we’ll probably be onstage 9pm ish.

When we played Blow Up, Jo, the co-promoter, asked me if I had a brother. My heart lept at the thought that Tom might have decided to show up after all… but that wasn’t like him. “Well, it was certainly someone with your eyes… do you know a…Kendall?”

Back upstairs I met Kendall, a young man I’d previous only communicated with via e-mail. In fact, I’m not even sure I’d ascertained his gender…. it just didn’t arise in our electronic correspondance. So right up till he introduces himself I have no idea even what sex to expect. This is a good thing, of course.

At first I actually think it’s Nicky Wire from the Manic Street Preachers… here to check out Fosca, or more likely Guernica, as Erol, the lead singer of that headlining band, is friendly with James Dean Bradfield among many other London-based indie names. Indeed, James came to Guernica’s first gig, when they supported Orlando at the Water Rats in 1996. I doubt he liked Orlando very much. James has always scared me the few times I’ve bumped into him. I have met Nicky Wire once, and found him charming.

But Kendall isn’t quite Nicky Wire…. there’s bits of my own face there too. It’s a weird feeling… perhaps we are related distantly. I certainly have lots of Welsh relatives. He also likes Fosca, and has come all the way from Wales just to see us play. He’s also dressed immaculately, in a dapper suit and tie.

Kendall is a real tonic.

Thursday January 1st 1998

I did in fact manage to go to a party last night, at Club V, the queer indie disco night that takes place Upstairs at The Garage, a darkened cave where Fosca played their first gig last September. Charley was there, her hair now an even shorter crop, as were her friends in the band Linus, Andy and Mike from the band Mouthfull, as well as Becky Craig, a Manics obsessive that I hadn’t seen for ages. I generally had a good time in the end, giving up to the effects of the alcohol… the queerest as well as the cruelest drug, perhaps, as it tends to blur the genders and weaker people can suddenly find themselves in bed with those they’d otherwise not look twice at. I do my best to succumb to the enforced hedonism of the night, and am even on the receiving end of a few offers (for once) but manage to leave at 3am by myself, thank goodness. Mainly because my room’s such a state. Getting home isn’t at all a problem, though. Not only is public transport in London free on New Year’s Eve, but there seems to be plenty of nightbuses about. I catch one home within seconds of leaving the club, and manage to sit next to George from the band Jack, whose eyes betray a successful night’s drinking without him having to say a word.

Fosca played Blow Up last Saturday. The newest number we did, “Half-Life”, came together so well it seemed to be playing itself. And we milked “Girl Selfish” to new heights of dynamic noise terroism… I managed to fall on my arse at one point. Must remember to do that again.

No other gigs booked as yet. But we now have four songs recorded for release soon. It looks like most people like “Limbo” enough for it to be the main song on the EP. Sav thinks we should hang on to “Leopard of Lime Street” as a separate single. But this is not our priority… we have to wait for the word from Geoff Travis, the kind man who paid for the studio time. He’s got a few label MDs to play the tape to first. So in the meantime we’re seeking out management and future gigs…

Studio memories… my own brother Tom coming down on the train from Ipswich to add a few guitar parts… the warm vintage Telecaster sound bursting out on the choruses to “Limbo”… the out-of-control noises in “Girl Selfish”.. the garage punk of “Action!”… Sav’s impromptu Hammond organ solo on “Leopard of Lime Street”… I still prefer playing live than making records, but the EP is a pretty decent start.

Here’s what I know so far. My name is Richard Edwards. My friends and family call me Dickon, but these days I tend to proffer myself to strangers as Richard, in an attempt to be helpful. I live in one room in Highgate, a leafy area of North London populated for the most part by squirrels, polite middle class families, and like much of London, unemployable dreamers who never really fitted in elsewhere. So they came here.

I currently write songs for and play in the new musical combo Fosca. We’re in Wavelength studios in Chelsea next week to finish off tracks that will hopefully be released as an EP. The songs are “Girl Selfish”, “Action!”, “Leopard Of Lime Street”, and “Limbo”. I’m not sure which label they’re appear on: the aim is to record them first and find the right label later.

Our next gig is on Saturday December 27th, supporting Guernica at the club Blow Up, which takes place at The Wag at 35 Wardour Street, London W1.

We’re going to be onstage quite late, sometime after 11pm, which hopefully means I’ll be also able to catch Disco Pistol and Salad beforehand at their gig the same night. My little friend Charley plays guitar for Salad, but I’ve still yet to see her in concert with them. Having seen her tread the boards with Linus last week, I’m looking forward to seeing her cool, babyfaced androgyny onstage again. I’ve always maintained that I don’t have any real friends, more people who tolerate my presence. Or mistake me for someone else. But Charley’s one of these naturally friendly, gregarious creatures about town that is happy just to be with people, trading off each others personas alone rather than presenting the mercenary sheen of networking. It IS possible to be friendly in London and mean it, you just have to look a little harder.

There are four people in Fosca: David, Sav, Pete, and myself. I hope to get them to write a little about themselves for “6”, so you’ll have a less one-sided view of the group. There is, however, an unofficial homepage set up by Kate Dornan here, so do take a look at that too. I’m looking forward to others taking hold of the non-creative reigns as soon as possible. Although I have a publishing deal with Geoff Travis’s imprint of Polygram Island, Trade Publishing, I badly need management. I so hate organising things myself. The aspect I most like about Fosca is playing onstage, but at the moment my sifling passivity and fear of phoning people means that we only play gigs when we’re invited. Roll on the manager, and roll on touring everywhere forever. I’m rarely happy doing anything else.

As well as continuing the autobiographic themes of innate loneliness, unease, misfitdom and self-hatred touched on in the songs I wrote in the band Orlando, which I left in October 1997; I’m now also writing tales about other characters, dysfunctional persona sketches and songs about modern London, inspired by films like Patrick Keiller’s London and Ian Sinclair’s book Lights Out For The Territories. The house I live in is located halfway between Archway Bridge, the favourite London suicide spot, and Highgate Cemetery, with its gothic tombs and famous graves.

Today my room is a complete shambles. I have a large amount of overdue paperwork to sort out, concerning my severing of the cord with Orlando. I’m proud of just how civilized my leaving was, sad but matter-of-fact. No bitter animosites and legal wranglings, life’s too short. It’s a constant mystery to me why so many people run screaming to lawyers for the slightest quarrel or financial hurt. Lawyers are not exactly a breed well known for solving disputes quickly and cheaply: they can put whole lives on hold for months, even years, draining thousands in fees, and still the hint is not taken. I’m anti-legal. “If in doubt, sue” seems to be an American catchphrase that, like most things American, is beginning to catch on over here, and we shall soon be at the stage where one will not be able to leave the house every morning without first issuing the postman a writ. The lesson of Oscar Wilde (and, indeed, Jonathan Aitken) is that getting legal is only, in the end, going to make lawyers happy, not yourself. All you are actually achieving is adding to the amount of nastiness in the world. As if there wasn’t enough of that already.

As well as boring paperwork, I also have a huge pile of handwritten letters from around the world that really must be attended to. Not writing back to people is a terrible thing to do, and I’m afraid I have only pure listlessness as a defence. I tend to prefer e-mail these days, partly because it doesn’t involve anything tangible like paper, envelopes and stamps, but also because it means I can write to American heroes of mine like Peter Bagge, Maureen Tucker, Kramer and The Magnetic Fields, and get a reply by the next day.

Best get on, then.