The Portable Dickon Edwards – as in the little book of lyrics and other writings – has now sold out at the record label. Entangled in the US seem to have a few left, though, so if you’re reading this and still want a copy, try here:

http://www.entangledrec.com/product_info.php?products_id=1354

There’s been a couple more Swedish reviews for the album. This one, Sydsvenskan, gives it three out of five:

http://sydsvenskan.se/nojen/skivrecensioner/article306287.ece

While Dagens Nyheter, the newspaper that interviewed me last year, gives it a more pleasing 4:

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2198&a=751208

Here’s a kind blog review that awards the album 8.5 out of 10, calling it ‘one of the best pop albums of 2008’:

http://kissmeivequitsmoking.blogspot.com/2008/03/your-list-of-top-ten-songs-to-self.html

By the way, the singer in ‘Kim’ isn’t mean to be anyone real or specific. Just any aging Britpop lothario. There’s plenty of those knocking about. Though the writer character is definitely inspired by someone I know.

At the rehearsal room:

Charley: Is ‘Kim’ about X?

Me: A bit. Unless they complain. In which case, no it isn’t.

Another clarification. Kate Dornan doesn’t sing lead on ‘Evening Dress’, even though she wrote it. That’s Rachel Stevenson. In the studio, all three of us took turns to see who could sing it the best that day, and Rachel won.

I can also announce that the album now has a proper UK release date: April 28th, via Forte Distribution.

We’ll try to organise a London show in May or so. Rachel says she knows of a hairdressers’ in Stoke Newington who put on gigs occasionally. Which would be perfect.

***

Have been traipsing around Hampstead Heath every day since last week, in a desperate bid to get fitter. I drawn the line at going to the gym, but am royally fed up with the permanently exhausted, ailment baiting state I’ve been in for the last year or so. Everyone tells me a brisk walk of at least 30 mins a day makes all the difference, so I try to make it an hour, and always aim to include a couple of steep hills, which is fairly easy to do around Highgate and the Heath. I’m endlessly passing people walking their dogs. Or walking their boyfriends.

When it comes to fitness, other people ‘train’. I traipse.

Passing the cafe by the tennis courts, I overhear some boys shouting ‘Batty Boy!’. Having become personally acclimatized to this particular catcall over the years, I turn round to see if they mean me. But no: it’s three or four schoolboys – their uniforms of the posh and expensive school nearby -  fighting and pushing and calling each other gay in that time-honoured, puppy dog, play-fight way that no one gets worried about.

Funny how childhood excuses cruelty. I vividly recall going in tears to a teacher at the age of 8 or so, having been attacked in the playground, only to get the teacher telling me off for apparently making it all up.  ‘Don’t tell tales’. More of a shock than a double hurt, it was my first realisation that the world might not be entirely on my side after all. I see, I thought. This life thing is not being to be the pushover it first appeared to be.

If the meek ever did inherit the earth, sooner or later the slightly meeker would be suffering at the hands of the slightly less meek, and everyone would be back where they started.

***

Coming back on the Tube one evening, two Rubenesque young women are pulling the carriage’s focus. Late twenties and in jeans, with the air of a few drinks about them, they are engaged in a half-hearted parody of pole dancing, using the support poles by the carriage doors. They swing and dance and giggle and whoop to each other, though as there’s not enough room in one space for both dancers, one girl opts to use the next exit space further down the carriage. So a whole row of seats – with a few bemused or uneasy passengers sitting on them – becomes an inadvertant no man’s land, across which the girls exchange their slinky, if tipsy, fire.

Still, they’re harmless enough, and a carriage at ransom to two drunken girls is preferable to one commandeered by lads in a similar state.

One man sitting near to me exercises his own control in a very male way. After the girls get out at the next stop, he offers a comment to the carriage at large:

‘Well, I wouldn’t pay for them.’

