28. 11. 2008

I typed out the transcript from the Paul McCartney press do and found to my surprise that my own recording contains three passages that are missing on the recording the record company One Little Indian makes available. One passage concerns The Beatles and iTunes (The Beatles wanted it to happen, said Macca, but there were some sticking points with EMI, and discussions had stalled). A second passage contained Macca's droll observations about Ringo's honesty and his right to refuse to sign autographs; the third is McCartney's response to a question about today's bands he might like (he said something about Radiohead and Zutons).

25. 11. 2008

It's the season for "Best of the year" lists - the first one I've clapped eyes on is the one in Mojo magazine. Now, over the years I've quite often disagreed with the selections of the pop, reggae, hip hop and indie magazines around, but up to now I've been in broad agreement with what the "grown-up" mags like Mojo and Uncut deemed to be the best of the year. Not this year! Mojo's Top 5 contains two albums I positively detest - Fleet Foxes at number 1, and Bon Iver at 4. At 3 is Paul Weller, at 2 The Last Shadow Puppets - strong albums, to be sure, but THIS good? The first I agree with is Nick Cave at 5 with "Dig Lazarus Dig!!!" Other names in the Top 20 I can only shake my head at in bafflement: The Hold Steady (6), The Week That Was (8), Neil Diamond (10), Don Cavalli (12; Little Axe did the same thing much more interestingly), Drive-By Truckers, British Sea Power, Sigur Ros, Beck.

Paul McCartney held court at the Fire Station yesterday (the gastro pub next door to Waterloo train station) to hold forth about his and Youth's new Fireman album. A dozen or so journalists each sat around four large tables. Macca spent about fifteen minutes at each - the q & a being amplified for all in the room to hear. Amusing, without - of course - any great revelations. The silliest question - BBC Radio 2's inquiry, what McCartney thinks Michael Jackson should do next - elicited the best giggle: Macca switched into a perfect Michael Jackson pitch and said something about "making a new album".

Today it was the K-West Hotel in Sheppherd's Bush to talk to the Sugababes. Charming women, clearly genuinely enthusiastic about what they're doing. Afterwards I wandered over to the much-hyped new Westfield shopping mall, the biggest in Europe, apparently. I promptly got lost. The place is huge, every top range fashion chain represented, plus millions of others. Outside, dozens of tourists were taking pictures of their families lined up against the massive Xmas decorations. The whole thing is, of course, a soulless walk-in monument to greed, foolish status symbols and bad taste.


22. 11. 2008

Plenty of writing this past week, and little else. Except for Millwall versus Stockport County in the third division. Thoroughly entertaining game, without any of the hassle of the Premier League, that is: no queues anywhere, fantastic seats just behind the dugout even though we just rolled up an hour or so before kick-off. Although it has to be said it wasn't cheap - £ 25. About five times as much as it would cost to see Bayern München (as a German colleague informs me). The result, by the way, 1 : 0 to Millwall. It has to be said that the visitors would have deserved a draw. I was surprised by the shape of the players. Not a single player on either side was the "classic" type of tubby, short, broadshouldered tank which once used to make up half of the average lower division team. Practically everyone was tall and thin. Which didn't necessarily mean they had fantastic ball control, though.


13. 11. 2008

Back last Tuesday from another of my regular working trips to Zurich. Enjoyed some thoroughly refreshing and entertaining evenings at Meyer's Bar, My Place Bar, the new Co-ope,El Local, Andorra and Oliver Twist. Plus, as always, a few "Wurst- und Käsesalat, garniert" at the Rheinfelder Bierhalle. A lot of work, too, including interviews with Joel Reiff, Urs Wiesendangerand Stephan Grieder for a story about music education in Switzerland.

The last flight of the day back to London - too early, alas, to catch one of Reno´s very few gigs, supporting Grant Hart in Zurich. If I´d had the time to check it out I´m sure Í would have found youtube full of recordings of that momentous night.

