25. 7. 2010

Gig of the year so far, no contest: The Mekons last night at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. 33 years in existence, The Mekons are the only bona fide Punk band of the first hour whose albums as well as live performances have only got better over the years. Seven people were on stage, including an extremely funny Jon Langford on guitar, quips and a bellydancing style uncannily like that of Omar Djalili, the Iranian comedian; Rico Bell on acordion, Lu Edmonds on long hair, bug eyes and strange strings, and the supremely, confidently witty Sally Timms on vocals (absentee Tom Greehalgh is ill but on the way to recovery). The repertoire ranged from the oldest to the newest, with particular emphasis on "So Good It Hurts", and culminating in a raucous version of my favourite song of theirs, "Rock'n'Roll". What makes this band so special is a rare ability to extemporise, spontaneously combust and generally crack up whilst still sounding incredibly crisp and funky. - Support, by the way, came from Symposium IV, a new band founded, it seems, by sometime Mekon Mitch Milligan. Their line-up boasted two basses, one guitar and a singer who came across like the love child of Poison Ivy and Robert Smith. This was reflected in her stage wear: Cramps t-shirt up top, Goth mini skirt and leggings below. Bass and guitar throughout sported a grimace that indicated complete befuddlement regarding the chaos around them - but the resulting music was intense, funny and entertaining in equal measures. I shall look out for further outings by this lot.

By the way: so good were The Mekons that I will be travelling to Zurich especially to catch their free concert on August 7th to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the best venue ever, anywhere, El Lokal. http://www.ellokal.ch/

23. 7. 2010

After a somewhat erratic patch, my local curry restaurant Geeta's - 57 Willesden Lane, London NW6 - has returned to top form over the last few weeks. Geeta's is a relative rarety in London - a South Indian restaurant with a wide range of vegetable dishes, including Kichadi, a lovely, tart mango-curry, and a killer sag paneer (spinach with a kind of tofu-cheese). The vast majority of curry restaurants in London are Bangla Deshi run Muslim restaurants where meat takes centre place on the menu. Twice this week I managed to convince myself that home cooking should be eschewed in favour of Geeta's.

First, on Tuesday, I met up there with Cathal Coughlan to hear about his excellent new album "Rancho Tetrahedron". It is an album bursting with wit and savage humour, not to mention melodic and rhythmical invention. I can't resist the temptation to illustrate this entry with another picture stolen from the web - except, this one is actually my own. It was used on the album sleeve of Microdisney's "BBC Sessions" album and has been making the rounds of the virtual world ever since. I took it in my first London flat during my first interview with Cathal's first band, Microdisney. A few weeks earlier I had been introduced to Cathal and Sean O'Hagan in my then local pub, The North London Tavern. Legendary PR-man Chris Carr had his offices a hundred yards down the road in Kilburn High Road. After "work", he liked to bring his clients to the pub for a valedictory jar or two. Thus, we had the priceless spectacle of a ratarsed Robert Smith falling backwards on his bar stool and ending up flat on the floor. In later years, Chris revolutionised the office/pub concept by setting up his stall at the Glasshouse Pub in Soho. Just before lunchtime he would arrive to claim his table by the window. Bands/clients would tumble through the doors in hourly intervals to join him at this "desk" and discuss their future. Alas, every once in a while, the first couple of meetings would drastically overshoot, resulting, by the end of the evening, in a vast pile-up of bands, all royally plastered, happy and entertained, without any "meeting" having taken place at all.

A couple of days later Helen Paris and Leslie Hill, aka the performance artist group curious, came to say goodbye before their relocation, first, to Madison, Wisconsin, then to San Francisco (http://www.placelessness.com/).

19. 7. 2010

I haven't exactly been brimming over with ideas and élan since returning from Switzerland. Perhaps the year-and-a-half of relentless deadlines, including two intense book writing periods, have finally caught up with me. Nevertheless, there were a few highlights. The first was a daytrip to Cork in Ireland to interview Prof. Alan Myers for Watch International about his research into the history of the watch movements made in the 1870s by Florentine Ariosto Jones, the founder of IWC Watches. Unfortunately, the flight that was booked for me allowed for barely four hours on Irish soil. Enough, at least, to be able to have a look at Mr. Myers's great little mini zoo containing a fine selection of geckos and African dwarf hedgehogs.

