28. 12. 2010

Clearing up the office in readiness for the "fresh start" that is the new year. In the process, I re-discovered my two This Heat albums, "This Heat" and "Deceit". Fabulous stuff, dynamic, sparkling with wit, and never doing the expected. Rip Rig & Panic next, perhaps.

Zurich passed with the usual blur of deadlines, late nights at Meyer's and books to read: various Daniel Kehlmanns, mostly. I particularly enjoyed his essays on aspects of literature, quite the anti-dote to the trendy and light-weight guff modern British show-offs like Will Self come up with, or even the dry academic stuff we remember from university. Zurich was interrupted, however, by a day in Paris - awful place - to interview Marianne Faithfull about her fine new album. It's a strange experience meeting someone like her, someone who carries such a huge load of history with her. Most questions I was able to come up with sounded unbearably trite the moment they sprang from my mouth, and when I tried to a more "meaningful" tack I tied myself up in knots of meaningless complications. La Faithfull was remarkably tolerant of my inept questioning, even when I strayed into territory she didn't want to talk about.

Zurich was further interrupted by a three-day detour to Munich where Dr Will and Katharina were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary with a splendid party in a place called Brickhouse. They even laid on some musical entertainment, including Beathotel (www.beathotel.de). They and their Rickenbachers somehow didn't just play their Beatles covers with unusual panache, they properly inhabited them in a way that reminded me of Dr. Feelgood inhabiting the Rhythm & Blues of a time long gone. Singer/guitarist Fredrik Forsblad gave me a copy of Beathotel's most recent album "Move On" afterwards. Apart from a cover of "Please Please Me" it's all originals, all demonstrating a fine ear for a dead catchy sixties chorus. To round the night off, Dr. Will himself and his brother Schorsch took to the stage with a gaggle of Munich musicians and played a hugely enjoyable "jam" of R&B and Blues classics. Schorsch H and Dr. Will, too, have a new album, "Together". It's their first together and contains a rollicking selection of Tom Waits covers, Bavarian Blues and "Little Sister". A truly memorable evening all round (BSC Music/Rough Trade).

On an amusing note - here's one of the more glaring examples of the bizarre self-importance displayed by the modern music industry. Just before departing for Switzerland I was meant to interview Beady Eye for a Japanese magazine I occasionally contribute to. Beady Eye are Oasis minus Noel. Naturally, I had to hear their first album before speaking to guitarist Gem Archer (Liam G. will talk only to publications guaranteeing a cover story). So I was invited to their management offices just down the road in Marylebone to hear the album once, and once only, before my date with Gem the next day. The next day, I first had an e-mail from Japan, indicating that the interview was delayed and would now take place late instead of early afternoon. A little later another e-mail arrived from Japan, saying that all interviews were postponed to Friday. Which was the day I was travelling.

As it turned out, I couldn't make the proposed time for a phone interview either. The magazine therefore asked me to supply a selection of questions for someone else to ask. I sent twenty questions and thought nothing more of the matter - until a contract arrived from Marylebone via Japan: I had to contractually agree that I would not use the contents of the interview or talk about them "without prior written agreement" for any other publication than the one the interview had been agreed with. Now, I'm used to such contracts by now, especially from the managers of American artists. But to sign something like this for supplying a bunch of questions is truly a first - and they even chased it up when I didn't respond within a few days. Thankfully, the contract does not proclude me from mentioning the contents of the album. It is without doubt a stinker of majorly toxic proportions. Truly, Oasis without the wit. At least three songs are direct lifts from Beatles tunes. At one stage, the Japanese journalist sitting next to me and I caught each other scribbling "Get Back" at the exact same time. Other songs attempt to recreate the magic of the "Hey Jude" coda, to embarrassing effect. It truly is lad rock at its stodgy worst, all topped off with pathetic lyrics along the lines of "we carry on regardless"...

11. 12. 2010

From today until December 21st I´m in Zurich. On December 20th I´ll be doing my traditional Sounds hour with Matthias Erb and a pile of new CDs and vinyl from London. In particular, I can assure you, you will want to hear the track "The Almond Tree" by Hannah Peel. Anybody who wants anything from me whilst I´m in Switzerland please e-mail me. I don´t go there for holidays, you know!