I’m Dj-ing this Saturday at the club How Does It Feel To Be Loved, which specialises in mixing 60s soul & pop with 80s indie. After all the showtunes and easy listening with which my DJ persona is usually associated, it’s nice to be able to air the likes of ‘Crush The Flowers’ by The Wake or ‘You Wind Me  Up’ by Bad Dream Fancy Dress and not feel like I’m in the wrong room.

Actually, were Cherry Red / El Records to put out 1989’s ‘You Wind Me Up’ as a single now, one wonders if it would be accused of ripping off Lily Allen. Judge for yourself, Dear Reader:

http://dickonedwards.co.uk/you-wind-me-up.mp3

Were I better connected with the current pop world, I’d be nagging Ms Allen to cover it. Or better still, Ms Nash. Or Mr Ronson. Or Misses Girls Aloud. Or any new pop group with a chart-potential marketing budget and youth on their side, but no decent songs.

‘Isn’t that a shameless Lily Allen rip-off?’ the people would cry.

‘Oho!’ you’d say. ‘It’s actually a cover of an obscure 80s indie track. The band was called Bad Dream Fancy Dress, and the song was written by Keith West, of ‘Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera)’ 60s hit fame. You’d know all this if you read Mr Edwards’s diary.’

‘Oh, him. Why doesn’t he just get a job?’

I digress. Here’s the details of my DJ slot:

Date: Saturday March 15th
Venue: The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP, three minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube station.
Time: 9pm-3am, with my set 10.30pm-midnight.
Entry: £4 members, £6 non members. Membership is available free from www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk

***
An email arrives from Zagreb, asking if I could be interviewed (re Fosca) for the Croatian magazine Terapija. Though I’ve never been to Croatia physically, it’s nice to know I’ve been there musically.

As I got dressed this morning, I realised a button was missing from the clean shirt in question. I started to think I’d have to sort out a needle and thread and sew a spare in place, when it dawned on me: it’s about time I started wearing cufflinks. After all, people do send me them to wear.

A pair of lovely vintage silver ones appeared in the post recently from the US, in the shape of little 1930s automobiles. Here’s the note that came with them:

Dear Mr Edwards

These belonged to my great uncle. He was a gay Mexican paratrooper in WWII (and after as well I suppose). You are the only one I know who would do them justice. Enjoy!

Ms Brandi Shawn.

I’ve got them on now. I like to think this diary reads like it was written by the sort of person who is sent vintage cufflinks previously belonging to gay great uncles, Mexican paratroopers or not.

In fact, someone else told me the other day they suddenly felt the urge to send me some cufflinks. Well, now’s the time. From today, I am officially a cufflink wearer.

(Is it ‘cufflinks’, ‘cuff links’ or ‘cuff-links’? Glancing at newspapers online, all three versions appear to be in usage. However, the Compact OED and the London Review Of Books prefer ‘cufflinks’, so I’ll go with that.)

Thanks to Andreas Ottosson for the following email, in which he translates the Sonic Magazine review:

I happened to notice that the Sonic review of your new album (by Johan Jacobsson) had been published online, so I decided to translate it for you. English is, as you may guess, not my first language, so I apologize for any awkward mistakes you may encounter while reading. It turned out ok, though. Enjoy.

***

A London suburb, the end of November, 2003.

Inside the walls of the house the afterparty was in full swing; frisky feet tracing dance moves over soiled carpets, fair voices being heard in the draft from the horrible insulation.

On the small bridge outside stood Stefan and I, with my slurry speech and drunken swaying back and forth providing the entertainment while he finished a menthol cigarette.

– Sushan amashing evening, Eckshn Baker [Action Biker] did susha bluddy aMEYzn show…

Then, suddenly, there was a tiny disruption. The door behind our backs flew open, and an amazingly well-dressed man went past us, mumbling something partly inaudible about wine while disappearing into the gray dawn, our eyes fixed on him in silence the whole time.

Not until then were we able to speak again. An unanimous sigh; “oh, Dickon”.

Lo-fi and DIY aesthetics had almost completely killed the idol worship of my childhood. The unreal artists suddenly became flesh and blood and, well, if they could, so could I. The relationship turned from one of worship to friendship. All was well.

