Museum

It’s always too little or too much with you isn’t it?

Too many people, too little people.

A museum is much like a park, or a cinema. A place to be alone in a crowd.

Do you remember the woman at the alcohol group? The peer mentor? She was your favourite. Do you remember how she used to say ‘ride’ the loneliness, just like she used to say ‘ride the addiction’?

She said, ‘let loneliness be there.’ She said, ‘let the loneliness be with you,’

On a more practical note she said, ‘You can go to a museum.’

Her audience blinked and shrugged.

‘You could, you could go to a museum.’ She repeated it again making sure it was an indisputable fact.

They organised a trip to the museum once. You don’t know how many went. You saw names written down a on a list though.

You’re alone now aren’t you? Amongst the crowds. Isn’t that how you like it?

You’re not alone enough to let go though are you? Not alone enough to give up or curl up?

You’d like to curl up now wouldn’t you? Then everyone would notice. Then someone would say something.

Someone might say ‘look he’s giving up?’

What do you want when you’re alone?

To be with people in different ways.

What do you want when you’re with people?

Depends how many but you’re always happy to leave. You’re happy to leave anywhere at any time. You’ve only just noticed that.

When are you yourself? When you are in between? When travelling between the two states?

No, that’s not right.

At the beginning. When you first saw Emma the other day. You were yourself for the length of that first hug.

And when you get home and no-one is in?

You are yourself for a while until you put your keys down.

The Last Days of Rodis

My days are mostly solitary. Except for the dog and sometimes the mice, it’s just me and words and worries. I have strategies to prevent madness. I cycle around Walthamstow Marshes to stop myself getting fat. I go to Rodi’s Café to make myself fat again.

Rodi’s is the most beautifully preserved Café you have ever seen. I originally started going there over ten years ago, because it was cool, unchanged and an absolute time traveling experience. That’s what we like isn’t it? Cool, old things. Rodis has been there since 1925.

About eight years ago I wrote a song about Rodi’s and even themed an album around it. It’s what we do isn’t it? We sit and watch and write and use. In the song, I sing out the address. It was a plea for people to come and support the café. My heart was in the right place but I was worried I was using both the place and my experience of it in a selfish way. Not every thing we do and feel has to be written about. Some things can be left alone.

Somebody wrote to the address trying to contact me and I was sussed. Franca said, “We know who you are.” when I next ordered omlette and chips.

Maria and Franco opened the Café at 6am every morning, Julie was there too, making the sandwiches. Maria’s sister Franca usually arrived at 10am to help with the lunch time rush. They closed at 3:30. Maria and Franca’s parents, Louisa and Cyril ran the café before them and before that was grandad. Before opening the Café in Walthamstow he had Café’s in Islington and Victoria. Maria vaguely remembers the Café in Islington and being driven past when she was a child but she can’t remember when those Café’s closed or if she was told when they were opened. The details are lost in time. This is a small but long history and nobody wrote it down. Maria’s Grandad came here in the 19^th Century. This Café has a family history stretching back over a hundred years.

Franca, Franco and Julie became my friends quickly. Franco called me ‘Bobby Dylan’. Maria is wise and harder to impress. After four years she called me by my name. After five I got a smile. After six she let me have a tab when I forgot my money. My wife said that visiting Rodi's is like ‘going to meet Darren’s in-laws’ . They tell her to take care of me.

I’ve never had a ‘place’ or a ‘local’, not sure if I wanted one. Rodi’s became my place, it was my office and living room and Franco and Maria were my work colleagues. They don’t know it but they helped me write songs. I felt safe and welcome there in a way that I felt nowhere else.

Last week it all ended. I went in on Tuesday. I’d been thinking how hard Franco worked in the kitchen at 68 and I was wondering how long the Café could exist for. Maria told me, ‘We’ve sold up. We close on Friday.’ I said, ‘I’ll come in every day.’

When I got outside I felt that winded feeling, like when someone punches you in the stomach. I was bereft. I thought selfishly about how mad I was going to go without Rodi’s. I cried a bit.

I phoned my friend Steve who love’s Rodi’s like me. ‘Rodi’s are selling up. They leave on Friday. Let’s go every day.’

Maria and Franco’s children are teachers, there’s no-one to take over and they are tired. They’ve worked hard and deserve their retirement. Nothing is supposed to last forever.

On Wednesday I went in with my Wife. She took flowers. Riza the new owner was there, learning the ropes. He said he wouldn’t change the café but of course it isn’t just about the walls and the 1970’s 7up sign. I took my last ever roll of Polaroid 600 film. I’d been saving it for something like this. Steve came and we stayed there a few hours and talked about late era Byrds. That’s usually all we do in Rodi’s.

Thursday was my birthday. Rodi’s weren’t letting me pay for anything anymore. They gave me wine. It was too much. I sat with Steve and talked about late era Byrds. As we walked back to mine, we walked past the Tescos Express just around the corner. It had just been built on the site of the Essex Arms pub. It was going to open on Friday, the day of the Rodi’s retirement.

On Friday I took in Prosecco for the ladies and red wine for Franco. Maria said I shouldn’t have. She said that my Wife had already bought flowers and that ‘it all comes out of the same pocket.’ Steve turned up and we talked about late era Byrds. Franco said, ‘come back at 3:30 when we close. Bring your lovely wife. Have a drink with us.’ As I left a young girl who'd been sitting in the Cafe tried to give me a leaflet for 20% off at the Tesco Express.

At 3:30 a handful of regulars arrived at the Café for drinks and cake. Some of them, remembered Cyril and Louisa, the earlier generation, but the clinetelle of a Café is transient and many of Rodi’s customers had moved on down the years. I got proper hugs and kisses off of all of them as I left but I didn’t cry. I did all my crying on Tuesday.

