A reminder of this Fosca gig next week:

Spiral Scratch Presents
Fosca + The Besties + A Smile & A Ribbon + The Parallelograms
Wednesday 1 August 2007
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London SW2 5BZ. 020 8671 0700.

Doors 8pm. Fosca onstage 10.20pm.

Tickets £4 advance, on sale now. Go to:  www.wegottickets.com/event/19272

It’s Fosca’s first London gig for over a year, and our first headliner in our own home city (well, for me and Rachel) for much longer. Please buy a ticket and come. We don’t play live very often. And I’m not sure when we’ll play another one, to be honest. There’s too much heavy lifting.

Here’s one taken when I wasn’t aware the camera was snapping away. So it’s a non-posing pose. Except of course, I never really stop posing.

And why shouldn’t I? Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras, more than in the rest of Europe put together. Everyone’s on camera. So the least one can do is make an effort to be worth looking at.

Holloway Road, close to where I live, was recently declared the most CCTV-covered street in Britain. I like to think this is due to the fabulous dress sense of the average pedestrian there, rather than the high incidence of unkindness. If not, then it should be.

So it’s this Canute-like attitude which I recognise in my expression below. It’s how I like to think I really am, or should be more often. Strange but essentially harmless. Wanting the best for all. Blowing kisses at the drug dealers. Flirting with squirrels.

Brompton Cemetery, July 2007. Photo by Gillian Kirby. More to come.

Have agreed to do another movie review column for Plan B Magazine. May as well be voluntary work (all they can afford to pay me barely covers half my travel costs getting to the screenings), but it helps pad out the file of published writings, on real paper. And I do like to go to the movies.

Tonight’s film was Evening, a lachrymose drama where women get upset over something that happened one fateful night in 1952 (or whenever), and ‘their lives are changed forever’. That sort of film. Sails rather close to the TV Movie world at times, despite the screenplay by the man behind The Hours. In fact, one aged version of a character suddenly turns up at the end to make a little speech, tying everything up. Which is exactly what happens at the end of The Hours. So Evening is essentially The Hours without the suicides, musings on literature, or Philip Glass on the soundtrack. Instead, there’s the usual nondescript echoey piano tinkings common to such dramas. And it’s all filmed beautifully: you come out whistling the sunsets.

Vanessa Redgrave and Claire Danes are both great, but miscast as old and young versions of the same character. It’s not just the lack of physical resemblance (Ms Danes is half a foot shorter than Ms Redgrave – was her character stretched on a rack between the ages of 35 and 70?), but their acting styles and mannerisms couldn’t be more different. Even when Ms Redgrave was Ms Danes’s age in films like Blow-Up and Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment, she was still aloof, starchy and brittle. Ms Danes is gregarious, sweet and quirky. It’s like comparing an angsty stick of celery to an angsty strawberry.

That said, I think it’ll fare well with fans of well-made female melodramas. There were more than a few snuffles in tonight’s audience, so I suppose Evening can be safely filed away under Actorly Weepies.

***

Am collared in Leicester Square by a woman brandishing an Amnesty International clipboard, after my Direct Debit details. Very much a sign of the times: these aggressive figures are also known as ‘charity muggers’, or ‘chuggers’. Usually students, I think. Either way, I find them immensely objectionable. In fact, I make a mental note to boycott all charities that stoop to employ such depressing tactics. Which is ironic, as it’s often charities that ask you to boycott various firms and organisations for their unethical practices.

So no more Amnesty International donations from me. Not until they stop leaping out at people on the street with clipboards and shouting at them for daring to walk away. It’s arguably a kind of oppression of one’s human rights, curtailing the ability to walk around freely without having to dodge clipboard fiends. I’ve a good mind to write to Amnesty International about themselves.

***

Funny how during these busy days people either have no time at all, or devote too much time to things they probably don’t need to do. Harry Potter fans are camping outside bookshops three days before the new novel comes out. I can understand the camaraderie of fans together, standing in the same place, for maybe for an hour or two at the most. And dress-up parties at midnight sound fun enough. But when I see people camping in the rain for days, I feel like John Lennon did in the Imagine documentary, confronting a fan camping out on his doorstep, politely asking him to desist, inviting him inside for a cup of tea, then sending him home.