On a summery afternoon I traipsed into town to talk to Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters about his band's fine and entertaining new album. Jake turned out to be a charming and thoughtful interviewee. We ended up talking at length about literary interests - he is a enthusiastic Haruki Murakami reader - and about Elton John's remarkable new album.

Elton had introduced this new album a couple of days earlier at an event in the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road. It turns out he has done a Robert Plant, that is, he has hired producer T-Bone Burnett and made an album that is considerably rootsier than anything he has done before. Even more remarkably, listed as co-author and co-pianist on many songs is Leon Russell. Russell was once a member of Phil Spector's studio band, organised Joe Cocker's legendary Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour and worked with everybody from Dylan to Clapton before falling off the radar in the 80s. Elton John turned up personally at the cinema and submitted himself good-naturedly to an on-stage interview by DJ Paul Gambaccini. His pop days were over, he said. Now he was looking forward to making many more albums in the spirit of this new one.

Another pleasant afternoon was spent at Rak Studios in St. John's Wood to hear a few tracks from the new album by The Script. Now, I must admit that their U2-derived pop-rock isn't really to my taste. But it was good to see that this band could actually be bothered to turn up for such a potentially deadly dull session and introduce their songs with panache and wit.

14. 6. 2010

Here´s my favourite photo from a recent session with photographer Danny Wilder (watch out for his new band The Silver Lizards). It looks like I´m sitting in a Sputnik capsule, circling the moon. Laika not pictured.

Funny, this business about expectations in England. On one hand, good manners and stiff upper lip demand a kind gallows-humour in advance, cf: "ah, of course, it'll be the same cock-ups all over again, it's always the same, we'll manage to wrest defeat from the jaws of deserved victory." On the other hand, British society from bottom to top is suffused with a huge sense of entitlement. Thus, Fabio Capello only spoke for the nation when he said before the World Cup game against the USA that this was a game "we expect to win". Well, "we" didn't. And already the knives are out: Today's Sun sees four reasons to call Capello "mad". And the Guardian suggests that "we" don't pay Capello £ 6 million to make so many mistakes. The Sunday Star found a perfect way of dealing with the situation: the back pages were filled with insults for "Clown Green", the "Rob-bish" goalie who "dropped us in the brown stuff". The front page declared: "Don't panic, we WILL still bring Cup home".

Which brings me to a couple of announcements in my own cause. I will be in Zurich from June 18th until July 2nd. On June 18th and July 1st I will be taking part in the Radio DRS4 Football World Cup discussion round. These take at 10 15 in the morning.

On June 22nd, this time on Radio DRS3, I will be talking about my new book, "Der Thriller um Michael Jackson" in which I have tried to come to grips with the fascinating phenomenon that is "the Michael Jackson fan". Either on June 18th or on June 25th, I will be a guest in a DRS3 "Black Music Special" devoted entirely to Michael Jackson.

Also on June 22nd, I will be playing the latest CDs from London in that evening`s Sounds.

11. 6. 2010

I did indeed find a collection of poems by John Ashbery on my shelves. It's called "Chinese Whispers". Alas, I haven't a clue what any of them mean or try to say to me. So far, at least. However, the writing is still somehow captivating enough to make me want to persevere. It's a bit like the short stories and novels of Donald Barthelme which at some stage a few years ago I devoured one after another. Practically all of them left me completely bamboozled and not in the least wiser about their intention or meaning.

Went to see the new "Exposed" exhibition at Tate Modern. It's supposed to show up the connections between photography, CCTV, voyeurism, intrusion of privacy etc from the first days of the camera. Basically, it's a great collection of photos, many of them black and white. I suspect I will have to read the catalogue to come up with a few more insights into the subtleties of these connections, other than that photographers have always been thick-skinned about their subjects' sense of privacy. I also suspect that a the exhibition is only scratching at the surface of its field since it clearly can't reproduce anything from the more disturbing pornsites on the internet.