A small family business that ran for a 100 years, imagine that? It’s an incredible achievement. I’m so happy for Franco, Maria and Franca. There really should be awards for this kind of work. They were an absolute rock at a centre of a community, a community that consisted of a lot of lonely men with too much time on their hands, but a community none the less. They don’t know half the good they do, these places. They are the stitches in the fabric of society, without them it all falls apart. No-one will be raising a glass for the Tesco Metro in a 100 years time.

‘Don’t let the old things change, Let one small thing stay the same’, I sang about Rodi’s. But things we love will always change. Just savour them whilst they are there. That’s what I tried to do last week.

The Duke of Uke

This Friday (15^th July) I’m playing a benefit at Christ Church in Spitalfields. The idea is to raise money for my mate’s shop. Yes you did read that right. In an age of cataclysmic earthquakes, a besieged welfare state and bankrupt economies what right do I have to ask you to help a friend’s business?

Stay with me. I’ll only take a few minutes, I promise.

Matthew Reynolds started the Duke of Uke shop in Hanbury Street E1 in 2006. You know those people who talk about their great ideas and dreams after two drinks but never do anything about them? Matthew isn’t one of them. He makes things. He builds things. Like all my favourite people Matt’s vision is narrow and deep, his shop sells small, arcane musical instruments, some as old as your Grandmother. He doesn’t sell electric guitars; he could if he wanted.

It’s more than that though. You own records made underneath his shop in Soup Studios, or you will eventually. Most nights after the shop closes, group ukulele classes go on into the night. Matthew usually cracks open the wine.

Around 2008 I might have had a handle on most of the art and alliances that have been created because of Matthew and the Duke, but now it would be impossible to catalogue all the ideas born at 22 Hanbury Street. For me personally, if the Duke had not existed, I would be a fat friendless fuck replaying my non-hits from the 90s. The Duke of Uke brings people together; it fosters an atmosphere of inspiration.

Even Matthew isn’t aware of all the people who are falling in love under his roof. He’s too busy making things, fixing things. The fact that he doesn’t know half of what the shop has achieved makes us love him even more.

If you have been in the Duke I hope you have never found it to be a clique. Matthew never wanted that. The shop was always intended as an antidote to Denmark Street. People sit and play for hours and never buy anything; they are welcome to, the door is always open.

Matthew is only ok at business. He is like one of those spider’s that skits across the surface of ponds. He somehow never sinks, until now perhaps. The rent on the Duke of Uke has been hiked up in line with the local area that Matthew has been instrumental in rejuvinating. Matthew needs more money than the shop can make to relocate and carry on. Maybe market forces should decide and the shop should close. That’s the way commerce works isn’t it?

We get the world we deserve, not the one we want. I have recently been very critical of misplaced ‘charity’, bands begging for money online to record their album etc. maybe this is no different.

Or perhaps this is something important. Possibly this is a small beautiful thing that doesn’t need to die. This isn’t charity or business. It’s something much older and unfashionable that disapears as soon as you look at it.

This is ‘community’.

The Crypt
Christ Church
Spitalfields E1

Friday 15th July
8pm - 11pm
Darren Hayman
A Little Orchestra
in collaboration with
The Pocketbooks
Pete Astor
Serafina
Lisbonne

Crissy Moran and Me

I have a reputation for writing a lot of songs about sex. It isn’t strictly true, but you know, shit sticks. I try to avoid the streamlined, plastic and interstellar sex that permeates modern pop songs. I prefer an awkward, absurd sex that rarely finds itself in Britney Spears videos.

I like to use language that is uncommon in songs. I like to sing the word ‘fuck’. I don’t do it to shock; I think that would be impossible. It’s just that these are things we talk about everyday. They have become frequent territory for literature and television so why not songs?

Ambiguity and sweeping statements hold no appeal to me. I like to pepper my songs with objects and places. I use people’s names both real and fictional. It occurred to me that few people had attempted to write a song about porn and that it would be interesting to imagine a narrative based around a real porn star.

As a man I have, of course, in weaker moments, succumbed to the Internet’s primary use. I thought there would be something amusing about using a porn star’s name that men would possibly recognise and women might assume was made up. The women in this industry have a strange type of fame, they are known to millions but remain covert, hidden.

Crissy Moran is not that different from any other porn star in the way she drifted from topless modelling into hardcore sex scenes. My only reason for basing a song on her was a certain dislocation in her eyes. She looked like she wanted to be somewhere else. Who wouldn’t? In every other way she was your normal pneumatic, glossy sex doll. She just looked so distracted.

The song had a serious intent. I was trying to write about something very sad and specific, a moment of tragic ennui amongst all the chaos of ugly, fake lovemaking. Porn is desperate and tragic in many ways and this idea of erotic displacement is something I’ve explored before and since in song. Nonetheless the song; ‘Crissy M’, was hidden away on an EP on a small label, I wasn’t that brave.

About a year later, a moderator of a forum attached to my website told me that a ‘Crissy Moran’ had registered. I brushed it aside but soon Crissy emailed me herself. The world has certainly been turned upside down when porn stars start Googling you. She said my song had made her cry but that she identified with it strongly. She told me that I was right to sing that “her heart wasn’t in it” and that she had abandoned ‘hardcore’ and now only did ‘girl on girl’. Oddly, she attached a picture of herself. Perhaps she thought I didn’t know what she looked like?

I felt that I had done her a great disservice. Despite the fact that she seemed enamoured with the song, I felt I had just found a novel way to violate someone who had too often been disrespected. I said sorry and she was fine with it all, but the relationship didn’t last. Not with the distance involved.

Soon after, Crissy left the porn industry altogether and became a born again Christian. She is now something of a poster child for the Christian anti-porn movement. She often posts heartfelt blogs and she does seem happier, if not a little raw and fragile. She describes the porn industry as hurtful and manipulative. As an atheist, however, I can’t help but feel she’s won the booby prize.