First duty back in London - listen to the new Annakin album, and I'm happy to say that I think it is indeed very good, particularly the first half. More about this later.

Up early today for a daytrip to Tetbury, Gloucestershire, for a reportage on Prince Charles's Highgrove Shop in the splendid company of another photographer, Steve Forrest. It was pissing down with rain all day, but this part of the English countryside is incapable of looking non-idyllic, particularly now with all the autumn colours. The shop turned out to contain quite a selection of high quality, best-of-taste type lifestyle material for the ever so slightly excentric. The Prince has a thing for hens, it seems. Masses of plates and teapots and espresso cups with cute hen-designs on them, not to mention the hen-tea-cosies, the hen-door stops and the hen-napkins. It's the Prince's 60th on Friday, that's why he's in the news. A grim looking Russian TV team wandered round the shop, looking grim and speaking Russian, but only to each other. The BBC Politics team, on the other hand, got landed with some mad-looking biddy who held forth at length, loudly, about her King Charles Spaniel called Camilla. The other Camilla, she fluted across the plentiful Xmas decorations, would just fall in love with Camilla, the dog, if only the two could meet!

Oh, and I've been told I'll be meeting Paul McCartney in ten days' time. The Prodigy, on the other hand, have postponed our date set-up for early next week.


30 . 10. 2008

After a day filled to the brim with bloody deadlines, a trip to Spitalfields market to meet Annakin and her producer Jono Buchanan and their friend, photographer Christian Ammann. Embarrassing confession time: a few days earlier I had received a package from the singer´s manager. In the usual rush and chaos of these pre-departure-for-Zurich days I was convinced the CD was Annakin´s previous, first one, which I already had. Thus I arrived at the pub having prepared myself only by re-listening to the first album which I picked from the shelf. It was only when I arrived back home again that I realised the manager had´t made a mistake at all, he had sent me the second album. Oh dear! Still, Annakin and Jono were game and good interviewees, their enthusiasm for the project patently genuine.


27. 10. 2008

A trip to Highbury to interview Randal Keynes for Watch International. Keynes is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin as well as the great nephew of John Maynard Keynes. After spending half a lifetime in the civil service, and trying not to be weighed down by the family history, he ended up writing a book about Charles Darwin in his early fifties. This changed his life. Gripped by a new understanding of both his ancestor's vision and his own place in the Darwin story, he has since devoted all his time to his Darwin studies as well as working for the Charles Darwin Foundation to save the eco-system of the Galapagos islands from destruction. He lives with his family and two splendid black and white cats ("Puss" and "Boots") in a gloriously book- and picture-filled house on the edge of Highbury Green.


26. 10. 2008

Last Thursday truly turned out to be a memorable day of the surreal sort. It began in a wholly wholesome sort of manner with an interview with Blacksand-member Charles Casey (see entry 21. 9. 2008) at the bar of the NFT. We talked for well over an hour about the ideas behind Blacksand's "guitar-based electronica in unusual places". Charles also gave me a copy of their first album "Barn" - stuck in an amazing cover by Vaughan Oliver - which is dense and yet eminently listenable, a kind of abrasive and constantly fluctuating ambient music full of detail and shadowy textures. - After that to The Punchbowl, the pub in Mayfair owned by Guy Ritchie, for a reportage for the Swiss daily Blick. I don't know how I would have survived this experience without the company of the photographer, Abbie Trayler-Smith. Not only was she utterly fearless in the pursuit of the photograph in a place where no photographs are supposed to be taken. We also shared an appreciation of the surreal, which was sorely necessary to make this bizarre environment of moronic hooray-henries just about survivable (not to mention the absurdly kitschy Italian restaurant we somehow ended up having a bowl of pasta in). "The Punchbowl" is generally portrayed in the media as a "boozer" in the grassroots sense, the plaything of posh boy Ritchie. In truth, its as much a "boozer" as is a McDonalds a boozer. It's a place where Ritchie and his ilk can pretend to "slum" it whilst being surrounded by no one but mirror images of themselves. A pint of Adnam's set me back £ 3.90. Two days later at the Exmouth Arms (to see the engagingly quirky, entertaining but ever so slightly under-rehearsed Smith, Locker & Winquist at the wonderful Cellar Upstairs Folk Club(http://hometown.aol.co.uk/cellarupstairs)) I paid £ 2.80 for exactly the same tipple. "Traditional Fish n Chips" (notice the spelling) sets you back £ 14.50 at the Punchbowl. And, of course, the place is full of rich kids "letting it all hang out" - the window sill in the boys' toilet was covered in white dust.