But, as I said, almost. Now and then I return to the giggling fanboy I once was, while contemplating covering my bedroom walls in glossy posters.

Such a “now” occurs whenever London-based Dickon Edwards – singer, songwriter, lyricist and guitarist of Fosca – passes me by or puts out a new record. Dickon, you see, is a Pop Star. He writes remarkably intelligent lyrics concerning relationships, the feeling of being somewhat apart from it all, and philosophy, his melodies spring forth from a decidedly british tradition of assimilation – Roxy Music here, Postcard there, Duran Duran here, northern soul there, Whigfield here, pick the best and make it your own – and he is just generally incredibly handsome and luscious from every conceivable point and angle.

An example on a pedestal… And now more than ever since Swedish label But Is It Art put out a couple of Fosca records in close succession! Considering the fact that Fosca’s discography consisted of two full-length albums in nine years as a band (»On Earth to Make the Numbers Up«, 2001 and »Diary of an Antibody«, 2004), this means a heart attack. »In Concert« – a live recording of the bands gig at the Rip it Up festival in Varmlandsbro last summer – perhaps isn’t essential artistically speaking, but since it is, still, Fosca, you should download it from butisitart.org anyway.

The newly released studio album »The Painted Side of the Rocket«, however, is truly a triumph in all possible aspects. Steady drums beating, synthesizers beeping beautifully and electrically, guitars glimmering seductively and Dickon crooning away couplets such as »but darling won’t you come down from the cross?/’Cause someone else here needs the wood« in the weak yet powerful fashion he knows so well.

A welcome return, still in shape and very recognisable.

– So, you think he’s coming back?
– No. Let’s go inside.

The fag tossed into the bushes, shoes scraping over the doormat, we went back inside, greeted by friends and acquaintances.

– We met Dickon, I proclaimed happily.
– Of course, he was here, they replied.

“You don’t understand anything”, I thought with a sulk. “I met Dickon, and someday I will brag about it in an album review.”

8/10

Original online here:

http://sonicmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2053&Itemid=85

To which I can only reply, tack så mycket.

[photo from Smash Hits Productions of Taiwan]

The new Fosca album, The Painted Side Of The Rocket, is released today as a legal download at the iTunes Store:

You can also get it on MP3 at Klicktrack Music:

http://www.klicktrack.com/shop/release.jsp?r=71172

Here’s a free MP3 of ‘Confused And Proud’; the new, dreamier version:

http://www.butisitart.org/downloads/Fosca_Confused_and_Proud.mp3

In the US, Entangled Records have the CD, plus the book and some older Fosca releases:

http://www.entangledrec.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=fosca&x=0&y=0

I note the album is at No. 10 in their Bestsellers list, just behind our old friends Trembling Blue Stars.

The CD will be given a proper UK release via Forte Distribution next month, date to be confirmed. We’ll play an album launch gig in London some time after that.

Otherwise, it’s available via mail order from the label (based in Sweden), here:

http://www.butisitart.org/order/

I’m looking into the possibility of having the London launch somewhere slightly unusual yet suitable, eg a bookshop, library or museum. This might mean having to sort out hiring a PA and organising our own wine and beer and soft drinks, much like a book launch or private view. Never done such a thing before, but I’m willing to give it a go.

What I’d love is to do is play a UK festival. There do seem to be so many new ones starting up these days. But how one gets to play them without an agent, short of rudely sending festival organisers CDs and hoping for the best, is beyond me.

I do get bookings as a DJ, but it’s not really done to reply along the lines of ‘thanks for wanting me as a DJ, but can you book my band as well, or instead?’

Thing is, I’ve never felt quite so cut off from the UK band scene as I do now. I’d like to think this makes the Fosca album all the more interesting: music out of time, genuinely uncaring of the scenes and musical fashions, as opposed to bands who pretend to be unique, but take pains to ensure they’re compatible with the current XFM sound or whatever it is. But I fear it just means we might as well be an unknown bunch of entry-level nobodies, and thus the album doesn’t stand a chance in the country of its makers. Worse than that, as youth is not exactly on our side.