When journalists write about Crissy they often come across my song and ask for an interview. There isn’t much I can say; I didn’t base the song so much on a person as a moment, an imagined feeling. I was also asked for the song to be used in a film about ex-porn stars but I declined. I decided it better to shut the door on this episode.

I think that music can often be sexy but rarely about sex itself. I have a big pile of CDs for ‘that’ mood, but I rarely find sex being sung about in the way that it is often written and talked about. Perhaps it is just too inelegant and brutal when you pull the airbrushed layers away.

Dave the Lionheart in Chalus

I was in Cussac, Limousin, making an album with the reknown Wreckless Eric and the unknown Robert Rotifer. I was just the bass player. I learned my parts and got them down. I was finished in two days and had too much free time before my return flight. I was trying to behave myself and stay out of trouble but the ‘cabin fever’ of the recording studio was unsettling.

Discovering a disused train line that ran from nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres to Chalus was a lifeline. Lost railway tracks make me calmer. You’d like me more if you met me tracing some lost route through the hills and valleys.

I wore a hat with a British Rail badge because I’m a cock-end. People still said ‘Bonjour’ to me. The line ran 13 kilometres and I decided to walk there because I’m a fuckwit who doesn’t know how long a kilometre is.

South West France has been garnished liberally with Britons. I met seven British humans and four British dogs. I saw a Union Jack in a garden, seriously I did.

In Chalus I felt blisters forming on my feet. The word ‘taxi’ was met with laughter and I knew I’d have to walk all the way back. I decided to refuel.

Dave runs Hotel du Central in Chalus and has done for four years. He struggles with his French and his French struggles back.

“Champignons are mushrooms, right? Oignons are onions, they speak for themselves,” says Dave. He wears sports clothes, but doesn’t do sport.

“It’s the masculine and the feminine,” says Dave explaining his linguistic hurdles. “Lemonade is feminine, beer is feminine, but shandy is masculine. Now beer is, primarily, a man’s drink. I know women drink beer, but it is primarily a man’s drink.”

Dave uses the word ‘primarily’ to underline his words. Dave was on a roll; he had momentum.

“Now power tools! Half of them are feminine! I don’t know where it all comes from. I really don’t.”

Richard the Lionheart was killed in Chalus. He was a French speaking English King who spent little time on British soil. There’s a statue of him outside Westminster.

Music in Space

(This blog was originally published as an article in the Saatchi Art and Music Magazine)

Before a man was put into space, even before we put a dog up there, we sent music into space. In October 1957, the satellite Sputnik was the first man-made object to achieve Earth orbit. It was a metal ball, 58cm in diameter with a radio transmitter and a single oscillator that went ‘ beep beep beep beep' . It was to be heard throughout the world and recognised as a sign of the USSR's dominance of the cosmos; a buzzing flea in America's ear. Man's first music in space was avant-garde electronica. In1957 everybody could hum the tune.

On February 4 2008 NASA broadcast ‘Across the Universe' by the Beatles into space, perhaps in the hope that little green men would re-evaluate the Fab Four's swansong album. It's going to be a while before anyone hears it though; the nearest galaxy to Earth is Andromeda which is two million light years away. That's the equivalent of ten million Mojo magazine Beatles covers ( I'm disappointed with the choice of Lennon filler over McCartney prime cut - it smacks of a committee decision. Democracy doesn't suit music, that's how we end up with Bohemian Rhapsody as the best song ever recorded).

The Voyager space probes were also musical. Just in case aliens have vinyl records players, the 1977 space craft came with a gold disk that boasted a ninety-minute selection of music from around the world. These included works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart and no less than three contributions from Johan Sebastian Bach. It's fair to say that in 40,000 years time, when Voyager is expected to reach our nearest star, the Alpha Centurians won't be partying like its 41,999. However, if they make it through all that Bach they do get to kick back with Chuck Berry's ‘Johnny B. Goode'. Louis Armstrong is thoughtfully included for that ‘morning after' mood.

The USSR put the first man into Space in 1961; the Americans got there a month later. NASA's early Mercury missions were short, busy affairs and it wasn't until the longer Gemini flights that the Astronauts needed time to relax and sleep. Mission Control would broadcast ‘wake up' music to the astronauts over the communications link. The occupants of Gemini 6 were woken by a version of ‘Hello Dolly' with new lyrics by Jack Jones (‘quick, open the airlock I want to get out!) Gemini 6 is also notable for another ‘space music' first. On 15 December 1965, astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford claimed to have sighted a UFO. The object turned out to be ‘Santa Claus' and the lads performed a quick version of Jingle Bells on a stowed away harmonica and sleigh bells. You guys!

I'm looking for something a little more insightful, more personal. These men were the first to gaze on Earth from outside our atmosphere. What did they themselves choose for their soundtrack?

The first compact audio cassettes were mass marketed in the mid-‘60's. Cassette machines were taken on the early Apollo flights. The astronauts used them to record observations. Apollo 8 was the first mission to include onboard music. Apollo 8 is a mission often overshadowed by Apollo 11, but it was an astonishing achievement. Spacemen Borman, Lovell and Anders were the first to break free of Earth's orbit and hurtle around the moon. An achievement even more remarkable when you consider nobody has escaped Earths gravitational field since 1972. Like many subsequent astronauts, they chose country and western music, specifically Buck Owens, who recorded the music on the cassette especially for the mission.

Larry McGlynn lives in New England, USA and collects items that have been flown into space. Amongst his collection is a tape cassette that belonged to Gene Cernan and was flown around the moon on board Apollo 10. Gene Cernan made the tape with his friend Al Bishop; they sat on Al's carpet choosing the vinyl that best suited Gene's forthcoming journey. ‘ The quality of the tape reflects that type of early private recording', says Larry, ‘it has miscues, skips and clicks that an older record album would make on a turntable. That is what makes the tape so good for historic purposes. These two men took the time to sit, choose and record music for a flight to the Moon.'

