THE END OF THE WORLD

The recording of the final Valentime's eve pre-apocalypse concert at The End of the World Club is finally released in Europe today through Antique Beat. As ever, it comes with beautiful artwork made by your friend Catherine Anyango - including a free Last Will and Testament form for you to fill in to mark the end of your own world (or that of a loved one) should you choose to do so.

It all comes wrapped up in a special black box containing other ephemera from my own collection so each one is different.

Read more about it all here

"Like shadows we are and like shadows depart"

LYME REGIS

Defying the season
Pink English tongues flick out to lasso
Yellow ice cream
In low slanting sunlight

The Jurassic Coast shrugs
At the ebb and flow of this year's troubles
The autumn tide comes in
And we head home for tea

RESURRECTING AN OLD SPIRIT

A few years ago, The Real Tuesday Weld were touring Europe with The Magnetic Fields. Being rather partial to exotic spirits, I asked for a bottle of Absinthe to be put on the rider in Copenhagen. It was duly delivered but unfortunately, it was the cheapest, greenest, most vicious looking version imaginable. It went straight into the fridge on the tour bus and remained there, virtually untasted as we criss-crossed Scandinavia and Germany.

A few months later, I received a letter from Toon the driver of the bus who told me that after our tour finished, the next band on was Michael Schenker - a famous heavy metal guitarist from a German band called The Scorpions. After his first show, Michael found himself alone on the bus without anything to drink as Toon drove him through the night. On investigating the bus fridge, he discovered - and downed - our bottle of Absinthe in its entirety.

Mistake. Apparently, he turned completely green himself and had to be hospitalised for alcohol poisoning - thus missing the rest of his tour. So imagine the headline: "Monster of Rock unhorsed by fey English dreamers." Apologies to all the Michael Schenker fans.

Anyway, these circumstances have never put me off the drink itself and I was pleased to work with maverick director Ronni Raygun Thomas on his new spot for Le Tourment Vert absinthe - a very classy film for a classier drink altogether.



Bottoms up.

ON THE SCENT OF SOMETHING OR OTHER

Whilst on the subject of body parts, I thought it might be worth drawing attention to one of London's lesser known features. I am sure most people are aware of the London Eye - the giant ferris wheel on the South Bank of the Thames in Westminster. But did you ever hear of another of the capital's facial features - The London Nose? No I thought not. Well, here it is - high up on a wall within Admirality Arch - so high in fact that it could only really be reached by a man on horseback. A man in the cavalry say who may pass it on his way to war with Napoleon and touch it as a good luck totem.

Interesting right? But I am very pleased to be able to announce that this isn't the only London Nose. There are in fact six other much lesser known noses whose purpose is entirely obscure. I did read the other day that London is the 'cocaine capital of Europe', so perhaps this nose is a monument to the practice of ingesting that illegal substance- Stiff upper lip powder as we used to call it. They are certainly in the right part of town.

Or perhaps they are there in recognition of the fact that until fairly recently one of the most significant things a visitor or new arrival to the city would have noticed was the smell. Talking with Catherine Arnold, it became clear to me that until the first world war, the place would have absolutely stank - of death, disease, rotting food, raw sewage and unwashed bodies. Nice.

Sniff.

FURTHER ADDITION 11 OCTOBER 2009..
I thought I would add three further noses. (one courtesy of David Wright - thanks). I intended to sniff out the other two soon.

Yesterday at Cafe Koha with Joe, I found myself sitting next to someone with a very fine nose indeed - Ms Jerry Hall. Nice to see an American Actor / model / whatever smoking Camels. I have given up myself but it's become so unpopular and un-PC that I have been reconsidering - especially when seeing smoke exhaled from such elegant lips. We did however then bump into the actor who played Dot Cotton in East-Enders and my resolution was strengthened.

Another fellow with a fine figure of a nose is the English musician Stephen Duffy. At the Raindance Festival on Friday, we saw the film 'Memory and Desire' a documentary about his career. Much of it was filmed in hand held close up - in fact, I thought the camera may be about to actually go up one of his nostrils at one point. Despite that, he has a wonderful and extraordinary time of it and had written some of my favourite tunes so it was a pleasure to see him so lauded.

I"M READY FOR MY CLOSE UP MR DE MILLE

I've been zipping around the freeways of Los Angeles in a hire car. This was a fairly terrifying experience - mainly for the citizens of Los Angeles. I know that Americans use the right side of the road (the wrong side we would say) but on all previous visits, my driving has been of the back seat variety.

The geography of the city became somewhat clearer to me as a result of my time on the roads - at least in that I understood much more clearly how radically different it is than European cities - first of all it is seemingly limitless and secondly, there is no centre. I liked it much more this time than previously - not difficult I suppose when you are sipping a cold drink by the pool of a house in the Hollywood hills or of a sea-front hotel in Santa Monica. I was of course there to work - but still.

Now on the other hand the psychogeography of the the place remains quite novel to someone used to the Dickensian labyrinths of London life. It's easy to assume that absolutely everyone is involved in the film business in some way or to fall back on easy cliches regarding superficiality, low carb diets and cosmetic surgery.

However, regarding the latter, I must point you at this delightfully spiteful piece of moving imagery by our old friend and colleague Alex De Campi for the Marcella and The Forget Me Nots song "What have you done to your Face?" produced by yours truly..

Quite put me off having any work done myself - even if I will be spending more time near the camera and musing on the words 'cut', 'score' and 'feature'.

EEL HEART LOVE

Yesterday to Broadway market to drink cocktails for Joe's birthday. He has reached the ancient age of 30 and therefore will not be able to drink there much longer as it now seems to be entirely the preserve of young hipsters.

I was reflecting on how much this part of the city has changed although as you will see below, a few fragments of the past still remain:

I am not particularly interested in Eels (hot or jellied) myself as I don't eat meat and they cannot be easily used for taxidermy purposes but I was glad to see that enough people - and possibly even some of the hipsters - still care enough to keep this shop in business

On the way home, we gave Rosie Cooper a lift to London Bridge. She is working on a very interesting project about The Dead - or what happens to us after we die - not in a metaphysical sense but in a mortuary sense. As we had earlier been to visit the wonderful but gruesome show Exquisite Bodies at the Wellcome Trust and what with the birthday and the eels and all, it felt rather a visceral day somehow.

For no obvious reason apart from the fact that this all made me think of it, here is the mash up of Blood Sugar Love and the Feist song 'How my Heart Behaves' all set to another of the amazing Catherine Anyango's lovely and mysterious films..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TUESDAY

It was 66 years ago today.

I watched 'Once Upon a Time in America' the other night. How wonderful.
And each time I see the Cinncinati Kid, I just..
Anyway, I hope she's having a wonderful day.

Image by Peter Blake.

Tate Gallery London

CRAZY IN (AND OUT OF) LOVE

'Be careful what you wish for because it might just come true' - as someone or other said and indeed things have been so crazy of late, I barely know what to say.

Still, that has never stopped me before. Amongst other things, I have been working with the crazy Ms Puppini on her project 'The Forget Me Nots' - more on that and on the lure of Hollywood soon - but in the meatime I thought I would leave this - Eyal's crazy mash up for that crazy remix for The Puppini Sisters - and the last thing that crazy cat did before he left us for Berlin.

OUT OF THE BLUE AND INTO THE BLACK

I turned the corner and there before my eyes was a vast chamber with four massive cast iron valves high up on the wall. There was the constant sound of rushing water and the air was hot and damp with a heavy metallic odour.

I felt as though the walls were beginning to close in, my breath clogged in bloodied lungs, a white hot fear pierced into freezing black coldness within me.

He sat lounging in a giant chair with lavishly dressed men and girls on either side, a lizard on hs shoulder. Moths flew about - or were they butterflies? He was smiling, almost to himself, with a slightly puzzled look - not concerned, but interested in a cruel uncaring way like a cat with prey. The people around him were all looking at me.

I felt myself led forward. There was laughter and whispering but as he straightened a silence fell and his companions looked toward him.

Hello pilgrim

I'm in hell

Not yet

Who are you?

Don't you know?

I don't know anything. I know that I'm done with this - I'm out of it. All of it - I'm going to tell the world about you

He raised an eyebrow.

And who would listen Pilgrim?

The police, priests, the authorities?

Another smile.

It's no good old sport - you know it's really no good

How can you be like this? It's me, me you're talking to. Me

And this is Me my dear

And in that moment, I suddenly saw him as he truly was: completely other, almost alien, capricious as they say the Olympians were - not evil, just entirely amoral.

I'm leaving

Oh?

I'm getting out of here - I'm going home

And where would that be then old sport?

I turned and walked back towards the entrance - but there was no entrance.

Let me go

But there's nowhere to go my dear. Don't you know?

Know what?

His companions were sniggering again, all looking at me and each other with exaggerated caricatured sympathetic expressions. He silenced them with a wave.

It's no good my dear. You really have to give it up

Give up what?

All this ... disbelief. It just won't do any more

What?

Do I really have to spell it out?

Laughter broke out again.

Spell what out?

He stopped smiling. Looked directly at me.

You're dead

The heat and coldness in me intensified to an unbearable pitch.

I'm not dead, I'm not dead

He was smiling again, shaking his head, mocking but almost gentle once more.

I'm afraid you are old sport

You've been dead for years..

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

My friend Pete Sollet sent me this photograph. Big deal right? But this isn't the central east side of London, it's the lower east side of Manhattan. I do look forward to eating there soon - but if you get chance to check it out, do let us know whether it's worthy of the name won't you?

Unfortunately due to circumstances rather beyond my control, I may not be in New York this summer as planned. Having been there every year for so long now, it will seem strange to miss it this time around. Until last year, I nearly always stayed with Pete and Eva and their dog Rae in their lower east side apartment (I shared with Rae). Their films: 'Five feet high and Rising' and 'Raising Victor Vargas' are kind of hymns to that particular part of the city - as of course in a way, is 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist' for which they moved to LA for Pete to direct.

I was pleased to be able to contribute some music to that film which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here is the instrumental of Last Words. I don't think it's available any where else and, despite having being written about walking around London in a daze wondering where it all went wrong, it will now always remind me of driving around New York in a yellow taxi wondering where it all went right.

WILD GOOSE CHASE

I started this blog four years ago with an account of a visit I made to see the buried river Fleet far beneath the pavements of Clerkenwell. A lot has happened in the time since but I've remained fascinated by the city - both above and below ground. Here is a picture of the mouth of the river Effra which rises below St Marks church in Brixton and exits into the Thames on either side of Vauxhall bridge. It was taken at low tide when you can also see the mouth of the river Tyburn opposite and that of the river Westbourne farther up stream. There are various other out-falls along the northern bank reminding us that Westminster was once an island. The mouth of the Fleet is very difficult to see but it can be glimpsed from a westbound boat under Blackfriars bridge at low tide. The definitive work on the subject is Nicholas Barton's 'The Lost Rivers of London' and the incredible and intrepid guys at sub-urban have photographed many of the most dramatic underground waterways.

A friend asked me the other day what I would do if I were to be elected Mayor. I had no hesitation in telling her I would cancel the 2012 Olympics (does anyone really want them?) and spend the money on alienating a load of property owners by opening up the rivers again. Oh yes and by making the city vegetarian and it obligatory for everyone who lives here to record their dreams everyday. Ok, so my friend was a wild goose on the Thames foreshore but personally I think this would have a very remarkable and positive effect on us all.

I have been seeing Valentine again. Like Philemon, he has seemed at times to be a somewhat imaginary friend but nevertheless, like the rivers, constant.

To all friends - real or imagined - who have read this blog and listened, watched or commented over the years, much appreciation.

Here's to another four..

I LOOKED AROUND AND HE WAS GONE

We played at the Last Tuesday Society's Walpurgis Night on Friday. To my slight embarrassment, and possibly because of the German connection, until I saw Punchdrunk's extraordinary 'Faust' a couple of years back, I always thought Walpurgis Night was something to do with sausages.

Now we don't normally do club shows but we like Wynd and Suzette who run the society because they do interesting things. I suppose Walpurgis Night (which is actually at the end of April) is a kind of Norse Day of the Dead or Halloween and before the show I had the pleasure to meet and run the slides for Catherine Arnold who gave a talk on her: 'Necropolis: London and its Dead' (one of my favourite books about the city of recent times). Michael Nyman DJ-ed (yes, really) and Giles Abbott delivered a characteristically witty and potent story about Walpurgis. After the show a rather flamboyant Bacchanalia kicked in. My six months of sobriety have sometimes made such things a trifle difficult but these days they seem to lend an interesting, almost anthropological, perspective to the proceedings.

I liked the death-themed activities - particularly in a vault under London Bridge which always reminds me of the T S Eliot piece from 'the Wasteland":

"Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many"

I find it at least, if not more, appropriate to try to write about death as to write about love these days. I always thought it was a rather strangely neglected subject in modern music - apart from the Goth and Metal stuff - which is often just a bit silly. My favourite example is probably 'Abraham, Martin & John' by Marvin Gaye. That's absolutely glorious and generally gets eyes moist in these parts. Do let me know your own favourites.

In the meantime here is a little thing from a private little show I did in the vault of St Pancras church last summer. We've done a few things in vaults of late and a friend secretly recorded it and sent it to me. I generally don't approve of men over twenty five with acoustic guitars - but I'll make an exception in my own case.

ANYTHING BUT LOVE

I used to share an apartment with my friend the writer Glen Duncan in Notting Hill before we moved to Clerkenwell. At that time he had written three novels almost entirely concerned with the ins and outs of Love, Life and Relationships and he became regarded as rather an expert on the subject. We used to be visited by various friends or members of our circle (and sometimes by relative strangers) who were suffering from the punctures left by Cupid's arrows or from scars inflicted by other gods and who were seeking what psychotherapists would call 'the talking cure'. Now I claim no particular expertise in these areas (as, to be fair, neither did Glen) because in fact, we ourselves been rather bruised and both had a quite shoddy record in the field.

Anyway, come they did to our sky-high flat far above the city and Glen, or the 'Doctor of Love' as I referred to him, would listen carefully to the details of the various predicaments presented. My role primarily involved being sympathetic in the background and providing tea - and occasionally tissues - as required. After any particular situation had been described, discussed and deliberated, he would pause to consider then lean forward from his armchair with steepled fingers and confidently give his prognosis:

"I think you need to get laid"

His interlocutor would always leave with a definite slight spring in their step - albeit also with a slightly puzzled air at having had the complexities of their dilemma reduced to such a simple solution. On being subsequently questioned regarding the universal application of his panacea, The Doctor would assert, not unreasonably, that there were few human condiitons such medicine couldn't improve. I suppose he was right.

Anyway, here is the original version of a song from that period.

Hope it works for you.

WILLIAM IT WAS REALLY NOTHING

Last week with Louis on part one of a Blake walk through London. We began at St Mary' church in Battersea - one of the older and surely most beautifully sited churches in the city and the one where, in 1782 William Blake married Catherine Boucher. It floats in a little garden just above the Thames facing Westward up-river and at low tide on a sunny day is a stunningly romantic (and relatively unknown) rendezvous. I can publish the full itinerary of this walk if anybody fancies it. It begins in this churchyard and ends in the grave yard where William and Catherine were buried. It takes up much of a leisurely day and although most of the buildings associated with the Blakes are gone (sadly, some fairly recently) it is a wonderful way to see the city and takes in much of interest.

