OUT OF THE BLUE AND DANS LE NOIR

I was in Paris last week.  One of the reasons we went was to try to locate the alleged 'teleportation chamber' in the cemetery of Montmartre.  I wrote about the London funerary teleportation grid made by Joseph Bonomi and the Clerkenwell inventor Samuel Warner here.  

I remain undecided on whether Warner was a complete fraud, a visionary or just deluded.  Amongst several other inventions, he claimed to have developed a missile capable of destroying ships from a distance: 'a teleportation bomb'.  In a period of war and abiding mistrustful relations with France, The Royal Navy were so keen for an advantage that they paid him to develop this extraordinary weapon but proved unable to reproduce his results independently. 

Bonomi was a believer for sure and it was allegedly with his occult knowledge that Warner had developed this  'psychic torpedo'. 

When convincing the military of the efficacy of the mind bomb proved unlikely, they turned their joint efforts and techniques to a semi-commercial venture - the London teleportation system .This was constructed across the seven major London cemeteries and sponsored by Lord Kilmorey, but secretly Warner continued with his military schemes.

In amongst the extravagant claims and self justification of his various books on the subject of National defence, there appear to be references to another teleportation chamber hidden in a Parisian graveyard.  This may have been intended for the purposes of reconnaissance or spying - hence the employment of owl symbolism-  but it seems to have been designed without Bonomi's assistance for it does not bear the typically Egyptian stylings he favoured in London.  

This cannot have been so that it would not stand out in Montmartre - it lacks any religious decoration and being the only structure in the graveyard engineered from blue ship metal is not that difficult to spot when you know what you are looking for.  The naval connection is evident in the side panels which have cast images of ships with engines on them - perhaps the fantastical machines used to launch Warner's occult weapons?

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Whist in Montmarte, we stumbled over another most peculiar monument - that of the amazing 3D Doctor Guy Pitchal.  Whilst mysterious and odd, this relies on a more obvious psychic technique to prove there is life of a sort after death.  Press play to see why..

I LOVE MY UMBRELLA

"It feels as if this rain will never stop" you say, gazing out at a very damp London and feeling rather like one of the kids at the beginning of The Cat in a Hat.  But I don't mind.  It is public knowledge that I love the Rain and, if we needed any more proof,  Antique Beat are releasing the original version of The Real Tuesday Weld's "I Love the Rain" - on an umbrella.  Yes, you read that right, they are putting out an Ep of the song with brand new music and remixes ON AN UMBRELLA - and it's totally fabulous. Our US friends may know the song from that very nice Chevrolet 'Rainy Day' ad and one of the remixes is by our very swinging friends Bart and Baker - the Parisian Kings of Electro-Swing**. It is toe-tappingly cute. 

So forget about Wet, Wet, Wet (I'm sure you'll be happy to), if you want to be singing - and swinging - in the rain, this is the way to do it. It was partly inspired by Fred Astaire, partly by Paul Newman and Katharine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  It is 'a love letter to the clouds' and a super stylish shelter from the coming storm.. whatever the weather with you.

And, if you should live somewhere very hot and dry like my Californian friends, what better way to signal your disapproval of those constant blue skies or hide from the oppressive monotony of The Eternal Sunshine? Then again, you could always get the matching T-shirt...

The umbrella is a beautifully made limited edition and can be bought here - just in time for Valentines if you are super quick.

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**Speaking of Electro-Swing, I sometime get asked if I invented it.  It is true that I had been mixing 1930/s jazz with electronic beats right back in the nineties and I suppose "I Love the Rain" may have been the first of the genre. I would be a fibber to say I don't find it nice when people remember that, but the answer to the enquiry is: 'No, I didn't invent Electro Swing' - because we called it 'Antique Beat' - and that means something more - it is where memory and melody meet.

I was, and remain, as much influenced by the sound and by the song as by the swing and have never liked being part of a scene. That is why we created our own.  And that is why when dear Chris Tofu introduces me as 'The Godfather of Electro-Swing"  I always protest: "No, Chris, no, no, I keep telling you - I'm the Fairy Godmother of Electro-Swing.."

DARK DREAMS OF LIMEHOUSE

This week we have our last  Salon for the City of the year at Westminster Library. We will be hearing all about Limehouse - the literary Limehouse and the literal Limehouse. Opium dens, criminal masterminds, the Yellow Peril and Edwardian Bogeymen.  It is a strange area and almost lost now as Thom Bolton, one of the speakers will relate. It was also one of the last known sites of another object on the London Arcana Hunters list. I have written about various of these before. There are currently ten - The Vestris Hams and Joanna Southcott's box  being another two.