10. 12. 2010

Thankfully, after the travails of the days before, this past week has been positively peaceful. Only a most pleasant encounter with Knox from Punk pioneers The Vibrators interrupted the daily typing routine. That, and the task of reading Philippe Auclair's (aka the Louis Philippe who made an appearance in these pages only a couple of weeks ago)splendid book on Eric Cantona, "Cantona - The Rebel Who Would Be King", which I had to read for a story to do with the footballer's "demand" that people withdraw all their money from the banks on December 7th. Cantona, as it turns out, made his "call" quite in passing during an interview, dropping a comment in the same manner any of us would occasionally say similar things over beer and doughnut. Philippe´s book is pretty much the best sports biography I´ve ever read, choc-a-bloc with insights that go far beyond the realms of football in general or Cantona in particular.

I was asked at short notice to help out with a Beady Eye interview by the Japanese magazine Inrock I occasionally do things for. In preparation, I trundled along to their management offices yesterday for a listening session of the album. Beady Eye, by the way,are the complete Oasis minus Noel Gallagher. It´s difficult to say anything here about this particular piece of work without jeopardising my chances of a future encounter with the boys. Suffice to say, that Oasis minus Noel sound pretty much what one would expect Oasis to sound like without Noel. Anyway, today, the interview was at first delayed, then cancelled altogether, to be re-arranged for tomorrow. Which counts me out. Because tomorrow I´m off to Zurich. Before that, however, there is another Punk interview, this time with The Restarts in a pub in Hackney. Must dash.

5. 12. 2010

The last weekend began with another trip to the Luminaire - probably the last. It has been announced, sadly, that this most comfortable of music venues will be closed down on December 31st. Alerted by Cathal, we went to see Susie Hug, ex Katydids, whose last and splendid solo album "Tucson Moonshine" was produced by JD Foster and recorded with Calexicoin Tucson, Arizona. Susie was supporting Chris Brokaw and Geoff Farina. Brokaw drummed with G.G.Allin before forming Come with the great Thalia Zedek, and, much later, Dirtmusic. Farina used to be in a band called Karate which I've never heard of. They both strummed beautiful sounding guitars, singing folky, bluesy and gospelly songs in voices not too many "River Men" away from Nick Drake. Somehow, though, their choice of historic, existential and generally earnest songs made them come across like students in search of a troubled soul.

I went home after one last Grolsch in the newly done up Father Ted's which is now called McGlynn's, after Martin McGlynn, the ex-head barman of The Black Lion who has bought the pub. The good news: the toilets have been done up, the cockroaches have gone. The bad news: gone, too, is the digital jukebox which used to be loaded up by a tone deaf musical ignoramus who put on anything he could steal, which meant we had a sumptious choice of Anthony Braxton, Can, Spooky Tooth, Mr. Acker Bilk and even the Incredible String Band´s magnum opus, "A Very Cellular Song", all 12´55" of it. Now, even the few remaining Irish customers are complaining about the extraordinary amount of old diddly-diddly and showband music. I do think the most contemporary album on there - yes, it´s back to the old CDs - is the second last Snow Patrol album.

Returning home in the early hours, I was faced with an unexpected crisis. A Michael Jackson fan was kipping on my sofa. Arriving just before eleven o´clock, she had managed to gain entrance by claiming she had announced her arrival by text, and that we were going to write a book together. Neither of which was true, of course. When she poked her head out of the living room door, I didn´t immediately recognise her face. I did gather from the few words she grumbled before saying she had a headache and didn´t want to talk that she was the well-dressed woman I had met in town for coffee a good year ago. She had written to ask me whether I needed an assistant, but when we met she seemed more interested in getting me to agree to help her with her memoirs, which, she whispered, would be rather explosive in nature. Since then, I had received the odd e-mail from her, nothing, however, to suggest she was more than just a little bit odd. On Sunday morning I asked her what her plans were: "Stay here for a few weeks maybe." she said. "Out of the question." "A few days, then." she said. It transpired she had jumped on a plane because she couldn´t stand it in Germany one day longer. In fact, she now hated Germany so much that she refused to speak German. Also, she hadn´t taken any money with her.

The short and the long of it was that I spent the whole of Sunday driving around London, looking for the friends she said would take her in if I wasn´t. Needless to say, none was at home. Negotiating the Sunday afternoon traffic jams, I had ample time to contemplate the question how far my responsibilities went towards a person who had thrown herself at me out of the blue, without encouragement or even invitation. It would obviously have been irresponsible if not inhumane to just turf her out into the street. She was clearly confused and vulnerable. But how far would this sense of vague responsibility tie me closer to her and only serve to intensify her demands?

