Over the past week it feels as though my feet have scarcely touched the ground. It has been a long time since I forgot to eat, or indeed didn't have time. This has been such an occasion.
One Tuesday, there was a rehearsal for Gina's choir in the basement of Third Man Records. Hats off to everyone, they had put the work in learning the parts. They are all excellent singers and there was no time wasted: we spent around two and a half hours running through both of the songs and working out the minimum of backing track that could be used to anchor the vocals. By the end of the rehearsal, we were singing as one, which is exactly what a choir should do: listening to the vocal blend at the same time as creating it. It was all the more of an achievement because without exception the members of the choir have their own solo projects as writers and performers, and kept their egos in their pockets to make the whole thing work.
On Wednesday we met at the Union Chapel, where the house sound engineer had prepared microphones for each of us, and he sorted the backing tracks so they sounded good over the PA. I had to leave for a while because Devendra Banhart uses incense and I found that like bonfire smoke, my lungs cannot cope with it. I went and stood out the back with the catering staff who were phoning their families- and eventually, lighting up their fags, so I went back in again.
It was a house full to bursting, and the audience responded really well to Gina's music. She is an accomplished front-woman full of wit and charm, and soon they were eating out of her hand. We stood in order behind the big velvet curtain and slipped into place on the stage after being introduced. It went past in a whirl. I could hear it all working (phew!), and we marched off singing 'Keep to the left..'
What an amazing thing to do, and also what a responsibility. It's been a long time since I arranged vocals for live; it's all been for recording recently, and for live I'd made some call-and-response sections to make the dynamic more interesting. I thought they worked!
Afterwards, Devendra took a photograph of us all on the stairs. He is a witty chap. Earlier, I'd been out to look for somewhere to relieve myself. 'Is this the toilet?', I asked a person standing in the doorway to his dressing room. 'Sometimes people call me that', he replied.
On Thursday morning, I went to my new freelance job writing songs with people with complex disabilities. It was a good session, and I left them with some homework for the next song, which will be a protest song.
Then it was time to head off to the BBC studios at Maida Vale to a live BBC3 recording of the BBC Orchestra. This was a wonderful thing to do, to listen after so much doing. It was also a watching experience because the orchestra interact with each other and with the conductor constantly. There was a piece by Tchaikowsky where the violins started to the left of the stage, and the arrangement moved through the violas (left of centre) to the cellos (right of centre), and ended up with the massed basses on the right. It was brilliant. Panning sounds on a small laptop all the time is so insular, to see this happening in real life was incredible both visually and sonically. How wonderful to be an orchestral composer and see this dynamic in action after imagining it in your head! Here it is (at least for a while. Can you hear us clapping?): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002lq0l
Friday was a breathing day, although I did prepare and time the mini-sets for the Louder than Words Festival, where I had been asked to play three 15 minute sets before the interviews with Justin Currie (The Tremeloes), Richard Jobson (The Skids) and Eddie Tudor Pole (Tenpole Tudor)
On Saturday I got the train to Manchester. Delays on the network meant that I completely missed Debsey Wykes of the Dollymixture, who was apparently brilliant, and Claire Grogan of Altered Images, who was also apparently brilliant. I did hear her singing through the doors of the Green Room and her lovely voice has not changed a bit.
Cazz Blase and Shelina Brown were there and we had some great conversations about it all, and about how some men are so threatened by intelligent women. Thankfully, not all of them are, but the ones who are have disproportionately loud voices. There are a lot of exceptions, mercifully: for instance I talked to Dave Barbarossa backstage, who is wonderfully funny and tactful.
I also have to thank the sound engineer Ash for getting a really great sound. He was calm and collected, and there was a room change (Baz from The Stranglers instead of Eddie) which was made all the easier for the fact that he's already done the other two sets I'd played.
What about the punk panel? Well, it was very lively. Chris Sullivan and Stephen Colegrave have published a book called Punk, the Last Word which they say is a tongue-in-cheek title because there is no last word. It was such a big panel that we almost fell off the podium: Russ Bestley, who designed the Pauline Murray biography, Carol Hodge, who performs Crass songs all around the world with Steve Ignorant, Chris, Marco Pirroni, Ryan Walker (journalist from Louder than War), me, Stephen and Mike Dines from the Punk Scholars Network sat in a semicircle with John Robb convening us all. Or reining us in, where necessary. The discussion became heated at some points but John managed to keep things polite and as unmansplainy as possible with so many strong male viewpoints. I think Carol and me held our own, and there was a very interesting point at the end where there was a debate about the origin of the word 'punk', and the familiar conclusion that it came from the nickname of young men in prison about 100 years ago who sexually serviced the other male prisoners. From the back of the audience, Cazz pointed out that her own first discovery of the word was in fact in Shakespeare, where the word was used to describe a female prostitute. Game, set and match to Cazz for that!
My own issue came with The Pink Fairies and Hawkwind being held up as examples of early 1970s countercultural music. To me, they were in the same male boat as Led Zeppelin (squeeze my lemon), and that led to a very interesting after-panel discussion with the woman who had proposed the idea. In the end, I said 'You should write about this!' (I didn't say 'This is why I wrote the song 'Thrush'!).
The next day, I played an early set before Richard Jobson's talk, and then went to a talk on a history of graphic design and DIY printing in the punk and post-punk era. It does sound like a very interesting book, but unfortunately the author couldn't resist the urge to be controversial at my expense. After the talk, in the questions part, he mentioned that he didn't like Cold War Steve. I actually love him- that constant snarling and biting, even on days when the quality of collage is not brilliant. It's the biteback that I find really heartening. I brought up how I felt. 'Hermann Goering would agree with you', said the speaker. What a silly swipe! I have seen this guy do something this before, so I let it rest. I could have asked him to wash his mind out with soap and water, but I didn't. Funnily enough, I mentioned it to Offsprog One this morning. 'Is he a graphic designer?', she asked. Ha ha!
So, on the the final short set where I had to develop a pair of cojones to get past the rows of folded arms, but I think it was OK. They clapped! Then I hared over to Eddie Tenpole to hear his interview, and it was absolutely hilarious. Years ago, he came to audition for one of the mad Music Halls that I did with Lester Square but kind of disappeared after that. On Sunday afternoon he was energetic, terrifying, honest, animated and exhausting. Life has chewed him up, but he has chewed it up back. Can you imagine being asked by Malcolm McLaren to go to Paris and have sex with underage girls while singing? Eddie was still clearly disturbed by this, and of course he said no. His talk was packed with people, presumably because of his hosting of The Crystal Maze. He did wonderful impressions of Edward Fox- and of himself being auditioned. He was like a box of fireworks; at the beginning it had seemed that he'd made the decision to just give yes/no answers, but this was clearly impossible for a man with so much explosive energy. It was a great way to end the festival, even though there was so much I missed.
I had a great chat with Jill Adam, who organised the whole thing so beautifully, and headed home to think about it all. There has been so much food for thought this seven days: every day a different flavour.
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