And yet the other day in Highgate Avenue I was collared by a young man who was going from door to door, distributing leaflets for a curry house. As I walked past, he eyed me and called out:

‘Excuse me, mate. I couldn’t help noticing that you look like you work in the music industry.’

I stopped, somewhat dumbfounded by this remark, and tried to think of a suitable response.

‘Er…’

‘It’s just that I’m a singer-songwriter trying to network. Do you have any advice?’

‘Well… I’m in a band.’

‘And you’re signed, yeah?’

‘Um… (feebly) We’re playing a tour of Sweden.’

‘So you must have management, an agent and so on, yeah?’

‘Actually, no… Look, I’ve got to go… (walking away quickly, blurting desperately) Er, use the internet! MySpace!… Facebook! Er… MySpace again!’

***

Do I really look like I’m ‘someone who works in the music industry’? To the point where struggling musicians feel the need to accost me in the street for advice?

There MUST be some way of converting this ‘talent’ of looking more successful than I really am, into an iota of an income. Suggestions to the usual address.

What I now realise I should have told the young leafletter is that the best way to earn a living in the music industry is to do anything else BUT be in a band. Be an in-house sound engineer, or run a rehearsal studio. All Fosca’s earnings – and we do make some (if always three figures rather than four)- go straight back into studio fees. When you realise that asking – and getting – upwards of £40 for providing three hours of broken PAs, battered mic stands and dented mics, you soon find out that the rehearsal room business is a buyer’s market.

There ARE one or two reasonably-priced places in London which actually care more about pleasing customers than making money for its own sake, but their weekday evening slots are impossible to secure unless you’re a band who rehearses every week, all year round.

Me: One of these days I’m going to open my own rehearsal room business, with flowers in every room, and well-maintained shiny new equipment.

Charley: Dickon, it would be trashed in one day!

Me: Not with me. I’d only allow nice, gentle people to use it. I’d ask for references.

***

I’m told Sonic Magazine in Sweden has just called the album ‘a triumph’ and ‘a much welcome return… 8 out of 10’:

http://sonicmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2053&Itemid=85

I’m also told ‘Confused and Proud’ is on rotation on some college radio stations over there.

An email from Bandung in Indonesia:

Hi Mr. Dickon Edwards… I’m one of your fans from Indonesia, is there any chance to release Fosca here..and is there any chance to get Fosca play some gigs here?? Love you, Joz.

You see, I wish this kind of thing made the slightest bit of difference when trying to get Fosca any kind of radio play, press coverage or festival booking in my own country whatsoever. But I’m still grateful to get the emails.

Last Monday was the first rehearsal for the Swedish tour. It did me the power of good – certainly more so than any CBT therapy or painkillers. I felt I was getting somewhere again. We’re airing an old song that hasn’t been played live since 1999, the Cohen-meets-Abba title song from ‘On Earth To Make The Numbers Up.’ Having Charley Stone on guitar really adds a oneiric texture and scope to the sound; we’re taking old songs somewhere new: a more aurally androgynous sensibility.

We rehearsed at a place called Enterprise Studios, in Denmark Place off Charing Cross Road. It’s like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter: one of those hidden London streets you walk past all your life, until it’s specifically pointed out that it exists. There was a huge huddle of fashionably dressed young people outside, and I passed adverts on the walls for bands seeking members ‘under 25 only’.

I know I’m rather biased, but it seems more acutely important than ever for bands to be younger and derivative, than older and unusual. Unless you’re on the level of REM or Nick Cave, you’re the wrong kind of Not Young.

But this is all starting to sound like typical Grumpy Old Man talk, and I’d hate to be a typical anything. I have songs to get on with and write, as we’re recording a new single in Sweden during the tour. Pressing on and making new stuff is the only answer. Everything else one just has to shrug off.

