This is my final post. I am not off in a huff or anything but I realise that life is very different than when I started this blog almost ten years ago with the post 'Wet Dreams' about my visit to the hidden river Fleet. That was brought home to me last week when the very same story was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of the Just Juvenilia series produced by Duncan Minshull. It was also the story of the beginning of The Real Tuesday Weld and the song 'I Love the Rain' - which was perhaps the very first electro-swing tune (although of course we called it Antique Beat)
So we are sort of ending with a beginning. That sort of sums it all up really.
You can listen if you like:
And it is not that I am no longer bothered about "Myth Music London Love Birth Death Dreams or Blood' either. In fact, I think care more, but several of these things have now evolved their own lives. If you still care too and want to stay connected, or if you should come across this in some future age, we can be in touch here:
For THE REAL TUESDAY WELD go HERE, HERE or HERE
For BEAUTIFUL THINGS to own, see and hear, go HERE
For LONDON related things go HERE or HERE
For DEATH go HERE
For my FILM MUSIC go HERE
To read about the strange, strange story of ghostly records and the people who loved music so much they went to prison for it, go HERE
I have really enjoyed writing the 200 plus posts I made for this blog and if you have read and enjoyed any of them, thank you.
It's always best to finish with a song and so here is the one that in many ways started it all off.*
Very best wishes then
TCK
*With eternal thanks to Tracy Lee Jackson of Dreamy records who heard it all those years ago and believed..
Showing posts with label antique beat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antique beat. Show all posts
UNLOCKING THE TIME MACHINE
The Real Tuesday Weld make a record for Dead People.
Buy In Memorium here
---------------------------------
Barely a week goes by without some new horror story about the London property market. But accommodation has always been a problem here - even for the dead
The city is a teetering Necropolis. Countless thousands lie beneath our feet. Until inner city burials were banned in the mid 19th C., everyone who died here was squashed into tiny parochial church yards. Even before the horrors of the Black Death, tales abounded of body parts visible below thin layers of soil, corpses piled upon each other in cellars or left lying in the streets.
The Victorians built 'The Magnificent Seven Cemeteries' in a ring around the city to stop all that. This month, in two of them, Antique Beat are hosting 'The London Month of the Dead' with our friends A Curious Invitation. We are investigating the capital’s relationship with its deceased residents with workshops, walks, talks, a seance and an incredible array of speakers on death, dissection, bereavement, cemeteries, near-death experience, the paranormal **
As importantly, we are raising money for Brompton and Kensal Green cemeteries. My personal project is to raise enough to unlock 'The Brompton Time Machine' - better known as The Courtoy Mausoleum. An interesting legend has grown up around this mausoleum because it is the only one in the cemetery for which there is no record of construction - and for which there is no key. It hasn't been entered for over a hundred years. It is thought to have been designed by the Egyptologist and occultist Joseph Bonomi - pictured here. The legend is that it may have been a Time Machine or even part of wider 'London Teleportation System' **
Our aim is to raise enough to have the Mausoleum opened and a new key provided for future access / time travel. To that end, we have made a haunting new Ep called In Memorium - a sequence of songs about death with our friends Lazarus and the Plane Crash, The Puppini Sisters and Martyn Jacques of The Tiger Lillies.
Listen and buy it here
(If you buy a ticket to any event at London Month of the Dead, you get a complimentary copy included in your ticket price).
So go ahead
Help out the dead
And save a slice
Of the Afterlife..
And in case you need any more inducements to help raise (money for) the dead, here is the Lazarus Plane Crash song "The Clay's a Calling" exhumed from the In Memorium Ep.
So go ahead
Help out the dead
And save a slice
Of the Afterlife..
And in case you need any more inducements to help raise (money for) the dead, here is the Lazarus Plane Crash song "The Clay's a Calling" exhumed from the In Memorium Ep.
* Of particular note to Londoners, may be 'A Day in the Life of Death' - a chance to ask a London undertaker all the questions you ever wanted to or 'Apocalypse Now and Then' when London's 'mass fatality planner' will be explaining what will happen to us in the case of various disasters..
**Ironically, of the several ways of now getting quickly around London, one of the ones that has become more popular is 'The Brompton' - a fold-up portable bicycle.