The reason I had so much time to ponder this question, by the way, was that she refused to sit in the front seat of my car: "I have to write letters", she said, and that was it. I sat behind the wheel and felt like the mini cab driver taking madame for a ride to the hairdresser. She barely spoke during the whole of the afternoon. In the end I took her to a hotel in Notting Hill, dragged her suitcases up the two floors, paid for a night and gave her a bit of money.

A few hours later I had an e-mail from her, saying that she had lost her keys in my car, she needed them urgently back that evening, I could drop them as late as I wanted. The next morning I had a look but couldn´t find them. Before I knew it, however, she was at my door again, demanding to look for them for herself. She couldn´t, the car wasn´t there. It was when she returned twice more with all her luggage, still refusing to believe that she had lost the keys in the car, that I became really worried. What if she became still more paranoid and thought I was involved in some plot against her? Well, apart from another e-mail asking me if I could bring her to the airport "sometime this week" I´ve heard nothing more.

Sunday evening, Femi Kuti at the Barbican. I was surrounded by Nigerians who were joyously dancing and singing along. Femi and his band were incomparably better than the last time I´d seen them a few years ago, when they were just too smooth. This time, there was real fire in the music as well as Femi´s performance.

23. 11. 2010

To the Park Lane Hilton on Sunday afternoon for a "private briefing" with Fabio Capello about the English World Cup 2018. Despite being rather viciously attacked once again after England's loss to France the previous week, the man presented himself in fine spirits, cracking the occasional joke and generally being a model of politeness.

Last night, York Hall in Bethnal Green. Normally, this pleasantly sixties sort of place (although a well-advertised wellness spa was anything but sixties) is used for boxing matches. But for some reason they couldn't explain themselves, White Lies used it for a small-scale gig to present material from their second album. Beforehand, I interviewed singer Harry McVeigh, an unfeasibly young West London chap who described the gestation of the new album articulately and elegantly. Personally, I find the new album much more interesting than the first, more complex, subtle and dynamic. Live, they sounded like a Smoothie consisting of the whole of Manchester and Liverpool circa 1981.

This afternoon I interviewed Anna Calvi at the Domino Offices in Wandsworth. Her absorbing debut album, released in January, is a genuinely original piece of work. Most striking is Anna's guitar style - a kind of mixture of PJ Harvey's more abrasive moments and the Blues of Peter Green. Actually, the first track on the album, an instrumental called "Rider to the Sea", reminded me very strongly of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" - the same quicksilver warmth of tone. When I asked her about Peter Green, however, she said: "Who?" The Blues is only one element of Calvi's captivating blend. There is a striking theatricality to her singing, at times bordering on the operatic. But she can sing quietly as if to herself, accompanied by a harmonium. Best is the dramatic last song on the album, "Love Won't Be Leaving" a Luminire-performance of which can be seen on youtube. In person, Anna Calvi was friendly and a little bit diffident - clearly not the sort who will supply the NME with loud headlines or gossip. She recently toured with Grinderman - all very gentlemanly and helpful towards her, even taking her and her mini band for meals now and then.

19. 11. 2010

My footballing career, on ice for the previous few years, received an unexpected fillip yesterday. Invited by the nice people behind England's bid to host the football world cup in 2018, I couldn't resist the temptation to take part in a mini tournament in Wembley Stadium, international journalists vs. English journalists vs. 2018 bid organisers. The internationals won, despite me bing on the pitch for ten minutes in each 30 minute game. John Barnes and Bobby Barnes were in our team. Funny place, Wembley. Standing on the pitch, the vastness of the terraces is not immediately obvious. It's just a wall of red, really. But when you start sprinting at full pelt and you realise that after about four and half minutes you've still only covered half the pitch, you begin to grasp the task of a Steven Gerrard playing the full ninety minutes.

Aching all over, I arrived at the Water Rats just in time for the start of another Cathal Coughlan gig. Except this wasn't just another gig - it was Cathal's best in years, as intense and funny a performance I've seen from him and his Grand Necropolitan Quintet. The compact venue kept the sound together wonderfully, and the volume was joyfully cranked up which brought James's crazed. abrasive and hilarious solos properly to the fore. "Rat Poison Rendezvous" and "The Loyaliser" were obvious highlights of an exceptionally focused night. Nice to see Sean O'Hagan in the audience, too.

17. 11. 2010

A peculiar encounter with the writer and essayist Jon Savage (speciality Punk; books: "England's Dreaming" about Sex Pistols, their background and environment; "Teenage" ) yesterday afternoon. We met at the Groucho Club, his "convenient" base when he's down from his home on Anglesey. The reason for the interview was his new and truly excellent compilation of Californian Punk music on Domino Records, "Black Hole".

