If anybody’s thinking of moving house my advice is don’t. Or at least it would’ve been, on and off, in the last few weeks. I’ve finally got every cardboard box containing every item that I possess into the same location and now I’m starting to sort them all out – shuffling the boxes around and occassionally unpacking one and finding a forgotten treasure, or more likely finding something else that really needs throwing out. About two weeks ago I started writing an update for the site, fuelled by guilt at having heard Andy Davies and Jonathan Ross saying that I update the site every day. I’m utterly ashamed of myself of course. Here’s two weeks ago when I thought the site needed a touch of the Sun

(the newspaper not the planet)…

 
… I had to go to the computer section of the John Lewis department store in Norwich the other day. To get there from the car park you have to go through ‘tights’. I’m not normally very interested in tights – I tend toward the view that the only good pair of tights are a pair that have been just been taken off - and then it isn’t really the tights themselves that are interesting.

I was full of tostesterone or whatever that stuff is called that makes men compare gigabytes and hard drive sizes. Tights were the last thing on my mind when my eye was caught by an exquisite pencil drawing of a lady’s bottom and the word "Wonderbums"…

It’s a revolution in tights – a bra for the bottom! I’ve been laughing about it ever since. I’ve felt like sidling up to groups of women - ‘got yer Wonderbums on ladies?’ Talk about shooting yourself in the foot – picture the scene…

You (‘you’ being a bloke) have just pulled the women with the most perfect arse in the pub (I’ve never done this myself by the way), and you’re off to her place (or yours) to take things a stage further. What are you going to think when the tights come off to reveal a lady’s bottom that’s just like a real lady’s bottom? You’re going to be a bit disappointed. And so will she be – especially if you get to see the actual tights – they must be quite a turn-off.

They come in fifteen denier American Tan finish with two oval shaped gold mesh panels designed to hold and mould the flesh of a lady’s bottom into two perfect globules of cellulite. I hope nobody ever feels inclined to wear these things for my benefit.

I can't remember if I've talked about Studio 3. It's about collaboration between myself and Karen Hibberd who is a film maker living in Norwich. Last November we had some of our abstract films accepted for the Norwich Open Exhibition. They wanted to show them on a TV in the foyer of the Norwich Arts Centre with a pair of headphones that you could put on to hear the sound.
 
We didn't like that idea so we built a photo booth that was like a miniature two-man cinema. From the outside it looked just like a passport photo booth. I got my friend Richard Moore at MK Marking to do us the neccesary stickers and plastic signs and we spent a lot of time lurking around different photo booths before we built the thing.

The construction took a week and we had to do it on site, which didn't exactly endear us to the person who mans the box office - a candidate for "Wonderbums" – and definitely not for my benefit! Anyway, we won the prize which was just as well because it cost us a fortune to build the thing. Sadly we had to demolish it when the exhibition came down, but we managed to salvage quite a lot of it and we've got lots of photos to remember it by.  

We've just made another installation which is in the bar of the Playhouse Theatre in Norwich showing a film commisioned by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Anglia Railways. This time it's a phone booth, except it's got a sound system in it, and where the phone should be there's a red box with a magnifying glass set into it. Inside the box there's a Casio handheld TV, and that's what you see the film on. It's up for another week or so but this time we won't have to demolish it – we can use it elsewhere to show some of our other films.
 
 
…I just talked to Tony about "Wonderbums" and apparently, before he was the whatever he is now, he was a buyer (working on behalf of a firm) of ladies underwear. Amazing how these things always seem to tie up.

Occasionally somebody comes along who thinks that Tony is my manager – ‘your people’ is how they quite often refer to him. We’ve got used to this, but since I included the picture of me and Tony we’ve noticed a disturbing trend: every time I get an invite it comes with the rider ‘feel free to bring Tony along too…’ And some of these invites involve an overnight stay. We think that they think that we’re an item. It’s not that either of us is homophobic, but Tony’s a happily married granddad, and I’m obviously an eligible bachelor with an eye for the ladies etc… I think I come off slightly better in that description, even though it makes me sound like a bit of a wanker. The truth is that me and Tony are both spoken for, so sorry girls and boys. Here we are again:

What a handsome pair! The 12 Bar Club went off all right the other night. The BBC were supposed to be filming it. I’m playing at an open air thing in Canterbury on June 3rd as part of the jubilee celebrating fifty years of the queen and twenty-five years of punk. It adds up to seventy-five highly suspect years if you ask me, but never mind. The BBC regions are televising various bits of the celebrations from designated sites around the regions, Canterbury being one of them – I believe they’re ‘bringing the music to the party’.

Anyway, they wanted to include me for the BBC South network. The idea was that they’d broadcast me doing two numbers live in the middle of my set. To do this they have to work out the camera angles first and then everybody’s on their honour not do anything unexpected. In order to work out these angles the director needed to see footage of me playing somewhere else. You see they’ve got a crane in the sky with a camera on it. They wanted to film me at the 12 Bar, even though there isn’t room in there for a crane. Unfortunately, although they’ve been working ‘twenty-four seven’ on this project, they were unable to work past ten PM. I didn’t go on till ten so they decided they’d film the soundcheck instead. They didn’t ask me, they asked the promoter instead who would’ve preferred them to film the gig because they told him they were going to use some of the footage in the previews. They told me they weren’t, because as far as I understand it use of a cameraman was not within the budget - they let slip to Mike, the promoter, that the PA girl had learned the basics of operating the camera that very morning so they weren’t going to get a professional result. They swore blind to me that there was never any question of using the footage for anything other than reference.

