This blog post is dedicated to all those who do great music outside London

God, that sounded patronising. Sorry. It’s just that, well, I live and listen in London, mostly, and have done for a good while. London’s on my skin and under my nails and in my lungs and I like it that way. It’s a state of mind as much as it’s that dirty place where everything costs too much, and that state of mind is sharp-eyed and dreamy-headed at the same time - flaneur with a flick-knife - and yes, I like London.

But you know. That doesn’t mean I don’t wanna hear other cities’ states of mind, especially when those states of mind are so distinctive and so not London in any way at all. Take this Benbecula stuff, which is from Edinburgh. It jitters with the lovely impersonality of all the best electronic music, but at the same time it’s got a renegade quality that sets it aside from so much of the stuff that comes through my letterbox from London-based labels and artists.

And then I heard Second Level Crossing by the Dublin-based band Rollers/Sparkers, which is also shot through with a strangeness and a presence I rarely hear in this town. I’m sure none of these artists want to be defined by where they come from, but cities are not just places to live. Even if you live in one reluctantly and spend all your time with the curtains drawn and your headphones on, you can’t escape the history under your feet or the changes underway just down the street. How these things manifest themselves is rarely obvious and shouldn’t even be spoken of for fear of making them un-magical, but they’re there anyway, and that’s why most of my favourite music comes from other cities: Oslo, Berlin, Cologne, Lagos, Osaka, Glasgow, San Francisco. Either that or the countryside, and very little from London at all.

When my narrative and analytical powers return (getting this magazine together has made mincemeat out of them, and me, for the next few days at least) I’ll relate the story of my trip to Dublin. For now, though, I’m surveying the unholy mess that is my ‘office’ and considering the following options: 1) clear it up 2) don’t clear it up, eat some eggs and read a book instead 3) do some work, clearing up is just a distraction 4) get some new shelves, then you wouldn’t have to clear it up so much 5) all of the above, at some point.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004
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Presented by: Everett True, Jon Slade
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Posted by on Monday, August 30th, 2004
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“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of hope.”

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Posted by on Monday, August 30th, 2004
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So this lovely magazine’s nearly finished. The last three days I’ve thought of nothing else, and I’ll be thinking of very little else until it’s in my goddam hands, smelling nice and papery with all the words and pictures safe and sound. It’s looking lovely and the energy and wonderfulness of all involved has put a huge spring in my step even as it all puts bags under my eyes. In the meantime, though, I’m allowed a few hours off. I got home from Brighton to find my wife had left a bag of cookies in the fridge with a pink post-it note on it commending me for all my hard work. God bless her sweet heart. And now she and her new lovely hott blonde paramour (we have an open relationship, y’know…) are smooching in the front room and reading 1970s horoscopes (”Scorpio and Aries: the kind of fated love from which legends arise” - tell me about it, dude; story of my damn life) and sorting me out with some spaghetti bologonese, red wine and the Texan Piano Blues (Dallas 1925-99, Magpie Records) on account of my imminent physical and mental collapse if I don’t get all of the above in the next half hour or so.

It’s all good. Don’t wanna jinx it before it’s even done, but god, it’s been fucking fun, this issue. Stressful, lively, funny fun. Highlights include Everett True making us listen to Misty’s Big Adventure - and dancing to it! - while we’re on the edge of psychotic tiredness, me getting to interview one of my favourite current artists for a whole afternoon, the helpfulness and enthusiasm of our new subs team (big shout out to Merek, Marianna, Grace, Isabel, Bec, Robin, Monster Bobby, Stewart, Daniel and Charlotte (special thanks to you for letting us take over your house.,..what a lady!) - the unsung heroes of all magazines), getting to see Sarah’s awesome photos on the layouts, and Poppy the cat acting cute and languid throughout the whole process. Oh, and last night, not being able to sleep, writing the bottom line of a whole new composition for violin (with, like, notes and everything) at Andrew Clare’s coffee table at 1am. Thanks to Andrew for the nicest coffee table in Brighton, and for the pen and Muji paper, and thanks to Katrina for the herb tea and letting me babble like a nutcase at her. And sorry to Robin, for missing your gig. I bet it was ace, too.

And there’s still lots to do. We’re nearly there but not there, all at the same time.

But there’s this weird loop going round in my head that keeps saying, “I just want someone who knows what I mean.” Lord alone knows what I mean by that. Something to do with listening to Mark Hollis’ solo album on the train. Something to do with thinking about words too much these last few weeks. Something to do with the clangy piano and moaning vocals that’s accompanying this blog entry, lonely and resigned and jaunty and sweet as hell.

Eat pasta, pack my cowboy boots and pure wool maroon kick-pleat circle skirt, sleep, get on a plane, write some lyrics and look people in the eye as I sing them.

By the way, the next issue is gonna fucking ROCK. And I oughta know.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Friday, August 27th, 2004
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this entry has been removed as it contained sour grapes

Posted by Andrew Clare on Monday, August 23rd, 2004
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Thanks to anyone who came to the Plan B night at Border’s in London yesterday - especially in that weather. Didn’t miss too much if you didn’t check out the Dirtbombs at The Garage afterwards…but tonight! Oh my god. Two shows in Brighton within five minutes walk of each other - and both so incredible. Joanna Newsom made all the girls weak at the knees (”but she’s so beautiful,” they sighed as one) and the boys dreamy-eyed with pleasure at the harp and the voice and the a cappella shouting. Rush over to The Beach with Ben Blackwell in tow, to The Dirtbombs’ second night. Oh my god. There are 20 of us fanatics down the front, during one equipment breakdown taking on the entire song with just drum support - Ben and Pat on fucken fire - and, well…it was how I always fucken want my rock’n'roll to be. Spontaneous, raw, brutal and MOD (check the narrow lapels next to me). Vincent did his French boogie, and many cigarettes were smoked. The encores were entirely gratuitous and very much appreciated.