Still feeling woozy and disorientated, my fingers as I type not quite feeling as if they’re mine. There’s a kind of numbness in my fingertips.

My copies of the new things have arrived. Instantly I think about a line from Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George, neatly summing up the joy of the painter’s process:

‘Look, I made a hat / Where there never was a hat.’

I feel this applies particularly when, like the George of the musical, the creator in question feels rather lacking at being a normal human being, away from the world of making or writing. It’s perfectly possible to be creative and NOT be a Colin Wilson-style outsider or dysfunctional or bohemian or battling with drug addiction or just strange. But if you are feeling lost in the world, and lost in your life – whether for a moment or a lifetime – seeing the finished results of your creative act really helps make sense of the relentless confusion of it all. Ah yes, you think. THAT’s what I’m good for.

Whether it’s something I’m good AT is neither here not there, not when it comes to deciding to make the things in the first place.

Last time I put out an album, I mentioned it on an email mailing list. Someone piped back unkindly along the lines of, ‘Woo! Well, look out, pop charts!’

Well, yes, it’s unlikely the album’s sales will give Nickelback any sleepless nights. But if a tree falls in a forest and no one blogs about it, it does still make a sound.

‘I’m rather happy with the way I fell just then,’ thinks the tree. ‘I fell in a way that was purely me. Other falling trees are available, and have better press agents, but none of them fall quite like me. Maybe no one heard me. Doesn’t matter. I still did it.’

Look, I made a book and a CD.  Where there never was a book and a CD.

Feeling a bit better now, partly via painkillers but mostly through the nice lady doctor at Whittington A&E who gave me a while-you-wait blood test and stopped me worrying myself to death. The waiting room only had three or four other patients, so I didn’t feel too guilty about seeking this emergency second opinion.

Thankfully I didn’t need the nasty lumbar puncture. But it turns out I do have a high lymphocyte percentage, meaning I’ve got a viral infection that will eventually burn itself out naturally. 

She sent me on my way with a pill for the nausea and an injection up my bottom for the pain. Or it may have been for fun.

I’m hot-headed in all the wrong ways. Feel riddled with a disorientating headache (making it hard to read from this screen), plus am additionally burdened with nausea, loss of appetite and a dizzy fever. The traffic was unusually deafening on my walk to Highgate Group Practice. Either everyone has turned up the volume on their cars, or I’m ill.

So I’ve just seen the GP. She suspects it’s an ear infection, and has put me on a course of antibiotics. I’ve no rash or neck stiffness, so she doesn’t think meningitis is the case, but the only true way to rule it out is for me to go to Whittington A&E (a short bus ride or 15 min walk away) and get a lumbar puncture. This means spinal fluid extracted and tested. It does seem rather drastic. But sitting here worried out of my mind – when I can think straight at all – I’m considering going along and asking for it, if only to put my mind at rest. In every sense.

Have this recurring headache – a painful pounding behind the eyes -  now coupled with nausea and feverishness. The headache’s been going on for a couple of weeks now, previously thought to be a touch of flu, but right now I feel particularly bad. I wonder if it’s just down to broken sleep patterns and not eating properly.

Of course, if I look up the symptoms on the Net, I get anything from flu to meningitis. I also wonder if I’ve finally inherited my dad’s migraines.

Was going to write a proper diary entry, but feel too awful to do so. To bed with Mr Neurofen, I guess, and see what the morning brings.

A few minutes ago, I could have sworn this bed was shaking. Just a little.

First thought was it might be one of those odd body reflexes: twitches, tics, or one of those times when you can feel your pulse acutely, by leaning too hard against the pillow, or staying too still in certain positions.

Second thought was: the neighbours really have gone too far this time.

Just checked the BBC news site, and it appears it really was an earthquake.  A very mild, slightly embarrassed kind of earthquake. A don’t-mind-me, terribly English earthquake. Muttering, ‘Scuse me…sorry… sorry! Just getting to my seat somewhere else in the world…’