On a gloriously sunny Friday I met Kele Okereke by the canalside near Old Street to talk about his first solo album "The Boxer". I remembered him from a previous occasion as someone who, despite his reputation as an anti-interviewee, was quite happy to hold forth about a variety of theories and hypotheses and tastes etc. This time, however, he seemed rather more reserved. Interestingly, after his coming-out a couple of years ago, he refused point blank to discuss any aspect of this.

On Tuesday I met up with Martina Topley Bird in a café on King's Road. We were there to discuss her excellent new album, out in July, containing a numer of sparse re-workings of older songs, and four new ones. It was a most civilised and pleasant way to spend a rainy morning. She asked me to guess how much the pot of honey she was carrying had cost her. I guessed about £ 3. I was out by a mile. It had set her back $ 70. She hadn't seen a price when she picked it up in an LA deli and was so shocked when she was told at the till she couldn't put it back. Apparently, however, it does wonders for the voice.

After parting from Martina I had a look at the new Saatchi Gallery, also on King's Road. It's massive, much bigger than I'd anticipated. The whole building is filled with an exhibition of new young British artists. These seem preoccupied with the idea of wrestling the viewer out of his comfort zone by confronting him with "ugliness" in all sorts of manner: ugly colours, ugly pictures, ugly plastics, ugly etc. Still, I loved John Wynne's installation "Installation for 300 Speakers, Pianola & Vacuum Cleaner". And Richard Wilson's "20:50" - essentially a room half filled with black crude oil - is as astonishing as it was in the old gallery in St. John's Wood, only now the room is much bigger.

4. 6. 2010

What I forgot to mention in the last dispatch: I also went to see The Chemical Brothers live at the Roundhouse. I was well glad to find a pair of earplugs in my jacket pocket. It was loud. I really can't see how anybody can get any pleasure or, indeed, ecstasy, out of this sort of jet plane volume. Clearly, however, the crowd - old fans, 30+, at the back or seated on the balcony, young fans up front - were well pleased with what they got: a first set containing the complete new album, played A - Z and accompanied by impressive visuals, and a second set with a few greatest hits. Personally, despite the state-of-the-art "show", I found the whole experience curiously unsatisfying. The fantastic(al) imagery and the huge sound seemed there mostly to paper over the fact (to my non-dancing and sober ears) that the new tracks are musically rather banal.

27. 5. 2010

The month has zipped past a good deal quicker than a Yes album. This was mostly due to the fact that I had my second Michael Jackson-book to finish. "Der Thriller um Michael Jackson" is an attempt to get to grips with the phenomenon that is the "Michael Jackson fan". Based on a series of interviews as well as a pile of questionnaires sent in by the participants of a handful of MJ fan forums, it was fun to write. Hopefully it will be fun to read, too, and not just for the MJ fans themselves.

Writing - and the odd rumble of panic about the deadline - took up most of my time, so there isn't much else to report. Oh, I did meet Ozzy Osbourne for an interview. He was in good form. Particularly amusing was a description of how his 17 dogs take him for a walk. I also interviewed Macy Gray. This woman has a real knack of making me nervous and thus ask shit questions. Perhaps this is because she does the "hell, am I bored"-look better than anybody else I've ever interviewed. All the way through our twenty minutes she kept wobbling her leg which was rather disconcerting since I was sitting next to her on the sofa and therefore was made to wobble along with her. Meeting Conor O´Brien aka Villagers was a much more relaxed encounter. He whetted my appetite for the American poet John Ashbery.

After delivering my manuscript at midnight on Wednesday last week, I caught the first plane to Munich to record a TV interview about Michael Jackson for Focus TV. I took the opportunity to stay on a couple of days, thoroughly enjoying the great hospitality and CD collection of Katharina and Dr Will, Bavaria´s one and only honorary New Orleansean groove master. We went along to a free festival of Munich bands in an arts centre called Gasteig and saw a superb Bavarian chamber-oompah outfit called Unterbiberger Hofmusik, complete with harp, Lederhosen, excellent jazzy arrangements and a band leader sporting the fabulously otherworldly name Franz Josef Himpsl.