Blake only left London once in his life - for a short period at Felpham - and the city figures greatly and mythologically in his work. A little exhibition is just beginning at Tate Britain to recreate his failed exhibition of works of 1809. I think a lot of people who like his work, particularly artists, resonate with the fact that he had little commercial success or recognition but doggedly kept on at it year after year. He seemed to generally have been regarded as loveable but mad, even by his friends, and he was supported by a few devoted followers, by his marriage and by working sporadically as an engraver.

With regard to his 'madness', it's very difficult to know what to think. God at the window of his childhood bedroom, an angel in Peckham, the ghost of a flea. What does one make of such apparitions now? A contemporary reading would perhaps put them down to some sort of mild psychosis and his eccentric temperament to one of manic depression governed by some bi-polar cycle, but who cares when the work is so luminous and passionate? I've often thought that being of rather a melancholic, even awkward, disposition is no disadvantage if it can be somehow turned to creative means - one reason why I have never favoured legal pharmacology in that area.

Blake is said to have died singing jubilantly, fired up with a vision of what was to come.

If that's madness, I'll have a bit.

EASTER PARADE

You wore your Sunday best
I wore my summer dress
At the Easter bank holiday parade

You said: 'It seems like a still
From some Nineteen Sixties foreign film"
I said: " I hope I always feel this way"
Easter parade
Easter parade

The ferry boat came into land
As we lay there upon the sand
And the carnival crowd wandered away

The afternoon began to fade
My make up smudged across your face
You said: "I wish that I could stay"

Easter parade
Easter parade

-Time passes-

At the station I came to wait
We said good-bye, you caught the train
I walked back home along the bay

I remember that summer dress
Though these days I wear something less
Provincial at the

Easter parade
Easter parade

DID IT FEEL GOOD?

Last night to the premiere of the new Richard Curtis feel-good, comedy 'The Boat that Rocked" in Leicester Square. Now I've never been to a red carpet affair before so I found it quite interesting - with Sixties Go Go dancers, popping flashbulbs and all that - and it was absolutely rammed with English Actors and celebrities - apparently. Unfortunately due to a combinations of factors - not having a TV, not reading the papers and being short sighted - I rarely recognise anyone and I embarrassed myself by mistaking Paul McCartney's new girlfriend for Carlo Bruni. My eyesight is good enough however to notice that Kenneth Brannagh is rather short.

I am not alone in this deficiency. Sipping yet another non alcoholic drink, I had become aware of the interested gaze of a young chap for sometime before he came over, introduced himself and engaged me in a conversation which implied a familiarity with me and my work. I managed a small period of self delusion before we both realised that he had mistaken me for one of the cast and he hurried off. I was left alone rather hoping he wasn't thinking of Rhys Ifans before changing my mind and hoping that he WAS thinking of Rhys Ifans - as the only plausible (ie blondish) alternatives being Philip Seymour Hoffman or, ahem, Bill Nighy.

It's probably the longest comedy I have seen - almost two and a half hours - and so full of feel good moments that I'm afraid to say I began to feel rather bad. Some funny things but I left with a rather confused feeling of really not knowing what to make of it. N. said to me "That's because you're not the target audience." Do let me know if you are the target audience, what that means and what you think of it.

THE WALK OF LOVE

To Kings College to chaperone Mr Duncan through a drug comedown after his operation. Now Camberwell is a district I know not at all but I was very pleased to discover this little street:
My phone rang and it was Toynbee Studios. Just when I had resigned myself to either having to purchase a new velocipede or to undertake future journeys on foot, I was delighted to learn they had discovered my stolen bicycle in some bushes near the theatre. True the delight was somewhat mitigated by the reflection that the bike was so uncool that the person who stole it couldn't be bothered keeping it, but it saved me the painful process of having to make a decision about a new one.

Did The Walk of Love home and vowed to reconsider my newly learned dislike of Shoreditch.

LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE CITY

One of the nicest, although slightly embarrassing, things about tourists (and about being a tourist) is the eagerness and ready wonder found in the experience of a new city. You see this in London all the time and of course you experience it yourself when abroad. It never quite extends with me to say wanting to actually buy the cd of that South American busker playing delay-pedalled pan pipes to a synthesised backing tape, but it does engender a remarkably childlike enthusiasm for sites and sounds which may well be seen and not noticed at home or to which the locals have long become blunted by over familiarity and repetition. "Sure, but you can't eat the view" as a denizen of Rome said to me once when I complimented him on living in one of the world's most beautiful cities.

I generally like the open mouthed bonhomie and genuinely innocent pleasure of the newly arrived, but there are whole stretches of London where I now feel reluctant to venture: Covent Garden, the South Bank and so on - only because they are so touristed - and yet when I do visit or should stumble there out of hours, of course I see, or re-see, the attraction.
There are other areas of the city which I feel less inclined to visit for different and possibly 'psycho-geographic' reasons. The flatlands of Battersea for instance make me feel slightly gloomy and those of Fulham rather irritable (although that may be the preponderance of B list bankers secretly longing to live in Notting Hill) and I have never been keen on the Edgware Road.

But, for world weary citizens of this and probably any other city, it has often struck me that London is most intensely experienced or re-experienced when one is a recently arrived visitor from the State of Love - whether it be in the intoxication of love's beginning or in the heartbreak of its end. Familiar sites that are taken for granted by all but geographical tourists suddenly become re-suffused with meaning. The concrete and stone ooze significance, soulfulness and the pleasure of anticipation or the poignancy of memory. Particular corners, tube stations, a bench here, a cafe there interlace in a network of symbolic association and emotion that reveals the soul beneath and between the streets and squares. This of course is the city as walked or imagined in the company of another person - whether they be with us in our past, present or future, in actuality or in our imagination or memory

If you are not in such a state, for better or for worse, then the process of intentional discovery seems to help keep things alive - a process I see as a kind of creation of a personal city. Apart from wandering around and finding new places, a favourite pastime of mine has been beach-combing on the foreshore of the Thames at low tide. This is an ancient practice formerly known as 'Mudlarking' when carried out professionally by a particular caste of London's poor. With less pressing reason, we have found many amazing things there - seventeenth century clay pipes, Georgian belt buckles, a Roman coin, an Iron age arrow head, fragments of lovely blue ceramic, and, the other week, an i pod. Today, in one of the lesser known stretches I found a child's bicycle from the sixties. How did it come there - and when? Why has it emerged from the mud just now? Where is its young owner these days? Did he or she weep to see it fall?

On the morning after an evening in Shoreditch (now, crossed off my list of places to like) when my own bike was stolen, this discovery presented a synchronistic reminder of the, ahem, cyclical nature of the urban environment - particularly as last night's crime occourred as we sat watching a performance by Paper Cinema involving projected images of the city, dreaming and bicycling.

These lost cycles remind me that as well as defining one's own London, it seems like an important thing too to mourn and mark the passing of loved things here. Sure, the city has always been in flux but if we don't notice - or don't care as it changes - then what does that say about our relationship with it? This year the amazing, unique Shunt vaults under London Bridge will be smashed to bits and a piece of Borough Market will get chewed up so that a priapic glass tower can be raised above. (London really needs more open plan office space for financial institutions at the moment right?). I noticed the other day that the funny little Battersea Barge where we used to play peculiar shows and where we had an amazing midsummer's party a few years back has quietly and mysteriously vanished - victim no doubt to the encroaching strip of ticky-tacky apartment buildings marching west up the southern river bank. I am sure the people who do these things really don't love the city - or if they do it's in the way of a one night stand rather than a passionate ongoing affair.

But, like all love affairs, even if you do love London, it is a romance that will end someday. Even if it should survive and flourish despite the over familiarity and the stresses and fights and the ongoing habitual routines, in the end you will eventually perhaps just grow weary and move away or, if not that, you will certainly die. Oh and that reminds me: up until the 1940s there was a dedicated rail service and train line from Waterloo to Brooklands cemetery in Surrey run by 'The Necropolis Railway Company' upon which the carefully casketed citizen could gracefully embark upon their final journey accompanied for a little while by their mourners.

What a lovely way to leave.

WALTZ FOR ONE

Eva Vives a Spanish film writer and director made this film in Manhattan with our friend Aurelia Thierree last year (or perhaps the one before). It has rarely been seen but was shown prior to The Real Tuesday Weld performance at the National Film Theatre last week and several people asked about it. It is intended as a section from a longer narrative set to a track which was not released in the UK.

Aurelia is the the protagonist, subject and main performer of the wonderful 'Aurelia's Oratario' - probably one of the most magical and mysterious shows I have ever seen.

ONE MORE GHOST BEFORE BREAKFAST

Here is Hans Richter's 1927 Short Surrealist masterpiece: "Ghosts Before Breakfast" re-scored.



The film initially had a soundtrack which was lost when the original print was destroyed by the Nazi's as 'degenerate art'.

This music - with Jacques Van Rhijn on clarinet, Don Brosnan on bass, Jed Woodhouse on drums, Clive Painter on guitar - was recorded at Clive's studio prior to the sessions for our re-score of Richter's full length magnum opus: "Dream That Money Can Buy" with which this amazing little film shares much. We later used some of it in the Nightingales in the Wasteland podcast but it has never had a proper airing.

The sun was streaming through the big windows and Jacques was on red hot form - quite blissed out I think.
A happy time.

Thanks to Bryan for finding the footage.

THE ALCHEMY OF INK AND BOOZE

The very talented Clive Painter made this beautiful montaged collage for the song 'Dorothy Parker Blue' (on which he also plays the guitar) as part of the project "Propaganda from the State of Love' we created last year for the Victoria and Albert museum.



It reminds me somewhat of the time we did a radio show with Jane Birkin in Paris. We were discussing Dorothy Parker and dreams and the way that literature can really wake you up when you are young. I grew up in a funny house in a strange little place at a peculiar time and the worlds described by DP seemed impossibly glamorous and far away - yet inspiring enough to be worth reaching for nevertheless.

Even though she became quite a tragic character, washed up and beached on a sea of martini and bad love, she seemed to remain insightful and self aware to the end. Now and again, I still enjoy reading her stories - even though, sadly, I've had to give up the martinis myself.

FEBRUARY IS HERE

The snow came today and London is transformed.

Builders and bankers having a snowball fight on Waterloo Bridge. A sort of hush. No buses and a curious camaraderie.

Heaven for let-off-for-the-day school kids.

DEAD ENDS

Suddenly, there is a creaking, a heavy clunk and a sound as if old gears are grinding. The door in the wall behind me is slowly opening and a thin column of light is cast on the wet cobblestones. The column widens into a golden parabola. Perfectly framed within it is the shadow of a tall man. 

Out of the light, a voice speaks:

"Well well my dears. What have we here then? Three against one? Now that's not very sporting is it?"

The voice is cultivated, mocking - almost arch. I look up. The dog is snarling, lips pulled back against scarlet gums. It crouches flat to the floor, bristles on end. My assailants have backed away to the edge of the light and I can see my own fear and hatred now mirrored on their faces.

The voice above me tuts a question:
"And aren't we a bit far from home boys?"

The dog's snarls gain in pitch. There is a sudden movement - a hand stabbing outwards in a whip-crack gesture and the dog yelps and is catapulted backwards. It drags itself up whining and limping and in a moment is gone. The men shift defensively, half crouched and peer nervously upwards toward the figure.

Losing patience, the voice suddenly snaps and hisses: 

"Get away!"

It is a threat, not a warning and suddenly there is even more terror in the air. Both men stagger as if rocked by some force.  One covers his eyes.  They recover, turn and flee after the dog into the night. 

We are alone.

I look up to see a pale aquiline face staring out into the darkness with an expression of fury which of a sudden is replaced by one of curiosity - and then solicitousness. The figure looks down and stoops to offer an arm. I take it and pull myself up. I can faintly smell good tobacco, a beautiful and strange cologne and something other, something undefinable. We look at each other in the light. He smiles.

"Well! You look like you need a drink "

Relief floods me. His gaze flits to the stain spreading across my trousers.
"Er.. and perhaps a change of clothes?"

Fear is replaced with embarrassment. Awkwardly, I try to tug my arm away from his but he holds it easily with a steely grip which is not to be resisted. I stand.
"Do come in won't you?"

The invitation is pitched like an order.  He steps back into the doorway. Hesitating, I look behind me - back into the darkness beyond the alley almost as if I am looking back into my life before this moment. I pause a little longer and then I turn again. My rescuer's silhouette is shrinking into the golden light. 

Very carefully, I step through the door and the world is changed for ever.

AT THE HOUSE OF THE CLERKENWELL KID

Inside the house, the golden light surrounding us gradually dims. We are standing in a short passageway which leads to one room and then to another. We walk on through doorways into a hall with panels and paintings and a large and very strange chandelier. We stop, a bell is rung and in a moment a middle aged man in black jacket appears.
"Rudge, my young friend here seems to have got into a spot of bother. Have we such a thing as a spare pair of trousers?"

The man in the black jacket looks me quizzically with one eyebrow raised, grins and says
"Of course sir. I'll bring a pair"

My companion looks to me and points towards another door.
"Maybe you can pop in there old sport and Rudge will sort it all out for you in an instant"

The room he indicates is a cloakroom with heavy Edwardian sanitaryware and a large red leather chair. I run hot water in the sink, get out of my clothes and proceed to clean myself up. After a few minutes, there is a soft tap on the door. It opens slightly and a black clothed arm appears holding shorts and a pair of black evening trousers.
"Ahem."

It is Rudge. I take the proffered clothes.
"Er, Thanks"

The arm withdraws
"Drinks are served in the red drawing room when you are ready. First door on the right."

I pull the trousers on and step back into my own socks and shoes. In the mirror, my face is bleach white with dark and dilated pupils. I look in a state of shock and indeed I am - not just from my flight and pursuit or from the averted terror of expected violence, but from the circumstances of my rescue and my presence in this strange house. There is something very peculiar here and I feel a sensation which is like fear but is not fear - a state of acute heightened awareness combined with a dizzy disorientation.

In the red drawing room I find my host standing with his back to a large fireplace. The room is beautiful - filled with books and old maps, a piano, taxidermy, curiosities. In the corner stands a large decorated globe in an oak stand. The deep blue of its seas sparkle against the deep red curtains behind. On a table are what look like antique navigational devices - an astrolabe, a sextant and a pair of compasses.
"Feeling better old sport?"

He is a smiling youngish man in a dark cut lounge suit. He is impeccable in dress, hair and stance. He is tall and has the poised look of a dancer. I nod. 

"Yes - thank you"

"Well you have been having some adventures haven't you! Must have given you quite a turn?"

"Yes - thank you again for helping"

"Not at all old sport - pleased to be of service. I won't tolerate that sort round my neighbourhood"

"You know them?"