Savage seemed in strangely spikey and defensive mood - well, perhaps that's his personality. He gave me the impression that he sensed criticism and attack in questions where none was intended. At other times he appeared to take it for granted that I knew nothing - well, I do have to admit that Californian Punk hadn't been on my radar before. But then he'd surprise you with a remarkably candid or even personal remark, often finished off with a piercing and, perhaps, investigative look straight in the eye. The encounter ended with him rifling through my bag as he handed it across the table. He found the two papers I take every day, The Guardian and The Sun (the combination gives me a pretty comprehensive overview, I feel, about the political and cultural climate in Britain, as much as I like or dislike it, and besides, both papers carry a rather good football coverage, which helps the other side of my work). Holding up The Sun in the middle of the Groucho, practically calling for silence all round, he proclaimed: "Why do you buy this shit!" Only then to grin and confess: "Oh, how we laughed when Chelsea lost on Sunday." Sentiments I heartily agreed with.

14. 11. 2010

Friday evening, an acoustic solo night with Sean O'Hagan, Louis Philippe and Stuart Moxham at The Luminaire. They were supported by a young female singer songwriter whose name I shan't mention. It turned out to be a spectacularly memorable evening, thanks largely to this young woman. She glided on stage in a pyramid-shaped brocade dress not unlike the golden hat in a coppit game, and instantly embarked on a strange sort of solo ballet, making a series of gestures as if she was plucking her notes from high up in a pear tree. Her vocals followed a similarly strange und unpredictable path. The whole experience was made still stranger by the surreally unflinching stiff upper lip displayed by the piano player who accompanied her - he betrayed absolutely no sign that things weren't quite going to plan. The woman displayed a breathtakingly wreckless free love attitude to pitch, rhythm and phrasing. Very rarely did she hit the same note as the piano. More often her singing wove around a melody the exact path of which was left to the listener's own muse to devine. And all the while, she waved hands, feet and head about as if she was a drunk fairy fluttering about between the roses.

Not quite knowing what had hit me (had I been watching a new female Jeffrey Lee Pierce? Daniel Johnston? Florence Foster Jenkins?) I watched with relief the more conventional performances of Stuart Moxham (and daughter Melody) and Sean O´Hagan (with cellist Marcus Holdaway). Then it was the turn of Louis Philippe who had organised the whole thing. However, instead of suavely launching into the first of his charmingly pre-modern Gallic chansons, he called for anyone with a passing knowledge of first aid to make their way backstage.

From then on, the events unfolded in front of us as if we were watching one of those ultra-hip 1960s split screen movies. Standing at the back, the right half of the room was taken up by the stage and the dance floor, whilst on the left there was the corridor to the toilets and backstage, some more standing room and the emergency door. Soon, a flustered-looking member of staff jacked open the emergency door. Whilst Louis Philippe was emoting tunefully on the right, on the left half of the screen tension was building up in a positively Hitchcockian manner with nothing happening at all and only a tinge of panic in the faces of the "insiders" scuttling up and down the corridor suggesting that this was about to change. At last, an ambulance man came rushing through the emergency door and - paying absolutely no heed to crowd or music - disappeared backstage. Two or three more Louis Philippe-songs passed before staff sent away a Guinness drinker in the corner and cordoned off a path between backstage and emergency exit. With Louis Philippe still in beautifully lyrical flow, the female singer songwriter, held up by a couple friends and an ambulance man sporting a mini mohican, appeared at the back of the corridor, shoving and carrying the singer songwriter towards the exit as discreetly as possible. Which wasn't very discreet at all, given that she was still wearing her shiny conical frock.

Later, I found out what had happened. By all accounts, the singer songwriter had been pretty blotto as early as six o'clock and continued sipping the red, even on stage. After her set (only her second gig ever, it seems) she took a kip in the dressing room. Just when Sean´s cello player got up and made for the door, the singer woke up and instantly rose, too - and just as instantly collapsed in a heap at the cello player´s feet, hitting her head on the way down. There was quite a bit of blood, apparently. Poor woman, she must have felt absolutely rotten the next day. A trawl through youtube shows that she is actually a really good, interesting and highly individual singer. Clearly all the arm waving and pitch-missing was down to alcohol. I suspect she wishes she hadn't Twittered this on the day before the show: "Luminaire tomorrow. It'll be fun. See how the dress has turned out. Enjoy the evening. Get hammered..."