18. 4. 2010

Quite funny, really, how the cloud from a minor volcano eruption can overshadow even politics in the run-up to a general election. Funny, also, how an exceptionally authoritative performance of Lib-Dems leader Nick Clegg in a live-TV-debate with PM Gordon Brown and Tories-hopeful David Cameron has raised the profile of the third party to such a degree that the others have turned on them with a vengeance, having pretty much ignored or patronised them for so long.

Politics in the pub, too. I sat, as I like to do, in my corner seat in Father Ted's the other night, reading yet another Michael Jackson book, when I was joined by R., a laid-back Welsh chap, a few years younger than I. Having just won an away-league-game with FT's darts team didn't seem to have brightened his spirits. Soon, he began to give me an exhaustive tour through the dark corners of his mind. R. no longer liked Labour, no, not at all, he began. Everything that had gone wrong in his life recently was somehow down to the governing party. By letting in all the Poles and other foreigners in the country who were taking away his work (he is a carpenter), Labour had betrayed him and all British working people. I pointed out to him that the Poles and other Eastern Europeans were in the UK because of a mutual agreement within the EU States. And that the UK was a member of the EU because the Tory government had pressed for this in the early 70s. Both "claims" were news to himi, and he didn't believe me. However, he now changed tack. As a craftsman, he said, he still refused to use any measurements other than inch and yard and pint as a matter of principle. He couldn't see why the government had sold out by agreeing to the use of metres etc. According to him, what should have happened was that the rest of the EU would have been made to switch to inch and yard and litres. It took me a while to realise that R. wasn't trying to be funny. He was deadly serious. If one man who drank Guinness joined a club with nineteen other members who all drank Cider, I asked, would he deem it reasonable that the nineteen Cider drinkers would be asked to switch to Guinness because the new arrival preferred it that way? Now I was mixing up things, cried R. The difference was that the UK was the most powerful country of all, and that it was a travesty that they should change anything at all to accommodate those piddling backwaters of Europe. Quite taken aback, I mumbled something about the Empire having ended a few years ago, whereupon R. stood up and left, leaving three quarters of his pint behind.

16. 4. 2010

It came as a real shock to the system today to find myself writing a music story again. It feels like an age since I've had to find words to describe songs instead of the financial travails of Portsmouth FC, Manchester United, Chester City, Crystal Palace and Burnley. Apart from an odd lack of interview offers (except for Kate Nash until patience ran out all round with the now apparently quite diva-like Nash and her unwillingness to re-arrange a date she cancelled in Mid-March), the long gap is also due to the mountain of material I'm perusing at the moment in connection with my second Michael Jackson book. Through a number of forums I've asked fans to help me with the book by filling in a questionnaire about their "fandom", the responses to which will form an important part of the book. The echo has been fantastic, adding considerably to the work load.

Switzerland - before I forget it - was the usual merry-go-round of radio shows, deadlines, meetings, social life, and - as always at this time of the year - M4Music, the annual conference/festival at Schiffbau. This time, I only had one job: I was a member of the "Demo Tape Clinic", category "Pop". It's a bit of a shame that practically no one brings along genuine "demo tapes" in the old sense any more. Most participants nowadays enter "finished product" in the competition. However, it is usually possible within ten seconds or so to tell whether at the heart of a perfectly produced piece of pseudo Take That-tat lies a misguided pop soul or an opportunistic business brain. Equally, it is easy to tell that the spirit is right, even if a recording sounds as if it was recorded in the singer's boyfriend's mother's washing machine. Of all the participants at the Demo Tape Clinic I liked best the witty experimentalism of Electrik Gossip - a sort of cross between Sparks, XTC and Mikachu, closely followed by the superior Americana/singer/songwriter fare of Maris.

Of the live bands at the event, I looked forward most to These New Puritans. However, they were rather disappointing. Their singer, Jack Barnett, appeared petrified in the big hall, his thin voice drowning in the huge sound of his band. A surprise to me were Bonaparte, the hydra-like ensemble of TJ Signorino, a chameleon of a musician who totally re-invents himself every couple of years. Sometimes the circus show seemed more important than the music - I didn't mind. In-between beers at the bar and the bands I wandered over to a nearby pub to see the performance of a bunch of friends who go by the inexplicable name Reno. They were excellent, playing motoric beats à la Can, coupled with repetitive Velvets-type melodies and a neat line in sarcastic and darkly humorous lyrics.