He pauses
"Well, you could say we are, er, aquainted"

"We should report them to the police"

He smiles and waves a hand airily
"Well I suppose we could do - although I don't think that would help much do you? You know the police these days - awfully busy with financial scandals and terrorists and the like. But let's hear all about it - what on earth were you doing with a couple of brutes like that on your tail?"

I shiver.
"I have absolutely no idea. They followed me from the pub - from the Jerusalem. I didn't realise what was going on until I came up into the square and and they made a move on me. I ran into the back streets and got cornered in your alley"

He is listening intently but I have the strangest impression it is not only to my words. He says quietly:
"How strange you should find yourself there of all places"

"Well, I just ran randomly - I know the streets round here but I've never noticed that turning before. It was bloody good luck."

He seems oddly unsatisfied with this but offers me a drink. I take the whisky in a heavy cut glass tumbler and sip.
"And you've never seen them before?"

"No, I..." 

I am about to continue but have a peculiar feeling that there was in fact something familiar about one of them, There is some memory on the edge of my conciousness but I can't quite grasp it.
".. I don't think so. I guess they were chancers out to rob me"

Even as I said this I knew it didn't ring true. Not here.  Not in Clerkenwell. Something much more sinister had been going on but I had no idea what.
"And do you know what they hoped to steal?"

"Phone, wallet, my watch perhaps?"

Suddenly, he reaches out, seizes my hand, pushes up my sleeve and looks at my watch for a moment.
"Not much of a prize - it doesn't appear to be working!"

It is true. The watch has stopped - but it has stopped forty minutes ago when I would have still been in the Jerusalem. Suddenly I feel nervous again - and this time nervous of my new companion and his abilities. He, however, seems more at ease and lets my arm go. I look at him
"What happened out there? What did you do to frighten them off?"

"Oh, I know how to handle that type old sport. Just a bit of assertiveness is all it usually takes. But don't you worry about that - why don't you take a chair and relax?"

He seems to want to change the subject and goes over to ring a bell by the side of the fire. I sit and look around the room. On one side the books, which are from many periods, seem geographically related - atlases, travelogues, itineraries and so on . On the other, there are historical publications - textbooks, periodicals and a leather bound archive relating to London.

After a few minutes, there is a tap on the door and my host goes to open it. It is Rudge and there is a brief quiet conversation. The servant nods and leaves. My companion comes back, stands over me, proffers his hand and says:
"How rude, I don't even know your name!"

I introduce myself. He sits and leans back in the chair opposite, sips his drink and looks at me curiously:
"Well, I shall call you 'Pilgrim' in honour of the way we met - what with you on your knees and all that!"  

This seems to cause him some considerable degree of private amusement.

"Pilgrim, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Valentine.

I'm the Clerkenwell Kid"

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY?

There have been quite a few commercials on the TV over the last few years with music which people have thought was by The Real Tuesday Weld. Unfortunately they were usually not-very-good in-the-style-of things which is a double blow - you don't get the money AND people think you'll knock out any old crap. I never normally bother about these things as I haven't got a TV and after all, who actually is original these days anyway? But, I couldn't resist a sigh and a chuckle when a friend showed me the new album by that funny Scottish band Franz Ferdinand.


Look familiar?



I don't mind at all but I did rather feel for my friend Paul Heartfield who I've been working with for years and who I think has quietly become one of the best photographers in London. he is always having his ideas pinched and not being credited properly and I am sure he would have helped FF if they'd asked him. Still, if you want to see the real thing head over to his place. It's far better

SEASONS DREAMINGS

Time goes so quickly now doesn't it? - And it's almost already that time of year again. Every winter for almost a decade now The Real Tuesday Weld have sent out a little audio christmas card with exclusive tracks and funny things and now they've finally made it available to all friends.

It has artwork by Catherine Anyango and contains some real surprises. It will fit most stocking sizes.

I believe they have also remixed Count Basie for the Verve Christmas album. Very nice too.

Best wishes to all. Thanks for listening, reading, watching, commenting. I appreciate that very much. See you next year I hope..

ANGELS OVER LONDON

At the end of this month, it's 251 years since William Blake was born. We usually go to see his grave in Bunhill Fields every year and I noticed that The Real Tuesday Weld cheekily pinched some of his work on their album 'The London Book of the Dead'. I always thought that he was buried in a mass grave with up to thirty other people, but the recent discovery of a secret coded grid on the graveyard wall may change that. Last time we visited, we found a small piece of nineteenth century oak coffin with two copper nails in it and wondered whether it was a bit of his.

When he was a child he was reputed to see angels in the trees and he became rather angelic himself as he grew older - but not in a cute way - more in the manner of the giant figure said to be guarding the gates of Eden with blazing sword and loud trumpet. I was reminded of this when I saw Alex De Campi's video for The Real Tuesday Weld song 'Last Words' - oh, and of course, of that wonderful film: Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.

I understand she had a hellish time making it and performed several miracles to pull it off but she has a place in video heaven we know.

HORSING AROUND?

After doing a few Baby Food ads, it's been nice to even up THE SCORE, shake off a bit of my Catholic past and for once do something to make the world a safer (and possibly smaller) place. The opportunty was provided me by Brooklyn cult filmmaker Ronni Raygun Thomas. Cheers Ronni.

And remember kids, do do this at home.

US AND THEM

In conjunction with 'Cold War Modern' show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Radio Clerkenwell will be broadcasting a series of shows for Resonance 104.4FM the London Arts Radio Station. The series is a trip through 'Sounds of Propaganda and the Cold War' featuring some of the absolutely extraordinary music, broadcasts and spoken word recordings of the time. I will have some very special guests along the way to keep me company too.

The shows go out from Sunday October 5th at 6.30pm GMT and will be repeated the following Tuesdays at 11.00pm GMT. There are a schedule of the programs and I will be posting playlists here each week (and a list of sources at the end of the series.). Outside the capital, the station can be listened to on-line at www.resonancefm.com

MEETUP?

Well you know, we probably all spend too much time in front of our computers and for many of us it seems the hours spent on the de rigeur  on-line virtual networking sites has even overtaken the time we spend actually meeting people in the flesh. I'm really not sure about it all to tell you the truth. Yet, when asked by Curious Pictures to contribute music to their new promo for yet another such site, I accepted. Why?  Well, because the film was made by Ro Rao the director who directed 'Bringing the Body Back Home' and of course, as you might expect, it's wonderful.

But anyway, what does this particular on-line social networking site promote that all the others out there don't already?  Yes, you guessed it, it's aimed at getting you away from your computer and on-line social networking sites...

And so it goes, round and round and round - 

but here's the film anyway.  

Kind of makes me wish I had a tail..

DEEP BLUE SOMETHING

Speaking of Catherine, she recently asked me to re-score her wonderful film 'Deep Blue Something'. She is rather reclusive and seems reluctant to ever step into the footlights, so I am forced to do it for her.

Many people have asked about the imagery The Real Tuesday Weld use at live shows - most of it is by Catherine too. If you are in London and would like to see it - come and join them at Corsica Studios on the 25th - I shall be there myself.

Anyway, here is the film with new music and voice: dive in to the deep blue

THE LONDON BOOK OF THE DEAD

This album by The Real Tuesday Weld came out in the US late last year and there is a terrible tale of skulduggery, betrayal and infidelity behind why it is only now available in Europe. But, praise the Lord,  it is now being released through Cargo / Six Degrees in all the usual places and by the new label Antique Beat as a special collectors' edition forty page hardback book. This is made with wonderful illustrations by the very magical and mysterious Ms Catherine Anyango (a fellow denizen of East Central London) who tells the album's story in a series of gorgeous linked montaged tableaux.   

They also kindly included some of my writings and future reminiscences together with a special piece by London literary luminary Glen Duncan and I believe there is a special gift for those who look hard enough.

Above is an image from Catherine's wonderful film for the first track: 'Blood Sugar Love'.  It was  made around my house in Clerkenwell. Click here to watch it. Quite beautiful I think you will agree.

MAD MAN MOON

Alex has been at it again.

A couple of years ago he came over to the UK an visited Callanish at my suggestion. Now Callanish is a place on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides off the North West coast of Scotland where there is an extraordinary and massive prehistoric stone site to rival Stonehenge.

It's pretty remote and a long and complicated trip is necessary to get there. He made the journey all the way from Brooklyn, arrived and then left again after five minutes. Why? Because it completely freaked him out. He loved Stonehenge but then Stonehenge is a Solar temple.. Callanish is a Lunar temple. Now, I know he doesn't take drugs so I am assuming he has that condition that means you get affected by the movements of the moon.

Why am I telling you all this? Because he has just posted 'Last time in Clerkenwell' - a kind of sequel to 'Bathtime in Clerkenwell' - on Youtube and it's completely stark raving bonkers. Youtube have featured it on the front page, so his lunacy - and considerable genius - will hopefully be appreciated by a great deal of people. Hurray.

THE LONG MARCH HOME

Back to Blighty after visiting the New World. Meeting new friends and old, meeting celebrities, a Siegfried and Roy moment, a Spinal Tap moment, getting sunburned, getting stoned. Experiencing a lot of generosity, appreciation and passion. And that was just on the way to Heathrow..

In New York I met up with Ro Rao - who has made a wonderful animation / film / puppet show for the song 'Bringing the Body Back Home. Here is a quick preview before we launch it in the Autumn.

Blew me away.

US and THEM

Well, well, well- after all this time The Real Tuesday Weld are going back to play in Canada and the USA and I will be accompanying them. About time too. The world has changed and governments do their thing - incomprehensible to most of us I suspect - so it's all become much more complicated and long winded and paranoic but I'm really looking forward to seeing friends, meeting strangers and travelling across that amazing landscape. I've hopped over the channel to work / collaborate / hang out quite a bit these last few years and it's always such a pleasure.

I don't know if you will be able to be there but it would be an honour to say hello if you were. All the dates are on that myspace thing.

In the meantime, or if we won't see you, for a little something (a little cheeky something) to whet the appetite and to show that that famous 'special relationship' is still firmly in place, click here

NOTICING

Now, when you notice things, there’s someone else there.

Crows lope away from us with a look that knows our atrocities.
The back garden in Wednesday rain heaves out godlessness.
Sunlight shines through the rim of a baby’s nostril.
Airports murmur the secret all governments fear: there aren’t nations, only people.

Now, when you notice these things, there’s someone else there with you.

Noticing used to happen without you noticing it:
A girl’s nude armpit like an opal,
The sea’s look of marbled meat,
A bare winter tree like a cross-sectioned lung.
You woke up, noticed, went to bed dumbly enriched.

Now, when you notice these things, there’s someone else there with you.

In the kitchen, after an evening in separate conversations,
You put your hands on your wife’s midriff – and there she is again,
All that you’d forgotten.
Desire learns cunning or dies.

Now, when you notice her, there’s someone else there with you.

Awake before suburban dawn you master self-ridicule and step
Barefoot onto the lawn’s frost, because after all you can.
And there’s frost revealed: an old patient god
Fragilely attempting an impossible reclamation.

You notice this, but there’s someone else there with you.

You can’t, quite, meet his eye, this companion who showed-up sometime after wisdom teeth or original sin.
But you begin to see your mistake:
Noticing isn’t a gift, a grace, a dispensation, but
Comes at a price, demands exchange,
And as his peripheral smile reminds,

We’ve only the one thing to give.

text - Glen Duncan
image - Catherine Anyango

A DAY AND A NIGHT AND A DAY

I've been reading the manuscript of Glen Duncan's latest novel "A Day and a Night and a Day".

What has struck me, apart from the distillation of his style down to its essence, is his ability to unflinchingly describe the darkest and most tragic situations in a way that is often positively thought provoking and sometimes inspiring. He shares that quality with Cormac McCarthy I think. I've made my compromises and generally regret them so I'm always impressed by artistic integrity - and Glen's never gone for the easy option, even when it's there begging on a plate. I remember with 'I, Lucifer', that it was intended to be knocked off in three months as a commercial ruse to get him 'out of a hole' - but he just couldn't help himself and it became a thoughtful, literary work (perhaps to the chagrin of his publisher) as well as a rather cracking yarn.

This book is political - or at least, topical. I was initially concerned about that when he told me - I mean it's easy to get that sort of thing very wrong  - but reading it has revealed it as not only a brave move but a masterly one. I think it will do very well - possibly not commercially (although who knows?) but hopefully in terms of a prize. It's that good. And, despite all the darkness, honesty and intensity,  a very enjoyable read.

But I've known Glen most of my life. We became friends in a provincial town early on - not least because it never really felt like home. We were in-situ cultural refugees so to speak and we've been egging each other on ever since. By the way, in case this all sounds horribly back-slapping and self-congratulatory, you should know that l could tell you the most terrible things about him and he's definately seen me at my shameful worst.

Anyway, the book will be published in the new year - first in the US and then in England. I don't really read fiction and of course I'm partisan,  so make up your own mind. But don't say I didn't tell you..

LUNA PARK

Last year Yuliya - another ex-patriat Russian friend living in Brooklyn -asked me if I would write something for her graduation animation about the old theme park at Brighton Beach. I did and here it is - a wonderfully strange creation don't you think?

I heard that the theme park is gone or going or being re-developed into blandness. Inevitable I guess- but it still seems a shame.

HALF HORSE - HALF DREAM

A couple of years ago I had a very strong dream about being on the South Bank of the River Thames in a kind of glade of trees - a landscape as it probably would have been before the city existed. Across the water came floating a kind of barge and on it were a family of half human - half horse-like creatures. They disembarked and I watched them for a while before we engaged in some sort of communication. They told me something important or imparted some kind of wisdom which of course on waking I couldn't quite recall. The dream itself continued in a strange and fairy tale sort of way and it inspired some music I later wrote called 'Epitaph for a Dream'.

Then I kind of forgot all about it until, with the strangeness of things, during some research, I recently came across a wonderful animation from 1921 by the American Winsor McCay in an archive. Surprise, surprise I thought I recognised the dream there.

Did I see it as a child and just forget?
Is it is a well-known myth?
Is it an unconcious archetype?
"What does it all mean Steerpike?"

I've no idea - but anyway, here are both.

Mad Hair

I often consider myself to have been rather fortunate and to have been the beneficiary of many happy accidents. A nocturnal meeting with Valentine Rose in Clerkenwell, reading about Dreamy records in London Time Out ten years ago, discovering a copy of Jung's "Memories, Dream and Reflections' in the carriage of a deserted train somewhere in West Wales and so on.

Another of these serendipitous events was receiving a letter one day from an animator called Alex Budovsky which sparked a friendship and a collaboration that has now gone on for several years and has produced some wonderful work. Alex also introduced us to Russia and to various extraordinary people there who we now work with too and some of whom have also become friends.

Amongst them are the amazing folk from the late, great Alexander Tatarsky's animation studio 'Pilot'. They have been engaged in an epic work to create two animated fairy stories for each of the ex states of the USSR - some of which I saw in progress and was duly blown away by. So, it was with great pleasure that i was invited to work on their latest project "Mad Hair'. This is a kind of trailer for a feature based on drawings and ideas left by Tatarsky before his untimely death last year and it truly is a gorgeous, eye-poppingly surreal tale of espionage, lunacy, baldness and sausages set in a re-imagined wartime London. You will rarely have seen anything like it and I look forward to being able to show more soon.

