My missing trip to India

[imomus]

The other night I was watching the él Records Story on Cherry Red TV, an extended conversation between Iain McNay (who runs Cherry Red, the UK indie label I've been releasing with -- off and on -- since 1985, and which recently celebrated its 30th birthday) and Mike Alway, the A&R man who signed me.

él was not just a fantastic label, but a somewhat fantasist one. Mike put groups together, gave them names, got them to pretend they were bakers or school kids or postmen or whatever (anything but "musicians"), and even gave them lists of titles to make songs out of.

I remember him sending me off to write a short story about cricket, called The Ashes Regained, for instance. I knew nothing about cricket, and cared even less, but somehow Mike's eccentric charisma won out and I scurried off to write the story, which I ended up -- as you do -- reciting behind a curtain in the Limelight Club on Shaftesbury Avenue at an él Records showcase. I left the label shortly afterwards, abandoning the next él / Cherry Red Momus album, provisionally entitled BBC1. I was slightly alienated by Mike's increasing bossiness -- él was turning into a label where you existed to express Mike's vision rather than your own -- and Creation's more hard-nosed, worldly, ambitious approach was suddenly appealing, as was the fact that Creation had music paper editors slavering, whereas él had them slamming the phone down.

Mike and I would work again together (on, for instance, a 2002 Milky album for Siesta). I suppose I only have one regret about leaving él when I did; the fact that I missed the él Records 1987 tour of Japan, in which Mike, Louis Philippe and Simon Fisher Turner were accompanied by legendary gay filmmaker Derek Jarman (the Super 8s Derek shot are reputed to be in cans somewhere in Simon's family home). But I have to say that I never found anyone in the music industry as interesting or creative as Mike Alway again. He's a completely unique A&R man (did I mention he signed The Passage to Cherry Red?), an intelligent eccentric with an inspiring pantomime vision of a completely parallel world of pop brilliance. It's entirely unsurprising to me that only the Japanese really understood él Records, which became a catalyst for Shibuya-kei (Kahimi Karie, before I'd met her, had charted a catchy single entitled Mike Alway's Diary, and many of the songs I wrote for her in the mid-90s were designed as pastiches of the style signature of él Records -- a signature I'd helped create, but had abandoned when I signed to Creation).

Anyway, one thing stood out in Mike's account of our meeting and the recording of my first album, Circus Maximus. Here's Mike talking about how we first met -- in the pub on Hogarth Road where 4AD Records boss Ivo and the Beggar's Banquet people used to go after work. This would have been in 1982:

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"[4AD had] released a single by The Happy Family, and then an album," Mike recalls. "Nick had gone then to India. I began to inquire then about his whereabouts. I enjoyed The Happy Family and I thought "This is somebody I'd like to work with." I thought, as a vocalist and as a lyricist he was extremely special. I found that he was in India, eventually returned to England and I invited him to get involved. We recorded an album, not at Olympic Studios, by now, because my involvement in Blanco had ended, and by now I was back under Waterloo Bridge with Pat Collier, previously of The Vibrators, in Alaska Studios on a much less hourly rate than I was on at Olympic Studios [where the Vic Godard album had been recorded], recording the first Momus album, and that is where I became connected back with you, because Theo Chalmers at Cherry Red Music heard the Momus album that I'd made."



Now, this is all impeccably factual, except for one detail. I've never been to India in my life. After The Happy Family stalled I went back to university in Aberdeen and finished my English Literature degree. Mike knows this, I'm sure, but he's chosen to say, instead, that I went to India. It may very well be that he thinks going back to university in Scotland is just too dull a detail to include. But it got me thinking about how easy it is to create rock myths -- how Keith Richards had his blood entirely replaced, how Ozzy bit the head off a bat, how Sebastien Tellier is son of a member of prog rock Magma, how David Bowie gave a Hitler salute at Victoria Station, how Lawrence from Felt won't use a toilet if someone's broken the hygienic seal.

I almost feel ready to capitulate to Mike's script, his edit of my CV. I'm tempted to say: "You know, that does read better. Scratch Aberdeen, insert India." The world in which I accept Mike's version of things, after all, is the world in which I first visit Japan in 1987 rather than 1992. But it's also the world in which I'm not only -- by about 1992 -- having to make a concept album about cricket, but do it in role as Osbert Sitwell, prancing in a pageboy costume under semi-ecclesiastical Op Art lime green lanterns. And suddenly I remember why I left él Records in 1986. This fantastic, fantastical record label made everything just too damned interesting. But I won't lie and say I'm not missing my missing trip to India.

Comments

[scythrop.livejournal.com]

How funny — the first thing I thought when I saw the photo at the top was that he looks like a cross between Edith and Sacheverell!

I would imagine almost anything worth doing is more fun if you do it dressed as a Sitwell. (Or Cecil Beaton. Or Stephen Tennant.)