22. 3. 2010

Off to Switzerland today, until March 31st. On Thursday 25th I will be guesting on Radio DRS3's "World Music Special" to chat about my trip to China to meet Sa Dingding. A little later on the same night, alongside Matthias Erb, I'll be spinning my latest batch of CDs in "Sounds", also on DRS3.

The last few weeks have been largely taken up with the preparations for the new Michael Jackson-book. The friendliness and eagerness to help of MJ-fans is quite breathtaking. Within a day and a half of posting messages in a couple of fan forums (fori?) I received more than sixty e-mails from fans eager to fill in my questionnaire. It's fantastic.

Aside this, the whole month has been quiet. There has been one serious highlight, though - meeting Mark E. Smith to talk about the new and excellent Fall album "Your Future Our Clutter". We met in a hotel bar in Kensington in the middle of the afternoon. Mark was exceptionally friendly, happiest, it seemed, when just chatting about the modern world, from football, no-smoking pubs (he's dead against them) daily routines and song writing all the way to crowd control by means of classical music (as it is practised in London tube stations). I still managed to upset him, though. Right at the end I asked him whether it was more difficult for a young band to make a living from music than when The Fall had started in the mid 70s. Firstly, Mark objected to a question like this being raised in the context of The Fall at all: "We're the fucking Fall, mate, we're not like anyone else!" Secondly, he thought modern bands were just big spoilt moaners: "We didn't have any money for three years when we started and we still did it." When I stopped the recorded, he calmed down, grinned, and happily chatted on. "I'm just fed up with this question," he said. "I keep being asked it. Each time my response became more extreme. To the last guy I said: if you can't make a living from music, fucking get a job or slit your wrists!"

The other interview I did over the last couple of weeks was with Ellie Goulding, the singer songwriter who has come out of the blue and hit number one with her debut album. It was bizarre, talking to a pop star in the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town, a place that holds many memories, mostly of a pub-rocky or a serious-indie sort of nature. Nevertheless very pleasant. And Ellie has a couple of really strong songs on a good pop album that to my ears sounds just a tad over-produced.

Another highlight: reading the new book by Nick Kent, "Apathy for the Devil". Nick, alongside Ian Macdonald and Charles Shaar Murray was one of the writers who made the New Musical Express required reading in the 70s. He lived and breathed music (a little too much, as the book shows) and seemed remarkably unhampered by musical prejudices. Thus, I remember him writing huge stories about The Beach Boys when they were at their lowest, and Nick Drake, when nobody knew him. In both cases it gave me ammunition for what had been a lost cause until then amongst my friends: my liking of the Beach Boys had been seen as pretty indefensible, whilst Nick Drake - whose "Pink Moon" I bought when it came out, I'll have you know! It's still there, in near-perfect vinyl condition - was nobody's cup of tea at all (except Andy Czech's, latterly of Radio Osaka and Comebuckley). Mostly, though, Kent wrote about Iggy Pop, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, all of whom he was friends with. "Apathy for the Devil" is an odd book. The first two thirds are a great read, and he describes his descent into junky hell with remarkable openness. Interesting, too, is his version of the short stint he had with the Sex Pistols, thus giving Malcolm McLaren the ammunition for a vicious PR-campaign that clearly used Kent as well as Sid Vicious as pawns in his game of pop career chess. After this, the book tails off. All of a sudden, Kent seems to harbour many gripes and feels ill-treated, principally by the next generation of NME writers who he despises and sees as business stooges. Bitterness of this type doesn't look good in print.

2. 3. 2010

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I saw another gig in Zurich, La Brass Banda from Bavaria at the always fantastic El Local. Incredible. The frontline of the band consists of tuba, trombone and something trumpet-like, supported by bass and drums. They play a sometimes fast and furious, sometimes subtle hotch-potch of oompa-music for the forward-thinking, including a wittily provocative piss-take of reggae's homophobia, and a couple of banging Techno tunes.