At a time when a kind of cultural (or at least Bureaucratic) Cold War has arisen between this country and Russia again, it feels rather happy to be engaged in such a cross-border collaboration.

BONNE ANNIVERSAIRE

My friend Gina reminded me that today would have been Gainsbourg's birthday. Can you imagine what he would have been like had he lived to be 80? No?- "moi non plus" as he might have said. And it's seventeen years since he died in Paris - rather reduced but still pretty stylish - and smoking - almost to the end.

These days with the slightly irritating ubiquity of Jane Birkin, it's easy to forget how forgotten he actually was during his lifetime - well outside France at any rate.

Anyway, I was reminded of an afternoon round at Clive's a few years ago when we sat around and recorded this. It's a bit out of tune and francophone's may quarrel with the translation but it felt right somehow.

Happy Birthday Serge.

LONG LIVE THE DEAD SONGWRITER

I have been much preoccupied of late but I was awoken from my reverie by the arrival of the wonderful film below - another made by George and Monica of Giant Squid Eye. As ever, I'm flattered and quite bowled over by the opportunity to collaborate with such wonderful artists. I'm sure I'm using up all my good Karma but in the meantime I remain astounded and grateful.

Speaking of collaborations, attentive US readers of the credits for the song ('Kix' from The Real Tuesday Weld album 'The London Book of the Dead'*) might notice that it is attributed to myself and a certain deceased star of the Great American Songwriting Tradition. It may not be obvious why to some - but personally it feels as if I have realised a once-thought impossible dream.
Yes, that's right - I have co-written a song with Cole Porter.

I do hope he wouldn't mind..



The year is already tripping on - faster and faster it goes - but there is a lot to tell and I hope to be here more often from this time onward.

*The album, along with 'The Clerkenwell Kid Live at the End of the World', will be released by Six Degrees throughout the rest of the world and in the UK by the new boutique label 'Antique Beat" in Summer.

DEADWEIGHT

I was installed in the grubby faded Georgian walk up guesthouse on Britten St. On the Tuesday I woke late and struggled through the lingering fug of some clammy dream, forcing myself from the narrow bed. I stepped onto the landing at the top of the curving staircase, locked the room behind and stumbled into the shared bathroom. Scalding water, razor, deodorant. The morning ritual of stripping, washing wiping, hair, skin, teeth, holes brought me back to myself. I donned clean underwear and shirt and padded back to the bedroom.


Unlocking the door, I dropped the dirty laundry on the floor and took a suit from the open case. Using the mirror, I dressed, combed and straightened. But then, as I looked to check my hair, I involuntarily stiffened rigid and shrieked - for in the reflection beyond, a figure sat in the armchair by the window staring straight at me. I backed to the door fumbling for the handle and lock in panic. But the figure, a man, did not look at me, did not get up, did not even move. He remained angled away - still staring towards the mirror, unblinking. One terror was suddenly replaced by another. I had been here before. He wasn't staring at me, he wasn't really staring at anything. He was dead.

Although at that time, apart from Sonny and my father, I had seen no corpses in close-up, it was something else that was causing my terror - the sheer fact of his presence in my room. How the fuck had he got in there and then died? Or worse, how had he been brought in and killed? I had been gone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes at most and I had heard absolutely nothing. I looked around the room - everything was normal. Nothing was displaced, there was no blood or signs of struggle - just a corpse sitting there.

Hesitantly, I approached. He wore the ordinary cheapish, semi-smart clothes of an average city worker. Tie, bad suit, brogues. He was slightly puffy around the jowls with the beginning of new growth starting to show on coarse, shaved cheeks. Within the penumbra of each nostril I could spy what looked like dried blood as if from a nosebleed. His nails too, though manicured, seemed to have blood under one or two of the fingers of one hand

The other hand dangled at his side. I could see that it held something but I had to inch around him, across his field of vision to see it fully. Ludicrously, I stepped away to do this - afraid he might suddenly re-animate and look up, even seize me. Dread felt heavy in the room, a feeling only increased when I saw that his hanging hand was gripping a small piece of paper between forefinger and thumb. I hesitated - I knew I should not touch him, I knew I should get out of there, call the police, tell somebody - but even as I considered the options, I also knew somehow that I would have to look at the paper first.

Gingerly, I came near, squatted down, lifted the dead weight of his hand and pulled. His grip was strong and the paper began to tear. I had to prize apart finger and thumb to release it and as I did so I could feel the slight warmth remaining in him. The paper slipped free and I jumped back and away to look. It was a page from a book - an old stained book with close curious type - but the reverse was blank or rather it was blank apart from three hand written words.

I looked up at the dead guy, He kind of looked at me. I looked back down at the words:

'You did this'

At that moment, in the Clerkenwell street below a police siren began to howl.

A STITCH IN TIME

Valentine was adjusting his tie whilst standing in front of the mirror in the parlour of the house in Clerkenwell. As ever, he looked impeccable but I wondered, not for the first time, how old he was. Twenty nine? Early thirties? It was difficult to tell and he was always rather evasive on the subject. In younger people that's usually a sign of wanting to appear older and, of course in the old, the reverse is true but he didn't particularly seem of an age when it would matter - or the type to care anyway.

Rudge, his valet, bustled in with the drinks tray. He winked at me in that slightly insinuating way of his. I disliked him on instinct. He related to me as if I was a source of some amusement or as if there were some complicity between us.
"Thanks old man"
Valentine turned from the mirror and took a glass from the proferred tray.
"Why not have one yourself?"
He grinnned knwingly when he said this and the valet looked slightly sheepish. Nevertheless, after offering me a glass he set the tray on the antique sideboard and poured himself one too.
"Chinny Chin!"
We clinked and drank.

Suddenly, I realised Valentine was looking me up and down.
"You're not going out dressed like that are you old sport?"
I bristled slightly
"Er, yes, why not?"
"Oh, it will never do my dear. The place we are going is very particular, very particular indeed and besides..."
He paused delicately.
"Streetware is all very well for Clerkenwell Road and Shoreditch and all that but we'll look a fine pair with me done up to the nines and you looking so..."
He paused again, searching for the right word.
"...so ahem, hip"
I stiffened.
"Well I haven't got time to get home to change now - we'll be late"
"Oh, don't worry about that old sport, We'll fix you up - won't we Rudge?"
I could sense rather than see Rudge smirking behind him.
"Of course , we will Mr Rose, of course we will!"
Valentine could tell I was put out but remained firm.
"Now come on, Pilgrim, finish your drink - in fact, have another - "
he signalled to Rudge
" - and then we'll have you spick and span in an instant"

He turned back to the mirror as if the matter were settled and began to fix his tie pin. I had to admit he looked beautifully elegant and I was acutely aware of the contrast of the creases and fluff and general unkemptness of my own attire. I gave in.
"Oh Fuck it, ok then"
He looked at me via the mirror and grinned. I finished my drink. Rudge put the glasses back on the tray, walked to the door and held it open for me.

We walked down the stone flagged passage to the stairs and climbed to the first floor. On the way we passed Valentine's gallery of ancestral paintings and I noted again how strong the resemblance was between him and his forbears - even the women shared his aquiline features and slightly other-worldly look. But I also noticed something else - something that had never struck me before. Rudge saw me looking and stopped.

"Was that a family tradition - to have their portrait painted at a certain time in their lives?"
"Sir?"
I indicated the painted figures
"They're all the same age aren't they?"
He appeared to be about to splutter with laughter.
"Well, yes, I suppose you could say that sir!"

We climbed to the second storey. There was dark wood on the floor and less panelling than the storeys beneath but there were the same high ceilings and large windows. At the end of a passage through double oak doors lay Valentine's bedroom. I was intrigued to see this room where he slept, dressed, undressed, presumably made love and was at his most private. I suppose I was expecting something exotic - a boudoir perhaps - but in fact, the room was rather simple. There were a few items of old furniture with the odd modern piece here and there and a few objects scattered around - a dog's skull, a single lace glove, an old fashioned hypodermic syringe, the bust of a young girl, a pair of embroidered slippers, a painted ostrich egg covered in spidery hand writing - curious things. By the bed there was a small writing desk with a large diary lying open and on a shelf above were a few of Valentine's ubiquitous travel books. The bed itself looked impeccable - almost as if had never been slept in.

Rudge beckoned me to a corner where there was another door. Through this was the dressing room. This was really more of a corridor leading to what looked like a bathroom at the far end with tall dark doors lining the walls. Rudge opened a few of these and inside I could see rails of clothes in the velvet lined interior. They gave off a pleasant, luxurious smell and I thought briefly and painfully of the mountain of discarded worn items in the corner of my own bedroom.

One particular closet seemed full of fancy dress clothes - albeit extremely expensive ones: a restoration era cape; a Victorian top hat; an ancient cane; riding boots - even what looked like doublet and hose. I reached out to touch.

"Er, no sir"
Rudge coughed and put his arm firmly between me and the outfits.

"Mr Rose, doesn't mean these things."
I looked at him slightly startled. He winked that wink of his.

"Try these."
He held out a couple of jackets. They were sixties style, mod cut, single breasted with a ticket pocket. They were beautifully made in expensive fabric and seemed my size. I chose the darker and tried it on. Rudge helped me - his hands darting here and there, straightening, adjusting, brushing me down. Seeing the liver spots on his skin and thinking of my earlier reflections, I suddenly asked him:

"Rudge, how old are you?"
He paused a moment
"Oh getting on sir, getting on"
"Yes, but how old exactly?"
He looked up reluctantly.
"About seventy five"
"What? You are not. No way. Come on - tell me the truth."
He looked down again.
"Maybe I'm even older."
He seemed sincere and I was astounded.
"Well you don't look it. I never would have had you a day over fifty"
"Thank you sir."
"Well what did you do before you were with Mr Rose?"
"Before Mr Rose sir? Oh that was a very long time ago!"
"Well he's about the same age as me right? So it can't have been that long ago - were you around when he was a child or something?"
"A child sir?"
He laughed as though the very thought were ridiculous.
"Well then, when?"
"Oh Mr Rose was quite grown when we met sir, quite grown"

I found his evasiveness and hints more and more irritating. He bugged the hell out of me and even though it wasn't really appropriate, I thought I would just keep pressing until I got something definate from him for once.
"Ok. Very specifically then. Tell me. How.. do .. you .. know .. him?"

He picked up two ties from a rail and flicked away an imaginary piece of dust from one. I waited. He handed me the tie.

"Very well sir"
He looked drectly at me.

"He's my great grandfather."

LAST LOVES

I walk through the ruins one last time to the house in the little alleyway behind the church in Clerkenwell. Everybody is gone now and I know that I will not survive another winter here. I believe that you're still out in the ether somewhere but there has been no blip on the radar, no distant ship smoke on the horizon for so long.

The house is silent. In an upper room, I take a spool of tape (the last one) from my case and cut and splice enough to make a loop. I thread the loop into the Studer - one minute, no more, is all it will need. I connect the radio microphone into the old amplifier and the amplifier into the Studer. I climb the spiral stairs to the roof and step out onto the parapet. Outside, the smoke has cleared for once and through the darkness, stars shine down brighter than they have seemed for years. I thought this house might survive but it still feels a miracle to stand here. I make some adjustments to the solars and connect them to the batteries powering the transmitter and the equipment below. There is not much direct light anymore but then not much will be needed. I rotate the transmitter like a giant gramophone horn toward the direction from where I last heard your voice. Other transmitters and receivers teeter on nearby remaining rooftops calling and listening for signals that will never now come. I look around for one last time at the broken horizon and the shadowy fragments of city that remain and climb back inside.

In the lamplit room, I make final preparations. I take the microphone, press the record on the Studer and speak. A single take and it is done - but then I have rehearsed this moment for so long. I stop the tape, connect the Studer to the transmitter and switch it to play. I gather my things, shoulder my bag, blow out the lamp. I step into the corridor and descend the staircase to the ground floor. For a moment, I pause, remembering the rooms as they were, full of lights and beautiful things, books, maps, dancing guests, the sound of laughter, voices.
All gone.

I step into the night and close the door behind me. There is no need to lock. I look up to the roof where I can see the transmitter silhouetted against the stars. One day the tape will break, the panels fail, the roof fall - but not yet. One day, this will not matter anymore, there will be no one to care - but not yet. For now, I can almost hear the voice broadcasting out in an infinite loop across the distance and the years between us:

"I loved you, I loved you, I loved you, I lo..."

LAST WORDS

I dreamt that the city was dying and yet that did not seem an entirely unhappy thing. As with any fading conciousness, the barriers between past, present and future, between dream and reality became blurred and indistinct. Walls of concrete and stone seemed permeable and insubstantial. The ground beneath me throbbed and hummed like a giant machine breathing in and out. helicopters and black birds criss-crossed the darkening sky as huge lights pulsed slowly on and off. On Fleet Street, an old woman in a bonnet approached me with out stretched hand. I stopped but she walked up and passed right through me. I felt a brief sensation of warmth and on turning, saw a young man in a tall hat walking away.

I passed down through the inns of court. Throngs of people appeared and disappeared. I could hear seabirds and smell a tart reek from the river. In a corner I saw a child lying but when I approached, it was only a dead hare garlanded by wild flowers. The blare of horns blended with the barking of dogs and the noises of horses, laughter, and wild singing. Suddenly, I was alone standing on a boggy moorland sloping gently down to a wide river. The sun was setting and in the middle distance campfires glowed and flickered as dark figures passed between them and me. A mother called to her children but with words which sounded foreign to my hearing. The background changed again and I stood in Covent garden. The world was spinning, holes opened in the sky through which I could see other places, other cities...

LAST DAYS

These were the last days.
I wasn't sure whether it was the war and if we were dead or just that the city had entered a different, final phase. In some ways it seemed to be going about its business as usual, in others it seemed more like a ghetto in Warsaw in the 40s. Law and order were breaking down, bartering and black markets had sprung up, privation and confusion had taken hold. A door had opened and something had changed. Perhaps the strength of the explosions had ripped something apart, disrupted the fabric or the collective psyche, the complex interaction between matter and conciousness.

I myself seemed relatively unharmed, free from pain and able to wander at will without suffering hunger or thirst. Occasionally I ate or drank when the opportunity arose but more out of a sense of duty and habit - or even just out of curiosity. My body seemed, like the city, to have become transparent in some way - not that you could see through it, more that it was made of energy or just the idea of solidity, opacity, colour, size, weight and form - like a collection of properties stored in some digital file.

Suddenly normality would take hold again, reassert itself as if the city had shaken its head free of some confusion. Taxis pulled up to the pavement, families on day-outs nonchalantly shopped. An effiminate, Italianate young man stepped from a cafe to smoke a cigarette and good naturedly eye a passerby. An old man sat nodding at a table by another cafe. A young mother pushed a pram whilst another child ran alongside tugging at her arm. Lovers touched, Shopkeepers chatted. In the distance I could see a funeral procession of mourners headed by a priest. I was filled simultaneously with sadness and admiration at this normality. The very ordinariness of existence - something I had always feared - seemed beautiful after the strangeness I had witnessed.

