Journal

JOURNAL

7th March 2010

Dear Dear (a letter from Peak, Istanbul)

Dear Dear,
I am here, in the Peak Hotel (since 1961). I haven’t been here that long, not quite, but nearly.

Dear Dear,
I came in on the TK 1980, from London City. I can’t remember much of what happened between then (1980) and then (1961), unless I try really hard, it kind of means nothing though it is everything I am.

Now I am here, although it is dark, and cold, and rainy, it feels like a good place to be. I have a partial view of the Sea of Marmara and total view of the Pera Taxi Rank plus a large choice of TV channels and free tea and coffee. Though the minibar is extra, it feels like a good place to be

7th March 2010

Dear Dear,
I went out in search of delight for you. No joy so far. But in the street filled with music stores and handy graffiti someone offered me a memory upgrade. It came in the form of a free download. How could I refuse? All I had to do was press yes. I accept.

But nobody prepared me for the bitter, biting cold. It’s the end of a winter but it’s not over yet. So now I am back at Peak. Waiting to perform, or whatever it is called.

Oh Dear,
And I did find a little. Delight. I almost forgot. In a round wooden box. Like it was made for cheese. I hope it is delightful, you know I always aim to please.

7th March 2010

Dear Dear,
And now I am back from Public, the performance, a few hours older and a little drunker. The words spider across the page. That’s how I can tell.
And I was... And it was... And everything is...
And it’s important to enjoy every moment, of being here, because it’s so short, since 1961, 1980, 2010, then so soon it will be over, finished, forever. The only thing that is forever, that eternity of nothing that is the end.

So, for now, I was Chris Coco. And it was a success. And everything is cool. And I played and people moved and the place was so dark it was unphotographable. And Poppke and Ferrer and Moeller and Starr sounded really good and helped me out like they are my friends though really they are just CDs.

And now I must sleep, and wait,and travel the long way home.
Till next time, my friend, till next time.

7th March 2010

And Dear Dear,
There is so little time to walk around in the light. So little time to take in the view, to dwell on the detail. Each ship waiting for it’s turn, for it’s tug from Marmara to Aegean. And details mean so much to me now. Fragments of the past that still remain intact. Memory upgrades.
Down a back street in a shop filled with ephemera, medals and memorabilia, metal and memories, I find a box of postcards and photographs from other peoples’ lives. And it’s like they are my own.
The past is so interesting to me now that my future is not all possibility. Like it is when you are very young and everything is open. Everything is to look forward to, nothing is impossible.
There is a photograph, in black and white, of a sunny scene, bleached out, from 1971, when I was here somewhere, when that person took that shot, bleached out, of a sunny scene with no people, just the shadow of a boy, the smudge of a boy, running in or out of frame, forever frozen, forever lost. I could have taken that picture or been just out of shot. I could have even been the boy smudge, running, too fast to be captured on a too bright sunny day.
But I wasn’t.
But it wouldn’t matter if I was. Because now it is gone.

Now all that matters is 1991. The TK 1991, my flight back, right back, to London 2010.

And Dear Dear,
I am only sorry for the things I haven’t done, the places I have never been, the many varied lives I will never lead.
And Dear Dear,
I am so glad I found you, there, then. So I return with delight. Aiming to please.

3rd March 2010

Boy about town

Back on the bike with the first burst of spring sunshine. Being the proverbial boy about town. Up to Chelsea to deliver an i-Pod. Down to Dalston searching for the perfect beat. Home again, hitching a lift in the slip of someone stronger and more used to this life. Wrapped up in the music. Making the show. Moving and making. All the rest is noise.

6Music
Discussing the possible demise of 6Music, in my eyes a great example of public service broadcasting at it's best - serving a passionate, large minority audience (music lovers) who will never get a similar service from the commercial sector, or from the less music focussed, more mainstream Radios 1 and 2 (music stations for people who don't really like music, specialist shows excepted).
It feels like the directors at the BBC don't understand anything that isn't hugely populist. Oh yes, and it's cheap too. Head boy Thompson was defending BBC 3 on Newsnight, saying it was innovative and useful. Newsnight was followed by an ad for new BBC3 show, Undercover Princesses, a follow up so called reality TV show to yes, you guessed it, Undercover Princes, where 'royalty' from round the world come to England to interface with the working class natives. Now that's what I call a waste of money.
But...
And this is the harsh bit. I've just been to see The XX with Micky, and we've been chatting about 6Music. And we both moaned, and then admitted that neither of us actually listen to it. And we should. We are the target audience. So, still sticking to the points I have made, I think there is something wrong with the station. It's too earnest, too train-spottery, too anorak and cardigan and slippers when it needs to be more hoodie and Harrington and sparkly heels. That's not to say young, or flash, but perhaps a little more exciting and excited. A little less post-post-ironic Northern.
So perhaps the whole 6Music debate will be a positive, an opportunity to make something better, more modern, something that we actually want to listen to, something that gives us what we want when we want it.
Maybe something a bit like Mixcloud with more resources?
This one will run and run.

