Lady’s Bridge November 2, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business.Tags: europe, life, music, work
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The idea of an album about a place, whether in name alone or in actual execution, is always incredible. I’m listening to Richard Hawley’s Lady’s Bridge right now, the album which takes its name from the bridge of the same name in Sheffield, linking the Wicker with Waingate. Fantastic sounding places, but you can find that out on Wikipedia.
Obviously the cross-section of listeners who can directly relate is always going to be limited depending where the artist is from (even if it’s a place like London or New York which are like outer space to most people who live in those cities’ respective countries). And I’ve never been to Sheffield. But Lady’s Bridge creates a magnificent association, it makes you want to experience what inspired Hawley. He’s one of those artists that I never really listened to as much as I should, despite his being involved in what seems like scores of projects from artists I always loved, particularly most Jarvis Cocker projects.
Tonight just seemed like a perfect night to put this album on. I look forward to nights in more than nights out. As much as I love an exceptional night out, there’s still nothing better than listening to a great album. It’s why it’s so hard for me to succumb to logic and leave the music industry – I could be doing so much better elsewhere! But the availability of great music always makes it worth the punishment and masochism involved in working in an industry run by know-nothings and do-littles, hell-bent on architecting the demise of art as we know it. Listening to Lady’s Bridge on the weekend makes the week tolerable. It’s not a record for the train, lush soundscapes that would get lost in the hustle and bustle (is bustle ever used in a sentence without being preceded by “hustle”?) of every day life. He must owe much inspiration, as his mate Cocker does, to Scott Walker. Roy Orbison is channelled here as well. It’s wonderful listening.
Every so often I do get the feeling that I should have done more when I was younger, in the same way I wonder whether in the future I’ll feel like spending the time in on the weekends now will feel like throwing away the best years of my life. A good record takes all of that away. It eliminates any undercurrent of negativity. It’s the only real relevant anaesthetic and certainly the cheapest. A good record makes you feel like things are possible.
Like Lady’s Bridge, I used to love writing about places, once I got over the idea of writing about frivolous things that generally get you worked up when you’re a teenager. Everyone wants to write songs about love but when there is something concrete in the shape of geography that can be attached to feelings and ideas, the result is so much more real. There is more romance in that than there is in love itself, a vacant concept.
Speaking of which, it looks like Paris is becoming a very real thing, pencilled in for 2/19 at the moment. It feels like an album release date, you just try to get everything lined up ahead of time and hope it doesn’t have to get pushed back for some reason. I’m excited, probably more excited than I’ve been for a trip in a long time. The transcontinental trip in May was amazing, but much more spontaneous. It will be great to have time to think about all the things I want to do ahead of time. If nothing else, it’s justification for staying in on a Saturday night to plan the next adventure. When you have the soundtrack and the inspiration, all that’s left to do is execute. It’s time to make a date with Air France.
In the meantime, I recommend: Richard Hawley – Tonight The Streets Are Ours
Le vent nous portera October 26, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, NYC.Tags: europe, life, music, new york, walking
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There is a certain greyness about New York in the autumn that is really quite evocative. Walking down the street is a bit like being the Bittersweet Symphony video, although usually I only knock over one or two grannies on a leisurely day out. But it does feel very cinematic.
I was out running errands on a grey day last weekend and stumbled into an incredible little market, completely out of the way on 25th street in what served as a carpark during the week. You’d only find it on accident, I don’t think anyone knew it was going to be there. But what characters! Fabulous African style masks, chandeliers and lamps that would look lovely cleaned up and restored to their full glory, art prints they’d tell you were rare, but probably weren’t. They’d tell you anything to move it. Old wedding gowns, hanging right there in the street! It was a very raw experience. Came across a great looking Shirley Bassey record but wasn’t going to be bothered for five bucks. Next time.
When I was a kid my parents always used to drag us round these horrible shopping trips, looking for nothing in particular. Markets, furniture stores, bric-a-brac… I don’t recall them ever buying anything on a single day out to one of these places. We had too much stuff anyway. The shoe’s on the other foot though now and I’ve started to become quite inspired by old stuff, design, etc. You walk through a market and wonder what it would be like to have a mansion and outfit it with all this ridiculous stuff from another time. Still a bit of a modernist at heart though.
I still get nostalgic for London. Defining experiences here seem to reinforce my memories of time in London. That market run reminded me of going up to Wembley before they destroyed the stadium and walking through the market on site there. After work on Friday I walked up to Penn Station. Penn Station is a defining cultural landmark I think, but more than anything else walking through the ticket hall reminded me of Victoria. Not as a straight comparison – they are aesthetically quite different – but the mood, experience, and atmosphere are essentially the same. I took the 1 train to Columbus Circle. I go into work later than most people and leave later than most people so I’m never really on packed trains. Instead of reminding me of what it’s like to be on a packed train in NYC at rush hour, it brought back memories of being crammed in a Central Line train out of Oxford Circus.