The object in question is the skull of the serial killer John Williams.

It was unearthed during excavations in 1862 by a gas company at the point where Cannon Street Road and Cable Street cross near Hawksmoor's St George's in the East.  The landlord of The Crown and Dolphin a local public house, fished it out as a souvenir and kept it displayed behind the bar. The pub has since become derelict and the whereabouts of the skull are unknown but it is thought that it was stolen or bought from the landlord a couple of years before by an occultist as John Williams was thought to be a vampire.

He had been buried at the crossroads as it was commonly held that such a location would confuse an evil ghost arising from the grave. In addition, and to ensure he could not rejoin the Limehouse living, a stake was driven though his heart.   His crime was the alleged infamous brutal spree killing of two local families - seven vicious and apparently motiveless crimes involving decapitation, mauling and dismemberment. I say 'alleged' because it is not completely certain that Williams perpetrated the crimes.  But is likely that even if he did not, the authorities wanted him out of the way as he was thought to be part of a wider vampiric cabal which included various members of the aristocracy . 

Some believe that the removal of the skull allowed William's spirit to escape, move north to Whitechapel to become the force behind the later more famous Jack the Ripper murders. Who knows? But Limehouse itself continued to have a reputation for wrong doings, depravity and evil deeds - flowering in the exotic persona of the oriental villain  Doctor Fu Manchu who had his headquarters in  Lmehsoue opium den. Now of course it is the home and workplace of various city bankers..



Go figure.
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On a lighter note, here are Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremner
dancing to a dream of Limehouse Blues

 

BREAD-CRUMBS IN BARNET

There has been a lot in the papers recently about how much food we waste.  Vast quantities are dumped daily by supermarkets, food chains and restaurants and apparently the average family (whatever that is) regularly discards up to six meals a week, throwing away around £700 a year.  

You can make an album for £700.

I am a culprit myself although if absorbed in work, I don't leave the house for days and end up eating absolutely everything - including those weird pickled cherries that aunts give you at Christmas.

But it wasn't always this way.  During the war years it was illegal to waste food.  I was reading the other day about a woman in Barnet who was arrested and  prosecuted for putting out bread crumbs for the birds in her garden. Crumbs.  

The men from the ministry could come and inspect your bins - and your kitchen cupboards, checking for black market contraband.  Mind you, given what you were allowed to eat under rationing, probably not much was voluntarily wasted anyway and it is perhaps understandable that people would do whatever they could to get a bit extra.  For an adult: 4 ounces of bacon, 2 ounces of butter, 2 ounces of tea, 2 ounces of cheese etc. per week. Per week! (I probably absent-mindedly just ate 2 ounces of cheese whilst reading the paper).  There was no ice-cream.

It must have been an extraordinarily tough time - but quite nice in some ways: there were pigs and sheep grazing in Hyde Park and Green Park, allotments everywhere.  You were allowed, even encouraged, to keep chickens.  Even the king and queen had ration books ("Any pate de foie gras this week?" "No Ma'am, sorry").   The Upper Norwood Rabbit Club" held talks on which breed were most suitable for 'the production of flesh and fur'..

But loo paper was in very short supply.

Right, what's for lunch?

LONDON DAY OF THE DEAD

October 12th at 33 Fitzroy Square.
How to die In London

Antique Beat have programmed an incredible day of Death and the City related things for the Hendricks Carnival of Knowledge in a gorgeous Grade I listed Robert Adam house in central London.

At one of our Salons for the City at Westminster Library earlier this year, I asked the question of the audience:  "How many people think they will die in London?".  Surprisingly few responded in the affirmative.  I wasn't sure sure whether that was because most people plan to leave at some point - or whether they don't think they are going to die anywhere..

The latter possibility is leant weight by the fact that two thirds of people here haven't made a will.  We became intrigued by this a few years back and included a lovely free Last will and testament form in the special edition of The Real Tuesday Weld album "At the End of the World'.  Despite that, most of my friends still haven't made one - although in the light of the most superficial questioning they seem to have quite strong preferences for what should and shouldn't happen to them and their stuff when they are gone!  I see planning your end as an enjoyable, creative exercise - like designing a party.  It is salutary, sure,  but in a positive way.  You feel rather refreshed and ready for action when its done - and also much more likely to stop dicking around and get on with what you really should be doing.

Anyway,  when Hendricks asked us to put together a day for their Carnival as part of London Cocktail week, it seemed a perfect opportunity to explore London Beyond London in some detail.