[(Anonymous)]

yo momus thats straight fucked
would you tell me what you think of Hawai'i?
I want you to come play here
I know you came to visit me in the mental insitution

[(Anonymous)]

I feel straight ignored, hood

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

God, that video is unpleasant. I'm sure both men are lovely, but man alive, it's a pub conversation that you'd invent a family suicide to get out of.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh come on, Rhodri, this is full of gems. It begins with Mike's story of taking the Shock Headed Peters' "gay anthem like nobody had ever heard... enormous" to Rob Dickens, boss of Warner Brothers, and being surprised that he didn't like it.

You'd be singing a different song if he was talking about managing Sudden Sway, for sure. Which, of course, he did. Actually, he does briefly touch on the subject in Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6TZ9gfi27g). This time he's surprised that a major label does release their record -- complete with a board game, fluorescing bow tie, and frozen curry in plastic kit form.

Grow up

[(Anonymous)]

With respect who care who cares cares care cares?

It was all so long ago, none of it matters, it's just silly pop music. Hearing this bod from the El label banging on like a 14 old boy is highly irksome.

Alway (Ultra)

[(Anonymous)]

Alway probably got the idea of inventing biographies for others after he himself was pranked in 1981 by Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey. Supposedly a pair of female Pre-Raphaelite synthesizer knob twiddles, Cherry Red released a track by the duo on the Perspectives & Distortion LP and indeed had a whole album lined up before Alway found out that there were no flowing robes or long tresses but just some guy in a basement with a Revox who had made the whole thing up.
http://www.last.fm/music/Claire+Thomas+and+Susan+Vezey/_/Bright+Waves

Re: Alway (Ultra)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, the Mike I know would have loved that. It wouldn't have stopped him putting the record out.

Re: Alway (Ultra)

[(Anonymous)]

That was Karl Blake and David Jackman in drag surely?

[(Anonymous)]

It's probably just a jumbled bit of info in his mind: confusion over the problems with Shaznaz (?).

You're reading too much into it.

Limelight

[(Anonymous)]

I think you read out something called The Nightwatchman at the Limelight to howls of derison from a packed club who had come for a party for the opening or closing of the London Film Festival. The cricket record did actually get made by a band called The Cavaliers. Not sure i ever listened to it. You are right about Mike being the most creative person, when i first met him i thought the music business must be populated by people just as maddening, eccentric and brilliant, how wrong i was. He could also be autocratic but he let me make my records because he knew it
meant a lot to me and really the influences he tried to bring in to my work were for the better. el stopped in i think 1989 and the last thing i did for them was a demo of
the Carpenters Close To You which was scheduled as my next single and kind of prefigured the style of music i would make later. You also continued to write sleevenotes and press releases for el after you left in secret because i think McGee told you "not to work with those tosser's anymore". We did get a lot of good press but never in the
NME, they were already on the slide that led to them giving
your scrappy, silly but rather lovely Hippotomomus album
0/10 a few years later. It's interesting to see in some of the reactions here how little has changed.
Kevin

Re: Limelight

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're right, Kevin, it was The Night Watchman I read out at the Limelight.

You also continued to write sleevenotes and press releases for el after you left in secret because i think McGee told you "not to work with those tosser's anymore".

Now that I don't think is right. Sure, I used pseudonyms for those sleevenotes, but that was just part of Mike's preference for role-play and intrigue. McGee was always pretty positive about Mike, and later, of course, got him in to do the sleeves for Poptones.

Re: Limelight

[(Anonymous)]

Cherry Red were a good record label for the time, I'm sure a lot of people feel this way. But it's really, really not that important to most people now over 30 - they're only pop songs, who cares who signed who and why.

Re: Limelight

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"We did get a lot of good press but never in the
NME, they were already on the slide that led to them giving
your scrappy, silly but rather lovely Hippotomomus album
0/10 a few years later."

I managed to dig up that review, it's here (http://loki23.blogspot.com/2005/01/hippopotamomus.html) for anyone who wants to read it in full.

Basically, Some bell-end at NME gets sanctimonious and slightly hysterical, arguing that "violence against women is not a subject for humorous treatment" in reference to the song "I ate a girl right up" and that the album, with is risque content mixing childhood and sexuality, would perhaps be better off suppressed and censored.

The cracks are beginning to show... Who would have suspected that a mere eighteen years later NME would be written entirely by a bunch of morons?

The icing on this cake of bullshit, a slightly tongue in cheek but all too serious suggestion: "why can't he write about football like the rest of us?"

Yeah Nick, why can't you write about football? or Cricket? Wait... you did!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think there's an interesting back story to this interview which makes it a much richer and more interesting human story than it may seem on the surface, and that's the theme of betrayal forgiven. While Iain may come across here as a benign old Geography teacher or something, you have to know the story between the lines: that almost everyone "betrayed" him at some point by signing to another label (Bid did it, I did it, and Mike took virtually the whole roster away to Blanco Y Negro, the WEA label he set up with Geoff Travis and Dave McCullogh.)

