Loose Ends on Radio 4

My lifelong partner in crime Lotto has a father who, like myself and Lot, also plays the trumpet. I signed up both of them to play the solo on Passchendaele when the band played it on Loose Ends for BBC’s Radio 4. I thought I would alert my spiralling readership to Mr von Neustadt’s marvellous account of the event, from a session musician’s* perspective.

*Why does the phrase ’session musician’ seem to have all kinds of negative connotations in my head? If it does for anyone else, disregard them instantly. The von Neustadts are both brilliant players.

Technorati: Loose Ends, Radio 4, Passchendaele, GoodBooks

Festival season

Around the middle of this month I got seriously festival-ed out. I didn’t even go to that many, but I seemed to fit everything into two weekends, which wasn’t very clever.

The festival I was most looking forward to was Field Day. Loads of people I knew were going. It had the bestest line up of ever. Even the weather was good. But it was a sore disappointment. It’s all been written about before, but from an artist’s perspective:

• Five beers on the rider? That day band+crew+management totalled 8 people. Five eighths of a beer is not enough on a sunny afternoon, especially when our rider states “two crates”…
• A dB limit of 85dB on the Adventures in the Beetroot Field tent. This is quieter than the sound of an unmiked drum kit. The noise police arrived halfway through our set and forced our engineer to switch off the PA. That’s right, switch off. There were stagehands going on stage to turn the amps down, and none of the band could hear a thing. JP swore on stage (“This is fucking ridiculous”, or something of that ilk) and then had to apologise to his mum afterwards. Mums shouldn’t have to hear swearing! It’s not fair! You could hardly hear a thing all day, so it wasn’t just our set – but having to give up on Battles cos I couldn’t hear was not what I had in mind.
• Everyone from our label who was coming down missed the band’s set, because they were stuck in a guestlist queue from 2pm to about 3.30pm. Stage time of 2.50pm. You’d think that 50 minutes would be long enough to queue, get in, get a beer and wander over to the tent…but no.
• Beer queues of 90 minutes. NINETY MINUTES?! And toilet queues around the same. I was lucky in this instance of having access to the backstage bar and toilets. But I felt for those who didn’t. Who were many, given that…
• They ran out of guestlist passes. No one on our guestlist had access to backstage, because there weren’t enough passes. It’s a minor quibble, and one made from a privileged position. But it was a bit annoying.
• Actually, they ran out of artist passes as well. We got the last of them. I dread to think what happened to any bands arriving later than we did. Oh well, no one would be able to hear if they didn’t turn up anyway.

I really really wanted to love Field Day. I like Tom the promoter and he’s apologised to me multiple times in emails since the event. But it was a let down, and I will think twice about going next year if I don’t have a band playing.

Underage Festival, on the other hand, was actually really good. It was in the same park as Field Day, on the day before, and everything was loud, there weren’t too many queues, and “the kids” were “loving it”. Standing watching the Mystery Jets felt a bit odd when there were covetous looks at my Red Stripe coming from all directions, and I’d never realised how used to tall people at gigs I am (they were all so small!), but in terms of atmosphere and enthusiasm and general goodness Underage was really good. Despite feeling too old and too tall.

The weekend before Underage and Field Day was Tales of the Jackalope, near Norwich. I didn’t see much of that festival actually, just Le Tetsuo, but I don’t really like Vice magazine to be honest so it’s probably best I got away quickly. The line up was a bit too Shoreditch for my liking. Says the lady with the sometime office up the road from the Old Blue Last.

The reason I wasn’t at Jackalope for long was Electric Gardens festival down in Faversham, near Canterbury. It was a long old drive including a scary overturned lorry on the M2, but I got there about 7pm. As you walk into the festival you can see the whole site below you. The sun was just setting and The Pipettes were playing and all of my driving aches and pains felt like they went away. Our agent and I wandered over to where GoodBooks were playing then both bought ridiculous checked hoodies to keep the cold away. I liked the whole thing so much that I changed my plans and decided to stay on till Sunday, which was lovely too – all full of sunshine, Maccabees and Hot Club de Paris. Paul from Hot Club and I spent about an hour putting the music industry to rights – hugely enjoyable. I landed on my ankle weirdly and used that to justify becoming part of Jack Penate’s crew and steal a beer behind Stage 2. Once upon a time I wondered if I would ever be as good a blagger as my friend Alice said she was, but now I realise you just have to vaguely know what you’re on about – seemingly at small festivals where the security isn’t quite Reading/Leeds standard, no one questions a thing if you say you’re part of a band’s crew. Fools!

I skipped Reading this year, though I did end up in Reading town for a meeting on the Sunday morning of the festival. I want to go to End of the Road in a few weeks, though I probably can’t afford it, and my dreams of Bestival have been scuppered by a GoodBooks gig on the Friday night. Then I guess that’s it for another year. Unless I go to Truck……..

