HAPPY HATTER CHRISTMAS

Get The Real Tuesday Weld's 2014 Audio Christmas Card HERE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's almost that time of year again isn't it?.  It seems to come with increasing rapidity.  Good job I'm immortal.. 

In the sixties, The Beatles, who were pioneers in SO many ways, used to make special flexi discs containing songs and bits of spoken word for their fan club at Christmas. Inspired, The Real Tuesday Weld have made an Audio Christmas Card for the last eight years.  Originally it was just for friends and to say thanks to all the amazing people who have helped or supported us but a few years back after many requests (well, two or three), we started to make them available to all.  They contain new music and pieces from the past year that wouldn't normally see the light of day.  Often some of our best work I think. 

They take the form of a specially designed greetings card with a mini cd inside - a format I have always loved although it is now almost totally anachronistic.  You can actually play them in a standard cd player tray - although not of course in a laptop.  Every year, we think 'shall we bother?"  and I always say 'yes' because although we now also include a digital download token, it just doesn't seem the same to not have 'the actual thing' in some physical form or other.  You can use the cd as a small coaster if you like.

You can get this year's card  HERE - signed and dedicated if you like.

The super cool image is one from the Alice in Wonderband collection by Antique Beat - beautiful cool greetings cards and T shirts featuring Alice and her friends in a psych-rock band (really).  With all the other things Antique Beat have on offer, that should really cover your Christmas list right?

I am particularly pleased with the music this time: "Hey Miss Policeman" (a song about a cross-dressing law officer); "Forsaken" with my dear friend Marcella Puppini (from this year's score for the US film 'Meet Me in Montenegro'); "Cheshire Love Cat Blooze" (does what it says on the tin) and 'It Came Through the Window" inspired by 'The Man Who Married Kittens', the Walter Potter biopic I scored for maverick director Ronni Thomas.




And as an extra Christmas stocking filler, the EP contains a copy of our much requested cover version of Abba's masterpiece "The Day Before You Came". This was only previously available on a US compilation. The original is one of my favourite ever songs:

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS

It seems all of London's bridges are stained with blood.

If you had been catching a bus southward on Waterloo Bridge on 7th September 1978 you may have witnessed the murder of Georgi Markov.  He was on his way home after a day's work at Bush House in Aldwych - the home of the BBC's World service where he worked in the Bulgarian department.  LIke Roberto Calvi under Blackfriars Bridge (see 'A Hanging and a Haircut' below) he was assassinated - but this was classic cold war stuff.   Georgi was an outspoken critic of Bulgarian Communist Party Chairman Todor Zhivkov and ridiculed him mercilessly in his broadcasts via Radio Free Europe.  His death is thought to have been a birthday present to the Chairman from certain Soviet friends.

In some ways way it was also a very English Death.  The murder weapon was either an umbrella or a fountain pen and was delivered by a gentleman in a bowler hat (nationality uncertain). Markov felt a sharp pain in his leg and looked around to see the gentleman backing off apologising as though he had stumbled.  A few days later he was dead - fatally poisoned like Alexander Litvinenko a couple of years back - but in this case by the Ricin in the pellet shown above which his bowler-hatted assassin had injected into his thigh. 

I was thinking of all this as we were driving from Brussels after a show with The Real Tuesday Weld last weekend and passed a sign for Waterloo.  Waterloo bridge like the station is of course named after the famous battle when the Duke of Wellington defeated the French and about fifty thousand people died. Can you imagine their ghosts lining the bridge? I always thought using the name was rather tactless towards the French who arrived in London via the station.  (As too apparently did a French politician who asked that it be re-named.  That would have been unacceptable of course but is one of the reasons they moved the Eurostar arrival location to St Pancras Station).  

The modern bridge is rather elegant and without doubt has the best view of any of the Thames crossings in both directions.   In some ways it is also the most female.  It was built mainly by women in the second world war and for a long time previously was known as 'The Bridge of Sighs' because of all the female suicides that happened there (for a beautiful example, check out Vivien Leigh in the film "Waterloo Bridge").  The name works rather well for the romantic trysts for which is suited too - I notice that the British Film Institute which shelters beneath it has become the assignation place of choice for certain internet daters.  I often get approached when there alone with a hesitant "Are you William?", or a gentle cough and an enquiry like: "Is that Frank…?".  

Of course if you've seen Terence Stamp and Julie Christie crossing the bridge in "Waterloo Sunset" that makes perfect sense.

Speaking of which, apart from the perennially lovely Kinks track of the same name, the area and bridge are associated with a few very good songs. Some of my favourites are Abba's pneumatic Euro-salute 'Waterloo' and the very nice 'Waterloo Station' recently penned by Rufus Wainwright for Jane Birkin.   But the most moving by far has to be Gavin Bryars orchestrated loop of a tramp singing "Jesus Blood Never failed me Yet".

The area now occupied by the IMax cinema was for years a bleak submerged roundabout where many homeless people sheltered.  Gavin made the recording in the 1970s whilst involved in filming a documentary about them.  The tramp concerned, a war veteran, is long dead now but he has gained a kind of immortality through this beautiful piece - singing a song which keeps me just this side of Atheism and which is timeless enough to serve as a lament for all Waterloo's dead - whether they be in London or in Belgium, now or long ago.