Had to go back on Saturday for a little more material and, hopefully, a bite to eat, all in the name of research. Alas, the "gastro" bit of the pub was fully booked, the table I sat down at turned out to be booked also, and I wasn't going to be squeezed in a corner under the window to pay £ 13 for a plate of risotto. Also on Saturday, another assignment brought me to the car park of Battersea Power Stationb for the start of the snowboard worldcup 2008/9. Again, pretty odd - seeing snowboarders fly past the famous Pink Floyd chimneys as if they were fat, pink flying pigs.


18. 10. 2008

A most peculiar selection of interviews has kept me busy this week. It started with Stephen Gately and Shane Lynch from Boyzone on Tuesday, continued with Tom Jones on Wednesday, and ended with Take That's Howard Donald and Jason Orange, plus Kelly Jones from Stereophonics on Friday. The Boyzone boys were good-humoured and lively. Tom Jones, I was informed by the record company chap beforehand, would appreciate it, if the interview would focus on his new album. This request was surprisingly easy to follow, since it is a genuinely fresh piece of work. Tom seemed a little tired to begin with, but thawed very nicely and even permitted himself a few anecdotes from the old days in Wales, and chuckles. Howard Donald, a cheery sort of chappy, and the much more serious Jason Orange, were personability personified. We had a good laugh about the Swiss DJ - DJ Antoine - who has bought himself a Hummer and sprayed his name down the sides. Shame the interview couldn't be combined with a pint. Kelly Jones, finally, was a bit like his songs, that is: not a word too many, and rather basic in his approach.

Why do I do these kinds of interviews when I would never voluntarily put any of these albums on, except, perhaps, Tom's? Well, I'd talk to anybody. It's like the pub turned work.


11. 10. 2008

Little chap in the street, perhaps 8, 9 years old. Out for the day with his parents. He's wearing a t-shirt saying "I cry for joy on the last day of school". What a mind-bogglingly stupid attitude to clad your own kid in!


9. 10. 2008

Today, I interviewed Eugene McGuinness, a young singer-songwriter who manages to squeeze some unusually witty and original ideas from his muse, not to mention sharp melodies in the tradition of, say, The Kinks. He does not belong to the melancholy school of crooners, but tells his amusing stories about modern life in London with playful - and often rocky - abandon. In person, Eugene turns out to be an exceptionally friendly and unassuming soul who clearly has a few aces hidden up his sleeve. One of my favourite questions - "what are you reading at the moment?" - does not turn up the usual gathering of Burroughs, Nabokovs, Will Selfs and Philipp Roths (God, how I hate reading Roth myself! I swear I've tried four or even five of his barren, dry novel-constructs by now, each time thinking, surely I must find something to find interesting in a writer half the world seems to think the world of, but no, my reaction turns out to be the same over and over again: what a self-regarding, dry fraud! (not to use the w****r word)). Anyway, back to Eugene McGuinness: He is reading Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" just now. Truly an original chap who doesn't follow the beaten tracks.


8. 10. 2008

Off to Richmond Hill for an interview with Anastacia. Not entirely my type of music, to be sure. But Anastacia turns out to be a vivacious woman with a charming manner. Strangely, though, whilst in conversation she seems to make complete sense most of the time, the typed out interview is full of baffling mid-sentence jumps of focus, leaving whole passages oblique with non-meaning.