So there will be a series of talks - arranged as our salons are with two related speakers followed by conversation.  And it is an incredible line up - Historian of Death Robert Stephenson, Curator of Osteology Jelena Bekvalac, London Way of Death's Brian Parsons, Londonist's Matt Brown, Future Death expert Dr John Troyer, Fashion guru Amber Jane Butchart, the BFI's Will Fowler and Dead Social's James Norris.

They will cover everything from the mediaeval way of death to the future of cemeteries. We have death mask making workshops, we have Dresses to Die for.  You can spend time in a coffin, you can meet an Undertaker, make a will (provided), find out what will happen to your Facebook account when you are gone, learn how to carry on updating it from beyond the grave - and of course drink cocktails.

My only regret is that I will be MC-ing rather than just hanging out.

Several things are free and drop in, others require booking.
Full details and reservations here

See you on the other side then..

LONDON BEYOND US

"The Future's not what it used to be Mr Angel" says the mysterious Robert De Niro character in one of my favourite films and in London that has certainly always been (and will always be) the case.  Walking around the town, I often think about things the way they might have been.  There are two aspects to this - firstly, if the Luftwaffe hadn't bombed us and if the post-war planners hadn't had their way, London would be a very different place.  Better? Perhaps - certainly if you read the book "Lost Panoramas of London", it is tragic to realise just what has gone.  

At one of our Salons for the City recently, St Etienne were talking about the excellent 1960s documentary "The London That Nobody Knows" narrated by James Mason.  Certainly that is in part a mourning for a London that was passing away but as Bob Stanley said: "You are also struck by what a shit hole much of the city was!". St Etienne's "Mervyn Day" film documents the area of East London which became the Olympic Park.  Whilst the park itself seems like some other-worldly Huxleyian Utopia detached from London proper, I can assure you from personal experience that what it replaced was hideous and not to be mourned.  I briefly lived in a house on a hill which has been completely obliterated by the very groovy Velodrome. (I was actually more shocked by the  removal of the hill than of the house until I discovered that it was only a Victorian rubbish dump..).

The Olympic Park is a vision that has actually been built but the other thing about London not being the way it might have been, is the ghostly presence of all the plans and dreams that were never realised - either for lack of will, money or conviction, occasionally because the citizens successfully resisted them or because they were completely barking mad.

Mile high towers, gigantic pyramids of death on the Thames, a 75m statue of Britannia on Greenwich Hill, Jetsons style monorails, a motorway through Covent Garden  - it could have all been so much...different.  Of course the visionaries are still at it. At our next Salon, Matt Brown of Londonist and London planner Andrew Collinge will be discussing some of the crazy and not so crazy ideas that have, or haven't, got off the drawing board.

But we all know one thing for sure about the future don't we?  That is that it will end - well at least from our point of view.  I don't think even religious people believe that time persists after death do they?  This of course, along with the city itself, has long been of fascination to me so I am very pleased that we have programmed a London Day of the Dead as part of the Hendricks Carnival of knowledge at a beautiful Georgian house in the centre of town.  It will be on October 12th and I have to say it looks absolutely fabulous.  


Hendrick's Carnival Of Knowledge from Hendrick's Gin on Vimeo.

FINDHORN

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Giant mute heads
Sand-sinking into sun
Gaze out still for ones
Who will never now come*
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*On the beach between Findhorn and Burghead, lie several gun batteries intended to repel Axis invaders during the second world war.  Time and tide are taking them now in the way the enemy never could.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TUNE IN THE WORLD

A little while back, I was asked to provide a mix-tape for The Voice of Cassandra radio show.  I confidently called it The Most Beautiful Tune in the World without hubris or fear of contradiction because the title is backed up by the facts. It will be broadcast at various places around the globe this week. Full details of where and when are here if you would like to listen to it amongst all the other things you have on - or here it is starting about 1 minute in on Mixcloud:
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What do Ken Dodd and Serge Gainsbourg have in common? Or how about Leroy Homes and Sarah Brightman? And what do they all share with Muse and James Last?

The list could get much longer because they and many others have written or performed songs derived from one melody: that of Chopin's Etude Op.10 No.3 in E Major. Some have credited him, some haven't but fortunately for all of them, music copyright does not extend back beyond the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. If it did and if there was a still a Chopin estate, it would be very wealthy on the back of this sequence of notes alone. There is probably no need to analyse why when you have heard it - the composer himself considered it his most beautiful tune and one he couldn't surpass.