30. 10. 2010

The premiere of the Springsteen movie "The Promise: The Making of the Darkness on the Edge of Town" at the National Film Theatre, complete with red carpert and special guest, The Spruce himself. The film was indeed fascinating, showing an incredibly single-minded songwriter at work in deeply frustrating circumstances: unable to record his music in an official studio because of a legal dispute with his ex-manager Mike Appel, he spent a full year just writing songs and recording them at his farm in New Jersey. "Home footage" from way back when (filmed by "a kid from the neighbourhood" who was just fooling around and then "sat on the material for 30 years) is interspersed in the film with new interviews with all concerned. As I said: fascinating stuff, even more so, presumably, for the die-hard Springsteen fan who can also look forward to the double CD "The Promise" with 21 of the songs recorded in that year that have never been properly released yet. What the film hasn´t changed, however, is my response to this phase in Springsteen´s music making (as opposed to his lyrics and as opposed to his quieter, later work) - I just find this constant wall-of-sound-brashness stultifyingly boring.

After the showing of the film, Springsteen, his manager Jon Landau, film director Thom Zimny and an MC sat down on stage and had a chat. Landau revealed that he wished there was a digital technology that could have made his hilarious 70s-style owl glasses shrink. Springsteen revealed that "Darkness on the Edge of Town" was meant to be "a meditation on where are you gonna stand". He said the wanted to make a record absolutely about its time: "I wanted to make a record that was essential". The earnestness of this statement was breath-taking - but it also sounded a little bit "teenage" and hinted at a considerable ego. Or, to put it more positively: An amazing degree of conviction and single-minded devotion to the expression of his thoughts. Frankly, I can´t help feeling a tiny bit jealous.

The film has a weirdly mono-chromatic feel, by the way - and not just because of the old b/w footage: Apart from Mrs. Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, and the ghastly Patti Smith, lovingly self-referential as ever, there are no women at all in the film. Given the claims for "essentialness", this absence feels even more weighty. The boys´ locker room vibe is further compounded by just how pretty Springsteen looked in those days, truly the archetypal sensitive, tousle-haired young boy poet.

Afterwards, astonishingly, there was a party at the NFT bar with a steady flow of canapes and wine, going on almost until closing time. Such largesse extended even to fringe journalists like me was a proper throw-back to the eighties when events of this kind were so frequent a whole decade has been boiled down to one large hang-over in my mind. Anyway, an unexpectedly great time was had by all, I trust, but especially by me. Sharon Chevin told me a great story involving her flat in the 1980s, a visiting Lemmy, and, instead of a bunch of roses or a bottle of wine, a large road sign nicked on the way.

29. 10. 2010

Elton John and Leon Russell, live at the Roundhouse as part of the BBC Electric Proms on Thursday. First, Elton played a handful of songs, including "Tiny Dancer", by himself. He was then joined by Plan B. to sing "That's Why They Call It The Blues" together (apparently "The Defamation of Strickland Banks" is Elton's album of the year). When Leon Russell was wheeled to his piano at the opposite end of the stage, he was joined by Rumer to sing "Masquerade". At last, Elton and Leon then joined up to perform the whole of their album "The Union" in sequence, excellently. The band was great, which I'm sure had something to do with the "musical director", the brilliant Marc Ribot. The evening was rounded off by some more Russell songs and still more Elton songs. I must confess that I left after 2 1/4 hours even though Elton was still pummeling his piano with gusto. Pummelled, that's pretty much how I was feeling at that stage. Great show in undoubtedly was, I'm just not made for the sheer loudness and presence of Elton's voice. Although I wouldn't mind a couple of London Prides down at Father Ted´s with him.

A brief word about Rumer. This woman is absolutely omnipresent at the moment. She even receives a 5-star album review in this month´s Mojo. I can´t quite understand this fervour. To me she sounds rather like the new Beverley Craven.

27. 10. 2010

Tottenham Hotspurs v. Everton was entertaining for at least the first half of the game. In the second half, Spurs' energy seemed to wane whilst Everton didn't really have the means to break down the home defence. The result could have been anything up to 4:1 had Crouch not missed many a reasonable-to-very-good chance. As it was, it ended in a 1:1 draw.