SMOKE, MIRRORS, MUSIC, MOVIES
I finally got to series five of Breaking Bad (yeah, I know, two years after you did) and realised there are officially only two degrees of separation between me and Walter White. Todd, the new recruit to Walter's meth squad (and who shoots the little boy after they rip off the cargo train), is played by Jesse Plemons who was the male lead in Meeting Spencer, a US Indie I scored a few years ago. *
My connection with Jesse is to do with the song 'If I've Got You' which I was commissioned to write and which got me involved in the film.
If you find all the behind the scenes technical stuff about films and music really boring, stop reading now and skip to the video below.
Still here? Ok, a few weeks before they started to shoot, my publisher Randall Wixen asked if I could write a song for the Spencer character to perform in a pivotal scene. I love this sort of thing. It was the same deal with L A Noire - a tight deadline and songs that need to be about a character rather than about yourself (which is cool as I find I have less and less to say on the latter subject).
After a couple of false starts and some back-and-forthing over the lyrics, I delivered. The next thing was to get a version with Jesse singing it. In the scene, his character performs at a piano in a restaurant. Jesse doesn't play piano, so I sang a version in London with me playing and sent it to LA in bits so they could replace my vocal with his. The issue in the studio there was that naturally, he was finding it difficult to sing with any vibe to my pre-recorded piano part. To prevent it sounding wooden, he wanted to sing it whilst he played guitar. This done, they sent his vocal and guitar parts back to me, I removed the guitar and played a new piano part to his vocal - with a solo. Still with me? Then I sent the final recording back to LA and he mimed to it whilst they shot the scene. As he doesn't play, they shot someone else's hands during the piano solo..
Ah, the magic, the smoke and the mirrors of movies.**
Click for more of our music in films
And check out this if you want to hear what the song sounded like with Jesse on guitar before I took over on the ivories..
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*For trivia fans, another of the the Meeting Spencer cast, Mark Harelik, plays Walt's doctor in Season Three of Breaking Bad. Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor and Batman Begin's Melinda McGraw also starred.
**In Meeting Spencer, Jesse's character is an aspiring ingenue who has played supporting roles but by the end is bound for stardom. Sounds like it all worked out in real life too. After his success as a psycho in Breaking Bad, he is rumoured to be taking the lead role in the next Star Wars movie..
THE LONDON SANDMAN
Re. Dave McKean at Salon for the City June 26th
-------
Were you a fan of Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman' series as I was as a youngster? Somehow it made the undeniable fairytale appeal of fantasy works relevant in a way that The Lord of the Rings, however wonderful, just couldn't to urban youth.
Or was it just the long The Matrix-style coats and cool haircuts?
The Sandman is a "story about stories and how Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is captured and subsequently learns that sometimes change is inevitable". It was right up my street. Plus, crucially, girls liked it too. The dust covers from the many The Sandman editions were made by Gaiman's friend and long-term collaborator, the British illustrator Dave McKean (and were so good they were eventually released in their own volume). I loved them.
Dave is a horribly talented illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, collage, painting, found objects, photography, digital art and sculpture. His collaborations with Gaiman on The Sandman and Coraline plus countless CD and book covers have inspired many other artists and writers. He is also a very nice guy.
And, he is coming to speak at our Salon for the City next week to talk / sing / play about London in his work. Hurrah!
I recently saw him performing live with Neil Gaiman at the British Library at the opening of the 'British Comics Unmasked' show curated by our out other guest at the Salon the fantastical Paul Gravett. It was super. Neil has obviously done a deal with some demon - he is annoyingly good looking, seemingly eternally youthful, also horribly talented, massively successful - and very nice too to boot..
Here he is reading the poem 'The Saucers have Landed' live in my bootleg recording.
Dave McKean at Salon for the City June 26th
AN EYEFUL OF LONDON
As well as looking for teleportation chambers when we were in Paris last month, we walked the city up and down. That is the best way to uncover its myths** I believe. We also benefitted from having a room right at the top of a tiny hotel in Montmarte. It was most unusual in that it was the first hotel I have stayed in for ages that actually had a window in the bathroom. In fact, it had "a loo with a view" - from which you could contemplate the Eiffel tower.