Fairly early on, the poignancy of the melody led to it being christened "Pathetique", "Farewell" and most popularly: '"Tristesse'" although Chopin himself never used that name.  The titles of the various derivatives have often had a similar air of romantic melancholy: "Autumn in my Heart", "My dreams of love", "Never Again" and so on.

The original has been used to improve the score of several movies and even recently a manga animation (Wakare No Kyooku).  I have included a bit from that and from the 1943 film "I walked with a Zombie" because it is such a great movie.   

The various derivatives vary in quality enormously.  I had to leave out some ("Parting Person Melody" by Jolin Tsai Li Ren Jie for instance is unbearably awful).  Jerry Vale's 'This Day of Days' only made it because it sounds old and scratchy. The lyric makes me gag as I suspect would Jose Jose's 'Divina Ilusion' if my Spanish was any better.  I quite like the corny Ken Dodd sixties hit "So deep is the night"  (although it's difficult to get into to a fully romantic mood thinking of Ken with his mad-hatter buck teeth and tickling stick).  Most recently, those cheeky magpies Muse smuggled a bit of the melody into their Olympics piece "Survival" which also contained a bit of that other much copied classical tune Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor (plus what sounds like Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman" and a couple of Queen songs..).

My personal favourites are the gorgeous 'No other Love' by Jo Stafford and of course 'Lemon Incest' by the Gainsbourgs - the latter being the only version which seems to have a healthily careless disregard for the romantic naivety of the original.

LIFE AFTER LONDON

Death has rather been in the air of late.  Despite the sunshine that has finally blazed London in light and with Andy Murray radiating health, victory, success and all that, I seem to have been involved in some rather morbid activities.  And I mean that in the most positive way.

Did you know that it is perfectly legal in the UK to bury someone in your garden?  But only one person.  Beyond that you would have a cemetery - which requires planning permission.  Oh and you have to mention it on the Property Deeds which apparently reduces the value of the place  (although not for me, I have to say).  I learned this fact from the very lively Dr John Troyer of the Centre for Death Studies at one of the excellent Morbid Anatomy series curated by Joanna Ebenstein at The Last Tuesday Society. 

For sometime, I have been mulling over what I would like to happen to my mortal remains and now I know.  John mentioned various techniques as  alternatives to cremation.  One  is an incredible sort of steam punk machine which sort of sucks your juice out.  Didn't quite fancy that but I do like the technique where you (or the ex-you) is freeze dried in nitrogen until you are very brittle. Then a sonic boom

is fired at you and 'puff!' you are reduced to a pile of something rather like coffee granules.

Then we were down at West Norwood Cemetery for a London Dreamtime event last weekend.  The cemetery is one of the 'Magnificent Seven Great Gardens of Sleep'  built by the Victorians to solve the terrifying problem of London's dead in the nineteenth century.  It is quite posh and well kept, certainly much more so than the crumbling gothic Nunhead - its only neighbour south of the river.  I haven't been before and was keen to see if I could find the teleportation chamber built by Bonomi and Warner (more on that here).  I think it may be in the Greek quarter.

Speaking of South of the River, if you live in London you will be aware of the great divide.  South definately feels different than North - which has often spuriously claimed to be posher, more sophisticated, somehow more London.  This may have its roots in that during the eighteenth century, bodies found floating in the river were allowed to be used by surgeons for anatomical experiments.  Those landed on the north bank fetched a better price for those who dredged them as there was a greater demand from the northern hospitals..

Tomorrow I am filming a trailer for Hendricks Carnival of Knowledge for which we are programming a London Day of the Dead in October.  It will be "a guide to what to do in London the day after you die" and will be chock full of information, entertainment and hopefully a taste of the afterlife (or at least of Hendricks).  More on that soon.  

If you can, I hope you will come - assuming we are all still around by that time that is ..

LOST IN THE TEMPLE OF LOVE

Sergey Chernov knocked on the battered door under the archway. We waited. A couple more knocks. Nothing.  Then, as we were discussing what to do, the door opened a crack and a wisp of scented smoke curled out. Against a dim glow,  a face appeared. A bulky bearded wizard-like figure peered out. Sergey spoke to him in Russian.  The figure looked at me, smiled, held the door open and said: 

"Welcome to Heaven".

We entered. For me, a borderline neurotic when it comes to domestic arrangement, it was more like Hell.  Every surface was covered with a cacophany of books, pictures, records, photographs, lamps and arcane twisted organic artwork in a dark interior which bore no resemblance to an apartment.  The atmosphere was heavy with incense, there were no windows, little furniture  and almost no evidence of ordinary life.