Back in London I went along to the launch at Home House of American opera singer Renée Fleming's album of cover versions of songs by the likes of Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie and Peter Gabriel. The chap who introduced her with the agile PR-tongue of a man who knows what's good for that side of his toast that needs to be buttered, compared Fleming's new post-rock-style with Patti Smith and PJ Harvey. He claimed that this album had nothing in common with many other experiments where classical musicians or vocalists had tried their hand at rock and ended up with watered down AOR. Well, to me it sounded exactly like that.

Later in the week I interviewed Marina Diamandis, aka Marina & The Diamonds. Her mannered vocal style is an acquired taste, but she has a great ear for a catchy chorus, doesn't kow-tow to any trend, and, above all, proves refreshingly willing to discuss any number of un-poppy subjects. For instance, I found her explanation for the present hunger for celebrity gossip magazines rather convincing. "After having the perfection of models and film and popstars shoved down their throats for years", she said, "people are dying to find out that these people aren't so perfect after all. Their supposed perfection had only made them feel bad about themselves, now they crave for the dirt to make them feel better." Ashley Cole and John Terry, see, there IS a role for you in life!

22. 2. 2010

What an all round splendid day! After the pleasingly challenging task of writing an NZZ-football story as well as a Blick-column before 12 o'clock, I met up with an old friend for lunch. As we were walking towards Bellevue afterwards, someone called my name. It was Willi Hampel aka Dr. Will from Munich.

I first came across Willi and his partner Katharina years and years ago in London, when they moved to the capital of pop where Katharina was to represent a German pop magazine. They were great fun to be with, especially as Willi, a drummer by trade, played with various Blues rock and indie bands, hoping that something resembling a career might come out of it. Sadly, the pinnacle of his London years as a drummer turned out to be winning a public audition at the Borderline Club to be the drummer of Spinal Tap. They had recently lost yet another "sticksman" to the grim reaper and were desperate to find another for a festival performance in Reading, if memory serves right. When it came to be his turn, Willi thrashed and bashed like the devil himself - not even Rat Scabies could compete against him that night. Alas, I do fear Willi got "the job" not so much thanks to his musical prowess than the fact that he fearlessly gave his name as "Willi". The whole thing turned out to be a bogus PR stunt anyway, and Willi never received so much as a pair of Spinal Tap underpants for his travails. Shortly after, he let it be known that henceforth he would prefer to be called Will, at least in England.

Many moons and beers and parties later, Katharina was offered a new job in Munich, and the two of them moved back to Germany, but not before Will - or, as he called himself now - Dr. Will had discovered the joys of Tex Mex and New Orleans, Doug Sahm and Dr. John. We kept in touch, from time to time the Dr. appeared in London, sometimes with a new album from his new band in his pocket. It was obvious that he had at last found his musical feet. As a singer, he revelled in the new grooves. Recently he even played in London - but somehow I contrived to miss his performance. And now we ran into each other in Zurich, of all places. This was not the end of the coincidencies, though. It turned out that we were both on our way to the same place, Radio DRS, where the Dr. was to be interviewed about his new album "Speak of the Devil", and I was to pick up some new recording gear. Off we trotted to a celebratory beer at the Bodega..."

Speak of the Devil", by the way, is a truly magnificent record. Dr. Will no longer copies the sound of the Southern States. Similar to the Berlin reggae people who have adapted the sound of Jamaica to their own needs, Dr. Will inhabits the sound of New Orleans and renews it from the inside.

15. 2. 2010

In January I was contacted by a young Swiss composer, Niklaus Keller, whom I'd never heard of (http://www.niklauskeller.net/). Niklaus wrote to say he was preparing himself and his group, the improbably but greatly named Kammerensemble Phonopus Roborowski, for a number of performances of compositions completed over the last two years. He thought I might like these, perhaps I'd like to come along if I happened to be in Zurich at the right time? I was, and I did. To be honest, I wasn't much convinced by the title of the performance, "2 Stücke über den Glauben und 7 andere". It suggested an evening of eye-watering seriousness, leavened only with the occasional amen. How different the reality turned out to be! The ensemble contained oboe, cello, viola and piano, plus a charming conductor, but also a rich array of unusual percussion instruments, some clearly home-made, and a loudly huffing organ. Religion came into it in a rather tangential way: One piece, "Consenso", melded quotations from the quran with a vocal melody from the russian-orthodox church. Mostly, the pieces were tightly woven webs of devilish syncopation, subtle melody and rivetting groove. "Die Stadt erwacht" in particular was engrossing, boasting an unutterably gorgeous "chorus". The sly "Blender", according to Keller, combined "kitsch melody, ragtime and noise". "White Coffee" was about "a cowboy in search of milk - a spaghetti Western hommage" (Keller again). The compositions thus effortlessly performed another rare musical feet: they combined an obvious, musical sense of humour without in any way making the music sound gimmicky or light-weight. Keller blithely ignores the divisions between a wide range of styles, creating music that is utterly his own - but should no problems to any one who appreciates the likes of Radiohead, Arcade Fire or These New Puritans. I'm very much looking forward to receiving a recording of the performance.