The old man suddenly woke and looked up. My heart skipped a beat. He looked exactly like my grandfather, dead these ten years. Then the skipping child stopped and gazed at me too - it was my neice lost to us two winters back! How could this be? What was this place? I looked around - more and more faces seemed familiar. The old man held out his arms. It was my grandfather! I rushed toward him laughing with my own arms outstretched to meet his embrace.

"STOP!"

I obeyed the command but spun to see the speaker. There was no one moving near me. In fact, there was no one moving whatsoever. The street was frozen. A bird hung in the air, forever about to swoop on some scrap of food. The traffic lights were stuck between amber and red. The ordinary street folk I had admired were stiff - caught between postures - my grandfather awkwardly so with eyes partly closed, a foot raised. The smoke from the waiter's cigarette was fixed in a plume of exhalation as if caught in the freeze frame of a film. There was complete silence.

Then again:

"Stop!"

The voice, though quieter now, was increasingly familiar. But still I could see no one speaking.

"This is not yet the time!"

Suddenly, I DID recognise the voice. Amongst all this confusion of images and experiences, this was perhaps the strangest of all - for in fact, l knew the speaker well

In the stillness, it was my own lips that were moving...

UP, UP AND AWAY

It seems that there are birds all around these days. There's all this stuff with Alex and Big Bird going on (and you really should see what he's working on now..). Then, a couple of weeks ago, we picked up a new blackbird from the Taxidermist. My friend Lou found him dead in her garden and now he is sitting in a little glass case in the library looking very happy. On top of that, I just came back from the Orkneys in the far North where I briefly joined the ranks of those strange folk called 'Twitchers'. I had the great pleasure, amongst other things, to see several unusual and beautiful winged things and the absolutely extraordinary sight of an Arctic Skua flying backwards. I kid you not.

When we were children, there used to be little fat men in Trafalgar square selling packets of seed. Tourists would buy them to feed to the pigeons who would flock around in grey thousands much to their mutual delight. Of course the grey would soon turn to white - to the great chagrin of Westminster Council and the more long term residents - and so the Mayor banned them (the little fat men, not the pigeons). Rather a shame I've always thought.

Anyway it's a great pleasure to bring you this twist on the theme of man feeds bird by our new friend Tina Roland. Lovely!

As I write, there is someone looking over my shoulder. An old friend who I thought long gone has unexpectedly re-entered my life and I have a foreboding that things are about to change..

OUT THERE IN THE BLUE

Alex Budovsky, an all round good egg and the the man who, if he could, would cool Global Warming with the flapping of many birds' wings, has been hanging out with Big Bird himself and hatched this flight of fancy. I accompanied them although my musical contribution is, er, rather featherweight.

I remember being a child and watching the birds collect on the telephone wires, gathering themselves before they just mysteriously decided one day it was time to leave. I'm off to the Orkneys now. I finished one record (and also, a second with a certain Mr Valentine Rose). It was an intense couple of years - birth and death and all sorts of things between and I am happy to have been here. I feel like I'm done with something but I don't know what it was and I don't yet know what's next.

FROM A WINDOW

This is from a friend's apartment in an old, tall, granite mansion block on a hill in Edinburgh. Last night we played with the Berlin Cabaret goddess Ute Lemper in the beautiful Usher Hall. Proper grown up stuff. Perhaps not our best show but Ute was extremely nice when I burst into her dressing room and fell over by accident. A romantic friend from the past turned up too - reviving certain memories and causing some interesting reflections - that was nice, if rather strange.

Another friend found and sent this funny thing from somewhere on the web. It features an half old forgotten track used without permission - I suppose I should have been outraged and complained or something but I liked it so much I couldn't be bothered. Nice one Nev.

More films, music and a new website soon.

FOR ROTHKO WITH LOVE

The music for the Rothko room is in place at the Tate Modern. It can now also be heard on line - song for mark

It was a pleasure to do - those paintings have long been a favourite but it was a curious thing too - his intentions seem to have been quite mixed. He started off wanting to intimidate the wealthy diners at the Four Seasons restaraunt in New York's Seagram building (the original commission) but changed his mind. Now they are generally seen as being contemplative, peaceful - even sacred.

Anyway, he ended up doing himself in like so many other artists, and so, partly, this was also meant as an elegy.

FOR RUSSIA WITH LOVE

I just returned from Moscow again. We were playing at the Golden Mask Theatre Festival - a very wonderful thing and a great pleasure to attend. It was probably one of our best shows - with Jacques back in the saddle and Eyal creating a magical dream world around us. The Berlin artist Jim Avignon joined us on stage for some live action painting and a whole posse of Alex's friends from the animaiton studio came to hang out.

On Saturday, our friends Marina and Serezha had asked us to play an acoustic show at a hospice for the terminally ill. So we arrived at a very peaceful little building on a quiet street somewhere as the snow started falling. It was an unusual event - no samplers, no projections, no electricity. There was a small audience of patients and staff from the hospice and some little birds in a couple of cages. Some of the patients were in beds and barely concious - one man in particular sounded as if he was about to go at any moment. When Jacques started to play 'La Bete et La Belle', the birds joined in too. I felt moved - just to be there at all and have the opportunity to do this sort of thing - although I confess felt some awkwardness at singing these songs, many of which refer to death, in a situation where mortality is very present. There were a couple of kids there and that really tore me up. Afterwards, just before we had tea and biscuits, I completely lost it for a few minutes in the loo. How do you tell children they are dying? - how do they understand that and how can they still smile and be so pleased to see you?

Back on the street, with the city noises and the snow falling more thickly, we wandered back into our lives and that stupid feeling that it couldn't happen to us - death is for other people right?! Despite everything that has happened, I find it really hard to not imagine I will somehow go on for ever. Anyway it makes you think doesn't it? - and one of the things I always think is how connections with people matter more than almost anything.

So, hello to all friends - but particularly this time to my Russian ones - old, new and however brief..

FISH

Now mad Al Budovsky and I have recently been doing our bit for the welfare of the world by working with Lillipip - a Seattle based educational company producing animated teaching aids for small beings. Here is an example. Very sweet I think you'll agree. The rest of the original text of this post has been CENSORED..

Hope all is going swimmingly for you...

THE GHOST HOUSE

I went to the Tate Modern last night. They asked me to contribute music for a 'Tate Track' - a piece written to accompany an artwork in the collection. (The Chemical Brothers have done Epstein's 'Rock Drill' and the Klaxons are doing Cy Twombly's 'Quattro Staggione' and there are various other peculiar combinations).

Whilst there we watched the Christian Marclay videopiece which is absolutely extraordinary. If you haven't seen it and get the chance, try to check it out - they are about to remove it I think. It's very, very clever and beautiful if you love music.

Whilst wondering home, I remembered the little house which used to stand at the edge of the western entrance forecourt and the time a few years ago when I lived there briefly. When I first came to London, I lost my innocence for a while in substances and I started to go rather down hill. One morning I got a bit bored of it all and signed up for some classes at the CIty Lit Institute in Holborn. There I met Martyn from the Tiger Lillies and Sophie his muse and manager and we became firm friends. They lived in a flat in Berwick Street in Soho but one Sunday evening on returning from a trip we all took to the country, they discovered that their landlord had burnt the whole building down. (We found out later that he did it to force them out and to get the insurance). They lost all they had - clothes, instruments, years of recordings, photos and letters. Everything. Anyway, a friend who was squatting in this little house in Bankside let them go to stay and they ended up being there for a few years.

It was a peculiar place which contained six little flats for workers from the time when the Tate was still a power station. It was very curious with a central iron staircase and one bathroom for every two flats. There was just Martyn and Sophie and a little old man who lived down below. It was spooky and felt rather out of time. I believe I once saw a ghost on the stair - although maybe that was just the wine. I can't remember how many times I walked down to the river from St Pauls and over Blackfriar's Bridge to see them. I do remember there were rats by the river then.

And I don't know why they knocked it down - there is nothing there now but an unused area of ground.

HiGHLAND FLING

I'd almost forgotten about this - summer seems so far away now doesn't it? The Future of Cinema? I don't know about that but it was really fun - and very stylish.....

The Show Must Go On

I had an absolutely wonderful Christmas present this year from George and Monica at Giant Squid Eye Productions. I really don't know what I 've done to deserve it or any of the other wonderful things that keep happening - but thankyou....
just check it out

The Real Queen's Speech

To all my friends: I have been dreaming of you in the depths of this Scottish castle and so with tape and an old gramophone, some wires and a transmitter, I am broadcasting out a signal to greet you through the ether. I hope you can hear me ... and, I hope we meet again - someday, somewhere, soon....
with love
TCK
turn on the radio to listen

Free (love) Jukebox

Here is Alex Budovsky's latest - to a lovely, little tune by the Berlin artist and musician Jim Avignon
play the jukebox

Love Amongst the Ruins

Sometimes it almost feels as if London has entered a Golden Age. The increasingly benevolent climate, the sparkling near mineral-water quality of the Thames, the clean white buildings, the concrete, stone and glass all cleaned and polished up by money. We've been purified by wealth, flushed and depilated, scrubbed and sanitised. There is electricity and light and music everywhere. Traffic wardens, and CCTVs shepherd and watch over us. Generally, ugliness and obesity - like poverty - have been banished to the provinces. Nearly everybody I see looks passable these days and often they look stylish, hip, smart, groovy and skinny. The cracks and crannies are gone (or have been papered over with banknotes at least).That often feels good I think - but with it has come a strange sense of vulnerabilty or foreboding. Do you feel that too? We have so much to lose now don't we? And worse, we are so ill-equipped to deal with any loss at all. Is this how Rome felt at the end? - this beautifully civilised leaning on the edge of things? Occasionally a wailing ambulance irritates with a reminder of birth, sickness or death and now and then the odd police car speeding south or east disrupts our sang-froid a little, but generally we seem to have become 'comfortably numb'.

Speaking of which,on Saturday, we went to see Battersea power station for the last time before its redevelopment begins. It is as magnificent in its ruin as it surely was in its industrial strength glory. Neglect has not really harmed it at all - well, not in the way that say Starbucks, Gap and Tesco Express shortly will. From the publicity material, it seems that it is destined to be filled with advertising 'creatives' (sic), oriental investors getting their money out while there's time and mortgaged-to-the-hilt aspirational young couples. Would J G Ballard approve? Probably. He recently said that he would like to see London erased and rebuilt in the manner of the Heathrow Hilton. I was sad for that - I have long admired him but it seems he has been reading his own press and gone all literal on us. But I was much sadder about what is happening to Battersea. Every age has its losses and the city has never stood still but of all the things that could have happened here, why have we settled for something so weedy? Could we not stand to leave one glorious ruin?

Well. if we don't teeter over the edge before the work is complete, you never know - it could all turn out nice again ........

......and pigs might fly

Coming Home

We're leaving for Russia tommorow - to play in Moscow and St Petersburg courtesy of the delightful Serezha from the equally delightful Bad taste Records (the Russian home of our friends the Tiger Lillies). I had bought a new (fake) fur hat in preparation but was dismayed to hear that it's actually very warm in St Petersburg at the moment. We are very much looking forward to the trip despite that disappointment.

Then we shall come home.

Speaking of which, if you click on the 'Coming Home' title above you will be connected to a remarkable piece on the subject by my friend and colleague, the all round musical polymath Clive Painter. Clive, as you may know, has lent his wonderful abilities in various capacities to The Real Tuesday Weld over the last few years - whether it be studio wizardy, his beautiful evocative guitar playing or hosting our many recording and rehearsal sessions at his strange rambling house. We produced 'Dreams that Money can Buy' there over several months of laborious needlecraft.

Anyway, this lovely piece is by him in the guise of Wolf. He has also released many records with Martine Roberts as 'Broken Dog' - a long time favourite of the late great John Peel. It features Cibelle, Tracy Lee Jackson, David Piper, Glen Duncan and yours truly amongst others

Enjoy and love him

www.brokendog.co.uk

Wanna Buy a Dream?..

Joe enters his newly rented room

NARRATOR:
"Well. It’s a room anyway Joe. Better than a tent.
But there’s the minor complication of the rent.
Take inventory son:
Assets: none
Liabilities: none
Prospects: none
Well, that’s the list.
Wait! There's one asset you missed –
The paternal watch that ticks away your life minute by minute."

Joe gets out an old-fashioned watch and looks sadly at the photograph of a girl in the fob

NARRATOR:
"Look! There’s a liability in it –
The dream girl. She resigned from the dream – why not?
She wasn’t so dumb –
You are a self appointed bum.
Hey look here!
Are you shedding an old fashioned tear?
You don’t cry nowadays.
You live or die nowadays.
Things could be be tougher –
And after all, an artist has to suffer.
I guess it must be a grain of Italian dust left over from your last campaign
Or put it down to eyestrain."

Joe takes a mirror down from the wall and looks at his reflection

NARRATOR:
"Look at yourself - you’re all mixed up
Snap out of it. Get yourself fixed up
Even if poets misbehave,
They always remember to shave."

Joe suddenly sees the image of the girl within the reflection of his eye’s pupil

NARRATOR:
"Say, what’s the matter Joe?
Something gone wrong?
Is your head on wrong?

No! It’s terrific! Here’s something on which you can really pride yourself
You’ve discovered that you can look inside yourself
You know what that means? - You’re promoted
You’re no longer a bum. You’re an artist!
Remember a poem you once read?
“The eye is a camera” it said
Suppose like a film it could retain
The images that glide so secretly through your brain
Have you ever tried to see the shadow world inside photographed by the retina and held suspended in its memories?

This is one of the more unusual talents – and it’s yours it seems
Maybe this could revive your bank balance. Remember, everybody dreams Joe , if you can look inside yourself, you can look inside anyone
Customers? There are so many, one can’t count them
What’s the population of the world?
Almost two billion. A potential of two billion customers
All with a dream to untangle
You’ve figured out a new angle
Get it? Dreams on the instalment plan!
You’ll be in the money man!
It’s a miracle – just as you were a complete bust
Re-adjust!
Wait ‘til you’re in the chips
Then watch the dream girl warm up those chilly lips!
Get on the phone
Make a small financial loan
Convert this tomb into a consultation room
And go into business on your own!"

STEPHEN:
"It's finally done. Phew!"

Check out the podcast "Dreams That Money Can Buy for a listen or click on 'Wanna Buy a Dream?....'

Without superficiality there can be no depth

Sorry, I've been away for a while on the Isle of Skye in the far north. I lost myself for a while there.....

More soon I swear but in the meantime, I thougt you might enjoy this

with love

Valentine

RIPied Piper

I have to say I'm very sad at the news just came in that Syd Barrett is dead. How sad - and it seemed in many ways his life was quite sad too - but who knows? -at least he had the enormous integrity to not do the comeback that he was continually hounded to do and which many of his contemporaries embarassingly did do. I love his music - particularly 'waving my arms in the air' and he had a few really magical years. Beautiful then too.

Of course, Syd actually died many years ago - it's Roger Barrett who just passed on

bless you both....


