Love Triangle

The London Transport guard looks at me, no doubt speculating on the level of terroristic threat I pose to the network, "So what's in the box, then?"
"A hundred triangles."
"A hundred what?"
"Triangles - you know, the ones you play..."
He looks at me as if I am insane. And it's true, it can't be very often that a passenger asks to leave a large box by the turnstyles of an Underground station these days, unless they're planning for mass panic. But I do in fact have one hundred of yer very finest Chinese 5" triangles with me. I'm on route to the West End (of London not Glasgow) to deliver them to the Scottish band, who are in town the day before the Glastonbury weekend to play a warm-up show. The triangles are part of their merchandise - more observant readers will already be making a link between the triangles and the name of the band but relax, I'm not in the least bit close to spelling it out for you.

Anyway, in true managerial plate-spinning style I have a whole load of different meetings and deliveries to make and of course given that I have so much to remember, one thing has fallen through the net - I've forgotten my mobile. However, thinking that the LU official won't be quite as forgiving if I tell him this, I have told him that I've left my tube pass at home, and asked if I can leave my heavy box with him briefly, while I pop back to my nearby house and pick it up. At this point it's worth remembering my recent experience with that bus driver, who not only would not let me off his bus but wouldn't actually even talk to me. If this fella has been to the same London Transport School of Customer Service then I'm in trouble. Not only do I have to drop off an important package for a former eighties pop star, who I'm trying to impress so he wants to work with me, but I also have to sort out the industry guest list for the night as well as smooth out pretty much everything else before driving to France tomorrow.

I'm actually writing this from France, by the way, something which may seem an entirely irrelevant piece of information but which still makes me throw my hands in the air with amazement - I can walk for the half hour it takes to get from the remote house where we're staying to the tiny village of Prayssac, find a little cafe opposite the town square and suddenly I'm back managing the band, talking to friends and writing the blog. Please forgive me if I sound like someone who's just discovered the mobile phone but this is the first time I've actually used an Internet café and I still full of the excitement of a new convert. Although it must be said that le French keyboard is exceptionally annoyment for the touch typist; I mean, if I was to type this sentence without taking into account that some Frenchman has rearranged half the letters it would look like this: if I aqs to type this sentence zithouth tqkingh into qcctount thqt so,e Frech,eqn hqs reqrrqnged qll the letters it zoulg look like this. Qnnoying eh§,

Anyway where was I? Yes, all that stuff to do before I came here. Plus I had to decide on what music to take in the car. Actually, that's the bit of going on holiday I always enjoy the most. Of course, I always take the iPod which has all the newest stuff I'm listening to on it but the car is still in the dark ages, having a CD player without the seemingly now ubiquitous iPod socket, I notice in all my A&R friends cars. Actually, this is quite ironic really, I can remember the days not so long ago when record company people used to covert DAT players in their cars in order to listen to mixes in perfect studio quality. Now all anyone wants is the convenience of the Pod, and to hell with perfect sound - everything is so compressed these anyway you may as well listen in the same way as everyone else.

But actually I quite enjoy the old school aspect of having a CD player in the car as it means I can select the holiday listening; I have to decide in advance which is half the fun. For those of you who are interested in this (and having just listened to another Word podcast where this sort of thing is discussed every week, I know there are lots of you out there) here's some of what I brought with me:

-- The latest Bruce Springsteen
There are actually some open, winding roads in The Lot region, which will finally do this widescreen album more justice than playing it in Walthamstow.

-- Five Leaves Left
Very obvious but I always pack a Nick Drake with me along with the suncream and hayfever pills.

-- Otis Blue
Not, I stress, the recently reissued, unnecessarily double CD of this album, just the original in all its unadorned glory.

-- The new Mystery Jets album
Really enjoying this at the moment. Are they the heirs to the Cure's accessible altpop crown? Sounded great driving back from Saint Cirque La Popie yesterday. And a hidden Aztec Camera cover as a final treat!

-- The new Coldplay album
Say what you want about him, Chris Martin has the songwriting chops; just when you think he's lost the tune and gone onto autopilot, he twists the song in such a clever and deft way that you have to try really hard to resist.

