Ah hallo Janglies,
Having recieved a handful of missives from various 'pop listeners' and Internet surfers, I reckoned that the least I could do was post one back. Who knows? I may even start doing it regularly.
In the old d.i.y casette days, after the invention of the Portastudio we all used to write lots of letters. We're talking late seventies/early eighties here. A bunch of bands and fanzine writers who didn't want to belong to the YupFest, communicated and distributed chiefly be post. It was slow but it was cheap and we formed postal friendships, many of which still last to this day.
Some music biz people are getting paranoid about the Internet and I know certain governments are. Any kind of communication is a sacred thing and in a shrinking world this may be the last great frontier. It may also restore the great lost art of letter-writing, albeit in a convoluted way.
The vaguely autumnal musical style which I belong to is not actually a movement as such but it's a belief in a certain way of songwriting. I share this neglected garden with people like Captain Sensible, XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, Stephen Duffy of Lilac Time, Julian Cope and a number of other people. What we all share at the moment, is a kind of exile-in-our-own-land. We all make records, we're all still developing but we don't often get played or written about in England. This is more than just an unfashionable age/haircut/trousers situation but not much more. Another thing we share is a defiant determination to press on in that great songwriting tradition which was all but abandoned in the late seventies.
I believe that a good song should have lots of interesting little corners in it, rather like an old house with secret rooms. I don't hate dance music as such but I've begun to think of the beat as a tyrant.The message from the mainstream is, "This is the beat we have selected for you for the current five years. If you are a customer you WILL listen to it. If you are a musician you WILL use it. Or you will be considered unfashionable and unworthy of attention and will be banished to the hinterland."
So are we all eccentrics/nuts? Sensible and Andy Partridge I know fairly well. Robyn Hitchcock I've met once or twice. The only time I ever saw Julian Cope, he was climbing up the side of a hill at Avebury Stone Circles with a small child. So are we all nuts? Er, possibly. If being nuts means not roaring around in cars listening to hideous dance mantras and throwing Big Mac wrappers at hapless cyclists we might be nuts yes.
So I suppose I'd better do something useful and tell you what I know is coming up soon. I have an e.p. c.d. out. It's called Lets Kiosk. It's on Humbug Records no. BAH10. If distribution is patchy, I'm sorry. My record company tries valiantly to stretch their tenticles worldwide, but they too are in the Indie Ghetto. In July I have a brand spanking new l.p. out. Probably called The Off-White Album it will contain about 13 songs... 12 by me and one by Morrisey. The Greatest Living Englishman is available again in a few weeks. You'll be able to get it on vinyl soon from Joachim Reinbold in Germany. There will be a second Cleaners form Venus retrospective out in September, Back From The Cleaners. This c.d. will include some songs which I guarantee have never been released before. As well as the two poetry books already out, I am working on a third, In Search of Ted Jarvis. It's written but needs to be re-written. Might come out autumn but Christmas is more likely.
For those of you who wnat to see a truly unlikely specatcle on 17th of June, at All Saints' Community Centre, Lewes, Sussex, UK I am performing with Robyn Hitchcock. I will do spoken word and then he will do music and spoken word - I think.
Useful Addresses:
Humbug Records, Suite 4N Leroy House, 436 Essex Road, London N13 3QP.
Tangerine Records, 12 The Close, Queens Walk, Thornton Cleveleys, Lancs FY5 1JX.
Books by mail order from Essex Festival, Lit. Dept., Essex University, Colchester Essex CO4 2SQFrom the Home For The Terminally Fab..er that's it. So goodbye til next.
Martin Newell.
Go back to Jangly Press Clippings.
May 1995 / Thanks to Andy Holyer.