28th February 2010

Steamy windows
All smiles at Sosho after a rugged, dogged six hour performance. A shot of vodka to speed to 344 home in the relentless rain.
It's been a crazy day: the Terry / Bridge pantomime and a severe and unwarranted loss at the Bridge; a quick chat with SP and Y-May in Farm Road; then back across the river and across the tracks to Coronation Street to prepare for the evening.
Which ended, all smiles at Sosho...

27th February 2010

All Smiles
All smiles at the Quality Chop House, progressive working class caterer up there in Farringdon. A simple night out, enjoying riding the buses and trains, crossing the river, in the thick of it, at the heart of the grime and the glamour, tiny dots, tracked by satellite, snaking through the city.

21st February 2010

Living daylights

City Reverb, back in live action with the three piece music unit. Playing a clvilised lunchtime gig at Union Chapel in London.

21st February 2010

For the record we played these tunes in this order:

1 Swimming
2 Roll On
3 Backwards
4 All You Need
5 Morning
6 Corner
And it sounded great and we played well and Micky said it was the best gig we have done. And even though my fingers felt like sausages I enjoyed playing the bass in such a beautiful space.

20th February 2010

The stamp of approval
Anthony came round with his A.B. stamp of approval. We signed 50 FEEL FREE LIVE GOOD poster, ate pasta pesto and opened the inevitable bottle of Nero D'Avola. This is simple. art. living.

19th February 2010

Back in the game

For the album launch party for the Mavis album, Ashley Beedle's new project coming out on K7 records, featuring Kurt Wagner, Candi Staton, Ed Harcourt, Danielle Moore from Crazy P and Chris Coco.
I provide the spoken vocal on a track called Dreamers. It's based on a blog I did here about a day trip to Manchester when I was making a documentary about acid house for BBC Radio 2.
Last night I DJed and recited lyrics from the album.
Also watched wonderful performances of songs from the album by John Turrell, Danielle, Ed Harcourt and Edwyn Collins. The last time I saw him perform was many years ago when I was a kid and he was the lead singer of Orange Juice. Despite his problems, a major stroke, he still has a lovely presence, a great voice and a wonderful simple way with words.

I'm actually really proud to be involved with this project, to be on an album with so many artists I admire. Nice.

19th February 2010

This just in from Mavis event...

17th February 2010

Today

Today we went to Brighton to escape the city and the constant rain. The incessant city. No rest. No sympathy. The winter city. No break. Unbreakable. Relentless. Resilient. Seeming endless.

And though I still cannot imagine flowers in bloom and leaves on trees. We did find some sun. Some space. To breathe. To be.

17th February 2010

Today for the first time I can feel that winter's brutal back is broken. There is hope. There is light. Flashing on the page on the train home. Flooding the sky. Filling our eyes.

Today.

We went to Brighton to escape the city.

15th February 2010

We are ugly but we have the music...
This weekend I have mostly been investigating the question - what is living?
Is it a simple question of being alive, breathing and all that, or is it about moments when we 'feel alive', real living, some feeling of transcendence, some otherness beyond mere animal function?
Religious language and alternative culture both like to use the word high to describe the feeling I am searching for. There is a higher calling, there is whatever your choice of almighty is, who is usually on high; or the simpler, more self indulgent, interior modern version - getting high. Maybe my version is somewhere in between the two, not drug induced, not created by some immovable belief, but still something more real than frustrating, cold, controlled, C21 life.
So where can I find such moments on a slow grey, low grey, mid February Saturday?
I find one in a simple, shared moment of collective joy. Adrenaline-fuelled fun at Stamford Bridge, me and my boys and the Didier Drogba goal two minutes into the FA Cup fifth round tie against Cardiff City.
Then again after the match as we watch, as they say in London parlance, it all kick off outside a pub on the Kings Road. Bricks and punches and traffic cones fly before the police horses arrive, more adrenaline and testosterone enhanced living. Like some throwback to our days as hunters, like some escape from the confines of modern society created for our controlled, patrolled, regulated, snooped-on city life.
As the Barbour-clad boy in the brown flat cap screams "Let's have it..." into his phone before rushing into battle he knows at this moment that he is really living.
Then again that evening at The Garage in Islington, watching Georgia Ruth, a harp-playing girl with her cello-playing side-kick, covering Leonard Cohen's classic Chelsea Hotel Number Two.
There it is, as she warbles in a not unpleasant fashion, the line about giving head on an unmade bead as limousines wait in the street, everything is higher, alright, it all makes sense, there is no need for anything more.
"We are ugly, but we have the music," she sings. And perhaps that's it. Perhaps Leonard, all that time ago, when he wrote the song for Janice Joplin, was already the proto-Buddhist. He already understood, life is still relatively ugly and brutal and far too short, or at best, most of the time, a little boring and frustrating. But every day, we can find moments of transcendence, of goose-bumpy, hair-raising beauty, in collective joy, in the threat of violence, in song, in sharing with friends and family.
And that's the higher something. The moments that are worth so much more than money. That's the living that is so much more than being alive.