In the evening I meet up with Alex McGowan, Big and the other girls and boys from The Future Shape of Sound (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=3281303). Alex and the band have been strongly involved in putting together the soundtrack for a featrue-length documentary film by German director Jens Hoffmann, "9 to 5 - Days in Porn" ( http://www.9to5-themovie.com/). Today was the European premiere as part of the Raindance Festival. It took place in a private club in the West End, The Rex. The film takes a look behind the scenes of the San Fernando Valley porn business. It is not the first to do so, but quite possibly the most interesting. Hoffmann shows the absurdity of much of what's going on with humour, wit, and psychological insight. He shows just enough gory, explicit, bodily fluid detail to give an impression of quite how "hardcore" this sort of everyday life is. At the same time, there is no doubt that most of the women portrayed want to be doing the work they are doing, and that it is the men who are the faceless "numbers". Viewing this film you get the strange impression that these people are living a life which is the embodiment of the sexual fantasies of the customers who buy their films. The sex life they act out in this actorly manner every day is not really a sex life at all, but a cartoon turned flesh. Having said that, frankly, there's nobody in this film one would want to seek out to have a beer with - apart from the excellent director, that is.


6. 10. 2008

Juana Molina played at St. Luke's Church in Old Street last night. Helped by an excellent percussion/bass duo, her performance was mesmerising. Quite astonishing how she plays guitar, keyboard and a host of pedals live, all at the same time - constantly adding and taking away layers of loops, including loops of her otherworldly, girlish vocals. Just one gripe: I've really come to hate the experience of sitting in a "concert hall" where the prevailing mood is a mood of reverential attention, combined with sycophantic oohs and hahas every time the artist starts on an intro or says something funny. Who are these people trying to kid? Do they think that clucking like hyperactive hens will get them brownie points in some higher spiritual groupie land? Do they think when they get to heaven Juana Molina will recognise them as a result of their exaggerated rhythmic rolling of their head and serenade them, and them alone, forever? - I'd much rather see a band in a dark hole like the Bull & Gate, or, better still, an unpretentious but comfortable venue like The Luminaire, where only the occasional slurping of beer will interrupt one's reverie.


2. 10. 2008

To Dalston last night to see Tom Brosseau(http://tombrosseau.com/) in a venue that was new to me, Cafe Oto (http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/). The venue turns out to be an achingly trendy steel-and-concrete post-industrial-refurbishment sort of place, in the middle of the ramshackle post-caring assemblage of dilapidated veg shops, dodgy pubs and garish Nigerian fast food joints that is Dalston. The program shows that the place specialises in all sorts of experimental music.

Stupidly, I gave in to hunger pangs before the gig and had quite possibly the foulest plate of Chinese noodles I´ve ever eaten - in a Noodle Bar set up in the ex-bank at the corner of Balls Pond Road and Kingsland Road (just in case someone needs the warning). Cafe Oto, on the other hand, turned out to be a real discovery. An acoustically and spacially excellent, friendly ground floor venue with a variety of good beers and wines on offer. I´d seen Tom Brosseau once before last winter at the Helsinki in Zurich. Whilst he was good then, he was better now. For some reason I hadn´t quite noticed before just how funny the man is as a performer and as a lyricist. Especially good was a new song dealing - in passing - with a dream about Dave Grohl being tied up in chains. Only the other day Juana Molina, whilst raging - wittily and calmly, of course - about the descent of Bossa Nova into meaningless Easy-Listening-Lounge-drivel, had explained the difference between facile Lounge-Bossa and the real thing. The originators like Joao Gilberto and Jobim had sang quietly, she said, because they had strength, authority and something to say, so people listened to them, whereas the purveyors of modern cheesy Bossa Nova had nothing to say, making it unnecessary to listen to them, facilitating the use of their music as lift music. Well, when Tom Brosseau started singing in the middle of the room with his quietly ethereal voice, far away from the microphone, the silence of the crowd was instant. The chattering never came back - Tom had the audience in the palm of his hand with his strange tales of suppressed emotions and love gone wrong (and sometimes right). The quietness also made it possible to hear how innovative and varied his guitar technique is - something else I don´t remember having noticed in Zurich. He encored with a surreally hilarious piss-take of the Woody Guthrie school of song writing. What a fantastic performance!