The cassette features themed choices such as ‘Fly Me To The Moon' and ‘Moonriver' as well as six songs by Doris Day and seven by the Kingston Trio, as well as a bit of Acker Bilk.

‘When I listen to the tape it brings me back to the times of my youth when this music was popular during the 1960s. ' says Larry, ‘ I think about the tape doing its job of providing entertainment to the Apollo 10 crew while traveling further than man has journeyed before or since. I also think that Gene Cernan had some pretty good taste in popular music back then.'

If you only know the name of one astronaut then you know the name of Neil Armstrong. If you know anything else about him it would be that he is something of an enigma. Public appearances are rare and interviews like gold dust. We do know that Neil Armstrong is a musician, he played Dixieland Jazz on his cornet as a child and plays ragtime piano. On his return from the moon he requested a ukulele in his quarantine quarters. We also know for his voyage to the moon he chose ‘Music from the Moon' by Dr Samuel Hoffman. The 1947 piece heavily features an early electronic instrument called the Theremin.

Andrew Smith is the author of Moondust , an excellent portrait of the twelve men who have walked upon the moon; ‘It shows how eccentric he is', Smith says of Armstrong's very particular musical taste. ‘I just thought it was funny. It made me laugh and laugh; this instrument that we associate with Sci-Fi B-movies from the 1950s - that he should be taking that off into space with him.'

The Theremin produces an ‘alien' portmento sound by having an oscillator controlled by two antennae. The movement of the player's hands, without actually touching the instrument, controls the pitch. Portmento is the sound of one note sliding to another. It's interesting to note that this effect has often been used to evoke the sound of space; think of the theme tunes to Doctor Who or Star Trek. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the tones slide between the notes in our conventional musical scales, making the sound odd or unnerving.

Perhaps, despite his subsequent modesty, Armstrong saw himself as an enigmatic sci-fi hero? By being so reclusive, he leaves himself to our imaginations; we can believe anything we want of him. Armstrong took a dramatic and strange music into space that matched our sense of wonder at this new frontier. He dutifully fulfilled our expectations.

The Steel Guitar is another portmento instrument that has evoked the sound of Space. It was used by the legendary pop producer Joe Meek on his 1959 science fiction masterpiece ‘I Hear a New World'. Brian Eno made the connection between the spatial glide of the steel guitar and the country music chosen by astronauts and had collaborator Daniel Lanois deploy the instrument on the soundtrack to the 1989 space flight documentary ‘ For All Mankind' . “I thought (their choice of country music) said something interesting about how they saw themselves, which was as frontiersman,' Brian Eno is quoted as saying in Moondust , “I also wanted to make something that didn't seem to be coming from anywhere, that wasn't rooted in the earth; I wanted the roll without the rock I guess! All the harmonic pieces I wrote for the film have a kind of unearthly country-and-western feel.'

The choice of country and western could also tell us about where these men came from. It is interesting to note how many of the 1960s astronauts hailed from small town America rather then cities. This would also explain why their music choices fail to capture the 1960's zeitgeist. The astronauts were drafted from the air force test pilots and fighter pilots - the military tends to recruit outside city centres. The straightforward grit of country music is the natural choice for these determined, aspirational, small town men. This ‘grit' is personified by Buzz Aldrin, the ‘astronaut's astronaut' and the second man to walk on the moon. He declined to take any music into space claiming that he would be too busy. Michael Collins, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, took Dvorak's ‘New World Symphony'.

If the Apollo 11 mission is often portrayed as dark and serious then Apollo 12 is its antithesis. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean joked their way to the moon. Their cassette includes ‘Lousiana Man' by Rusty and Doug, ‘Wichita Lineman' by Glenn Campbell, ‘Sugar Sugar' by the Archies and ‘Son of a Preacher Man' by Dusty Springfield. Apparently Pete chose the country and Al chose the pop. I've been lucky enough to have spoken to Alan Bean twice. In 2001 I released a single called ‘Alan Bean' (complete with pedal steel and Theremin) which deals with his life after NASA. After leaving the space program, Alan devoted his life to painting pictures of himself and his fellow astronauts on the moon. Alan is a man who is acutely aware that the only type of people we have sent to another world are test pilots and that astronauts have difficulties in explaining how it ‘feels' to walk on the moon. They can explain altitude and landing procedures but find it harder to emote. Alan realized he was unique; he was the only moonwalker who felt compelled to tell his story though his creativity. ‘I was handed a gift that has never been given to any other artist in history', Bean says, ‘No other artist has had a planet all to his own.'

Apollo 13 was the ill-fated mission that failed to reach the moon due to an exploding oxygen tank. The crew was lucky to return to earth alive. Commander Jim Lovell took the theme from Staley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to listen to. It's good that he likes movies. He may have missed the moon but he did get to be portrayed by Tom Hanks in a movie. ‘I know one of the command module pilots saw 2001 eight times before he went up.' Andrew Smith tells me, “The astronauts liked that movie a lot”.

It isn't until we get to Apollo 15 that a true music nut gets to choose the sounds. Al Worden took no less than 12 cassettes into space with him. The tapes show him to be quite the hipster: Judy Collins, Simon and Garfunkel and George Harrison all make appearances. The tapes also included poetry and book readings. One rather ‘personal' track is entitled ‘ Something Special From Your Wife'.

Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' accompanied Apollo 17 which was to be the last mission to the moon (to date). The Apollo program had failed to sustain the interest of the general public and the space program moved its attention away from lunar matters. The Skylab missions of the ‘70s were of much longer duration, as were the Shuttle missions of the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s. There was more on-board leisure time on these missions. Music had become a staple space entertainment. The astronauts carried with them Walkmans and, eventually, iPods and even musical instruments. There is currently an electronic piano onboard the International Space Station.