I was shocked to realise my membership to The Cellar Upstairs needed renewal. This means I hadn't been there for at least a year which feels doubly bad because, a) I've clearly missed many a good gig, and b) my last visit seems to have been only yesterday. Anyway. This time we had the melodeon/concertina duo Dan Quinn & Will Duke, a kind of folkie Little and Large, with Will Duke sporting the sort of hairdo Slade'sDave Hill was fond of, and a twinkle in the eye. Excellent stuff, truly refreshing, at a venue that feels like my own sitting room with the added bonus of London Pride from the tap. http://www.cellarupstairs.org.uk Couldn´t resist buying the new Duck Soup album "Open On Sundays" (Duck Soup being Dan Quinn`s other band).

On Sunday, homeless and soup kitchen charity The Margins Project organised a benefit concert on their own behalf at the Union Chapel in Islington. Compered by the chap from The Miserable Rich, we saw Jo Bartlett, Cathal Coughlan, Emily Barker, Dan Michaelson & The Coastgards, Alistair Roberts and Robyn Hitchcock.CC played superb versions of "Black River Falls" and "The Loyaliser", accompanying himself on the piano. EB was excellent, too, and so were Roberts and Hitchcock (though strangely croaky-sounding at times).

20. 10. 2010

To Cardiff to observe Welsh football habits at the Euro qualifier on the Friday evening between Wales and Bulgaria - straight from Hethel in Norfolk where I had interviewed Lotus CEO Dany Bahar for Watch the same morning. What a difference to English football habits! In England, any serious game is introduced with some loud post-Oasis tune. Here, we had a couple of male choirs from the valleys singing patriotic valley songs, followed by some Paul Potts-type "doing" the Welsh hymn. The game itself took place in front of 14'000odd spectators, mostly, it seemed from the permanent screetching noise, young school children.

Early start on Saturday to get from Cardiff to London City Airport for a 9 55 departure. Zurich was eventful and busy and all round enjoyable, as usual. Highlights included the gig by Tim Robbins & The Rogues Gallery Band at the Mascotte. I'd never been to this venue and was very impressed. Pleasant size, excellent facilities and good acoustics. The gig was truly fantastic. Robbins's live singing is much stronger than on the record, and the band was a real treat. Afterwards I had an excellent chat backstage with multi-instrumentalist David Coulter (also in Marianne Faithful's band and other Hal Willner projects) and the chirpy keyboard-player Roger Eno. The latter recommended I buy his album "The Music of Neglected English Composers". I have done so and not regretted it one bit. It contains a series of tremendous compositions "in the manner of" - in other words: the "neglected composers" are, in fact, Eno inventions, creating the space for a number of subtle parodies of styles and composers. My personal favourites are Ellishaw Blakehope and Burwell Ruckland.

At El Lokal - as ever - I chanced upon an American neo-bluegrass band I'd never heard of, The Wilders. They were so good I ended up buying their latest CD as well as a 10" Mini-LP on red vinyl and a vinyl single. There are three song writers in the band, and all contribute strong and original material.

After a rave review in the British press of a novel called "Fame" by German writer Daniel Kehlmann who was new to me I bought the book as soon as I arrived. It is indeed a greatly entertaining and surprising read, full of unexpected twists and hidden depths. I finished this splendid novel within a day and bought some more Kehlmanns straight away. At the moment I'm in the middle of the comically arresting "Ich und Kaminski".

6. 10. 2010

Went along to another recording of a "Later...with Jools Holland", and it turned out to be a spectacularly entertaining event, not entirely in the way I had expected. My main reason for going were, of course, Grinderman whose second album I find even more satisfyingly noisy and funny than the first one. They didn't disappoint. On the contrary. The brio which they brought to proceedings was truly majestic. Grinderman were followed - and this was truly one of the moments of the year - by a stroke of genius by the producers. The loud and long live applause hadn't even begun to die down yet, when the next artist was counted in. Brandon Flowers. A more spectacular contrast is barely imaginable. After the maelstrom of libido and wit let loose by Nick Cave & Co., the sheer vapidity of the Killer's pompous, bombastic, clichée-riddled and tedious inanity became so blindingly obvious it was a thrill to watch. I sincerely hope that not one single viewer of this particular "Later..." program will be able to buy Flower's idiotic solo album. Or, if he must (as an Xmas present for a disliked godchild, for instance), do so without going seriously red in the face with the sheer embarrassment. Truly, Flowers and his band of Las Vegas oiks is nothing but the modern version of the Bay City Rollers.