9. 2. 2010

An action packed week - last week - started with a highly invigorating visit to the Chris Ofili exhibition at Tate Britain. Some people complain that the fountains of colour he makes erupt from canvases resting on large balls of elephant dung are merely "decorative". I disagree. Besides the "meaning" of the colours themselves there is a strong undertow of conceptual, political and social thought in these images, be it in their subversion of mythological and biblical imagery, be it in their cross-references to musicians, sports people and the like. I was hugely impressed - although I found it difficult to make sense of Ofili's newer works, painted - yes, painted - in his new home in the West Indies. But then I still don't like William Blake, either.

On Tuesday I interviewed The Rumble Strips for their German record company - really nice chaps, and a lovely album, even though it's produced by Mark Ronson whose work I generally find hard to stomach. Later on the same day to a pub near Brick Lane to talk to Hot Chip, one day after the release of their new album, absurdly. Again, nice blokes with a wide variety of interests, especially Alexis Taylor who also plays in an experimental band with Charles Hayward, John Coxon and Pat Thomas. Later on, they performed live at the Rough Trade shop, but I found it hard to get into their cerebral shade of dance music tonight. This might have had nothing to do with the actual music. Rather, I find Brick Lane well-nigh unbearable these days. The mixture of curry pimps trying to lure you into their awful poppadam traps (speciality: sugar-laced chicken kurma for boozed up City types) and cool East London spivs with ridiculously recherché moustache designs, droopy eye-lids, and girlfriends that make Kate Moss look humble, just makes my blood boil. This wasn't helped by the fact that my salmon-and-cream-cheese bagel from the Brick Lane Bagel Bakery was - astonishingly and unusually - stale. Or the fact that the only pub where I found a space to wait for the Hot Chip performance and read my book, was so dirty that every time I forgot where I was and rested my arms on the table I had a hard time pulling then off the sticky surface without leaving a sizable patch of jumper behind. Truly, Brick Lane should come with a health warning: "Prolonged exposure to the idiots around here will cause death by supercoolness and vanity".

Later in the week followed an interesting interview with Peter Gabriel whose album of cover versions of songs by Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Paul Simon etc. in a contemporary classical-style, "Scratch My Back", is excellent. I also read an exceptionally insightful and entertaining music book - the memoirs of Police-guitarist Andy Summers, "One Train Later". I've never been a great Police-fan, but Summers also played with Kevin Coyne (brilliant career-spanning box set just out!), Soft Machine, Zoot Money and Robert Fripp. He paints a vivid picture of the times, doesnt't hold back with self-criticism, and tells many a rivetting tale.

31. 1. 2010

January - one long trail of deadlines, ending with a personal live spoon bending demonstration by the one and only Uri Geller himself. More about that later.