Iain not only welcomed us all back after our incursions into ambition and betrayal, but managed to resist being ambitious and treacherous himself. As a result (and I don't think you can entirely detach this magnanimity from his spiritual path, and his time with the Bhagwan), Iain kept Cherry Red alive long after Creation and Factory and all the other indie labels of that period had disappeared. He profited, in the long run, from our ambition, and often acquired the rights to material we'd released elsewhere. I wouldn't hesitate to use the word "wisdom" of Iain, whereas few other record company execs get beyond "self-interest". He's actually a Good Person, and that's -- rather unusually -- made him a good businessman in the long run; the kind of person who can rebuild bridges with people, and patiently accumulate a vast catalogue, and allow artists to grow and develop. It's very rare, actually.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree Iain does come across as a good person. I'd much rather hear him talking than Alan McGee anyday. I like Cherry Red TV, when will you do an interview?

[(Anonymous)]

Like the idiom about the patience of the Chinese in regards Hong Kong, which I badly paraphrase...

"Having to wait 99 years without a few islands is nothing for a culture with measurements of billions and the odd millenium" (the long view, so sadly ignored by the majority of major rekkid co's)

Bless Cherry Red, hope they get themselves sorted from Pinnacle a.s.a.p.

Alles besten, DC

JOEMUS

[(Anonymous)]

Mister Momus
I am writing you again to stress how incredible the song The Vaudevillian is. I have been listening to the album now for a few days & I also love Widow Twanky. I try to live my life inside of A surreal music hall & also inside of abstract pop songs. I love The Vaudevillian so much that I will be playing it two times in a row on the Worried Waltz radio program this Sunday. I wish to make a point about how great that song is. I insist that people realize it! I bet you don't even realize how great it is. I have decided to believe that you wrote it just for me.
thoifm@aol.com

Re: JOEMUS

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This is great, thank you! I've never listened to the track twice in a row, I wonder how the spooky ending works as an intro?

And you're right, I don't really realize how great The Vaudevillian is. For me it came pretty easily, it was the character I'd "found" in the slow sections of Mr Proctor. He got his own song, a swansong. In a way, you could say he's the Sgt. Pepper of Joemus.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Mike's a lovely guy. Always wanted to collaborate on a project with him. Something to do with early aviation, perhaps.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I'd like this man, he doesn't disgust me at all in this conversation. His ideas don't stink of fake wood finishes made to fool the eye or gold chromed lamp fixtures destined to appear as scratchy piss-metal in days to come. His plastics appear as plastic and his natural elements appear as just that; something that is missing in most areas of everything and everyone you are likely to meet.
-John Flesh

Ivo and 4AD

[(Anonymous)]

I think the last vinyl I ever bought was a 4AD LP by Richenel entitled L'esclave Endormi. I didn't know who or what it was and I still don't. The LP was produced by Dirk Blankchart and mixed by John Fryer and Ivo. It's actually an LP sized 45. Was Richenel someone named Armand Altai? I'm an American and out of the loop, as it were.

-whodareswings

Alway, Momus

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Nick,

Caught this thread thanks to Google alerts which pulled up my name (Theo Chalmers). Nice to see you're still alive and apoparently well. It all seems so long ago and very far away (to borrow from The Carpenters). These days I'm nothing to do with music, as you probably know, and amongst other things have a regular show called 'On The Edge' on Edge Media Television, Sky Channel 200 or watch online at www.edgemediatv.com which I regard as somewhat more germaine to the future of life on this planet than a rehash of the past with a hand-wringing (failed) accountant who can't talk without spitting like a Hattersley rubber puppet all over you. Regarding the past, it's interesting to see how completely I've been written out of the history of Cherry Red except for the marvellous Mike Alway's kind input. However the truth stands inviolate as the final arbiter and my name cannot be erased from all those original contracts as easily as it can from the 'official' story, can it? I wish you well. As Alway said you were (and are) a rare talent indeed.

Re: Alway, Momus

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hello Theo! Your TV show looks, to be perfectly frank, like the most appalling New Age rubbish (based on the David Icke clips I found on YouTube, anyway) but you were a kind and key man when you not only published me back in the 80s but befriended me, and for that I certainly won't forget you!

Anthony Adverse.

[(Anonymous)]

I had a massive crush on Julia Gilbert (Anthony Adverse) and had a promo poster of her in fencing gear on my student bedsit wall. Years later (and as an adult) I was introduced to her and turned into a star struck stammering idiot - much to her amusement and that of my friends who had never seen that side of me.

Do you know what happened to her?

Re: Anthony Adverse.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Gosh, no, I don't know what she's doing now! I remember also feeling some stirrings on being introduced to her with the vague idea of collaborations -- which never happened.