A few days later I had the great fortune to gain entry into the Grinderman gig at the intimate Garage at Highbury Corner. There were terrible problems with the sound, and Cave's tiny keyboard had lost a key key on the way, but this band is so good that such minor mishaps actually felt like they were part of the joyous, improvisational groove. Happily, someone had been generous enough to include an after-show party wristband with my ticket, and so I found myself able, after years of never running into them any more, to reconnect with the legendary Chris Carr (the PR man whose office is now a table in The Ship in Wardour Street) and NME-writer Dele Fadele, who used to run a band called Welfare Heroine.

On Friday, I interviewed Ade Blackburn from Clinic before their acoustic gig at Rough Trade East in Brick Lane. I've always found these Liverpudlians an intriguing band. Their repetitive and minimalist melodies were propelled along by motoric rhythms somewhere between Can and Rocky Erickson, whilst the strangely nasal vocals lent an otherwordly quality to the songs. For their new album they have moved towards a more singerly songwriterly style with fewer odd sounds from fewer weird instruments. They have also replaced their surgeon outfits with Guatemalan ponchos. I suspect I'll have to give the CD another spin or two before I can truly say that I've been able to settle with Ade's voice being so upfront in the mix.

Then, on Monday, finally, the long-promised interview with Oscar winner Tim Robbins about his first album with a band called The Rogues Gallery Band (on the off-chance that this interview might happen at short notice on the Friday before I had to turn down the chance to meet Ray Davies). It took place during the short car ride between Tim's now ex-hotel and St. Pancras train station. Despite the rushed circumstances, Robbins was relaxed and interesting company. The conversation will be published in Tages-Anzeiger/Züri Tipp on Friday, October 5th in time for his concert on the 13th in Zurich.

16. 9. 2010

I had Studio 3 at Abbey Road all to myself yesterday evening, thanks to the no-show of all six other journalists expected to sample the new version of David Bowie's "Station to Station" from the finest stereo system in existence. Perhaps sidetracked by the innovative brilliance of the Berlin trilogy, especially "Low", I'd forgotten how fantastic the icy "Station to Station" is. The guitar work, especially, is thrilling to hear. The album is worth buying for the labyrinthine title track alone. The new edition box set also includes the previously unreleased concert at the Nassau Coliseum in 1976.

Woke up today to find the Pope being all over the Brit media. Utterly bizarre. A man who looks like the pampered poodle of a louche nightclub queen descended from a particularly decadent corner of the landed gentry, pronouncing on the world's evils whilst setting a fine example for all prospective banana republic dictators. 60'000 fans have turned out to see him burble this and that in some park in Scotland. A disappointing turn-out, apparently. One of his predecessors in the 80s drew a couple of hundred thousand. Ratzy makes some right-sounding noises about rooting out the institutionalised sexual abuse that's been uncovered amongst the moral shepherds in the pay of his church, but really, isn't this just one of the symptons of the twisted and inhuman thinking at the heart of a power-mad religious doctrine? How could it be otherwise when celibacy and the whole code of sexual mores seem to have been expressly invented to ensnare all who believe in it in an endless tangle of conflicting emotions, thoughts and impulses? And all this before we even get to the mediaevil pronouncements on homosexuality. Thanks to today's Guardian I now also know the Pope's views on Rock music: ""Rock" is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship."

15. 9. 2010

Barely touching down in London after France, I was back in Zurich for the first week in September. Interesting exhibition in the Museum für Gestaltung of the work - furniture designs, photos, collages à la Heartfield - of Charlotte Perriand, a Paris-based friend of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Some great black/white photos of found objects, mostly stones.

Back to London in time for Cathal Coughlan's typically excellent concert at Bush Hall, the highlight being an incendiary version of "The Loyaliser". Then, on Thursday, a showcase to promote the new album by Jamiroquai at some posh hotel in Knightsbridge. The constrast between the two experiences couldn't have been greater. Here, an artist who has steadily developed his music over the years without ever pandering to the tastes of the hitparade; there a man who fell on this pop earth in about 1992 with a fully formed style from which he hasn't deviated as much as half an inch since. I've never been an avid Jay Kay-observer, and I found it impossible to tell the new songs from the old. Our Italian colleague PG Brunelli was present, too. I mention this because whenever I run into PG, he seems to be in an almighty, wide-eyed flap about this or that. It was no different this time. The reason for his disgruntlement? He had managed to read the set list and discovered that the band had truncated their own showcase by two songs. Jay Kay bored by his own music? It couldn't be, surely. Great food, though, and a generous supply of drinkage - hospitality of this kind has become rare in recent years, for foreign journalists at least.