In 1993 the Shuttle astronauts had to start listening to themselves. Max-Q is an all astronaut rock band that plays rock'n'roll covers; they woke up the crew of Discovery with a cover of ‘Heartbreak Hotel'. German astronaut Tom Reiter had a specially designed guitar on the MIR space station and played Russian folk ballads. The last song played to the Columbia crew in 2003 before their ship disintegrated on re-entry was ‘Scotland the Brave'. Are these sometimes dubious astronautical tastes what the human race is to be musically judged upon? Maybe not; it just depends on how hard the aliens listen. I've heard it said that a certain amount of all our radio and TV transmissions leak into space. According to Raj Sivalingam, of the British Space Centre, ‘ To some extent this is true. Some transmitters reach their intended receivers indirectly by bouncing their signals off the layers of atmosphere (like mirrors). Careful planning is done to ensure that this is optimum. Thus extremely sophisticated receiving equipment will be needed to detect and discern such faint signals.'

Even so, it's a scary thought that extraterrestrial life could just be cherry picking the very worst that our culture has to offer. Comedian and writer Robin Ince agrees. ‘To think, that radio and TV signals will not die but keep journeying through the universe so long after the human race is dead and gone; the sound of Dave Lee Travis saying “ whack whack oops ” will still be alive. We have given the universe tinnitus. Even if the aliens do journey towards us, they'll face a horrifying disappointment. They'll pick up our signals and imagine a world of The Brains Trust, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, Carl Sagan's Cosmos and the TV plays of Dennis Potter. Just as they arrive though, they'll tune into Balls of Steel and the Chris Moyles show and reverse at speed.'

What about us? If we listened hard to the stars what would we hear? In 2002 NASA's Cassini spacecraft picked up tiny radio emissions from Saturn. When the signals are lowered in frequency 44 times the human ear can hear what sounds remarkably like Theremin music with a lot of echo. Go to the NASA website and listen for yourself. Perhaps Neil Armstrong knew what we always hoped was true. We may previously have thought that space is silent, but now we know the truth; the music of space goes ‘ ooooowwwwweeeeeeeooooooooo' .

What song would you broadcast to aliens?

Stewart Lee – Comedian and Writer

I would send Klaatu's ‘Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft' into space, but the version done by 1970s Canadian school children on The Langley Schools Music Project album. The kids' version of this attempt at fostering intergalactic harmony sounds utterly sincere, devoid of the kitsch elements of the Klaatu or Carpenters' readings; and I think it might buy us time in negotiating our way out of our long overdue eradication by a higher species, like the pests we are.” Raj Sivalingam (Director of UK Space Policy) ‘What a Wonderful World',by Louis Armstrong.

David Gedge – Singer with the Wedding Present and writer of many Space themed songs

‘Bizarre Love Triangle' by New Order because it's one of the greatest tunes ever written. Hopefully aliens won't speak English and so won't notice the terrible lyric.

Patrick Moore – Astronomer and Musician

At the age of seven I read a book, The Story of the Solar System and was ‘hooked'. My mother was a singer and I think I was trying to play the piano before I could talk. I chose the music for the intro to The Sky at Night . I'm not sure what music I would send into space, I'd probably choose a Strauss waltz, to show that we have a lighter side.

Robin Ince – Comedian and Writer

I would send up Robyn Hitchcock's ‘Spleen Rap' from Storefront Hitchcock , as i think it is a succinct description of why the human race require ribcages, though not technically a song. Otherwise, probably ‘Saturday Night' by Whigfield as it sums up the pointlessness of human endeavour – and that all this time after the enlightenment, man is still mainly interested in going out on a Saturday night with a vacuous frame of mind that may turn to violence after chemically altering the brain with blue booze.

Huw Stephens – Radio One DJ

I'd send ‘Into My Arms' by Nick Cave into space for them to see how miserable and sad we can sound when we want to be, but also to remind them that we're not as horrible as they think we are. Candidia Doyle – Pulp ‘At Last' by Etta Williams, because it's a song you could happily die to, a beautiful song with wonderful stringed accompaniment!

Tjinder Singh – Cornershop

Well i wouldn't think any music as such would capture their imagination. Alien life would probably be more impressed with CB banter operating at 27MHz. Live & interactive, this precursor of the World Wide Web would allude to intelligent life and motorway (or ‘super-slab') service stops. Start out on channel 11, and if there is interference force them up to channel 14. Failing all that, crank out Nigger Kojak and Liza

Sainsburys Girl

It’s strange how we change our language to suit the situation, our phone voice, our pub voice, our sex voice.

I am buying ingredients for a Valentine’s Day Dinner. The checkout girl is perky and over-keen. She has straw hair, an earnest smile and a cross hanging round her neck.

I can’t help but fixate on a cross when someone is an otherwise neutral role. It’s a signifier that can’t be ignored.

She asks if I have a loyalty card. She asks if I need bags. She asks if I need help packing.

She is polite and attentive, but this all changes when her blonde friend walks up in a big puffy jacket, pushing a pram.

‘Alright?’

They talk across me as the checkout girl rings up my shopping at a snail’s pace. They are being rude. I don’t mind though, it’s better than TV.

Everything about the checkout girl changes: her posture, her words, her accent.

‘How you been?’

‘Alright, how’s Steve?’

‘I tell you, I can’t take it no more. It’s driving me mental.’

‘Really?’

‘How come you never phone no more?’ asked the blonde girl.

‘I’ve been mad busy, I’ve been so busy, I will though, I will text though, promise.’ replied the checkout girl.

‘See ya.’

‘See ya.’

There is something that all three of us know for certain. The checkout girl will never phone the blonde girl. The pram is the unspoken truth. She’s gone and fucked it for good.