-- Kraftwerk's Man Machine
Along with all the other penetrating and salient stuff he says, LCD's James Murphy pointed out that kids love Kraftwerk and he is not wrong. This one from pop's finest year (1978 of course!) has The Model on it as well as We Are The Robots, which sounds great when sung by Maddy from the back of the car and makes a refreshing change from Valerie by The Monkees which we had to listen to five times in a row on the way to Dover.

-- Best of the Monkees
Which I now never want to hear again (see above)

-- Consolers of The Lonely by The Raconteurs
Time will tell whether releasing this album without submitting it to the press was a good idea, you don't get the feeling that many people have realised just how fantastic a record it is. It's the thinking man's White Stripes - with bass guitar (at last!), added Benson melody, and a whole Zeppelinesque stature to Jack White. It's pretty good at 120 kmh round bends too.

-- In A Silent Way by Miles Davies
It's the one with only two tracks on it, the first of which, Shhh Peaceful, is a beautiful end of afternoon driving home groove. Robyn finds it a bit annoying and Maddy is still shouting for Valerie but quite frankly, I'm the daddy, OK? Actually, Maddy hasn't got a leg to stand on as far as in-car music taste is concerned: the last time we were here two years ago, when she was two and a half, she insisted on hearing Monster by The Automatic the whole time. "And look where they are now!" I say triumphantly, "people are still listening to Miles Davies though!" She doesn't understand though, and in the end I relent and let her have The Monkees again.

-- The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow
I still can't get over how bad the band name is compared to how good the group are. One Day Like This is on all my compilations at the moment - I put it on the one for the famous eighties pop star who I am trying to impress - I hope he gets over the name Elbow and realises the transcendental nature of this song. It manages to do all the things they promise great music does like make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and the blood flood into your brain. I think I also put it on a CD for the Scottish band for their trip to Glastonbury in their new van. But it turns out that the van doesn't have a CD player, surprising since one of the things that recommended it to me (of course I, as manager, was the one required to part with the cash for it) was that it had a PC on board. A PC but no CD! I assume that this meant a personal computer as opposed to a police constable although given that the van is an ex-police vehicle perhaps the law requires that it does have one last remaining officer on board. Anyway, Elbow: a good album, although the opening track is a bastard for getting the volume right on - starts really quietly then explodes, then gets quiet again. Bit like Maddy after 8 hours in the car. I tell you, washing sick off the car seat whilst on the hard shoulder was not a high point.

-- Quite a lot of other stuff that I can't remember...
Give me a break, I'm sitting in a Café D'Internet! I can't be expected to remember everything - there's a bloody family in the booth next to me conducting a joint exploration of the Web in extremely audible French. I've had to retaliate by sticking on Olafur Arnalds to drown them out. Actually I wish I had brought Olafur's stuff with me for the car. He's a twenty-something Icelandic pianist with a hardcore rock background who now tours the world with a four piece female string section, playing beautiful, melancholy, orchestrated instrumentals, comparable with Eno's 70's stuff, Michael Nyman and of course Sigor Ros. I saw him headlining the Barbican last week and it was quite wonderful. And the audience was the sort of crowd you kind of want to see at all gigs - from really young to really quite old. All of them presumably having discovered Oli via the BBC's eclectic Late Junction. Here I have to come clean and confess that I actually publish Oli's first two releases - it's the first time I've been a music publisher and frankly if I can find a more talented, more amenable person to be the publisher of then I'll be surprised. Let's hope he's reading this, eh?

If the Scottish band are reading this they'll know of course that I did make it to the soundcheck of the London Glastonbury warm-up show in time. The London Underground guard grasped the concept that what was in the box was not going to endanger anyone's life unless they had a deepset trianglephobia (there must be a word for this, I'll look it up when I don't have the clock against me.)