24. 9. 2008

To the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Modern for a story for www.the-title.com. Striking stuff, of course. But I find it almost impossible to take anything in, much less appreciate it, whilst paddling against the flow in such a flood of arts appreciators, half of them trotting blindly ever forward, pressing the buttons and twiddling the knobs on the earphone-thingies dangling from their neck.


21. 9. 2008

A spooky sounding invitation to the latest performance of Blacksand (www.blacksand.info - I'm giving up on proper hyperlinks: every time I'm putting one in, when I want to upload the latest entry, I get an error message and the whole of my "blog of sorts" is erased), a duo consisting of Lemon Jelly's Nick Franglen and Akasha's Charles Casey. According to their MySpace page they specialise in "guitar based eletronica in unusual places". These have included u-boats, disused mine shafts and empty factories.

5 o'clock amongst the bushes behind a London Corporation sign on the edge of Hampstead Heath, halfway up East Heath Road, the instructions said. At the appointed hour a dozen or so of us are puffing steam into the cold night, watching a fox casually wander past, and awaiting developments. Eventually, a small flickering light that approaches through the trees turns out to be attached to Nick's cap. He guides us through the dark - miraculously, the wolves are staying away - until we arrive at a giant tree, hollow, black against the canope. In and around the tree, Nick and Charles have set up their gear - one acoustic guitar, one slide guitar, a hell of a lot of pedals, amplifier, a few speakers, and a generator adapted from a ship's generator. In the dark, they begin to improvise their music, a mesh of electronic droning and shimmering, interspersed with fragments of guitar melody, loops and, well, the sounds of a forest waking up. Music and place remind us of the experimentalism on the outer fringes of Krautrock, the magic inseparably linked to place and time. As opposed to just another gig. The performance ends just before the generator's energy is used up. The first jogger of the day plods past, determined to look neither to his left nor to his right, just like the commuters in the morning trains staring into their papers.



19. 9. 2008

Stuck in a particularly grim corner of the BBC, just behind the counter where they hand out microphones to their reporters, Femi Kuti - on the way to the airport and Paris - still had time for a few choice words about politics ("democracy - where do you get democracy? England? America? Pffft!"). He also proved adept at "singing" some of the more complex Charlie Parker licks.

A few hours later it was the Oriental Mandarin for an encounter with Tracy Chapman, my second. She really is one of the more charming "pop stars" around, a woman with conviction and an amusingly droll, though underplayed, sense of humour.



18. 9. 2008

No David Gilmour interview - all promotional activities cancelled/postponed due to the not unexpected, and yet unexpectedly sudden death of Pink Floyd-co-founder Rick Wright. Wright was clearly one of the nice guys, his contribution to the sound of early Floyd-albums vastly underappreciated, especially after Gilmour had come in for the ill-disposed Syd Barrett.

As a result of this cancellation, the week suddenly looked amazingly clear of deadlines and the like. An opportunity, at last, to clear up the office, especially the pile of magazines under the desk. To my horror, I found Time Outs from August 2007 down there. In other words, the job needed to be done, no question about it. Still, having barely written a word so far this week, I'm gripped by the classic freelance feeling of under achievement...