Getting Beaten Up

I don’t like things being stuck in my ears. I am in the audiology testing room of the Ear, Nose and Throat department. A nurse is inserting a protrusion into my ear, some men pay for this type of experience.

The Doctor tells me I have Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, small crystals have been dislodged in my inner ear. They cause me to feel dizzy. I have been feeling dizzy for two months now. He also tells me I have lost some of the top range of my hearing in my left ear. He says it may well come back but he isn’t sure.

I am surprised to find myself feeling slightly angry. I haven’t allowed myself to feel angry for two months.

I’m also going to have another head CT to check that my skull fracture hasn’t affected my inner ear or that any infection has gone from my ear to my brain. Or vice versa. Christ.

Two months ago I played a show in Nottingham. I don’t look forward to these types of shows; a gig that turns into a club, bouncers on the door, a queue of bare legged strumpets and shaven headed Ben Shermans outside waiting for the band to fuck off.

With gigs like this I feel like you're parachuting in emergency supplies. The audience was great and the show was fine but I don’t really like this job on these nights. I am slightly travel phobic. I enjoy playing live but I’m always homesick. This is no way for a man my age to behave. Every year I say it’s time to get a proper job.

After the show we took the gear to the hotel and me and our drummer, Dave Sheppard went to park the hire car. Nottingham is a rabbit warren of one-way streets. I needed the toilet badly so pulled up in the wrong place.

Someone walked across the front of the car and I knew we were in trouble. He said, ‘Give me some money or I’ll take your car.’ I guess he was a bit like Dick Turpin.

I fumbled to lock the door but he pulled it open and hit me hard in the face. Everything else is a blur; I was pulled out of the car, there were four of them I think. I got to the ground and tried to cover myself. They just kept hitting and kicking my head. They seemed really angry about something. I was heavily concussed.

I remember being on the pavement with Dave beside me and was surprised at the amount of blood on my shirt. I remember a paramedic asking if Dave could go through my pockets (they had stolen about five hundred quid). I remember an oxygen mask and the paramedic saying ‘try to calm down’. I remember babbling something to Dave about agoraphobia. I might have said he was my best mate or something like that. It was an intense time.

I wasn’t thinking about my physical injuries, I was worried about the psychological affect on me. I was thinking ‘I’ll never leave the house again’.

I remember seeing Bill, our bass player in a hospital corridor. I remember going feral when a nurse tried to put a thermometer in my ear. When did they start putting thermometers in your ear? I don’t like things being put in my ear.

I remember staggering down a corridor and pulling off my bandages. For days I would be confused as to why I wasn’t bandaged until I remembered this.

You wonder how people might react in a crisis. My band mates pulled through for me. Talking to the Doctors and Police, letting my wife know and taking care of me until she got there. I was lucky to be surrounded by such good friends. Franic Rozycki was also a trooper, visiting me in hospital, arranging the transport of the band equipment and car back to London.

About twelve hours after the event some lucidity returned to me. Helen was by my bedside. I had quite a headache.

I stayed in the hospital for three days. I had a little TV. One night I realised the whole ward was watching Top Gear at the same time. All the men were laughing at Alfa Romeo jokes that I didn’t understand.

Paul had the bed opposite me. He is an extra. You’ve probably seen him in the Rovers Return. He came over and said, ‘I’m sorry for shouting at you on the first night, we thought you were trouble.’

I said, ‘I don’t remember.’

Horace was an elderly man who shuffled around constantly asking where his bed was. I’m sure he knew where his bed was. He was looking for company.

The nurse came round with a thermometer and said ‘are you going to let me put this in your ear now?’

My face was purple. I had a large gash on the left hand side of my head. You could literally see the imprint of a shoe on my jaw. When I got up, the room spun around. Once I went to the toilet and the pain suddenly seared through my head. It was too much and I keeled over. I was lying on the floor and the pain was too much for me to move. I started being sick but couldn’t move my head so I was lying with my face in the mess.

It wasn’t a great day.

The police came to take a statement. They said that I was probably used to this sort of thing coming from London. I thought ‘No’. London has terrible violence it’s true but this particular brand of random, indiscriminate rage is articulated best in the provinces.

The head CT scans didn’t show any permanent damage but I had a linear fracture in my skull. It would take around six weeks to heal. The main problem for me was the pain and the dizziness. I was glad to go home.

Apart from the beating itself, getting beaten up has been an almost entirely positive experience. I have been made much more aware of the good side of human nature then the bad. I know it might sound like false humility given my occupation but I don’t think of myself as popular or well liked, what sort of arse-hole does?

I got texts, phone-calls, visits, tweets and gifts. It was overwhelming, really. Friends, family, all of Hefner and the Wave Pictures and total strangers showed such kindness and consideration. Somebody sent a Woody Allen film; Trena and Simone sent a Lego Millenium Falcon. People know me well. It’s a cliché but it made me better, quicker. Quite literally, having all these beautiful people around made my physical recovery so much faster.

The expected psychological trauma never came. I haven’t been gripped by agoraphobia or any anger towards my attackers. I don’t know why, it’s quite confusing. In fact my only psychological problem is worrying about why I have no psychological problem.

The dizziness won’t stop though. Some days are better than others and I guess it might be subsiding a little over time. It never quite makes me fall over but it is persistent. Hence I find myself at the Ear, Nose and Throat department at Whipps Cross Hospital.

Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo is completely treatable. The deafness in one ear is high end and may also possibly correct itself.

None the less it makes me a little cross.

Which is a relief.

The Death of the Line Up Change

I love the story of Rock and Roll as much as I like Rock and Roll itself.

I love the story of Rock and Roll more than I like Rock and Roll itself.

Once, back in my glory days, I was flown to Stockholm for a promotional day. The ‘indie’ press officer wasn’t available so I got the ‘metal’ press officer. We talked about Bruce Dickinson all day. I didn’t care, I’ll talk about any of this shit for as long as you like.