Still, I suppose it has precedence in the times of Dickens, when his novels were published in installments. The story goes that people standing at New York harbour asked passengers arriving from England if Little Nell was okay. Now it’s the welfare of Little Harry that their descendents are seeking to know.

This year’s Latitude was something of a civilised success on the whole, both from my point of view and from overhearing those who went, whether it’s the chatting of young waitresses in Walberswick cafes or the chatting of people on the Internet. The young have even given it a nickname. Just as Glastonbury is ‘Glasto’, Latitude is ‘Lat’. Not bad for a festival barely two years old.

The multicoloured sheep by the main bridge have also achieved a kind of instant icon status, a newly-forged tradition much like the Doctor Who Christmas Specials. Second time around, and it feels as if they’ve been there for decades. Latitude is now The Festival With The Coloured Sheep. On no account must the sheep go. It’d be like the ravens and the Tower of London.

My only complaints were really with my own lack of organisation and foresight: staying in Southwold meant I had to miss a lot of late-night acts. Being a performer on all four nights as well as a reviewer also called for a bit of schedule juggling, though I’m pleased that I came up with more than the minimum of the required writing, and was always on time for my DJ slots. I didn’t let anyone down.

However, I do slightly regret the occasions I drank too much and became a bit Kenneth Williams-y in public. Not funny and entertaining, but embarrassingly wracked with self-piteous wailings about why I am still not The King Of England. I apologise to all those around me at the time.

At one point I was lying on the grass (in full suit and tie) near the queue for the Southwold Shuttle Bus, utterly drunk, crying to myself, moaning that I wasn’t allowed to jump the queue (which I entirely agreed with, but I needed something to moan about) and muttering about, oh, how lonely and empty my life was, and how come most people preferred to watch The Arcade Fire than watch me DJ-ing with other people’s records (again, I entirely agree with them), and oh, why am I still not yet The King Of England?

Of course, this was all haughty, cod-diva showing off, even to myself, fuelled mostly by alcohol. I was enjoying every minute of it, though it wasn’t until some days later that I realised this.

A concerned girl came over to me during one of these ridiculous rants to the sky:

Concerned Girl: Are you… are you okay? Where are your friends?

Me: (triumphantly, arms aloft) They’re… all… on the internet!

The truth is I quite enjoy being lost in life: at least you know where you are.

Otherwise, I had a perfectly wonderful time. Last year I was a mere freeloading Guest Pass holder. This year, bona fide work, twice over, every day. My face was in the programme twice (The Beautiful & Damned DJ act appeared in two different tents), plus I was employed to blog for the official festival website. Next year, the front cover. Or if wet, The King Of England.

My haughty showbiz thanks to the tirelessly kind souls behind the Latitude scenes: Ms Tania H, Ms Sarah and Ms Rachel from the Cabaret Arena, Ms Jen from the Latitude website, Ms Tamsin and Mr Jason from the Film Arena, Ms Anthea and Mr Ben from the Press Tent. And all the ones whose names I’ve forgotten. God bless them all. (Applause, exit stage left.)

Am in the Press Tent at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, DJ-ing for The Beautiful & Damned team, writing for the official website, staying in Southwold, avoiding the sun.

I’ve got lost in the car parks, and have wandered around for too long carrying heavy luggage (as ever). But I’m more or less sorted now. Strangers keep coming up to me, in Southwold or at the festival, to say how much they enjoyed my DJ-ing. This hasn’t gone to my head at all. Oh no.

Houseboy! I want a rider of blue Smarties this instant! With the blue ones taken out!

Another price paid for the Swedish trip. I thought our Ryan Air experience was bad enough, but it now seems I was bitten quite frequently by mosquitos during the night of the gig.

Airborne blood-suckers who constantly drain you of your health and resources without reason or fairness, and leave only a lasting irritation in exchange. But enough about Ryan Air.

My lower legs, calves and ankles are riddled with bites. On my right calf there’s three little bites neatly in a row, followed by one huge bite. With the inflammation blending together, it looks like a large birthmark in the shape of a guitar, which at least makes some sense. Pink on white.