"What triangles, like the ones you play at school?"he said, his face softening a bit.
"Yes; exactly like the ones you play at school," I quickly agreed.
"Oh go on then, I'll look after your box"
So I rush home, grab my phone and return to my guard, who hands me back the box. He's obviously been burning to ask me the question ever since I left.
"What are you doing with all them triangles, anyway, you a teacher?"
"No, I manage a band - we're selling them to the fans."
"Oh right, what are they called your band?"
I tell him.
"Oh right. Funny name for a band."
"Well, we like it. Thanks for looking after the box."
I ran off, got my train, drop off the compilation and package for the famous eighties pop star, sort out the guest list that the venue, after several years of emails and phone calls, have finally confirmed with me, buy some guitar strings and plectrums for the band in Denmark St, have dinner at a posh London club with a handful of A&R men who still have jobs and then escort some of those to the gig.
And the triangles? Yes, I deliver them safely to the guys. I later hear how they got used at Glastonbury a couple of days later, but that's another story ...

Camden Leisure Pirates

Blimey, a whole week has gone since the last entry. That's how time goes when you leave your thirties behind. And as you know I left mine behind years ago. It's what everyone talks about when they get old - how the time flies. Strangely, you never hear about this when you're young, no one ever mentions it. Maybe they do talk about it but you just don't ever listen, it's just a noise in the background like classical music, advice about pensions and invigorating walks in the country. No, the only occasion time flies when you're young is when you're having fun - which clearly, you never are as much as they tell you.

Anyway I've been thinking about age a lot this week. It's to do with Esther turning a month old last Friday, I think - my years are beginning to weigh. It started on Tuesday as I was getting off the tube. I'd been catching up on the weekend paper - the curse of the slow-reader/father combo - and had just finished a really interesting Hilary Mantel review of two books about depresssion. As I got out of the tube station I was thinking about what the article had said - largely semi-praise of the first book, a study of how people too often get fobbed off with anti-depressants instead of dealing with route causes; and a pithy put-down of the second, some fashion jounalist's navel-gazing study of how she dealt with her own depression. She read every book she could get her hands on, she claims, citing Kierkegaard (died 1855) 'who lived a few hundred years ago" as inspiration and having a go at her therapist's dress sense.

So, out of the station I come and bounding towards me comes a really attractive young girl in a Samaritans T-shirt. "Hello, have you got a couple of minutes?" comes the gambit. It is, of course, a charity rep who wants my sort code and bank account details, I believe the common term is Chugger (charity mugger). Normally I would have smiled apologetically and muttered "terribly late, sorry ..." in Guardian reader style. But this time, partly down to her attractiveness but also because I was thinking about depression, I stopped. She was elated and smoothered me with gratefulness. I later learnt that it was her first day as a Samaritans rep and I was the first person who'd stopped for her. In her excitement about this she said, "You know, you really remind me ..." and here, time stood still as I imagined what would come next; who would I remind her of? A mystery guy she'd met on holiday who she'd never seen again, a celebrity? an ex-boyfriend? No. "You really remind me of my best mate's dad!" she squealed. My face must have said it all. "Oh not in a bad way or anything! ... he wasn't old," she back-peddled furiously, fearing the loss of a potential customer, "he was good looking and everything ..."

So this is what the Samaritans have come to, I thought, actively going out and randomly depressing strangers on the street in an attempt to drum up business. The thing is, I do look older than I did. I think I was blessed for quite a while with looking younger than I was and now suddenly age has caught up with me. It doesn't help managing such young, attractive musicians. When we were out with the girl band before Christmas, for example, the digital photography was coming thick and fast and I inevitably ended up with a bunch of pictures on my phone, full of the sort of drunken revelry you'd expect when you go to Christmas parties and the booze is free and you happen to be in your twenties. I showed them to my wife and it was all going well until we reached one featuring me. I am looming up towards the camera, clearly thinking the 22 year-old female guitarist's prettiness is reflecting well on me. This is not the case: I look like a fat, balding regional DJ. "Christ, do I really look like that?" I asked. My wife, who is from the Bronx and doesn't really muck about when it comes to straight-talking, was uncharacteristically reassuring, "You just look a bit drunk, that's all."

"But… but … it's worse than that! All my features have been moved around - I look like a Picasso picture!" Etc etc. In my defence, I was very hungover and beginning to get The Fear.

"Honeybaby," said my wife, upping the longsuffering tone, "you've taken photgraphs of me which are much worse and I AM good-looking."

