I now feel the urge to quote the lyrics to Dory Previn’s ‘Yada Yada La Scala’. She really is one of the lyric-writing greats in rock and pop: up there with Mr Cohen and Mr Morrissey in my book. Her best known song is ‘The Lady With The Braid’, which is included on Jarvis Cocker’s new DJ album, ‘The Trip’. But I feel ‘Yada Yada…’ works even better in a club, with its tragicomic-vaudeville oompah arrangement.

let’s stop talking talking talking, wasting precious time
just a lot of empty noise that isn’t worth a dime
words of wonder, words of whether
should we shouldn’t we be together
yada yada yada yada yada
let’s stop talking talking talking, taking up our lives
saying things that don’t make sense, hoping help arrives
curse my questions, damn your qualms
tomorrow they could be dropping bombs
and we go yada yada yada yada yada
so we sit at a restaurant table
discussing reasons we’re unable to commit. that’s not it
all i want is to please and enjoy you
what makes you think i’ll be out to destroy you
if you commit. that’s not it.
is it something you sense underneath my defenses that makes me a threat?
that’s not it. and yet… suppose that’s it?
i don’t want to think about that now
let’s stop talking talking talking, every lame excuse
justifying alibying listen what’s the use
the sparrow chirps, the chipmunk chatters
and we go on as mad as a hatter
and nothing at all gets said
talk to me please… in bed. where it matters.
talk to me please, in bed. where it matters.

To answer a frequently-emailed question, The Beautiful & Damned club will return on Thursday May 18th. So put that in your diaries now, please.

I would be doing an mid-April date, but the only available slot coincided with Fosca’s concert in Brixton.

Some songs played last night, in addition to those mentioned in the earlier entry:

Bernice Bobs Her Hair – Divine Comedy
Get Happy – Judy Garland
You’ve Either Got Or You Haven’t Got Style – Frank Sinatra
Nice On The Ice – Vic Godard
Initials BB – Serge Gainsbourg
I Wanna Be Loved By You – Helen Kane (1920s recording)
I Feel The Earth Move – Carole King
Casino Royale – Bacharach (theme from the movie)
Dream A Little Dream Of Me – Mama Cass
Anything Goes – Harpers Bizarre (theme from ‘The Boys In The Band’)
The Lady Is A Tramp – The Supremes
I’ll Keep It With Mine – Nico
How Does That Grab You Darlin’? – Nancy Sinatra
Move Over Darling – Doris Day
The Number One Song In Heaven – Sparks
Mrs Robinson – James Taylor Quartet
Yada Yada La Scala – Dory Previn (this works fantastically well)

Well, the Beautiful & Damned club night was a roaring success last night. People came from all over the capital (much thanks to Time Out, Evening Standard, Guardian Guide etc) and really made the effort to dress up in their own takes on stylish period looks. Some fantastically good-looking patrons. People do look their best this way, no doubt about it. Dressing up is attractive. Men do look better in silks, ties, braces and so forth. Of course, the important thing is to stress is it isn’t ‘fancy dress’.

I played a couple of extracts from the Topsy-Turvy soundtrack, which went down well. You can’t dance to Gilbert & Sullivan, but it sounds terrific in a bar. The Topsy-Turvy cast sing in a non-operatic style, so Mr Gilbert’s lyrics are particularly discernible.

I also started the evening with all of the ‘Elizabeth Taylor In London: with John Barry’ CD, (on El Records, naturally). Arguably the most stylish album ever made. Against a stirring, swooping orchestration by Mr Barry, Ms Taylor recites various texts related to the capital: Wordsworth’s “Westminster Bridge”, Queen Victoria’s diary entry following her husband’s death, Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech (“I may have the body of weak and feeble woman…”) and Churchill’s post-Blitz statement comparing the city to a defiant rhinoceros.

The biggest floor-fillers seemed to be not so much the vintage 20s and 30s stuff, but the musical tunes inspired by that era, from Cabaret, Chicago, Bugsy Malone, A Chorus Line and so on: “All That Jazz”, “One”, “Fat Sam’s Grand Slam””, “You Give A Little Love”, “Life Is A Cabaret”.

I was a bit worried about mixing in a few pop tunes like Mr Prince’s Raspberry Beret and Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place”, but I think it worked okay. Essentially, it’s a time-travelling disco, where (like present-day Earth in Doctor Who), some destinations are more favoured than others. Actually, David Tennant’s demob-suited Doctor wouldn’t look out of place at The Beautiful & Damned.

The Frankly Misunderstood Sunday Tea-ists, at the Waldorf Hotel.
Left to right: D.Edwards, L. Gullo, J.J Bibby, X. Roide. Photo by Ms G.

DE outside an acupuncturist’s shop window on the Kilburn High Road, en route to see Scritti Politti at the Luminaire. I rather like the jolly colours announcing the complaints treated within. As if the ailments themselves were on sale. “This week: Special Offer on Vitiligo.”. Photo by T.M. Chipping.

Preparing for the club night, Miss Red shows me her vinyl collection. Two enormous scarlet suitcases full of albums. It’s got me musing on the differences between the genders when it comes to music collections.

The comedienne Jo Caulfield has a routine about this. “Why do men do it? No one needs a record collection! All you need is Abba’s Greatest Hits, and THAT’S IT!”, she rants. I must admit there are times when I agree. Though if I have to listen to one Best Of forever, I’d plump for The Supremes.

The idea that women tend to only own one or two hits collections is entirely untrue in my experience, but then I’ve always associated with music fans in general. Miss Red is one of many women I know who not only has an impressively varied collection, but much of it is on vinyl. I stopped owning vinyl years ago.