It’s just take, take, take with some insects.

***

My last day in London for a week. Today it’s the first day of the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, and I have to find somewhere there to park my red sleeping bag, for tonight only. It’s the one night my parents’ cottage in nearby Southwold isn’t available. Miss Red texts me to say that her spare tent isn’t going to be free after all. So it’s going to be interesting. I shall just turn up, ask around, and hope for the best. I wouldn’t mind sleeping in the open air in my all-weathers sleeping bag, assuming I can shelter from the forecast light showers. Watch this space. I will survive.

The festival ends on Sunday, but I’m staying on at the cottage in Southwold till Wednesday morning, just because it’s such a lovely place to stay. In fact, I’m hoping to rent a place there later this year, off-season, just for myself.

I’m wearing two hats at Latitude this year. One is my DJ hat, as one of the Beautiful And Damned DJs, along with Miss Red. We’re doing sets on all four evenings, starting tonight in the Film & Music Tent, then moving on to the Cabaret Arena for the rest of the festival. On a couple of occasions I note our slot is immediately followed by a live performance by the Puppini Sisters, whose records I often play when DJ-ing. I’m not sure if it’s good DJ etiquette to play a performer’s records just before they take to the stage themselves. Possibly not.

The other hat is as a writer for the festival’s own website. I shall be contributing at least two blog entries a day over at the website, so keep an eye over there if nothing is appearing here.

Last year I was merely a wandering punter, but despite this strangers did come up to me and ask what time I was on. Being a member of the audience is clearly a role in which I am just not convincing enough. If I watch a comedian, they often spot me and make some comment on my appearance. Which is one reason why I rarely go to comedy shows by myself, unless it’s someone who doesn’t stoop to the cliches of audience belittlement, such as Stewart Lee.

But sometimes there are comedians who put an original and refreshing spin on the hoary old standbys of the stand-up. Last year at Latitude I was watching Josie Long, with the very stylish author Sophie Parkin at my side.

Said Ms Long, ‘I’d just like to point out that there’s a lady over there dressed like Truman Capote. And that next to her is a MAN dressed like Truman Capote.’

Which is of course a high compliment in my book. And makes a change from the usual Andy Warhol cat-calls. Though my favourite remains the following, shouted at me on the street:

‘Oy! The 80s!’

Not resembling someone from the 80s, but looking like a whole decade. Not even ‘Mr 80s’. Just ‘The 80s.’

Off to catch the train.

Unpurged memories of Sweden. A lady collars me as I’m walking around the festival.

Lady: Oh, Fosca! ‘Storytelling Johnny’ is such a brilliant song!

Me (graciously): Thank you.

Lady: Though of course, you are not as great as Baxendale.

Me: Thank you again.

***

Monday last, 6pm to late: finally finish mixing the rest of the new Fosca album with Alexander M, who indeed is in the Highgate-based indiepop band Baxendale, or was. It’s not clear if they’re still going or not, even to himself when I ask him what their status is. But one hopes that Swedish lady and other such fans of both groups might be slightly impressed by the collaboration.

So we now have a completed album. Ten songs, forty minutes long, album title The Painted Side Of The Rocket. This is a reference to brother Tom and mine’s childhood games of the imagination, where we’d sit one side of a shaped and painted sheet of hardboard (a present from Dad), and pretend we were in a space rocket. Though the painted side was on the outside, unseen by ourselves, visible to those looking on only, we knew it was there and carried on as if we could see the outside as well as the inside. And obviously most of the time there would be no one else there look on. But it didn’t matter. We were in the space rocket, having adventures.

So it’s a comment on perspective of creativity, where the thing you make is never going to be the same as the version perceived by an onlooker, a listener, a reader. Records, films and books are different to those who’ve made them and those who buy them. And of course, it also manages to comment on how it doesn’t matter if no one else is there to look on. Creativity is a personal act offered to the world in the hope others will make their own personal connection. It’s an act of faith.

