My missing trip to India
Dec. 20th, 2008 02:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 02:03 am (UTC)I would imagine almost anything worth doing is more fun if you do it dressed as a Sitwell. (Or Cecil Beaton. Or Stephen Tennant.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:46 am (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 08:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 09:01 am (UTC)Grow up
Date: 2008-12-20 09:23 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 09:38 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 09:40 am (UTC)Personally, I live for such endearing titbits of ephemera.. especially of the 'what if?' variety.
By the way ; on the mp3 download v Cherry Red tip. I notice that Cherry Red related releases such as 'The Ultraconformist' & 'Joemus' are listed 'unsafe' (i.e. you could in theory be prosecuted by the RIAA for downloading them via filesharing)
http://riaaradar.com/search.asp?searchtype=Keywords&keyword=momus&sortorder=salesrank&page=2
WARNING! This album was found to have been released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
So watch what you do with your fingers children.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 09:50 am (UTC)It depends who the interviewee is, of course, but yes, someone in a room being questioned about their life in art can be the most brilliant thing. Here's Bid, for instance, talking about The Monochrome Set for 52 minutes:
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Interesting stuff -- I actually know very little about The Monochrome Set.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:11 am (UTC)I know he managed Sudden Sway, but I'd rather hear Mike McGuire talking quietly for an hour about the themes behind "Autumn Cutback Joblot Offer" than hear Mike Alway taking credit for this or that. Nothing personal against Alway. To continue the cricket theme, it's like hearing the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board talking about a match, when what you actually want is to hear from the people who play the bloody game.
Alway (Ultra)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:11 am (UTC)http://www.last.fm/music/Claire+Thomas+and+Susan+Vezey/_/Bright+Waves
Re: Alway (Ultra)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 10:46 am (UTC)You're reading too much into it.
Limelight
Date: 2008-12-20 11:54 am (UTC)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
Date: 2008-12-20 01:00 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 01:18 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Limelight
Date: 2008-12-20 01:23 pm (UTC)Anyway this is more interesting. Simon Turner talking to
Mike on Richmond Hill.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0BtlQI0fuwI
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 02:05 pm (UTC)So, yes, if it's about this stuff, I'm afraid I simply can't comment. If it's about what we're talking about, then I'll respond happily.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:08 pm (UTC)Re: Limelight
Date: 2008-12-20 03:14 pm (UTC)Re: Limelight
Date: 2008-12-20 03:21 pm (UTC)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!
Re: Limelight
Date: 2008-12-20 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:35 pm (UTC)www.myspace.com/lilsultans
not my friend's suicide, i just thought it was interesting that he was the one that told me about you.