The real difference comes with completism, I think. Getting silly about it. Writing letters to Mojo magazine. Caring too much. Tracking down complete works, buying box sets of rare out-takes and alternate versions.

Wanting to own everything, even things that were never meant to be owned. That’s more of a boy thing.

After twelve years of going to other people’s clubs in London, I thought I’d finally give it a go myself. Please come. I may do it again if there’s enough interest.

Time Out have given it a Recommended star, which is very nice of them.

Club title: ‘The Beautiful and Damned’

Date: Thur 16th March.
Times: 9pm to 1am.

Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.

‘A new decadent disco curated by dysfunctional dandy DJ Dickon Edwards, with Miss Red. Patrons are encouraged to dress up in their own take on 1920s and 30s glamour, though anything more stylish than the ubiquitous Old Street fashions is welcome. Cigarillos, braces, tweeds, beads, silk scarves, unforgiving teddy bears… Drink, dance, and ponder the night’s tenderness to an eclectic but discerning mix of Sinatra, Strauss waltzes, soundtracks, musicals, El Records, deviant disco, shadowy soul, parvenu pop and insouciant indie. Free entry. ‘

Doing my bit to become a Green Party ‘paper candidate’, the euphemistic term for someone who’s on the ballot paper to make the numbers up. It appeals to my interest in always providing an alternative, visibility above all. If I have one message to the world, one maxim, it’s ‘other experiences are available’. Likewise my agreeing to stand as a candidate. The vanity factor is a given. Of course I love the idea of adding ‘have stood for government’ on my inner CV. Who wouldn’t?

Anyone who wants to be a local councillor must collect ten signatures for their ‘nomination papers’. The signatories must be on the electoral roll of the ward I’m standing in, ie Highgate Ward. Annoyingly, there’s another Highgate Ward within the Camden Council area, as opposed to Haringey Council, who preside over my street. You’d have thought the people in charge would’ve come up with different names to avoid confusion.

In fact, it’s a subject in the London-centric news today. Someone somewhere wants to rename Archway tube station as ‘South Highgate’. It also turns out that the bit I live in, near the Highgate tube station but away from Highgate Village, is sometimes considered to be ‘North Archway’, or ‘Archgate’, or even ‘Highgate Slopes’. Typically, this is all to do with house prices. Change the area name, and you change the asking price of a house by some ludicrous percentage. The very word ‘Highgate’ is worth so much extra tens of thousands of pounds. While ‘Archway’ has the opposite effect. For all my arch Telegraph-reading and Marks and Spencer-loving affectations, I find it hard to feel anything but a radical Marxist whenever the subject of the house prices game is broached. Greed as an institutionalised virtue. Keeping people very much in their place, literally. There’s a TV programme about house-hunting called ‘Location, Location, Location’. It’s fair to say it’s not produced by representatives of Shelter or The Big Issue. Still, I’m sure if I ever get in the position of actually having and earning money, this would be a different diary entry.

Pop round to Tim Benton’s to get his signature. I’m trying to get people I know rather than knock on doors, mainly because if someone grills me about The Green Party, all I want to say is ‘if I get in, everything will be better… dressed’.

I think I’m too timid to be a real politician, because I ultimately want a quiet life with no arguments. Still, if that last statement was suddenly adopted in troublespots around the world, it could only make things better.

If I’m at a dinner party, and people start talking about Israel and Palestine, I tend to get my coat and leave. It’s just pointless: 99% of arguments over such things are never really resolved. It’s just a kind of showing off. Even marches and protests are essentially saying ‘we’re showing off against your showing off.’ It’s all a version of people – usually men – waving their genitals in others’ faces.

Things You Seldom Hear: “Yes, you’re right. I admit my stance on Israel-Palestine issues is wrong.”

All is ego, all is vanity. Even war. To be an honest narcissist (or even, a shy / sly narcissist) is the only way.

End the evening with a drink with Martin White. Entirely pleasant, entirely optimistic and forward-looking. The only way to be.

In the interests of band visibility, I’ve rather reluctantly set up a Myspace page for Fosca.

http://www.myspace.com/foscatheband

At least people can now listen to a few Fosca songs easily. And maybe it’ll help us find a suitable new label.

Interesting how James Blunt has now replaced Gareth Hunt in the rhyming slang stakes.

The Showbusiness Reaper comes this week to: Jack Wild, John Junkin, Linda Smith and Ivor Cutler.

Linda Smith’s death is the most shocking and unfair, at 48 years old and very much in her prime. She would have made a terrific old woman. Like Paul Merton and Willy Rushton, she was a born radio and TV panel-game performer. To type those words actually sounds a bit insulting: the medium of panel games is thought cheap and somehow lesser compared to, say, books or even solo stand-up albums. Is just being witty on a panel game enough, I want to say. Enough for what? Thousands enjoy your “work”, so why do I feel the need to put that word in inverted commas? It’s true I think her style of humour would have made for witty novels and plays, but all this is the snob in me talking. I of all people should recognise the value of Being rather than Doing. And Linda Smith did indeed make a living from just Being Linda Smith.

Apparently she did contribute to an anthology of comedians trying their hand at prose fiction, but her piece was cited by critics as one of the weakest in the book. Perhaps it’s that I always want to own a work by someone I admire; it’s like wanting to buy a postcard of a favourite painting again. You can get Best Of The News Quiz (or Just A Minute, or I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Club) CDs and tapes with her on, but I suppose I want her bits with the contributions from other panellists removed.

Actually I’ve just remembered, the BBC do put out anthology recordings like that, in their ‘At The BBC’ range. A ‘Linda Smith At The BBC’ CD would be perfect.