And then there’s the level of childhood nostalgia: this album is the first creative thing Tom and I have made together since we were children. As Tom Lehrer said rather unkindly, pop is music by and for children. Being in a band, making records, is something usually associated with young people. To do it in your thirties, particularly when you’re not full-time and successfully established on some minimum level, has a regressive, self-deluding side of it which doesn’t happen for those who make films or write novels.

You’re allowed to make your debut film in your forties (eg Red Road), or publish your debut novel in your fifties (eg A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian). But with bands, age really matters. Would Lily Allen be allowed to put out her first album at the age of fifty? The whole youth side of bands is something that fascinates me. New gods selling the influences of the old. Old chord progressions on young vocal chords.

So like most Fosca lyrics themselves, there’s an attempt to say at least three things in the title alone. And it doesn’t matter if no one else ‘gets it’. And indeed if no one else gets it, as in buys the album. The rocket trip has still been made. Creative acts still exist even if no one else looks on. I’m not holding my breath for a five-page interview spread in the broadsheet supplements. Though obviously, it would be nice. Frankly, I’ve got far more interesting and unusual things to say and even take a better photo than your average hyped band of the moment. But you expect me to say that, don’t you, Dear Reader? It only matters to those to whom it matters.

The next step is to find a record label to release it. One that believes in paying its bands (Shinkansen seemed quite unusual in this respect, given what I’ve heard elsewhere). It’s cost us the best part of £500 to finish, mostly going on Alexander M’s time, skill, and rental of a proper studio. So that has to be recovered for a start. I fear the DIY indie world rather expects you to have incurred a total recording budget of zero, as opposed to the thousands spent by bands on proper labels where day jobs are allowed to be left. As ever, I’m neither one thing nor the other.

Photos from Saffle, by David Hill:

More at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_nottingham/tags/ripitup/

Yes, it’s Fosca, who put out a single called ‘Supine On The Astroturf’, pictured here almost supine on some actual astroturf. The backstage area was a huge indoor football pitch, with the stage at one end, looking out onto the festival camping site, like a kind of mini-Glastonbury. The rain was only mini-rain, too.

We were second from last of a two-day festival bill, our day ending with Dan Treacy and his Television Personalities. We also met and became travel mates with Richard Preece, who records as Lovejoy and who performed a lovely acoustic set earlier in the evening. I also enjoyed the solo lady plus laptop that was Action Biker, and the pristinely jangly guitar groups Kissing Mirrors and Cats on Fire.

Fosca went onstage after dark, though typically the acts beforehand overran, and our set was much later than scheduled. We also took an aeon to soundcheck due to some technical problem or other, and hope the crowd forgave us. They danced and sang along, and I was asked for my autograph afterwards.

My voice fell apart two-thirds into the set, and I now realise it was because I couldn’t hear my vocals loudly enough on stage, and sang too loudly as a result. But after the extended sonic tweaking that had already taken place, I couldn’t bear to trouble the engineers any further, and plumped to persevere. Still, if one can’t replicate the recordings properly, one has a duty to provide more of a visual element and generally have fun. So I shouted and screamed and danced about and generally put on what I hoped was something vaguely classifiable as a performance. I had fun, and I hoped it would rub off.

The band themselves were fantastic: Tom especially, on lead guitar. No mean feat considering Ryan Air had managed to lose his suitcase containing all his guitar effects pedals, and worse than that, his stage clothes and shoes. I forgave him his trainers given such mitigating circumstances, and we are indebted to the people at Saffle who found Tom a whole new set of pedals to borrow at the last minute.

Set list:

1. Letter To St Christopher
2. Universal Gatecrasher
3. Head Boy
4. Come Down From The Cross
5. We See The World As Our Stunt Doubles
6. Secret Crush On Third Trombone
7. It Only Matters To Those To Whom It Matters
8. I’ve Agreed To Something I Shouldn’t Have
9. The Millionaire Of Your Own Hair
10. It’s Going To End In Tears
11. The Agony Without The Ecstasy

***

Landing back at Stansted on the Sunday, the plane tannoy plays a tinny, banal fanfare with a sugary pre-recorded message reminding the passengers the flight has arrived on time, and that we must all be truly grateful to Ryan Air for existing.