(syd painting by hu mendes)

For The Dreamers

"This is a Story of Dreams mixed with Reality".

When Marek first showed me Hans Richter's film 'Dreams that Money Can Buy" as a potential project, I knew from this introductory salvo that I was in. It's a difficult, deeply flawed film in many ways but it is also remarkable, extraordinary, ground-breaking, massively influential, comic and poignant in turns. It says things about Surrealism, film, art, the American Dream, dreaming in general and the emergence of therapy-practitioners as the new priestly elite, that hadn't been said before - and possibly haven't since. It captures the mysterious, confusing, meaningless-meaningfulness of Dreaming in a way that few films have - apart from perhaps David Lynch's work - and it's obviously no coincidence that Lynch himself has declared it as a major influence.

I've always been very interested in dreams myself. I can still remember some from childhood and, particularly a few years ago, I felt very guided by them - the decision to make music, the name of the band for instance were nocturnally inspired. I actually dreamed of Valentine before I met him.

And last Saturday evening, playing our score to the film in the Turbine Hall with David and Cibelle felt in many ways a Dream itself. The building now called" 'The Tate Modern' - in fact the old Bankside power station - was my favourite building when I first came to London. Martyn and Sophie from The Tiger Lillies were squatting in a little ancient decrepit building (now demolished) on the area near the west entrance. The giant empty hulk brooded as we crossed Blackfriars Bridge from St Pauls to come to see them. It was very quiet then - and there were rats. But the transformation is also wonderful and it was amazing to stand where the giant machines formerly rumbled and play our music with the giant images by Leger, Calder, Ernst, Duchamp et al flickering above us. If you came, Thankyou - and I hope it felt special to you - because it really did to us and I never would have thought three years ago playing that first reluctant show at the Horse Hospital, that we would be here now.

But then that, I suppose, is the power of Dreams.

THE EYES HAVE IT

On May 27th, the Real Tuesday Weld will be performing their alternative score to the Hans Richter's wonderfully strange 1946 Jungian surrealist drama in the awesomely august surroundings of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. If you wish you can buy tickets here:

< THE TATE >

I will be there, I don't know about you.....

And, I do believe they have gone and recorded the said score for the British Film Institute for the first ever DVD release of the film in July.

Well, if I don't see you there, on the right is a new podcast: 'A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN THE WASTELAND" for you - a little taster of the past and something from the future featuring the remarkable and eccentric English Alchemist David Piper....


with TLC from TCK

elephantism

It's been an incredible year for animals in London. Apart from Alex's Mad Monkey, we had the London Whale and then, this weekend just gone, the absolutely incredible London Elephant. I swear, I have never, ever seen anything like it in the city and I doubt we will see its like again.

Parading up from Horse Guard's parade along the Mall, and down Picadilly to Trafalgar Square doing all sorts of odd and funny peculiar things along the way - this was pure real joy. I actually thought I was tripping at one point. We were singing all the elephant songs we could remember - 'Little Blue', 'Nelly the Elephant', 'Effervescing Elephant' and so on. Valentine even broke into a jig at one point.

I hope if you live here, you saw it and if you don't that you get chance to one day.......

Blessings on those with elephant sized imaginations and ambitions - and particularly on those who managed to keep the Health and Safety Nazis at bay -a gargantuan task in itself .....but oh, what a sight!

May you Plod preposterously on.......

ALEX BUDOVSKY MADE A MONKEY OUT OF ME....

< SEE FOR YOURSELF >

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

“The Trans Pennine express will now be leaving. We’d like to apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience caused to passengers”

The announcer didn’t sound particularly sorry and as the train started to move nobody really paid any attention anyway – well, certainly not me - who had other things to think about. But then, of all the many inconveniences caused by late departures and arrivals over the years, I couldn’t have realised the particular significance of this one - though there may have been a clue a little while later when, gazing out the window at passing fields, I felt overcome with a strange, gentle but intense feeling of unexpected contentment.

My sister met me at the station with open arms.

“He just died.” She said and started to cry.

The time I last saw him, the window by his bed was open and the spring breeze wafted the sound of Astrid Gilberto’s ‘How insensitive’ into the room from the little radio on the ledge. The handsome, skinny, black French man in the next bed was depressed and defiantly resentful with the loudly cheerful nurses. But who could blame him? This was a waiting room - and for him, dying with cancer before his time - what point was there in social niceties?

My father's skin seemed like a membrane wrapping his shrinking body but it had become strangely beautiful in its detachment. The purple and blue bruises, the copper-green wriggles of veins, the parchment like transparency blended organically with the plastic, plaster and bandage fragments of various recent,fruitless, surgical interventions. As with apparently anybody whose body is fading, his eyes had assumed a dark, bright luminosity.

Things were said – too personal to record here where they might seem clichéd or banal – but which of course in that place had a poignancy and depth amplified by the context and our previous emotional reserve. But profundity jostled with non-sequitorial nonsense, dream seamlessly mixed with reality as the morphine ebbed and flowed. Expressions of affection were chased down labyrinthine corridors by peremptory instructions dryly issued to imagined companions. The ward itself became superimposed upon a room in our family home and floating names from the past attached themselves to passing visitors. However, it was a mistake to try to empathise by pretending to concur with his hallucinations for he could at any moment open his eyes, stare straight at you questioningly with complete lucidity.

I tried to keep him alert by talking about things from years ago. Childhood holidays, favourite relatives, a shared love of old English dance band music. We sang "I’ll see you in my Dreams" and a few other old favourites together a few times. He fell asleep again and so I sketched him as the afternoon slipped away. Then, just before it was time for me leave for London, he opened his eyes and said:

“Thank you”

I was shocked

“For what?!”

But he just looked at me and the distinctions of parent and child seemed to disappear. I suppose it was simply just one person being grateful with another for having been alive. No need for explanations or protests or polite humility. And, amazingly, that would be the last time I spoke to him.

The funeral was held at the Church that had been such a significant part of our childhood. I had rarely visited it since but the old words slipped out as easily as if I had said them only the Sunday before. So many turned out for the wake that we were startled into a re-evaluation of the respect in which his peers and a wider community of acquaintance held him. My friends Glen (who feels like a brother anyway) and Jed - who had known him since we were all children - came up with us to say goodbye. Afterwards, we climbed the hill onto the moor behind the house and drank and laughed with my sisters and the kids.

Who knows what the soul looks like? And who knows how another really sees or really feels themselves to be? At the hospital, I had spent some time with his body. The priest had gone but I was thinking of that traditional Catholic vision of the final journey to the Pearly Gates and suddenly a very palpable image of my father appeared in my mind. But strangely, I didn’t imagine him struggling up the steep road towards St Peter on crutches as I last remembered him. Nor striding purposefully toward his maker as I recall him from childhood – a tall, strong, implacable defence between me and the world. Nor, even as he must have been in his prime - in soldier’s uniform in some train carriage - before I even existed or before even my Mother knew him.

[ LISTEN - I'll See You In My Dreams ]

No. It was most peculiar. What I saw was a dirty faced, dark haired, eleven year old boy in short trousers turning, looking up and then running wildly up a green hillside toward a brightness on the skyline.

RIP

SONNY BLAKE

There's a little man called Sonny Blake who wears a grey trenchcoat and a furry cap with ear muffs and he smells of piss and faintly, of shit. He has big dark eyes and looks a little like a monkey. His shoes are long, shiny and black like Chaplin's. He carries an ancient red kit bag and pulls a decrepit old lady's shopping trolley with what looks like some Victorian underwear poking out the top. He whistles and wheezes and talks to himself and now and again he breaks into song. He frightens you and repulses you. You see him round Clerkenwell and he leers at you knowingly.

One quiet Sunday afternoon, I stumbled, devastated, back down the stairs from Amina’s flat. Sonny was at the bottom in the alley poking around in his bag. I pushed past him toward the street and, as I passed, he struck up one of his old jazz numbers in his reedy, phlegm filled warble…

'Who's sorry now......'

Unaccountably, of a sudden, I completely and instantaneously lost myself. I rounded on him:

'Shut up you fucking scumbag. I'll kill you - you fucking shit-filled, stinking scumbag. Shut up or I'll rip your fucking eyes out!'

Before I knew it, I had the collar of his coat balled up under his grimy neck pushing him up against the wall so hard that he had to stand on tiptoe not to choke.

'I fucking hate you, you little shit, following me around, whispering your fucking insinuating little songs'

His monkey eyes seemed bigger than ever - though strangely they appeared to be staring through me not at me. The stench of his mouth and his nose and his clothes was so bad that I was gagging. I almost felt for a moment as if I really could kill him but suddenly, with shock, I realised that in fact I was totally terrified of him. I let go his coat and stood back. He sagged, lost his footing and landed on his arse on the concrete in the corner of the alley.

'You sad fuck…’ I was still trying to shout but I felt strangely weak and was increasingly nervous of being overheard. I looked at the pathetic crumpled little bag squirming beneath me and tried to re-summon my rage:

'You're jealous of me aren't you, you sad fuck? You're broke and lonely and old. You stink of shit and no one gives a fuck about you. No one gives a fuck if you live or die. And you will die soon and they'll stuff you in your fucking bag and burn you ‘cause they won’t want to waste a bit of London land on you. And nobody will be there and nobody will notice you've gone and if they do they'll think: ‘Thank God that fucking awful smell's disappeared…’’

He just lay there in the corner staring and wheezing. I felt a migraine beginning. I turned my back on him and went on mumbling for some time with my head against the cold, damp brick wall next to the fire escape stairs.

After a couple of minutes, I realised that there was no longer any sounds coming from behind me.

'Fuck.’ I thought ‘I've killed him.'

I panicked and spun round.

Impossibly, Sonny had disappeared. On the floor whre he had lain prostrate was a piece of paper. I picked it up with no small amount of fear and unfolded it. In a beautiful copperplate hand was written:

"I love you"

Made of Stone

The more I got to know Valentine, the less I felt sure about him. I remember once we were on the tube because we couldn't find a cab. Although he could be a snob at times and would never normally take public transport, when he did, he looked around him with great interest. This particular night, on the platform at Farringdon, I saw him smile as he watched a couple of lovers - a pretty, black haired girl and her combat-trousered, small spectacled beau - necking on their way home. We got on the train and found ourselves in a carriage with them and with three Geordies in town for a soccer match. The Geordies were terribly pissed. Now I've been terribly pissed on the tube myself many times but whereas I tend to become withdrawn and maudlin, they were loud, obnoxious and confrontational. As usual, when there is any sign of trouble, the other passengers buried themselves in their magazines, their books, the advertisements above the windows - even in the pattern of the fabric on their seats –anywhere or anything not to catch the eye or attention. I took a particular interest in the sleeve of my jacket although Valentine carried on looking at the couple and smiling slightly as if lost in reflection. They, meanwhile remained absorbed in themselves - oblivious to the growing tension around them. Sneaking a glance up I noticed one of the Geordies poke the others and gesture towards the lovers. He staggered over, stood in front of them and bellowed:

'Is this train going to Bephards Shush?'

The carriage fell silent. The couple tried to ignore him

'Oi pet, I said: ‘Is this train going to Bepards shush?’’

The girl looked up, shook her head and looked down again.

'Can you give me directions then?'

She looked up again and nodded. He belched and grinned at the others who tittered.

'What’s the fastest way down your knickers pet?'

I winced. The girl looked down. Her boyfriend blushed. The carriage froze. The Geordies fell about laughing. Then, number one stretched out his hand, grabbed the girl's and pulled it towards his crotch. Her boyfriend stood up and pushed him away. Lout Number One grinned at him and then very deliberately, almost carefully, hit him very hard in the face. The boyfriend crumpled. The girl stood up, reached toward him and turned unbelievingly to the other passengers - all of whom were desperately trying to pretend nothing was happening.

'Please.........'

I was terrified and was trying to persuade myself to do something but my legs felt completely leaden. I just could not seem to move apart from to look at Valentine. Unbelievably, he was still smiling slightly as if still lost in his own thoughts. But then, suddenly, as if coming to, he leant up off the rail and walked the few paces down the carriage past the boy slumped in his seat and the girlfriend bending over him. The Geordies were looking on expectantly, still grinning.

'That really wasn't very nice old chap' he remonstrated gently
'I really think you should apologise you know'

Lout Number One looked him up and down with disbelief. The others guffawed and pressed up behind.

'What did you say cunt?'

Valentine gave the boy his handkerchief

'I said: “I really think you should apologise old sport!”'

With the other passengers I felt a miasma of fear and tension envelope the train. It felt to us all as if something terrible was about to happen. Whether through shame or sheer desperation to get it all over with, I managed to force myself, shaking, to get up and stand behind Valentine.

He turned to me.

'Don't you think so too old boy?'

I shook my head but he just smiled beatifically again until suddenly, the lout grabbed hold of the lapels of his beautiful suit, pulled him forward and head butted him very hard. There was a sickening crunch. I looked away. Everything stopped - even the train. There was complete silence in the carriage. I looked up. But Valentine was standing exactly where he was - and was still smiling. The head-butt didn't seem to have had any effect on him whatsoever - apart from a bit of gob or snot or blood that had landed on the lapel of his jacket. He looked down, noticed this and suddenly stopped smiling. He looked up towards his assailant upon whose face a scarlet mess had blossomed.

'Oh, now that really isn't on old sport '

He reached out and stroked the lout's cheek. The tension in the carriage thickened further at this most surreal of moves. The train juddered into life again although I could see an elderly man edging toward the emergency lever. Valentine reached further around the back of the lout's head and pulled it towards his own face. We heard him say, very gently:

'If ...you …..don't .... apologise,........ I'll rip ..…. your ...heart ....out'

I could see him as he said it. He was smiling again but when I looked at his eyes, my stomach churned. They had a look that was completely alien. I had a dizzying impression of something distant, cruel, cold and terrible.
There was a noise from the lout. I turned toward him. His face was contorted like some weird, giant baby begging for something. Suddenly there was a very bad smell. It seemed he had shit himself.

Valentine let him go and stepped delicately aside as he fell away and slumped to the floor, retching and sobbing. The old man pulled the lever, the train came into Kings Cross, the doors opened and the passengers pushed at each other in a rush to get off. The Geordies remained silent and still at the end of the carriage staring and fearful. The girl helped her boyfriend up. He was sobbing too.

'Thanks' she said but she didn't look at Valentine

'You're more than welcome my dear!' he said as he looked down at the lout and poked him with the pointed toe of his boot.

'Well?'

' Let me....Don't....Sorry. Alright, I'm fuckin’ sorry.......I didn't mean nothing, I...'

He wouldn't look up off the floor. The other Geordies remained backed away. Valentine winked at the girl.

'Tragic isn't it?'

She looked back at him nervously

'What did you....?'

'Oh you know, just a bit of the old assertiveness training!'

Her boyfriend pulled her hand and they jumped from the train as a guard got on.

'This chap's been being rude to some of your passengers old sport' said Valentine - ' and he seems to have got himself in a bit of a mess too!'