I like the tower - as do most Parisians - though they wouldn't think of going up it. Like The London Eye, it is associated almost entirely with visitors. But like The Eye, it gives a wonderful perspective on the city and is a fun, childlike thing to visit. Our Salon for the City is all about perspectives on the city, so it was a pleasure when myself with Antique Beat and Suzette Field (of A Curious Invitation) were asked to suggest ideas which could reconnect The Eye with the city it observes. We did, and here, after months of secret planning is the result:
"On the evening of May 1st the EDF Energy London Eye will be set to a special slow rotation speed and each of its 32 capsules will be given over to a talk by a well-known authority on a famous Londoner. The subjects will range from Thomas Becket to Joseph Bazalgette, from WS Gilbert to Ray Davies and from Queen Victoria to Zadie Smith. The speakers themselves will be a roll call of those who have contributed to the capital’s cultural legacy: from former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, to ex-Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, film director Julien Temple, broadcaster Robert Elms and biographers Claire Tomalin and Kate Williams.
And to commemorate the occasion our friends Hendrick’s Gin have devised 32 bespoke cocktails, one in honour of each London borough. Each guest will be served a complimentary cocktail in capsule during the talk.
After disembarkation there will be an opportunity to share a drink with your fellow passengers and speakers and to discuss the talks, the city and Londoners in general"
After disembarkation there will be an opportunity to share a drink with your fellow passengers and speakers and to discuss the talks, the city and Londoners in general"
I am so pleased that we have pulled it off. We rather hope that this will become an annual London May Day institution.
Be quick if you want to be part of it. It will sell out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* To Uncover the Myths of London's Square Mile, join us this Thursday 27th March at Westminster Arts
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**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.."
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.
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 ..
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.
***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.
__________________
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?
CREATURE COMFORTS
Anyway here they are: The Creature Comforts:
Mr Night OwlMs Snowy Owl
The CadBanker Boy and
The Pirate
Wonderful right?
I had the idea for accesories for shy men a couple of years back. There are loads of brooches for girls but hardly anything for the fairer sex. But whenever I wore my Death's Head Flower (made by dear Za Za) people would always stop me to talk about it and I mean EVERY single time. So now it's what I recommend for a boy with a broken heart. And I mean boys of either sex naturally.
(Antique Beat have been selling them to confident girls too - that wasn't quite the point but that's commerce for you I guess)
As Koo says: "Show your lapel some Love"
There are also some absolutely lovely other things in the boutique but I am starting to sound like an advertisement so I will stop - you get the picture I'm sure.
I probably won't write again now until next year. Assuming the Mayans (and me) were wrong and the world won't be ending in the next 24 days, I intend to be sitting by the fire or beach-combing in the far north of Scotland. It has seemed a very full year. I can't be bothered to list all the incredible achievements and witty comments I made but as ever, it was the people that mattered.It has been great fun getting to know and playing with Matthew Snowden and Josephine Lloyd. And I remain very appreciative of my stalwart bass player the crime jazz detective Don Brosnan not to mention the boy with the golden flute Jacques Van Rhijn and Wing Commander Clive Painter.
And of course to you, if you are there and reading, looking or listening.
A pleasure and an honour as always.
TCK
WOLF DREAMS AT THE YEAR'S END
As ever, it contains new or unreleased music from the past year. The crazy gypsy electro-swing foot tapper "Spring Heeled Jane" features the most stylish DJ duo in the world The Broken Hearts. Josephine Lloyd and the band perform a heart-stopping version of "Torched Song" (originally written for the LA Noire soundtrack) whilst a demo version of a new song "Black Bird Day" (soon to appear on Arctic Circle's forthcoming incredible Age of Not Believing project) brings a haunting fairytale atmosphere to the proceedings. "Snowball" and "Last Light" bookend the mini-album with crackly old meets new sounds suitably coloured to the winter season (well, if you are in the Northern hemisphere that is).
Antique Beat have been doing these for a few years now. They made them available for sale and for personalisation four years ago. It's nice to see they have become collector's items. I think you can even still buy some of the previous ones if you haven't already.
They have also commissioned an absolutely gorgeous new set of brooches for shy men (also reluctantly made available to confident girls) - more on them and on Christmas and on dreams soon.
Thursday is the first of our Salons for the City at Westminster Arts Library. If you are coming, I look forward to seeing you there. Gin and seventeenth century coffee will be served. We have had a fabulous response with so many people wanting to come and talk. Future events include "London Over, London Under". "London before London, London after London", " Dying in London", "London by Night" and so on and so on. We already have a fabulous selection of speakers and are hoping to announce some VERY special guests soon. You heard it all here.
Happy Howlidays
THE REAL TUESDAY WELD Seasons Dreamings 2012 preview by The Real Tuesday Weld
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)