Even the nights out bring back the memories. I went out to see Late of the Pier play their CMJ showcase, followed by a James Lavelle DJ set and a masterclass in electrorock from Soulwax. LOTP were something else, and the Astralwerks crew looked quite pleased. James Lavelle was probably on for twice as long as he should have been, but the set made me think back to my first ever dance festival experience, at Creamfields, watching people go mad for sets by Carl Cox and Darren Emerson. Jonny Flaws was with me last night and pointed out that seeing a rock band is about experiencing the band, but seeing a DJ is about experiencing the moment with your friends. There’s a lot of truth to that. Pete Tong was the MC on the night and I remember listening to his old mixes on Radio 1 online back when I lived at home. Soulwax are geniuses and no mistake – they even audaciously managed to cover Daft Punk’s Robot Rock in what was an unbelievable set.
Despite the large nights, it’s been a fairly chill out mood lately. I hear the Kings of Leon album everywhere but all I want to deal in is Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sia, Gomez, Emiliana Torrini, Noir Desir’s quieter, moodier moments… and French cinema. I feel like despite all of this English nostalgia a trip to France is really on the cards. Paris is calling, perhaps by the death of 2008 but likelier at the birth of 2009. The time is coming to create new memories for which to become nostalgic, and I need them desperately, because unfortunately those critical moments are not being inspired by work anymore. I guess the market in a vacant carpark on a side street ends up being a relevant metaphor after all: if there’s nothing of interest you’re being supplied with, time to step off the beaten path to find something inspiring. Otherwise the grey days become less evocative of strong feelings and more of an obvious metaphor for life in their own right. It’s time to get to work and plot the next adventure. It can’t come soon enough.
Schönbuch September 11, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life.Tags: europe, life, walking
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I took today off. Some days you’re just not right. Kevin called this afternoon, to meet up at In Vino Veritas on Saint Nicholas. We had either a late lunch or an early dinner, depending on your point of view or time zone. The Heights were in good form. I’d say rare form, except it’s hardly rare. But nature was kind to us, and the blocks and blocks apartment buildings cut such a rigid contrast across the bright blue sky and clouds that it looked like they were made from cardboard on a movie set.
Kevin’s taking a month to go to Buenos Aires, to learn Spanish, to learn the people, to experience culture. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to take a week or whatever I can take and meet him down there. I start searching for flights… you have to connect in Santiago. Why not go to Santiago? A time ago everything was much more rigid. I had to plan these things. In reality I know I still do.
Last night I sat up looking at maps of Germany. Mainly of places I’d been, that I loved. Back when I had the freedom to get up and go places and not worry about ANYTHING (even though I did). Ludwigsburg Palace. Train lines around Herrenberg and Reutlingen, where I used to explore the towns. Everything’s flat on maps, and it’s a bizarre perspective on what you experience three dimensionally. I looked all around Tübingen, at bus routes, the streets I used to take to get to class. I started dreaming of all the time we spent lazily in the Neckarinsel – lounging with the peacocks – and the Altstadt and Neckarmüller, simply out of having nowhere else to go. I never really bought into that way of thinking though, and tried to spend as much time at the Hauptbahnhof as possible, figuring out where I could go next, nights and weekends. They say the world is your oyster but there’s no point having an oyster if you’re not mining it for pearls.
One afternoon the lady I lived with decided we needed to go up to Bebenhausen, to look at the cloisters. The last thing I needed to look at was more fucking cloisters, considering my entire stay in Germany was punctuated by churches and castles. But we took the bus up to Bebenhausen, before she sent me off on a tour around the place so she could have snacktime in the caff. I could hardly contain my delight at getting out of there, only to find that she and I were going to walk the several miles through Schönbuch nature preserve to get back to the outskirts of town.
We set off first through fields and prairies of beautiful yellow and green grass before making our way up into the proper hills and mountains of the preserve. It was as gorgeous as I was restless. I had yet to learn that sometimes getting there is more about the getting and less about the there. We inevitably got lost, which only frustrated me as much as it delighted her. I quickly learned that if there’s one things Germans love more than tight trousers it’s hiking. It took us hours to get through Schönbuch, it felt like we were trapped on some other planet. It didn’t seem real. She didn’t know where we were going and didn’t care.
Finally she announced we were coming up on a village called Hagelloch. I dismissed that as fantasy, saying it sounded like something out of Lord of the Rings and couldn’t possibly exist. We emerged from the mountains in a field of cows, climbing down paths behind barns. Eventually we came to a cobblestone street, which led to another street, which led to a church. And that was more or less Hagelloch. We waited what seemed like an eternity for a bus. A mother and two children waited with us. The children were crying. It took ages on the local bus to get back to Europaplatz in the centre of Tübingen so that we could walk home, along the canal to Memmingerstrasse where we lived.
I spent a lot of time that summer preoccupied with things back home. As I was walking out of the bakery on Saint Nicholas & 171st tonight, it made me think of all the money I spent on sweets, cakes and ice cream back in Europe, when I didn’t have bills or jobs or anything like that to worry about. So many brilliant things have happened in the intervening years that it’s impossible to say things should have been different, I would never say that. But in the state I found myself in today, there was nowhere I wanted to be more than Schönbuch.