27. 8. 2010

Barely been home the last few weeks. First came a weekend hop to Zurich to see The Mekons play a free open air gig to celebrate the 10th anniversary of El Lokal. A grand occasion, needless to say. This was followed by a car trek through France: a couple of days looking at the Maids of Orléans, a week of reading books at Chateau Dumas in Auty (Niccolo Ammaniti's "Crossroads" - just as rivetting and original as "I'm Not Scared";Irène Némirovsky's elegant and superb novellas "Le Bal" and "Snow in the Autumn"; Arno Schmidt's typically oblique "Leviathan"; Michel Faber's "The Fire Gospel" which I found oddly unsatisfactory - a great idea I was expecting more weight from than was ultimately delivered; Ginger Baker's memoirs "Hellraiser" - what a strange book: the man is forever ending up in fights and terrible situations (and not just to do with the procurement of drugs or cold turkey), getting on with no one, really, and he never asks why, sails through life blithely accepting what comes his way; and, finally, a couple of oddly disturbing stories by Denton Welch about whom I know nothing but will endeavour to find out more (I found the stories "Narcissus Bay" and "The Trout Stream" in a book shared with a couple of Jane Bowles novellas for which I had bought it, and some suitably mysterious "images" by one Colter
Jacobsen).

A day trip brought us to Saint-Cirq Lapopie, a picturesque village squeezed out of a tube on to the cliffs by the banks of river Lot. André Breton lived here, apparently, and several other artists of his generation. The place reminded me of St. Ives in Cornwall and was smililarly minging with tourists - not enough for some, though: "I know why the place is so empty," proclaimed one loud American voice: "It's lunchtime and they're having their siesta!" The best part of Saint-Cirq Lapopie was the small gallery run by Alain Prillard and filled entirely with his own witty works (http://www.alainprillard.com/ancetre.html).

Circumstances brought a detour on the way back to coast of Brittany: Pornichet, an archetypal seaside town with ghastly grockle trap restaurants, sandy beaches, dead jellyfish and bronzed adonises playing volleyball. Then Saint-Nazaire, the last town held by the Germans before the end of the War, tidy, not without style. The old port consists mainly of a vast concrete u-boat bunker that is being turned into an arts and entertainment complex with a garden/arts installation on the roof. It, and the views, are so spectacular that it was easy to spend a couple of hours exploring without spending a single Cent. The modern-day industrial port, meanwhile, is situated more or less out of sight a few miles to the East. Mont Saint-Michel, on the other hand, was sheer, unmittigated awfulness, one large assemblage of tack shops and rip-off eateries, a cross between a bazaar in Beijing and one of the more absurd installations by Edward Kienholz, draped like an advent wreath around the foot of the monastry which reaches skywards like the transsylvanean vampire castle in an Italian sex & horror movie from the early 70s.

In between such jollies I was nevertheless doing the odd interview. The GrindermenCave and Sclavunos were in a splendid mood, the conversation flowed easily and the album is damned good.

Much, much more difficult was Leon Russell who was meant to be talking about the excellent album he has recorded with Elton John and T-Bone Burnett. Not that Russell was in any way unfriendly - he is just not a man of many words. So many fantastic musicians he has played with, and so little he wanted to say about them. I guess that is the privilege of a musician who speaks through his music. Still, one of the anecdotes he imparted was of a record session with Frank Sinatra: "There were more security guards there than musicians," he said. "I never worked out whether they were there because of the mafia or because of the fans." Three record company people sat in with the interview to make sure nothing untoward happened. What did they think might happen? The Italians who went in after me lasted no more than five minutes...

Tricky began our latest encounter with an explanation of why he had in the past couple of days thrown out no less than three interviewers. One had been rude, the other too fan-like and fawning, the third too jittery. Well, Tricky, too, has an interesting new album, more laid-back than the previous one, more unified in "groove" and on several occasions properly "catchy".

Bryan Ferry blew me out at the last minute, but James Righton from The Klaxons was punctuality and civility personified - plus, he showed an exceptionally extensive interest in popular music history and even agreed on the brilliance of The Mekons.

On Wednesday, finally, on a grizzly day of intense, monumental grey I travelled to the Channel coast to quizz the great Norma Winstone on her new album "Stories Yet To Tell", the third with German saxophonist and clarinettist Klaus Gesing and Italian pianist Glauco Venier. What a great way to spend an afternoon, to have the whole history of British Jazz explained by someone who was there from the dawn of Lol Coxhill!

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.