The story of Rock and Roll is being spoilt however. The ending is being changed, the best bits taken out.

We have already lost the ‘break up’ to the endless hordes of reforming bands. Our music biographies are getting unwanted codas and messy epilogues.

Not only that, important chapters are being removed, namely the ‘pivotal line up change’, Brian being replaced by Mick and then Ronnie, Pete getting ditched for Ringo. Do you prefer the Bon Scott or the Brian Johnson era AC/DC? That type of thing.

I miss the excitement of bands getting new members. As I teenager I loved the Dammed. They had a line up change every week. I had a notebook to keep track of who was on bass. The band had an ongoing narrative that demanded loyalty.

Ian McLagan (of the Small Faces) once told me my favourite line up change story; “Mick Fleetwood told me to come over and meet his new singer and guitarist. Now look, Lyndsey is a girl’s name and Stevie is a boy’s name. How was I supposed to know?”

So why don’t bands replace missing members any more? I know that the Rolling Stones have had a bass player since Bill Wyman went off metal detecting. I can even tell you his name. His name is Daryl Jones and he has played with the Stones for 16 years.

But the Rolling Stones I see in photos and videos don’t appear to have a bass player. Like a half formed group of teenagers in their parent’s garage.

Similarly when it comes to publicity shots, REM seem to exist without a drummer. They obviously need a drummer and have one all the time at shows and recording sessions. His name is John or Brian or something.

Bon Jovi currently have an absurd personnel. They are ostensibly a ‘rock’ band with just keyboard, guitar and drums.

Something is being taken from us; the unveiling of the new member, the new sound, the new look, the myth of the band as a gang, an ongoing adventure. They’ve ruined our Rock Family Trees. Do we enter these new members in pencil or brackets?

Worst of all these mutant half bands reveal an unpleasant truth, that the world of music is financial, legal and contractual, that it would cost someone too much money to have the new guy standing in behind Gem and Andy on the back of Heathen Chemistry.

I think the band that appears in the photos should be made to do a concert without their waged accomplices, just once in while, to prove they’re a band. What would the 2003 three piece Blur sound like? I want to pretend these characters just get together and play sometimes for the love of it. As though they were in ‘Fame’.

It’s just more corporate ugliness. Stick the session drummer in the photo. Pretend you are friends who like music.

We used to like those stories.

Jack Hayter

Tonight I’m going on Radio 6 with my friend Jack Hayter to talk about Hefner and the new re-issue of We Love the City.

I first met Jack around 1997. He was playing Pedal Steel on lighted disco flooring at the Paradise Bar in New Cross. The first thing I noticed was that he and his band were laughing. British bands were, and still are, very po-faced on stage. I find playing music on stage to be an absurd activity and find I can’t stop laughing. Never can Jack.

Jack is an unusual musician. Give him a simple sequence of notes to play in repetition and he’ll stare at the guitar as though it’s made from cheese. Give him a song with no instruction and he’ll play beautifully and make the song sound twice as good as it really is. Just make sure you press record.

Last year Jack and me did some shows where we played Hefner songs. Our audience and wage packet doubled. I had mixed feelings. I was glad to be on stage with Jack again and have no problem with playing those songs, but I have a small tolerance with this reformed bands thing.

I don’t care if it’s Pavement, Pixies or Skunk Afuckingnansie, all reformations have cheapened the band in some way. I can’t think of anyone who has pulled it off. Apart from Take That of course.

Despite making it clear that we weren’t Hefner without John and Ant I was worried that we had detracted rather than added to the Hefner story.

Jack and me fell out a little during the shows as well which didn’t help matters. This had nothing to do with Jack and everything to do with the insurmountable sleeping problem I have on the road, which is starting to prove a real barrier to touring.

It’s careless of me to fall out with Jack, especially at our age. Jack is soft spoken, intelligent, creative and wonderfully tender. Amongst all the Hefner related stuff last year we managed to record three or four new songs, which will appear on my next record. I can’t wait for you to hear them.

My favourite time with Jack was in 2001 when we made Dead Media and Practical Wireless simultaneously.

‘Dead Media’ is the album where Jack finally got to be himself in Hefner, contributing space age steel guitar, home made Theremins and even dueting with me on the last Hefner song on the last Hefner album.

‘Practical Wireless’ is a Jack’s only solo album so far, though I know he has enough material for three more. We made it during downtime for Dead Media and it features all the members of Hefner. We hope to make it available again soon.

You’ve been patient with me; here is a link to Jack’s Myspace where you’ll find some of his songs. Jack Hayter Myspace.

Here is an MP3 of one of the 'Jack and Darren play Hefner' shows. It’s from Madrid in December 2008. Franic, Jonny and Dave from the Wave Pictures also appear. It's free and yours to keep.

Darren and Jack play Hefner

Trains in Science Fiction 2: Survivors (Terry Nation 1975 – 1978)

Two things.

This won’t be the last time I talk about ‘Survivors’. Not by a long shot.

But this will be the last time I make the distinction between the desolate, savage and truly shocking series, ‘Survivors’ from 1975, and the glossy, glib, Doctor Who-lite remake from 2008.

We only talk about the original Survivors here. I say so.

‘Survivors’ is the third most famous creation from Terry Nation after the Daleks and Blake’s Seven. A virus wipes out 95% of the population of the world. This is portrayed with unrelenting bleakness. Three quarters of the cast are killed off in the first episode. In fact no cast member is ever safe in ‘Survivors’ with major characters being culled every other episode. Only one original cast member makes the whole three series.

Post apocalyptic and ruined worlds always tick my box. If good science fiction is about ‘what ifs’ then the destroyed earth has to be the ultimate premise. Threads, Day of the Triffids, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, I love them all.