In the first place I gave them permission to film the actual set, as long as it was cool with the promoter and the 12 Bar Club. I gave them the relevant contacts and told them to get the OK. I certainly didn’t expect them to decide what would be filmed with the promoter. That should have remained a matter between the BBC and myself.
 

Arrghhh!!!!!

At this point in my rantings and ravings I got into full-on box filling, moving and transit van hire. In between I managed to play at the 12 Bar Club without giving too much of an impression of how frazzled I was. I don’t think anybody noticed – some of them might have taken me for a burnt-out acid casualty, but they’d be wrong. The fact is I’ve decided to go directly to senility, missing out the male menopause and the mid-life crisis - anyway I’m having a box-life one.
I had a great time at the 12 Bar. There seemed to be a lot of people and even though I felt frighteningly out of practice I think I more than got way with it. I can’t really remember the set so the anoraks are going to have to wait on that one. Tony filmed the event on his new camera. He filmed the Minx Club date too – I watched it the other night and I’m afraid to admit that, being a conceited old show-biz hack I actually made myself laugh… my shame knows no bounds. Luckily Tony’s invested in a tripod since the Minx event. I haven’t seen the 12 Bar film yet but Tony sent a still the other day:
The BBC didn’t film the event by the way. TV companies operate on the assumption that everybody they come into contact with is desperate to get on the television. You’ve only got to look at Big Brother. Unfortunately for the BBC I’m not that fussed about TV – the way I see it is that they’d quite happily compromise my artistic integrity to achieve whatever end is desirable for them. Television is not my god - it’s a crap medium. I’d prefer to be on the radio. I told them so and blew the fuckers out. I expect there’ll be some debate about this on the egroup thing and I’ll get lots of emails offering kindly advice and warnings about shooting myself in the foot etc…

I’ve been buying records again. I never got a chance to talk about the Lo Fidelity Allstars new album, Don’t Be Afraid Of Love. It’s great, and I’m proud to say that I’m thanked on it twice – once by Martin, the keyboard player, and again by the whole band. I leant them some bits of equipment to help with the recording – my Telefunken full track mono ¼" tape machine and a few other bits and pieces. I also gave them an old Pye outside broadcast four channel mixer – you can hear that distorting just about everything on the first track. I’d recommend everybody to get hold of a copy of this album. Even if you think you don’t like dance music or electronica this album should turn your head.

I also went completely bonkers last November for the Pulp album, We Love Life. I’ve been raving about it to just about anyone who’ll listen, but sadly not on this site. My friend Andre Barreau was under the impression that it was some sort of pastoral affair until I put him right. It’s at least as good as Different Class. Hearing Different Class was a life changing experience for me, as was seeing the Lo Fidelity Allstars for the first time back in 1998. I should list my life-changing experiences sometime, or at least the musical ones. Most of my life-changing experiences have been musical – other experiences have just been things that happened to me. (Actually that’s not true - I only said it because I thought it sounded good.)

Anyway, last week I felt very old because it was my birthday and I was forty-eight, so I celebrated (or cheered myself up) by buying lots of records – Karen gave me a copy of the Nutbush City Limits single by Ike & Tina Turner. I was both touched by this and thrilled to bits because it’s one of my favourites that I didn’t have. She knew this and found it somewhere – I can’t imagine where because I haven’t been able to find even a worn out copy at a car boot.

I don’t know why I’ve told you all this, it’s not as if I’m a style guru or anything. This information will probably make little or no difference to the rest of your life and it isn’t even entertaining. Never mind, it’s staying in anyway. I also bought the new Cornershop album, Handcream For A Generation, which was disappointing on the first listen. It all sounded a bit muddy to me and one of the tracks was a dead ringer for Good Shit off their last album, When I Was Born Again For The 7th Time. But the third side seemed to get going with People Power and The London Radar. They always strike me as a band with more concepts than ideas - a bit patchy, and I wish they’d get a bass player. But when they’re good they’re really good, and their graphics are fabulous. If they read this they’ll probably hate me and all their fans are going to say what crap I am and how I couldn’t do anything near as good etc etc… and they’ll probably all be right.
 

Next week I’m playing in Canterbury. I expect it’ll rain. It seems to be part of Canterbury’s bid to be the European City Of Culture. Norwich is also having a go at the City of Culture lark, so I suppose that Brighton will be too. I suppose Simon "fuck wit" Fanshawe who did so much to bugger up Brighton in the first place by tirelessly campaigning for city status will be spearheading the campaign. He was hoping to run for mayor of Brighton but fortunately we voted against having one. Apparently he thinks he’s a Brightonian. I’ve heard that he comes from Norwich.
My house moving tips are as follows:
  1. Get your boxes from the off licence – don’t fuck arse about with the supermarket boxes because they’re always too big, too shallow, or just plain flimsy. Wine boxes are perfect because they’re a good size and they have to be strong to hold the bottles. Pick them up on Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon, because that’s when the off licence will have just filed away a new consignment of booze.
  2. Don’t hire a van from Sixt Kenning because when you take it back they’ll charge you thirty pounds for every mark on the windscreen caused by flying chips thrown up by other vehicles. Apparently it counts as damage, not fair wear and tear. I think it also counts as extortion.
  3. Keep a cool head and get used to living in a state of absolute chaos.
  4. Eat lots of chocolate.
  5. Let things slide. But not to the extent where personal freshness becomes an issue.
  6. Unpack your record collection first and you might find that the jolly old CDs can stay put for a year or so, always provided that you didn’t forget to pack the turntable. I’m treating myself to a new set of decks – they’re coming tomorrow!!!!

© Eric Goulden, June, 2002