15. 9. 2008

Rarely can there have been so much upheaval and ridiculous goings-on in the first few weeks of a new Premier League season. Newcastle United for sale after the owner's experiment failed to link up old-fashioned Kevin Keegan with a "modern" "Director of Football" in the shape of deeply dodgy Dennis Wise...Manchester City suddenly being the richest club in the universe and having the staggeringly expensive Brasilian youth Robinho trot out with a bunch of honest players previously expected to be pleased with a good run in the FA Cup - and all of a sudden the new owners are demanding a top 4 finish...Chelsea outbidden by sheiks in the pursuit of a player for the first time ever...West Ham losing their best manager in years due to their insistence - too - on a Director of Football who failed to see eye to eye with the manager on transfer politics...Well, what this means is, basically, that we'll leave the top end of the Premier League to the billionairs and their PR-agenda soap opera. Much more fun to follow the relegation battle which will involve at least ten teams this season.


11. 9. 2008

Luxembourg, oh dear oh dear. We shall not dwell on this fiasco and instead build up steam for a whole raft of interviews coming up: David Gilmour, Tracy Chapman, Femi Kuti, Snow Patrol and David Bedford.


9. 9. 2008

Went to a book launch yesterday, a collection of children's stories, each exactly 366 words long, called "Wow 366". The event took place at the London Transport Museum by Covent Garden and was notable mostly for the amazing sound quality of the speeches. Or rather: of the first speech, which was held by a man from the museum (name lost in the sound, alas). Such was the echo in this huge hall, that his words became a psychedelic mush of sound the moment they had left his mouth, leaving the realm of verbal communication far, far behind. The nibbles were good, though, particularly the goat cheese/beetroot sticks.

Today I traipsed down to the Wandsworth offices of Domino Records to interview Juana Molina, the Argentinian electronica/singer songwriter whose new album is just wonderful.

And in the evening I found myself unexpectedly on HMS President, a boat-cum-office-cum-party-location moored on River Thames between Temple and Blackfryars Bridge. Earlier in the day I had received an e-mail from KP Schleinitz, a man I had known years ago when he managed Terence Trent d'Arby. He invited me to a networking event called "Starry Starry Nights" and organised by his new company Use Enterprises. The company is marketing a fascinating new computer/arts concept which makes it possible to "paint" pictures in the air consisting entirely of water drops - and, of course, dancing in them.


8. 9. 2008

Well, getting back into the groove does take its time...and now I've wiped out the whole of my previous diary entries by mistake.

Wednesday was easily the most entertaining day last week. First, to the Kensington Garden Hotel to meet Mike Skinner, aka The Streets. The man wore a jumper so shocking pink it could have lit the hotel all by itself. It was the only bright thing in a peculiarly quiet half hour spent with Mike. He rarely smiled and generally stared at his socks. He gave the impression of someone who isn't happy with where he is. The new album is a singularily bloody-minded affair. Skinner, fed-up with computers, has assembled a bunch of "real" musicians, including a string orchestra, to help generate the sounds. And then he combines these with a rhythm and drum sound that could have been produced in a toilet on a bunch of shoe boxes. He claims he did this in order to subvert expectations. He has succeeded - and the results are very peculiar indeed. Alas, due to the fact that I've only been played the album once in the hotel room I can't say anything about the lyrics.

Later on, already a little sozzled from a drink with a colleague after The Streets - it turned out three of us had blown out the dreaded Keane to be with Skinner - I went to the opening of an exhibition of Gary Wallis's portraits and fashion pictures at the Burlington Club. I particularly liked the b/w portrait of Anita Pallenberg. One lychees cocktail cost as much as 3 1/2 bottles of Grolsch at my local, Father Ted's in Kilburn. Which is where I repaired to afterwards. Here, John Fenlon's pal Maureen told me a story from her childhood in Kilburn. Some local character, a big bully who went round tearing telephone books in half, bet the rest of the pub that he could spend seven days buried without food in the garden of the pub, breathing through a garden hose. After two days, Maureen and her friend took pity on the chap. They pooled their pocket money, bought a portion of chips and stuffed it down the hose...One day, I swear, I will find a way of properly using all these Kilburn stories.