He turned to me:

'Come on pilgrim' he put his arm around my shoulder

'I think we'll get a cab now'

Valentine Rose

'What's your surname?' I asked him

He raised one eyebrow

'Rose'

'Valentine Rose? Are you kidding?'

'No I'm not kidding. It was my mother's idea of a joke old sport. Actually, I rather like it.”

'It must have been hell at school'

'School? Oh, I didn't go to school. Educated at home you know!'

He twirled his cane

'My mother was very particular. Very, Particular.'

'What's she like then?'

“Oh, she’s a great beauty. The greatest some say.'

He said this entirely seriously and apparently without any conceit

'Married beneath her of course. Her friends never really forgave her. Very proud woman. Very concerned with appearances. Gets quite jealous of the younger generation. Particularly the ones who aren't in her social bracket.'

He looked rather regretful as he said this and took off his round, green glass, shaded spectacles and began to polish them. I noticed that he blinked a little in the light

'Are you short sighted?' I asked

He put the spectacles back on

'Oh, I should say so. Practically blind old sport. Mind you it helps when you do what I do'

'What do you do?' I asked. The space around us suddenly seemed strangely hushed and far away

'Oh, you know, I like to bring people together'

He paused and smiled at me, lit another cigarette then looked speculatively at the gathered people in the club around us

'Or sometimes .....to tear them apart……'

XO download your valentine's day kiss here XO

the last days of cigarettes

Another year. Time goes so quickly now - I can barely keep up. It's funny isn't it? These days I never know when it's the weekend or a new month or even when it's time to go shopping or do the laundry

But I wanted to tell you that it's over. Really, this time. It's been a long romance - and you have left me with a lump in my throat and maybe a hole in my heart. You are always there waiting for me I know but you're killing me and each kiss leaves me gasping for breath. There is hardly anywhere we can go together now anyway and without you they say things will be better. Serge Gainsbourg, Bill Hicks, Humphrey Bogart, every French film I ever saw, every 1940's film I ever saw will always remind me of you. Clerkenwell and London will never be the same. Post coital langour, the drinking dens, the end of the evenings, waterloo bridge, Paris will never be the same.

We took drugs together, made love together, sung together. we even managed to dance together. You kept time through all those conversations about life, love, lust, longing. I shared you with friends, took you to business meetings, introduced your guest appearances on stage. I hid you from my family for so long but you forgave me. You always forgave me. You were always there waiting.

You are long and pale and slim. I have unwrapped you so many times. You make me burn. I can catch your scent - right here, right now

Will you forgive me this? For I am leaving you. Will i miss you? I hope so and I hope not.....

Yes, i really must give you up

with love

Stephen

Happy Winter Solstice ...

Here's a little ludicrous something for you
courtesy of
Father Budovsky and his little helpers

Death of the British Bohemian

It's nearly Christmas, nowhere near Easter and yet, somehow, I feel like I have been resurrected. I wonder why? It has been a very strange year - what with Stephen disappearing /dying and all that. Still, soon it will be done and then there will be another one......

Last week I met up with a very nice chap called Nathan Larson in Patisserie Valerie in Soho. Now don't get me started on Patisserie Valerie - or Maison Bertaux - or The French House- or The Coach and Horses for that matter - or else I'll get overly sentimental and embarassing. Suffice to say that, if you know it, you will know that - along with places like Jerry's , the Piccadilly Cafe and the Colony Rooms, it's one of the few bits of old Soho left. Now I don't want to sound too retro or whatever but in the ghastly homogenity and suffocating cafe-latte niceness of Blair's Britain, it's a relief to be able to passive smoke in peace somewhere. I know that there isn't anything particularly beat or bohemian about some of those sad, pissed-up old lags in the Coach but at least it looks like a pub - or rather, should I say, it IS a pub - there are plenty of places that look like pubs - but aren't, aren't there? It's amazing no? A few years ago, they ripped the guts out of all the old places and either tried to make them look like they were in New York, or did the gastro thing, or gave them that hideous new 'media' look.......and now, they have decided to change them again and are trying to make them look like ......pubs.....(I was in the Coach the other day with a friend - who was torn up over a girl and wondering if he does some work on a hardcore porno it might help get his rather wonderful non-porno films a chance - and he told me that the place will soon be sold - to a member of Madness - let's pray he's sane enough to leave it exactly like it is).

Anyway, so I met up with Nathan who kindly gave me the benefit of some of his laconic wisdom. He's a very modest, talented dude who has done a load of cool film music and other things (see www.nathanlarson.com) and who is working on the new Stephen Frears film about the late, not-so-great Princess Di. We left and I blew what's left of MY cool by not being able to find the key to my bicycle lock. I spent thirty minutes or so repeatedly ransacking my pockets, my bag and the cafe, and swearing in a blind rage - only to find it - still in the lock on my bike. Now, what this means is that either Londoners have become a lot less observant - or a lot more honest. I mean they could have nicked my bike without seeming to and then been able to lock it up themselves TO PREVENT ME NICKING IT BACK! Later I went to see Mr Devandra Bernhardt play (rather underwhelming) and did a little show on the University of London radio station with the delightfully Dickensian Mr Sam Steddy.

Now I hear The Real Tuesday Weld are playing a little Christmas show as part of the Elefest at the Corsica Studios on December 2nd - It's free apparently. See www.corsicastudios.com

They are also aiming at a summer release for their next record - hopefully to coincide with The British Film Institute's DVD release of the Hans Richter film 'Dreams that Money Can Buy' containing the alternative soundtrack written and performed by the band (with the remarkable David Piper and Cibelle) for the Reality film production at the National Film theatre this year. The album features a number of VERY SPECIAL GUESTS in addition to the usual suspects I believe.

And oh yes, the recent Channel Four film 'Loving Ludmilla' exclusively featured music by band whilst the wonderfully wierd film 'Zerophilia' has a couple of tracks too (see: www.imdb.com/title/tt0421090/). Of course, there is also the new music for Alex's barking mad film: 'Return I will to old Brazil' (see: www.figlimigliproductions.com).

Speaking of returning, on Tuesday, it is the funeral of one of the last of the British Beats, Simon Watson Taylor at Kensal Rise cemetery. I only met Simon a few times - and fairly recently - at meetings of The Pataphysics Society. He was 82 years old when he died and had led an extraordinary life. George Melly wrote his obituary last week in The Independent where he was described as 'Surrealist turned anarchist, Pataphysician and hippie, Actor, Translator and ......Air Steward.' That kind of covers the bases pretty much doesn't it?

Now finally, I wanted to say thanks so much to another, still living, bohemian - my friend Jo Vella who has really helped me live in the Virtual World all this year. He is a real dude - a very creative, generous creature and, hey, he has his own blog too where he showcases some truly wonderful old jazz (see http://jazzonline.blogspot.com/). Apparently he wears flares, has an afro and a medallion too - what more do you want man?

love and history to you wherever you are..........

TCK

The End

You step from the jetty onto the boat. There are lights everywhere. In the saloon, a full-blown party is in swing. Couples are dancing to a small jazz band on a tiny red stage at the end. "I'm your guardian angel, down from heaven to take you....."The crooner is whispering the words into the big radio city style microphone. He is looking over toward the door where you stand.

You walk to the bar, squeezing through the pirouetting dancers who turn and smile as you pass. The barman waltzes toward you with a glass in each hand. He takes a deep swig from one and passes you the other. It is Dr. Logos, in a high black tuxedo.

“My dear boy” he says, “you’ve made it - I’m so glad!”

You take the glass and drink and wonder if he is drunk. You turn and look out across the dance floor. Everyone looks familiar but you don't actually know who any of them are. Over in the corner you can see a couple sitting at a table with a candle. As soon as you look at them, they stand up, wave and beckon you to join them. You try to move toward them but, as you go, people take you by the hand and embrace you. Women kiss you and pull you into the dance, men shake your hand. You are laughing and crying at the same time although you have absolutely no idea why. You no longer feel unhappy but then you don't feel especially happy either. You finally make it to the table. The couple stands to greet you. The woman is holding a baby. She is dressed in simple, elegant evening clothes and her hair is tied back in a neat in a neat bun. It's Amina. She holds the baby out for you to see.

'Isn't he lovely?' She laughs.

You look down at the bundle in her arms. The baby's just like any other baby but a strange feeling comes over you - although whether for the baby, or for Amina, you cannot tell. You look up at Amina and try to speak but the words don't come. She smiles and puts her finger to your lips:

“I know, I know, don't you worry, it's ok!”

You turn to the father, who had seemed like an ordinary Jo with slicked back blonde hair, a slight quiff and smart, slightly military style clothes.

“Hello old sport,” he says “fancy seeing you here!” He winks at you

You are shocked into the sudden realization that it's him. It's the Clerkenwell Kid. It's Valentine. Why couldn't you see before? You embrace rather awkwardly.

“Congratulations” you say, “I, I never expected....”

Valentine looks at Amina and winks again. They grin.

“No, old sport, we didn't either. We didn't either”.

You stand for a few moments in silence, smiling at each other and it’s almost like old times. Suddenly the baby gurgles and they look down. You wait for a few moments and then leave them and begin to squeeze back across the dance floor.

The crooner is tapping his microphone:

“Everybody, please! This one 's for Stephen:……. When somebody loves you, its no good unless they love you all the way…”

The old, old words float out. You are crying and laughing again and you still don't know why. The singer beckons you up onto the stage. He passes you the microphone and you start to sing without hesitation

“Deeper than the deep blue sea, that's how deep it is - if its real......”

He puts his arm around you and you realize that it's Sonny Blake - but then you knew that it would be didn’t you? The song ends and the dancers start to clap and cheer. You bow and Sonny takes back the mike

“Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls. Even though it’s been difficult at times, I’d just like to say: you've been a wonderful audience!”

You climb down from the stage as he is warming up for another number and walk out across the floor and up the stairs out onto the deck. People pat you on the back and raise their glasses to you as you go. At the front of the boat you can see the pilot in his glass cabin. He turns and gives you the thumbs up. It is a beautiful warm night. There are a million stars above you and all around are the city lights spinning up into the sky. The shore seems far away but you can see that it is lined with people waving and pointing. You feel a great love pouring from you towards them, towards the river and towards the city. Fireworks explode somewhere. Are they outside you or inside you? You can’t tell now and it doesn't matter anyway. You stand at the prow and you can see that the boat is cutting through the water at an incredible speed - leaving sparks and little comet trails of gold and silver behind it. Huge soft lights are pulsing in the sky like giant heads above you. You remember your mother, lovely as she looked when you were small, leaning over you and laughing and then, there's your father in check shirt and boots, strong and dark and tall like he used to be. And there's a girl on some mountainside somewhere, smiling back over her shoulder at you and mouthing words you can’t quite hear. And the images come thick and fast now and the boat no longer seems like a boat but more like a ship and the people on the shore seem further away and you can feel that you’re leaving the city behind and you can feel the tide coming in and going out through the river and through the ship and through your body in great thick washes of warm, deep red sensation and you’re traveling at a tremendous speed outwards now and there is no more shore and no more leaving and you’re alone and yet not alone, full of longing but empty of desire and then suddenly, all that there is, is just the great….wide………… deep …………..sea.

The Ugly & The Beautiful

We left Clerkenwell briefly a couple of weeks ago. Travelling out of town, we headed into the West - through the ugliness of Reading and Slough - to the beauty of mid Wales where the little literary town of Hay on Wye lies on the edge of the Black mountains. The event was a small, very special music festival called “The Green Man” held in the lovely grounds of a small stately home known as Baskerville Hall. It really was a delightful, languorous weekend spent lounging in the sun, lying on, the grass and ruminating on the strange nature of things. There were very a few minor celebs there, the odd discerning journalist and a lot of bands and musicians who fall vaguely into the category of ‘nu-folk’ or ‘folktronica’ or ‘alt-country’. There was no corporate sponsorship, very little security – you could have just leap frogged the fence – no Starbucks, cash dispensers or franchised extortion. Apart from that and the clear country air, sunshine and local provender, the most refreshing thing was too notice how bloody ugly most of the male musicians were. The women were generally a bit more attractive but then that’s often the way.

Now I like beauty – and beauty there was in abundance – but on the whole it was in the backdrop of the mountain landscape and, if human, in the mouths and instruments of the players rather than in their skin. That is to say, it was a property of the music rather than the way they looked. Take that remarkable wild man of the woods known sometimes as ‘Bonny Prince Billy’ - even his mother wouldn’t claim him as a conventional pretty picture - or take the down at heel accountant known as ’Malcolm Middleton’ - or that remarkable out of work painter and decorator “The Lone Pigeon’. Head-turners none of them but all making some heart-stoppingly lovely sounds. Perhaps it’s the rootsy nature of the genre that makes it possible – perhaps it’s because the ambulance chasing industry types are only just catching up – perhaps it’s because the people who enjoy the music are somewhat immune to the beauty regime that dominates everywhere else. Perhaps. But thank heavens there is some small green corner of the land and the culture where it still doesn’t actually matter what you look like.

Of course, none of this is really news and of course we expect gross superficiality, sexism and ageism from the mainstream big guys - and it’s understandable - if not forgiveable. But the invidious, creeping tyranny of having to be finger- looking good to be given an opportunity to give the world music seems to be spreading to some of the Indies too. I mean, didn’t they used to take pride in giving the most unattractive, nerdy, piss weak, chinless geeks record deals? Look at Belle and Sebastian – well you wouldn’t particularly want to would you? – but, it didn’t matter – because they sounded great (well, pretty good at any rate). Now, things seem to have changed – I mean an A+R friend (who loves music and has very good taste) recently told me that a label she knew rejected The Magic Numbers – because they were fat and hairy. Ouch. Oh dear….Still, it might be possible to justify that with the notion that having a fat and hairy band become successful is the exception that proves the rule - is a temporary blip, a novelty, an aberration before the comforting hegemony of the beauty rules are re-established. Maybe.

But don’t you feel like you are getting short changed? Like you are getting ripped off? It’s like bringing those Schwarzenigger sized pumped-up peppers home from the supermarket. They look AMAZING – but, oh dear, they don’t taste of anything – it’s like eating an idea. And it’s not just music – my dear friend Glen Duncan told me the other day that you are far more likely to get your first book deal if you’re gorgeous! I mean can someone tell me why?! No? Well, perhaps it’s because the people who make the final decisions are the bean-counters and the marketeers – and guess what – they quite often don’t particulary like food, reading or listening to music!

Now being beautiful doesn’t mean you can’t write beautiful literature or songs – look at Nick Drake, Kate Bush, Syd Barrett etc (although, funnily enough, in some ways it might make it less likely.) But we remember them mainly for their music right? And of course, being ugly doesn’t guarantee talent, but many of the people I admire are really not a pretty sight. Look at Gainsbourg – “cabbage head’ as he called himself – or all those old jazz dudes– fat, scarred, wrinkled, bald – and the men were even worse! They were all so stylish though weren’t they?

It’s a funny world and it’s true that there are many noble exceptions and a couple of bastions of non-aesthetic discrimination still fighting the trend – just look at the good old BBC – I mean, it seems you can’t seem to get a job as a political journalist there unless you have huge sticky out ears and a gob like a frog – but generally if you want to even work the door in the entertainment business you have to be drop dead gorgeous.