Incidentally, my wife is not arrogant or an airhead and doesn't have any of the negative traits that you would normally associate with people who proclaim themselves attractive. No, she just knows that she is good looking – and she is. How brilliant must that be! To KNOW you are attractive? I have good days and bad days and I bet that's pretty much the same for most people. I still have days when, to quote Joe Jackson, "I kid myself I look real cool" And as you get older you have more bad than good days, until, I suppose you just don't think about it anymore. It stops bothering you because you become invisible to the opposite sex.

My friend Andy, whose office I share, admits to having been through his midlife crisis already. Last week he told me that he had sat on the sofa the Saturday before, flanked by his wife on one side and his 5 year old daughter on the other, eating apple crumble and watching The One And Only. It crossed his mind that his younger self (the one which once shouted to me at the Reading Festival "Let's do all the speed we've got left and pretend we're the Clash!") would have pointed and laughed. Now the crumble/sofa interface is the height of sensual pleasure for him. Me, I'm still undecided.

At least the age thing hasn't hit the heights of my mate Russell, who whilst always having been the most eccentric man I've ever known managed to top even himself when I saw him on Thursday. I was talking about booking a recording studio for our Scottish band and how much it would cost per day (about £200 if you're interested, A&R-spotters). Russell said to me, "Imagine the peace you'd get in there - no noise from neighbours, no phones ringing, perfect air-conditioned silence - I'd pay 200 quid for that."

On the other end of the scale, I got a call from David, the man who cuts the remainder of my hair. He's a very well adjusted 40 something who after having given his flat to an ex-girlfriend finds himself flat-sharing in Camden with another guy his age. He's loving it and leading the life most of my generation only witness vicariously on Skins, Mistresses or sometimes it must be said, Scarface ... His flatmate phoned him up last week and asked if he could borrow his camera. "Sure," said David, "it's in my room - but why do you need it, you never take pictures?" "I'll show you when I get back!" he replied. When David did get back, his flatmate, who'd been up for two days with no sleep and, as we dads say, watching a bit too much Charlie And Lola, presented David with his camera. It contained a large collection of images of his girlfriend in various states of undress on David's pool table. After having phoned me up to tell me this story, he later texted me asking me if he should keep the images on his camera as his flatmate hadn't erased them ...

I was in Camden myself earlier in the week (not far from the Hawley Arms as it goes, which I have to admit, I never knew was a celeb hangout until the news reports about the fire started describing it as such; I'd always assumed it was a no-go tourist trap on the one way system, but that's what eulogy does, eh?) Anyway, I was in the Lock Tavern meeting a friend of mine, Phil, who manages bands too. He's been managing bands successfully for several years and I was hoping a bit of his luck would rub off on me. Anyway, we drank pints and talked about the changes in the music business - a typical Camden conversation - and then he went for a wee. I sat by the bar and having just had a pint was feeling expansive so started a conversation with the twenty-something guy behind the bar who was wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. Here's how it went:
Me: I saw them live when I was 13
Him (Seriously unimpressed) Yeah?
Me: Yeah, it was by accident, supporting the Buzzcocks - I didn't think they were that good to be honest - all that elbow-waggling and stuff ...
Him: (laughing out of politeness) Right
Me: (Now almost without the will to live) Funny, how they're seen as so brilliant isn't it ...

I realised half way through this that I was this old bloke sitting at the bar recounting war stories that the dudes still fighting don't really want to hear. I felt a fool - like Howard Moon talking to Vince Noir about jazz when all Vince wants to hear about is the Human League.

Still, at least I'm still trying. I'm not - in the words of The Mighty Boosh's Howard Moon again - dressing like a "Camden leisure pirate", or pretending to like bands that do nothing for me. But you know what, I can't help liking a lot of stuff that only young people are supposed to like and if that makes me look like someone's best friend's dad then so be it.

So anyway, the questions still remains, did I sign up for the Samaritans? The answer, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear, is yes. And strangely, just as I was putting pen to paper I heard a voice say, "Hello Ben!" and it turned out to be my old school friend Luke, whom I hadn't seen for ages. And that, I suppose, is one of the benefits of getting old, you amass friends who turn up at moments when you need them most. The girl tried to get Luke to sign up too but I don't think she was his type ...