27 April - Owner of a Lonely Heart

Never mind going to guilty pleasures the club.. how about going to the source? A happy night was had by four of us watching the Producers ie. Trevor Horne, Lol Crème and Steve Lipsom aided by a much younger and Wainwright-esque and Hutchens-que singer called Chris Bradie and a fit drummer ex of Del Amitri – no can’t recall any Del Amitri songs, sorry, who regaled the audience at the Barfly with: the hits they contributed to over the years, some other classics and some new tunes, which I have to say, were er… not that memorable. I guess the singer/writer does add something special to the mix.

I wonder if it is a sign of ageing that I couldn’t remember the lyrics to Space Oddity? Now, have never been very good with lyrics but a) I fell in love with DB on this song/roundabout this time, and b) heard it a million times and c) they are not exactly complicated but no… even the chorus… I was getting it muddled up. I did much better trying to sing high on Owner of A Lonely Heart by Yes, my, so far, guiltiest pleasure and possibly something I wouldn’t object to having on my tombstone, as, well, I just kept to those six words over and over and I was fine.
One day I need to compile not so much my favourite songs but my favourite ‘bridges’ in songs (it’s the bit that’s not a verse and that’s not a chorus and goes off on one, just for those who don’t know). This one I like a lot, it may not be as it is on CD but the live version was excellent. We also discovered that Trevor is taller than we thought and Lol is much shorter than we thought and has the biggest (by comparison) nose I’ve ever seen on a man. This doesn’t stop me from wanting Lol Crème to adopt me, all 5ft of him and nose as big as a church bell. R. has me in stitches when she declares half way through the set that her mum went to Lol’s barmitzvah. Perfectly credible as she’s from Stockport and so’s he and they are both Jewish.

Earlier at dinner with V. a larger than life head teacher who was R’s first flatmate when they moved to London (these are people who went to gigs at The Roundhouse back in psychedelic hippy days ie mid-fifties), V. had declared she is a cousin of Brian Epstein (her father’s sister’s son). In a later twist, another of V’s cousins, L, married R’s sister so that’s a relation there. But this doesn’t make R. Brian Epstein’s cousin too as she tried to claim. We had to draw it all out on a napkin to get round it in our heads. The poor man is dead anyway so not much kudos to be gained there, he can’t get us into parties and so on.

Anyway back to the Producers. At the end of the show am compelled to go shake Trevor’s hand (he gave me The Look of Love don’t you know) and totally enjoy his obvious delight in having played on stage, (bass) . Clearly Brian Eno would disown me but it has to be said you can’t beat singalong tunes with MELODIES though finding myself going along with the chorus of Everybody wants to Rule the World is something my 18 year old self would have vomited at. I don’t think I could even say the name TFF without spitting. I did notice that many of the songs where in a high register (although not Slave to the Rhythm which they made the mistake of getting a white girlie opera singer to sing and it didn’t work.. her sexy posturing was anything but…). Remind me not to ever try any of his songs at karaoke. Not that I ever did it. Has it gone back to being un-trendy yet? It made it into my world for a while with friends talking about going to upmarket booths and bards, but hope it’s been consigned to stag and hen nights again. Ok, am rambling now but as R. said ‘ Bet you didn’t even remember you knew 10CC’s Rubber Bullets’? No, I didn't, and to think that only a few days ago the Camden Crawl was purveying all manners of new-ish artists and teenage fans to these streets and not an aged pospser in sight...