I’d rather they spent less time and energy producing such smug little recordings, and more on ensuring valuable luggage ends up at the same airport as its owners, but there you go.

Tom seems less bothered than me about his loss, having done the sensible thing and taken out insurance. It happens. Could have been worse. When Spearmint played somewhere – Japan, I think – I remember a guitar or similar piece of important equipment ended up in the wrong hemisphere, though it got back to the band eventually, having been around the world a few times.

If travel broadens the mind, there must be a few toothbrushes and pairs of knickers out there entirely qualified to sit on liberal think-tanks.

Rachel Stevenson’s account of the trip is here:

 http://millionreasons.livejournal.com/173056.html

Back from Saffle in Sweden, where Fosca have played the indiepop festival ‘Rip It Up’. I leave my home at 4.30am Saturday, not managing to sleep before that, and get back at about 6.30pm on the Sunday. Hardly seems any time at all, but by the time I fall onto my own bed again, I feel the most tired I’ve been in my life, down to too little sleep and much wandering around carrying heavy bags and instruments on and off trains and buses and planes and taxis.

It goes like this:

4AM Eagle Cabs taxi to a packed Stansted slightly marred by driver who gets our addresses wrong and nearly picks up Baxendale and Taylor Parkes instead, hours of interminable standing in the cattle-like queues getting through the various airport security hoops, 7AM plane to Gothenburg (a two hour flight marred by restless toddlers who either climb over the seats and run amok, or scream their heads off to unholy volumes during take off and landing), unforeseen taxi to the rail station instead of the bus due to our chasing up Ryan Air’s luggage folly (of which more later), kill three hours at Gothenburg station thinking we could go for a walk through the city if we didn’t have the heavy bags and instruments, take a two-hour train journey to Saffle (marred by two giggling twelve-year-old blond girls guzzling sweets and fizzy drinks endlessly, punctuated by them stomping about the aisle for no apparent reason, much like the airplane toddler), meet the refreshingly boyish and gentle promoters at Saffle station, get driven to our bedrooms (empty flats in town, in fact) rest (thank god), get driven to the festival at about 5PM, loaf around the festival enjoying the company of cute young Swedish indie fans, sit around drinking and eating but feeling a little at the mercy of the language barrier, see a few of the other bands, meet a few old friends (Hullo Kasper), gingerly greet boozy old indie legends (hullo Dan Treacy, good to see you’re still about, glad you’re out of prison, but do mind the saliva on my suit, sir), play the gig, wait till we can be driven back to the flats, get some sleep (thank god again!), up at 8.30AM, get driven to the station for a 9AM train, enjoy things getting a bit smoother on the way back, have to kill an hour and a half at Gothenburg airport, which has a bar but doesn’t accept pounds and we’re out of Swedish Crowns, enjoy browsing its moose-related gift shop, but am hypocritically appalled to see it also sells real hunks of moose meat to take home, along with steaks of elk and reindeer; take the flight back to Stansted (another baby screaming its very life out on the bumpy take-off and landing), am reminded it’s a Sunday in England and so the Stansted Express train is delayed due to engineering works, take the tube from Liverpool Street to Highgate, also infrequent due to it being a Sunday.

Was it all worth it, for 45 minutes onstage, for expenses only, as the festival is run by fans and they have to spend a fortune on said travel and accommodation as it is? Yes. Just. The getting there, the nuts and bolts, I can do without. The gig itself is always worth it, singing one’s own words, playing one’s own music, making strangers dance and be happy. I Google the gig, and find some Swedish bloggers writing that they loved us, hadn’t been aware of us before, and who had immediately gone on iTunes and bought our albums as a result. So yes, it was worth it.

Here’s some video clips from David Hill, Rachel’s partner, who was frequently forced to take the tour manager role throughout the trip, and who did so without a word of complaint. Having someone with the band who’s not IN the band is so important to one’s physical and mental well-being, particularly for a group of fragile and sleep-deprived English people with very different lives outside the music we make together. And he helped to carry our instruments. We owe him. Thank you, David:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fosca+rip+it+up&search=