I had been in St Petersburg with The Real Tuesday Weld for a concert and TV show and had stayed on for a couple of days with my friend Sergey Korsakov of Cardboardia .  We were doing research and interviews for a project I am involved with about samidzat recordings from the soviet era.  Sergey Chernov another friend and a journalist for the St Petersburgh Times had set up this meeting with Nikolay Vasin, a character of some note in Russia where he is known simply as "The Beatles Guy".  In his youth in the early sixties, Nikolay had come across an illegal recording which turned out to contain a Beatles song.  It changed his life irrevocably.  He had an epiphany.  Since then he has devoted virtually his whole time and meagre resources to the Fab Four and John Lennon in particular.  He calls his apartment "The Temple of Love" and he is its priest.  

As we entered, he retreated to an armchair in the corner. We found a seat where we could amongst the chaos of his collection.  Every single item was in some way Beatles related: hundreds of items of memorabilia and tribute, homemade miniature shrines and shelves creaking under the weight  of documents and recordings.  Our conversation, alternating between Russian translated by the Sergeys and broken English began.  I can't really call it an interview.  Whilst I was able to steer Nikolay back to the period and subject we are researching, it was clear he was far happier  talking about the Beatles.  Now don't get me wrong, although I'm not a massive fan I am quite interested in them myself so his anecdotes and memories of various near-encounters with Paul McCartney, trips to foreign fan conventions, peculiar meetings  with people tangentially associated with the band and deep analysis of their lyrics were fascinating.  They are a band of course who have spawned an unparalleled amount of fandom and they did have a significant cultural effect*** in the Soviet Union, but without doubt there is no fan to compare to Nikolay.

As fascinating (albeit in a poignant way) as his reminiscences was his mystical take on the music and the effect it has on his life.  He spends most of his time in The Temple of Love listening to the band (Beatles music was playing for the duration of our visit).  His main passion is to talk to people about them. At one point he asked us if we wanted to see his 'family album'.  My understanding is that this is a feature of many traditional Russian homes - a book of photographs of a person's family and forbears.  As Nikolay had mentioned his mother several times, I was intrigued to see his.  However when he opened it, we were startled to find it was completely filled with images of McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo and especially, John Lennon. These were often personalised and worked on with odd illustrations into a kind of outsider art.

As he showed us the album, he declared several times:
'John Lennon' is my Daddy'.  

It was clear he didn't mean this literally although tellingly from a psychological perspective, his own father seemed to have been a difficult, absent figure in his life.  I was rather at a loss as to what to say. Eventually I ventured:  

"You must have been very upset when he died"

He looked at me with surprise:

"He isn't dead"

This time, all I could manage was 

"Er, oh."

He closed the album:

"He has been living secretly in Northern Italy since 1980"

He waved toward a wobbling shelf of CDrs behind him.

"And he has made 34 albums since.." 

At this point, Sergey Chernov asked if he could use the bathroom and was directed through the kitchen. He returned a little while later looking slightly stunned (he told us afterwards that there was absolutely no sign of any cooking implements or food but didn't want to talk about the loo).

We didn't get to hear any of the secret Lennon albums.  I got the impression they weren't available for anyone but a committed devotee and we never got to the bottom of why Lennon had been in hiding.  Pressing him on the subject seemed upsetting in some way, so we returned to the music itself.   Nikolay said (and I believe him) that when he is in the Temple listening to the Beatles he feels completely happy and filled with love but that when he hears it elsewhere, even at a friend or fellow fan's place, it doesn't have the same effect.

It had been a fascinating if unsettling visit but it was time to leave.  I genuinely liked Nikolay and thanked him. He gave us each a warm hug and some parting words of Beatles related wisdom.  As he hadn't asked anything about what I did, I mentioned I had made a Beatles mashup if he would like to hear it.  He would.

As the first bit of "All You Need is Love" played out on my laptop, he smiled beatifically and nodded with encouragement.  But when a beat and a sample from another song kicked in, a pained expression fell across his face.

He looked up at me and indicated I should stop the music (we were at about bar 16).

"You ruined it'  he said sadly.

He was probably right.

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***Leslie Woodhead's recent "How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution" has much more on the importance of the band in the ex-USSR if you want to know more about the subject.  

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Speaking of The Temple of Love, I'd almost forgotten this old song about Cupid and Psyche, or was it Laura and Petrarch? Or me and that person I met in the launderette?