Technorati: Reading Festival, Truck, Electric Gardens, Tales of the Jackalope, Field Day, Underage Festival, Bestival, End of the Road, Hot Club de Paris

My cat seems to like Roxy Music

Sometimes Glastonbury can be miserable as hell. This year I arrived at midnight and started trying to find where my friends were camped (their mobile batteries had already gone). The mission inevitably failed so I pitched up somewhere vaguely nearby, put on my wellies and went to get some food before being woken at 4am by my tent neighbours. When I woke up at 9am, I still had no idea where my friends were, and I decided that if I was going to be all alone for the whole festival I might as well get drunk and pretend to be Bryan Ferry. Cricket jumper, striped shirt and sunglasses later (with an extra raincoat for added cool), half of my mission was complete. I couldn’t find any beer until about 10.30am, so for the hour before I was drunk, Bryan Ferry and therefore happy, any feelings of loneliness were stopped by saying to myself “Would Ferry do that? No! He wouldn’t!”.

Of course, by about 1pm I had run into someone I knew, and by my morning bedtime I had had an excellent day. At least three people – none of them new festival friends – were calling me Bryan for the duration of the weekend. I thoroughly recommend forging yourself a new identity at Glastonbury, it adds to the flavour.

All of that, though, is besides the point, other than to illustrate my rather severe fondness for Roxy Music.

I put Avalon on in my car yesterday and got quite excited about it. I don’t know if it’s the car stereo (surprisingly good) or the mix of the record or the fact that I was gloomy and it was dark, but More Than This just sounded so wide and expansive and wonderful. Others seem to agree – “aurally seductive” sounds about right. I still can’t quite get over the brillant instrumentation – so many layers! – or the guitar tone that stands out but fits in all at once, most notable at 3′17. But it’s all still got that 80s snare sound that I love – not quite as extreme as Born In The U.S.A. (video), but on a nice par with Poison Arrow (video – will I ever get over the drum fill at 2′35? I don’t think I will) and Sussudio (video – close ups on the keyboard…genius). Interesting that this dude reckons Eno and Bowie were the first to do that noise…I have no idea if it’s true or not, but it would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it? I don’t really ‘get’ Bowie at the moment (ie I think it’s brilliant but it doesn’t yet move me in my gut) but I’m trying really hard. Any extra reasons to fall in love are welcome.

My first paragraphs illustrate that I think Bryan Ferry is ace, but the video to More Than This makes me think that perhaps, pop stars over the age of about 35 shouldn’t be allowed to appear in their own videos.

Technorati: Bryan Ferry, Avalon, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Phil Collins, Sussudio, ABC, Poison Arrow, Glasonbury

I’m going to look for fossils!

The classic words of Cyril from “Five Children and It”, which tracked the latter part of my bank holiday weekend.

I am feeling currently as though perhaps the phrase ‘dirty stop out’ was invented for my very own purpose, having not been home since Thursday. My grandma once reckoned that ‘you can live for free in London’ – I think she meant with all the free concerts, art exhibitions etc etc going on as opposed to food and rent, but I am doing my best to cover all bases.

Ridiculousness began on Wednesday evening, when GoodBooks played the Buffalo Bar for the last time in our four-part residency there over the summer. So I suppose summer must really be over. I went to pick up Sportsday ‘Hugh’ Megaphone from his gig at Cargo after GoodBooks finished playing so he could do a nice late night gig with us. It was brilliant, as ever. Later back at mine Max and I talked till half 5, decided it would be a great idea to go to Primrose Hill, then once up there worked out that we might as well go for breakfast now, really, given that it was indeed breakfast time. And so it came to be that we were sat outside the Wolseley at 6.55am, waiting for it to open its doors at 7am, and then finished by 8am – Max having left his bacon roll when he started feeling the effects of the night.

Thursday was wasted being asleep, then. A friend’s birthday in Bedford on Thursday night and a trip to Brighton to see a band on Friday evening, which deserves its own entry, really, and so it shall do. On the subject of entries I am relatively keen to write about topics as opposed to events far more often, and I have a couple on the go of that ilk. Hooray.

I stayed in Brighton till Sunday morning which was very relaxing – lots of Steely Dan on the CD player (a relatively new discovery for me) and more pages turned in Rupert Everett’s autobiography (very good). Then to Reading town for a quick meeting, roast lunch and, oh go on then, a bit more beer as if I don’t drink enough, before hot-footing back to London to go to, oh, hang on, another pub. GoodBooks came to DJ, JP played MF Doom, and I went to my managerial friends’ party in Marylebone, where I remained until this evening amidst doses of fry ups, more beer, Thai food, Five Children and It, and, last but by no means least, Fraggle Rock.

And now home. Much work pondering and stuff to be done over the past few weeks which I need to hone in on in the next week and get down in ink. At the moment a lot of things are merely ideas floating around my head as opposed to even in pencil – so maybe it’s a week of first drafts.

Technorati: Five Children and It, MF Doom, Fraggle Rock, Brighton, Reading, Reading Festival, Sportsday Megaphone, Buffalo Bar, Wolseley, Steely Dan, Rupert Everett