Earlier in January, just when Britain had morphed into a more densely populated version of Alaska, the kind people of Folio NZZ sent me to Todmorden in the Pennines. This was to report on the progress of a local campaign to make this town self-sufficient in terms of vegetables, fruit, meat and dairy by the year 2018. Incredible Edible Todmorden (pronounced Thod-me-den, with the emphasis on the o) is a truly interesting concept, turned into practice by a remarkably focused and devoted group of people. Many corners of municipal land previously loved only by dogs and prickly bushes have been turned into artichoke, carrot or beetroot beds, by the train station is a potato patch, there are herb gardens everywhere, in front of the police as well as the fire station and the car park of the supermarket they have planted cherry trees. The local schools are fully integrated in the plans, the kids are taking part with great enthusiasm in communal gardening parties. Everyone I met - including Mary Clear and Pam Warhurst who started the ball rolling, Nick Green, who took me on a garden tour of Tod, Tony Mulgrew, the passionate manager of the school cantine, and Madness-fan Estelle Brown who looks after their website (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/) - was a joy to talk to. No encounter was more pleasurable, however, than that with Mark Dempsey, Calderdale Council's "Support Services Manager" whose job it is to look after the parks (plus, he is responsible for keeping the roads rubbish-free). I came away from our talk with the impression that here was a man who loved his work and enjoyed nothing more than seeing wild plants and trees thrive. He was clearly thrilled by the fact that more and more people were now coming round to his ways of seeing and treating nature.

The month also included a couple of films. First was Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood's portrayal of the pre-Beatles John Lennon's deeply ambivalent relationships with both his largely absent mother and aunt Mimi, who brought him up. A tidy film which was a bit too slick and neat for my taste. Next was "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll", the rude, often inexcusable and wildly funny life of Ian Dury packed into an entertaining 90 minutes or so. I suspect the film got at least one star out of every 4-out-of-5-star reviews it received in Britain just for the incredible performance of Andy Serkis in the lead role, an assessment with which I thoroughly agree. All actors, though, were very good.

Another excellent commission, this time from the Swiss magazine books, offered me the opportunity to read a pile of novels and stories by T.C. Boylein preparation for an interview - only by telephone, alas - with the great raconteur. Question: "What do you tell your students when they moan about writers' block?" Answer: "I tell them if their work isn't in by Tuesday it's a fail."

Here's a conversation that happened in my other Stammkneipe apart from Father Ted's, The Blue Post in Berwick Street. I brought in a passing visitor from Germany, and found an old friend sitting, sozzled, on his regular stool by the bar. I introduced the two.

Friend: "So, where do you live?"
Visitor: "Germany."
Friend: "Do you have any relatives there?"
Visitor: "Quite a few, yeah."
Friend: "Mother, father?"
Visitor: (points to the heavens) "Dead."
Friend: "Do you visit them often?"

The only musical encounter of the month was a most enjoyable one: Pat Metheny, who explained with an enthusiasm that went way beyond the duty of PR his latest project, a set-up akin to the old mechanical pianos. This device allows him to be a kind of one-man-band, surrounding himself with a plethora of machines which produce organic sounds and rhythms (as opposed to computer-generated noises), and playing over the top with his guitar. "Orchestrion" is a lovely album, I have to say, even though in the past I preferred the noisier Metheny-records, like "Song X", with Ornette Coleman.

There was, furthermore, the launch event that dare not speak its name. You won't read about it here because I'm allowed only to say that I definitely wasn't there. If anybody asks, I know about it only thanks to my dear Musik Express colleague Josef Winkler who stayed with me when he came to London last week to attend this exclusivest of soirées. Strange, then, in the light of this 007-type secrecy, that two UK publications have already carried big and colourful stories about said masterpiece, the third album of an unusually innovative, funny and yet movingly musical cartoon band. By all accounts - but not mine! no,no,no! - another masterpiece.

Back, at last, to Uri Geller. Last Saturday, I was interviewed for a program to be shown in March on RTL television in Germany about Michael Jackson. After me, I found out, they were going to talk to Geller about his friendship with Jackson. Naturally, I stayed on to hear what he had to say. He was eloquent, believable, interesting - and efficient. He didn't bother with make-up, just threw himself in the chair and said: "let's go." When time was up, he grabbed his puffer jacket and suddenly said: "Hey, would you like me to bend a spoon for you?" The six of us crowded around him as he picked a tea spoon from the hotel trolley. As he kept chatting away, he rubbed the spoon gently under the crook between handle and bowl. We all watched intently whilst Geller casually chatted on. As the spoon slowly began to bend he handed it over to one of the crew, saying: "It'll keep bending for a minute or two." And so it did. At the hand-over, the angle was perhaps 45 degrees. A minute later it was 90 degrees. Leaving us all just all little mind-boggled.