‘Survivors’ deals, with starvation, looters, rape, rabid dogs, martial law, fascists and small pox, occasionally in the same episode. We live in a time when the word ‘dark’ is used to describe a Harry Potter movie, but for once there is no other word. ‘Survivors’ is truly dark.

Let me give you some for instances.

In the episode ‘Law and Order’ a mentally challenged boy is wrongly accused of rape and murder. Our ‘heroes’ debate over what is to be done with criminals in a world without courts and prisons. They have a show of hands and take the boy outside and shoot him, then find out he didn’t do it.

In the episode ‘Corn Dolly’ Charles proposes that the women should let him impregnate them for the future of the human race. Two women fall pregnant but then die because they eat rotten fish.

In the episode ‘Revenge’ Vic, who has previously been permanently crippled and left for dead by Anne, tries to commit suicide. He then seeks revenge but then pleads with Anne to finish the job and by slaying him with a sickle.

One of my personal favourites is ‘A Greater Love’. Paul travels to a ruined Birmingham to gather vital medical supplies where he contracts a new fatal plague. On his return he is treated in quarantine by his rubber suited girlfriend. She declares her love for him as she administers a fatal injection.

Trains are used prominently three times in Survivors.

In the first episode they are used to demonstrate the broken links of the crumbling society. Train stoppages are shown as one of the first tears in the fabric. Great Malvern Station in Worcester is used as a location and doubles as 'Brimpsfield'.

In the second series Ruth travels to London and discover a dirty, broken London living in the rat infested London underground stations, Hanwell Station and Camden Station are used.



A lot of fans don’t like the third series but really this is where ‘Survivors’ gets most bizarre and feral. The cast are now dressed in rags and ride on horseback. The first steps to recovery and infrastructure are shown via the revival of a steam railway. The Severn Valley railway is used and the beautiful Headstone Viaduct is shown in another Series 3 episode.

The series is a long way from faultless. Producer Terence Dudley appears to not know what continuity is and thus decides to do away with it completely. The acting can be decidedly middle class and stilted. The dialogue can clunk. Although I love the slow ponderous pace, this may prove sluggish for the modern viewer.

What makes ‘Survivors’ fantastic though is it’s total singularity. It sets out with a goal, to tell you how absolutely foul the majority of people become in times of crisis and their complete determination to survive. It never blink’s from this intent, it never wavers.

'Survivors' can be bought pretty cheaply in a box set.

N Gauge Trains

A letter from the N Gauge Journal Jul /Aug 09 Issue

A Thank You

I have a terminal illness and have been struggling to get my N Gauge layout finished as a legacy for my grandchildren. I so wanted just one set of signal lights working and after trying for three weeks had to give up as I’m too tired to sit and do any more. My wife phoned a local N Gauge Society member (Kevin from Hadleigh) who came and did a wonderful job. He was a lovely man and so very kind. I would just like to thank these members for their kindness and their help.

Fred Emery (18143)

It is with regret that I have to convey that Fred passed away on 28th June. Our condolences to his wife Judith. Ed

Flash Forward versus Primer

Flash Forward (2009 Dir: David S. Goyer) versus Primer (2006 Dir: Shane Carruth)

When you see ‘Lost’ on the TV schedules and think, ‘who the fuck is still watching that?’ the answer is me. I sometimes suspect that the producers are rabid Hefner fans that are providing me with a personal service. I haven’t met anyone else who is still watching it.

I know they make it up as they go along, I know it will never truly make sense but for me it has an almost Becket-like sense of ennui. Meaningless idiot narratives looping endlessly, pseudo science and mythology, time travel theory for toddlers. It’s like catnip for geeks.

What I didn’t need was another ‘Lost’. ‘Flash Forward’ may be one of the few TV programs to jump the shark half an hour into its first episode. Both ‘Lost’ and ‘Flash Forward’ use endless expositional dialogue to explain the simplest ideas behind time travel as if the world had never seen ‘Back to the Future Part 2’.

Your stupidest friend is three times smarter than the writers of ‘Flash Forward’ however and you just end up shouting at the TV, “You can’t do that! It doesn’t work like that!”

The premise of Flashforward (everyone glimpses 2 minutes of their own future in six months times) is a scaffold made of balsa wood. Things don’t have to be believable for me to like them but they do at least have to adhere to their own internal logic. Four episodes in and the main characters still haven’t thought of things you thought of in the first two minutes.

May I suggest a time travel film that is twice as clever as you? ‘Primer’ is a 2004 film by Shane Carruth that was made for 7000 dollars. It is intelligent, slightly terrifying and mind numbingly difficult to follow. Two friends are making a machine that lowers the mass of objects but accidentally achieve time travel as a side effect.

The characters immediately think and do all the things you would think and do if you had a time machine but haven’t been mentioned once in 45 years of Doctor Who. At first they cheat on stocks and shares to make money but soon they become obsessed with creating time paradoxes and tampering with timelines and the subsequent causality. The plot becomes unfeasibly complex with bearded faces from the future, time machines within time machines, and ruminations on the endless possibilities and ramifications of what they are doing.

It’s like ‘The Tomorrow People’ remade by David Simon. In fact it is the ‘Wire’ like impenetrable dialogue and naturalistic acting which mesmerises you. ‘This can’t happen’, you think, ‘but if it did, it would happen like this.’

The film is made for almost nothing, shot guerrilla style in parent’s garages, apartments and storage warehouses. The look is stark, bare and refreshingly un-CGI. Likewise the soundtrack is minimal, acoustic and beautiful.

It’s a film made for DVD, as only with repeated viewing, pauses, rewinds and migraines does it start to reveal its magnificence. Predictably, as with ‘Flash Forward’ you find yourself going ‘Hang on a minute!’ when it doesn’t conform to your own notions of time travel cause and effect. The film has thought of everything however and you are wrong.

After about the fourth viewing you’ve started to get what’s going on.

This isn’t just a film, it’s a comittment.

Here is a bit of it.