Now why am I naively banging on about this and boring you to death? You’ve heard it all before and I’m gorgeous myself of course - so what do I care? J Well, it’s just because I was sitting in that field in mid-Wales chewing an English apple and reading a book by some old fright and it seemed so sad to think of all those wonderful musicians that we never got to hear, like all those wonderful writers we won’t read and all those wonderful vegetables we’ll never eat – because they didn’t look right. And, also mainly, to be honest, because I was hoping that when I’m ancient and ugly, they’d let me carry on doing the only thing that I ever really wanted to do: - trying to make beautiful music.

visual fun courtesy of alex budovsky

[ click here to watch ]

Introducing the Band ...

It’s a funny thing being in a band, particularly being in a band like The Real Tuesday Weld because you aren’t really sure whether it is a band at all – and sometimes, it appears that nobody else is either. Now, I like confusion and complexity and ambiguity and, of course, ambivalence but sometimes, perhaps, it’s good to set the record straight.

You see, it was never the intention to have a band at all. I was quite happy working in the studio with The Clerkenwell Kid, never seen and only heard on record. We refused every offer, bribe and prayer to play that we ever received. After all, what would be the point? It was never going to sound like the records unless we bored everybody with huge amounts of equipment on stage and really, why bother? But certain people (Tracy Lee Jackson) kept pleading and promising and badgering and bullying until, very reluctantly, it was agreed that we would have a little party, not a gig mind you but a party, at that delightful odd venue in Bloomsbury called ‘The Horse Hospital’. (By the way, if you don’t know the place, it really is worth checking out – it actually was a hospital for horses – it has a big ramp for animals with big legs, a rubberised floor with drainage channels to catch all the messy stuff and now holds remarkable film and fashion events).

So, I ‘DJ ed’. But everybody is a DJ now aren’t they? (How did that happen by the way? It’s all part of the democratisation of art I suppose – now critics, gallery owners and djs are just as important as the work of those they use.). Basically, I put a few of my favourite 1930s / 1940s / Gainsbourg / Morricone / Chanson songs clumsily on the cd players. We showed Alex Budovsky’s films, Glen Duncan did some readings and we all grooved around a bit.

But, as a surprise, in Tracy’s honour, I had secretly prepared a very short live set with my old friends Jacques Van Rhijn (Dutch aristocrat, great, great, great, great grandson of Rembrandt) and David Guez (French Algerian and James Spader look alike). Another old friend, the remarkable recluse Clive Painter did the sonics. We had decided to dispense with any attempt to sound like the records and performed quiet, sweet acoustic versions of ‘Anything but Love’, ‘La bete et la belle’ and ‘Someday (never)’.

Well, blow me down with a feather but it actually went quite well and, even more remarkably, we all quite enjoyed ourselves. But that really was meant to be that - until a week or so later, we got an invite to travel over to Athens and be wined, dined, watered and fed in luxury surroundings if we would only play a radio show and a little concert. We thought about it for a few seconds, said ‘oh, ok then’, learned a few more songs, dragged in Clive to play bass, bought some sunscreen and duly flew over to that ancient classical city.

Then, no sooner were we back in Blighty than the inestimable Ms Gail O Hara of Chickfactor fame proposed yet another live show – but this time in the insanely glamorous and monstrously mad borough of Manhattan. And so it went on: A residency in Clerkenwell, dates and tours in the US, Europe, the UK and Ireland, a host of radio sessions, David moving back to France, the peculiar and handsome Don Brosnan joining us, the wonderful classical geezer Brian Lee joining us, the live soundtrack to the Hans Richter film: ‘Dreams that money can buy’ (with the immensely gifted Cibelle and David Piper narrating), the odd funeral and Bar Mitzvah and so on and so on

What have I done to deserve this? I honestly don’t know – I mean I can’t play very well myself and I am surrounded by all these amazingly talented people who can! It’s a very, very good deal I can assure you. Rather unfairly, I tend to get most of the credit because it has mainly been me and the Clerkenwell Kid on the records so far – (with various guests including the band of course) - but if you have seen us you play live will know that that really is only half the story. It has been an evolving, collective, oscillating, ovulating thing and I am as surprised by the wonderful sounds being made as much as anyone else!

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, thank you. You really have been a wonderful audience but now I would like you to put your hands together and give a warm welcome to the band:

Jacques Van Rhijn: Clarinet
Clive Painter: Guitars
Jeremy Woodhouse: Percussion
Don Brosnan: The bass
Brian Lee: The piano and the violin

And, lest we forget, the remarkable:

Eyal Burnstein Visual Projections
Alex Budovsky Animations


Goodbye

I, Lucozade

You may have recently seen a commercial for a certain fizzy drink featuring a gang of mad cuckoos jumping around to some peculiar bouncy music (on the television and at cinemas in Europe at least). Well, the music was by The Real Tuesday Weld and the amazing animation was by a peculiar Russian friend of mine called Alex Budovsky. In fact both were developed from earlier films for tracks from the ‘I Lucifer’ album.

Watch the music video: Bathtime in Clerkenwell

I am often asked how I know Alex – I mean he is an ex-pat Russian from St. Petersburg living in Brooklyn, New York and I am a pale-faced, down at heel ex-aristocrat who finds it difficult to leave my bit of London, England. Well, it all comes down to the wonders of this new fangled thing they call the Internet. You see, one day, I got an e-mail completely out of the blue which said in rather broken English: ‘Dear Mr Stephen, I am making a film to one of your tracks, do you mind?’ Very polite that ‘do you mind’ don’t you think? I like that. So, I wrote back in an equally polite manner: ‘no, of course not old sport. But you will let me see the results when it’s done won’t you?’

Now I don’t mind telling you, I fully expected to never hear anything about the matter again or, if I did, for it to be one of those computer generated affairs you can get software to do automatically plus a bit of monkeying around on top. So, you can imagine my surprise therefore, when less than a week later, I received a disc in the post from the United States of America with an absolutely remarkable animation choreographed to the track ‘(still) terminally ambivalent over you’. It had all sorts of malarkey going on between various people in strange hats, a prison, gramophones, a lavatory, a baguette and I don’t know what else. I was charmed and not a little blown away.

Listen to the "I'Lucifer" album mixdown here

It turned out that Alex had discovered the track when he was round at another Russian friend’s apartment in Coney Island. This friend – Radik – had heard it himself in that peculiar and delightful shop: ‘Other Music’ in Manhattan. The very next time I visited that august and noble metropolis, we met for tea and I expressed my appreciation in no uncertain terms – I mean, after all, this was Alex’s very first film – and we discussed the possibilities of another collaboration. Well, that planning eventually bore fruit in the avian madness of the ‘Bathtime in Clerkenwell’ animation and the rest, as they say, is history – Alex went on to win a list of awards as long as both your arms – Sundance, Cannes, Krok, Aspen etc., etc., etc.. He gave up his job as an electrician at the port authority, travelled the world and ended up signing to Palm Pictures. Gosh it makes you think doesn’t it? But, you see, it could easily have been so different couldn’t it? – not just if Alex’s original e-mail had gone astray but if we had stuck to our original plan which didn’t involve birds at all.

You see, ‘I Lucifer’ is the soundtrack to the novel of the same name by Glen Duncan. The book is the story of the devil being given one last chance for salvation by having to live on earth – without sin - in the body of a failed writer in Clerkenwell. When I told Alex all about this, and particularly about the scene which has the devil waking up in the bath, we decided that this would be the story of the animation – actually it sounds quite good, no? So, I went about my business and Alex disappeared to Russia – to Siberia in fact – where he was undertaking an epic trip to a strange and mystical island in the far north. I heard from him by e-mail fairly regularly until unannounced there was a long silence. This continued for some time until one day I finally received a highly excited missive.

It turned out that, whilst our man was crossing the sea in a ramshackle boat piloted by a semi-inebriated captain, there had been a storm and the boat had suddenly and terrifyingly capsized. Plunged into almost freezing water, those on board managed to swim and drag each other to shore where they had to strip naked and light fires to dry themselves and their clothes before hypothermia set in. Fortunately, all’s well that end’s well and everybody survived unaffected – at least physically - by the experience.

But, as the e-mail went onto relate, whilst in the icy water, at this moment of existential crisis, Alex had looked up and had had what I would describe as ‘a white light’ experience as he floated there before he managed to get ashore. Things would never be the same for that Mr Budovsky:

“Stephen, there is no way, we can have the devil in this film, absolutely no way. I have seen the light. But it’s alright, everything’s going to be alright I promise you, everything all makes sense now man… I have had this idea about an army of cuckoos trying to take over London……….’

And so they did.

The Lucifer Connection

Well, the devil’s in the details so they say and, strangely, it seems to be so. For instance, when I first met Jacques (the wonderful clarinet player for the Real Tuesday Weld), he was dressed (or undressed as I should say) like the wicked one himself.

It had been a rather peculiar day. At that time, I was working in Fitzrovia a couple of days a week for someone who did a lot of refurbishment work for The Salvation Army. I was actually designing a twelve-foot high replacement crucifix for a Sally Army hall in Whitstable on the Kent coast. (Whitstable is quite nice by the way – good for oysters I believe). I was bored. I had been out all night and frankly, I felt terrible. It was one of those days when, you know, you somehow how manage to get in to work because you have to and you need the money and if you miss another day it’s over and you keep telling yourself: ‘just get through this, get through this, then we can get home and get straight into bed and everything’s going to be alright’.

I was nodding off and I couldn’t focus. I mean it's not that hard to design a cross right? I mean all the work’s already been done for you hasn’t it? Well, I was making a terrible pig’s ear of it and I could sense the combination of concern and puzzlement / distaste of the other people who were around. (Thankfully, the one Christian present was being very nice to me.)

Anyway, there I was doodling over this crucifix and thinking about the cross in St. Joseph’s when I was small and thinking about my mother (ex-nun) and wondering ‘where did it all go wrong?’ when the phone rang and it was for me:

‘Stephen, will you be my Jesus?”

“Sorry?”

“Will you be my Jesus?”

This was said in a heavily accented French female voice which, although I don’t know how to represent in writing, was unmistakeably that of Sophie Seashell, manager of the crazed castrati band The Tiger Lillies, an old friend of mine and, at that time, co-founder of the wonderful art-cabaret club ‘Nux Vomica’.

Apparently, there was a Nux Vomica show on that very evening and Sophie had decided to do a ‘piece’ around Mary Magdalene. She needed some extras. She had somebody who was going to play the Devil and was calling to see if I would take the part of the Son of God. Having had a very strict Catholic upbringing, I was understandably rather superstitious about it…and then there was the matter of the hangover and that promised early night in. I refused. Point blank. And I felt proud.

But anyway, you know how it is. The day goes on. You go out for lunch, wander round Soho a bit, think about life, come back to work, think: ‘I can’t fucking stand doing this for much longer”, the Ibuprofen and the metabolism kick in a bit and you start to feel just a bit perkier. The prospect of an early night now seems rather depressing. Everyone else will be out having fun, you're only young once, you are becoming bourgeoisie, what about Dylan Thomas? etc., etc..

So, I rang Sophie back:

‘Ok, I’ll do it”…


Four hours later, I entered an upstairs room in a pub in Islington and was directed to the ‘dressing room’. This, I kid you not, was the size of a saloon car. Already in it were Sophie, who was wearing nothing but three carefully placed seashells, and a friend of hers' who was wearing nothing but a pair of horns (and a grin). Sophie introduced us:

‘Stephen this is Jacques”

‘Er, oh, hello’

I wasn’t quite sure what to shake.

Where Sleeping Pigs lie

Carefully, deliberately, I leaned forward and stubbed my cigarette out on the back of the neck of the fat man. The skin sizzled as though melting and opened around and closed around the butt so that when I pulled my fingers away, it stayed there as if in a plate of food. I stepped back and waited for the onslaught thinking: “I’ll get one good hard kick in his bollocks and then make a run for it”. But the fat man didn’t turn. He didn’t even flinch. Terrifyingly, the burn seemed to have had no effect on him whatsoever. Carefully, cautiously, I edged around him until I came into an exact line with the piggy profile resting heavily on the pork-sausage fingered hands. His eyelids were slack and there was a dribble of gob hanging from his lower lip.

He was insensible.

In fact, he was dead.

Wet Dreams ...

A few summers ago, inspired by another strange obsession, I finally left my sky-high apartment in Notting Hill for a new home here in this old Victorian tenement among the tightly clustered streets of the old part of town. From my windows now, it is only possible to see other buildings - in finally leaving my old place with its airy perspectives I descended into the heart of the city - where, directly under me, deep beneath the surface, flows the river Fleet, the greatest of London's lost tributaries to the Thames.

Along with the Tyburn, the Westbourne, the Effra, the Walbrook and the Neckinger, the Fleet now exists only in the conscious life of the city by vague references in local street names and in the occasional watery incident in some deep basement or subterranean structure. But you can't get rid of a river. Flowing down from the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath, filling Hampstead ponds as it goes, descending through Kentish Town and past King's Cross, the Fleet still winds its way down to the Thames as it ever did - only now suppressed into a channel deep below the concrete.

Inexplicably haunted by peculiar dreams of this lost river, for months I bluffed, bullied and badgered Thames Water into finally allowing me to visit it. Accompanied by a gang of sewermen, equipped with full waterproof gear and gas mask, I watched as an innocuous looking manhole cover was raised in a pavement south of Holborn Viaduct. Descending a slender ladder and edging along a narrow ledge, down another ladder and along winding brick passageways, we made our way deeper and deeper into the darkness, accompanied by the ever-increasing sound of rushing water.

We made our way for what seemed an age around twists and turns and along ancient brick branching walkways. Suddenly, we emerged from the cramp of the tunnels into a vast chamber whose floor was covered in churning water and at whose far end were two vertical pairs of giant iron gates. This is the mouth of the Fleet that now only pushes the gates open into the Thames at times of storm.

It was a spooky, confusing place and even my companions seemed keen not to linger. We waded upstream in the warm darkness, listening out for rats and seeing with some wonder the haunches of ancient bridges still buried in the walls above the banks. Smaller tributaries emptied themselves into the stream from either side and occasionally, high above, a patch of daylight could be glimpsed. At the confluence of two channels, we dredged the bed of the water where I found a Victorian silver sixpence and an old, battered silver ring. Eventually, after further explorations we left the stream and climbed upwards again to emerge blinking into the relatively sweet air of Clerkenwell. I spent the next couple of hours in the back of the sewermens' van, drinking tea, smoking fags and listening to tall tales of the subterranean world below the city, invisible and unimagined to most of its inhabitants.

Was it a symbolic journey? Was it, in fact, real? Later, I sometimes wondered if perhaps I had dreamt it too. I still have no idea why it seemed so important and yet, afterwards, city seemed different, I was different, everything was different and a whole chain of events began that day that continues to this.

When I'm long gone, when this city and all its complications are long gone, the rivers will still be there, flowing freely once more, out into the land, out into each other and out into the sea, just as they always did………