Re: Border’s talk. I enjoyed myself, for once. The Chicks On Speed question was fair enough (”Why put CoS on the cover of the first issue: doesn’t it run contrary to the old CTCL creed?”) - but kinda off-beam, inasmuch as we would’ve put one of Sarah’s photos on the front if we’d really wanted to try to sell a few extra copies, not one of Andrew’s extraordinary illustrations of a small animal being dissected by a lab technican. The Libertines question just seemed strange to me: like, why would I care if a singer in some crap band chooses to take a crap drug or not? It was good to see Meg White getting some deserved kudos, and my apologies for any bitterness inferred from my statement about Nirvana. I’m over that former president of the Bruce Springsteen fanclub writing the big Cobain biog, really. Yeah, that rich kid cunt. No. Really I am.

Apologies to AMP, who didn’t get a chance to read out her life story like promised, but we’re hoping she’ll be convinced to shove it up here one day. And Mr Stevie Chick (who moderated) really is both a star and perhaps the nicest music critic I’ve ever known. The fact he shoved my bicycle in the back of his car on top of boxes of the new Loose Lips Sink Ships, thereby saving me a very troublesome ride home, merely confirms the fact.

It was a very decent turn-out, though - between 80 and 90. With more hovering behind the bookstands.

Posted by Everett True on Friday, August 20th, 2004
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So I declared this amnesty or moratorium or whatever on lonesome boy singer-songwriters, and guess how long it lasted? It lasted precisely ONE DAY, because I got sent Devendra Banhart’s new CD, which some people are saying is overkill what with him just having released an album, but which I think is rather wonderful. In spite of myself. Damn you, Devendra, and your pretty way of keeping the ‘hmm!’ noise at the start of your first song, which most people would erase. It’s such a cliche, because we know you’re really singing, and you don’t have to keep the throat-clearing in to prove anything, but it’s how these old-new records sound now, isn’t it? It’s all precious, every rustle and skip and clunk. If it wasn’t nearly dinner time I’d get onto some thing about glitch and the new folk and the meeting of sound and song and how our ears are open to texture these days like never before, which makes being a songwriter so much more fun now, I guess, and…I will save the essay until after. Save it for somewhere that isn’t a blog, maybe - now there’s a thought.

In other news, that new Hot Chip thing is pretty fine. It’s so clever it almost makes you want to slap it. I think that’s a compliment.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, August 17th, 2004
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Nothing like a family weekend away to reset your settings back to, well, factory setting, factory settings being the ones you were fortunate or unfortunate to be saddled with when you popped out of the converyor belt and into the big world.

Luckily, despite repeated attempts to override mine and adapt them, they’re still there somewhere, and they’re not bad at all. And I didn’t come from no factory anyway, more like from some strange, optimistic, jumbly co-operative workshop that expands across England valiantly and curiously, recruiting new members as it does so, who often look a little shell-shocked as they join the team, but seem to enjoy themselves nonetheless.

Having discovered the following things - the installations of Wolfgang Winter/Berthold Horbelt; how to make a balloon dog; Slominsky’s Thesaurus of Scales; nice old editions of Robert Louis Stevenson and books about the British countryside from a charity shop in Leeds that had a sign up saying AS MANY BOOKS AS YOU CAN CARRY FOR A POUND; the absolute appropriateness of playing Alice Coltrane at wedding receptions; and the rather pleasurable discomfort of wearing a full-on early 1950s outfit (including gloves and corsetry) all day long - I came home and tried to get cracking on the awesome task that is getting this magazine together in the next two weeks and still keeping a-hold of my other work at the same time, tired and inspired by my couple of days in another space with people I rarely see.

On the train home I read fiction the whole way, pleased to be back into words again after months of only wanting to listen to music, and when I got home I opened lots of jiffy bags and listened to Sunroof and almost without thinking stacked up all the lonesome boy-singer music I’ve been sighing over these last few weeks into a neat pile and pushed it to one side, the better to get on with the business of instruments and sounds. The better to concentrate on my own songs.

I read a quote from Morton Feldman about how if you didn’t have a painter as a friend, you were in trouble (or something like that). I opened up the window to listen to the mad London monsoon outside and started writing a letter to a painter friend who doesn’t have email.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Monday, August 16th, 2004
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For a full few moments, even minutes, I forgot about the huge amount of stuff I have to get done in the next few hours* and danced in a patch of sunlight barefoot on the fluffy Greek rug to Gal Costa. On my own, with a smile. It was nice. She has the best outros.

*make a tulle and net petticoat. Sub Stuff. Hassle PRs. Make a mix CD of wedding music for my big sister’s wedding. Write something about VHF records. Wrap up wedding presents. Look after my wife, who has had a stressful day. And that’s only the half of it.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, August 12th, 2004
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My housemate suggested I should take on the tube with me and instead of reading the Metro I should Spirograph.

Posted by Sarah Bowles on Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
(5 Comments)