Lyndey & Blair airs

In about twenty minutes from now, I’m going to miss a TV show. And it’s a shame, because it’s one I’ve worked on.

Yes, Lyndey & Blair’s Taste Of Greece goes out on SBS One at 8.00pm tonight – but in Sydney currency. In UK money, that’s 11.00am, and geo-blocked to foreigners like me. So, despite the show’s entire focus being relaxing with good food and wine, I shall be psyching myself up to do the next job over coffee. But I shall toast, none-the-less.

As has been said in numerous places now, the show has naturally turned into a fitting memory of young Blair, who’s sudden death in April still brings me up short when I think about it, despite the fact we never met. Felt a bit like we did. And it’s just stomach-pit odd to think that he’s gone. Especially when you see how full of sunshine and beans he and the whole show is.

I do hope Lyndey finds some joy in the screening of this first episode. But I’m thinking of her right now, and how broken hearted a mum will feel watching it, so soon after events.

—

On a personal note, I’ve loved developing the tunes for this production. Most of it was written in the dark dark months leading up to Christmas, in Momo’s jumbled temporary studio upstairs, but they’re pieces that rank amongst my favourite. So, understandably, I’m chuffed to be taking the wraps off them at last and sharing a first selection online from an hour-long bootleg album I’ll be pressing into the hands of my poor chums.

To check out Momo’s own news story on the show, with links to the official site and, of course, the new music on the Nuevo pages, just hop on over to the Promo story here.

Time for coffee, then.

Here’s to the sunshine.

x

Creative qualifications.

I don’t have many qualifications. Not the sort that make me sound as if I’ve spent proper time really memorising some proper-sounding stuff. You know. Like English students do, to help them later in life in pub quizzes.

I have a bit of paper somewhere that tells me I have a full degree in graphic design, I know that. But I was never sure exactly what an academic badge in a subject so fluid it would let me write about Star Trek for a final year thesis would really do to impress a Cambridge don, for example. I think they’re all more likely to be secretly into Doctor Who.

Going back to a place of learning today – and specifically the first place of learning in which I was exposed to the frightening possibility of being expected to look for professional creative work after my time there – I am reminded of my ignorance and inability to memorise stuff.

Anything.

My name.

What I’m supposed to be doing instead of this.

—

I’ve spoken at Arts Institute Bournemouth once before, at fine artist and fab tutor Sarah Grace Harris’ request. It was a couple of years back at least and I think I presented diagrams or something. Confused us all. Today, I simply showed a lot of examples of something I do still drool over – pretty typography.

If you’re a Foundation student just starting out on your creative journey of exploration, you might not have yet considered letterforms as gorgeous things to play with in your work. And after today’s little rambling chat from me, you might well now know just why you’d not considered it.
But I hope I’d gotten just one or two type nerds hiding in the group just a little piqued with a sense of possibilities.

Thing is, as I sat in the slightly imposing, even academic-looking lecture theatre alone for ten minutes, I felt as unprepared and unqualified as I ever did back in the summer of 1989, getting dressed down by the course leader for mucking about with music instead of knuckling down with my studies.

Twenty-two years later, the vibe around the building – in fact, much of the paintwork around the building – hasn’t changed at all it seems. Not for me, anyway – despite all the impressive additions and new cafe outlets. Sarah’s office desk is more or less in exactly the same spot of floor as my desk was back then as a student. And not just mine, but that of fellow student and frequent critee, Tim – who was, all these years later coincidentally with Sarah and me and our other halves at her mum’s house at the weekend. Gassing on with me about music. How things play out. And how some things don’t change. Some quietly wonderous things.

But, though I still distract my graphic design work with musical daydreams, and music work with typographic daydreams, and though I’m still not sure what I really know about artistic discipline – I do now seem to have perhaps one important qualification at least. Experience. A bit of it. And it feeds my creative enthusiasm, at least.

Something I’d like to find ways to pass on.

—

Nice, therefore, to also spend time with Bournemouth Creatives on Wednesday night. A place of significant enthusiasm for the arts. And perhaps for that reason at least, I felt qualified to be there in the half light of the ol’ Winchester, swapping creative stories with people a bit like me:

Playing about in creative matters and still loving it. And still learning loads doing so.

—

It’s business time.

Can’t be sure, but I think I was on the radio this week. Even more implausibly, on a business programme.

I know. You don’t need to say it.

Of course, Brian Harries, on the very good-hearted local station Hope FM, had no idea who I was or what my credentials as a businessman were likely to be, as I perched opposite him in the sumptuous Romanesque marble-and-drapes surroundings of Studio 1 in the roof of the YMCA in Bournemouth. And after explaining it to him on air for a bit, I’m not sure he was any the wiser.

But he did kindly let me attempt to be funny for the shameless majority of an hour on his lunchtime programme, on Tuesday. You know, in that way of mine that would get you sighing: “Ah, Mo…” with a little empty look of pity, before you go get on with some real work. You know the way. You do.

Brian firstly introduced me as his long-lost twin.

“So, explain it to me, Timo,” he then said, looking be squarely and beardedly in the the eye, “how does your business survive?”

Now, a lesser man in my position would have frozen like a severely under-RAMed PC being asked to suddenly process a high definition broadcast-quality final render of an entire Pixar movie. Not me.

I simply said cooly: “Some creatives feel that it’s good to specialise and get really good at something. That’s not me.” And looked him straight back in the eye like this made sense. Holding in the strong urge to additionally blurt out: “Titting about on the radio like this doesn’t help me knuckle down any, mind.”

What a pro.

Despite this, Brian was generous in his warmth and welcome of my particular brand of unrehearsed ‘personality’. And he described Momo’s music as “stupendous”, which I politely asked the work experience lass, Paige, to write down somewhere obvious.

So thanks to Brian and the Hope FM crew for inviting me on and not throwing me straight off, and to Suzy at Strawberry Fields for once again being my schedule’s personal Shuffle function.

As I posted on the Business Show FB wall later, don’t let Brian Harries’ wan elfen translucency fool you, he is not so easily upstaged.

Listening as I type to Annie Mac on Radio 1, I don’t know why I ever imagined that Momo would make more sense on a popular urban electro dance music show. Really.

—

In words and tweed:
Sort of playing the Day of Hugs festival.

Well, when your publicist asks politely on Monday morning whether you can do a gig on Friday evening, you don’t immediately say yes, do you? Not when you’d told the band we all had a couple of months before any live dates and we might as well all go for G&Ts; at the Swell Chaps Dead Creative Bar instead of practice.

I wish band life was like this for the Electro Pops Orchestra. Lounging together everywhere in casual sartorial brilliance like an eclectic gang of hipsters in a series of knee-bucklingly-cool Mad Men social scenes. If I can muster the costume and photography budget for the boys, we will spin this fable in the publicity shots.

In reality, the boys are too cool to be just lounging around within reach of Kimmerage on Good Friday evening and I stepped into the fray intrepidly alone. Sans cool gang to do most of the work for me.

But yes, Momo:tempo did play an exclusive pre-season, out-of-the-blue, boutique set at the Friday night warm-up to Dorset’s very friendly Day Of Hugs festival, Easter Friday night.

We didn’t exactly bill it as a Berk & A Laptop set, but I shall be doing so from now on. Entertainment can, it turns out, sometimes be portable, even for an electronic musician.

What the punters made of Momo’s assertive electro-pop cabaret at half-midnight in a blacked out tent in a heavily socialised haze, lord knows. But I’m well used to that look. Somewhere between What the hell is this happening in front of me and: Is it wrong or at least too soon to admit liking this? To say nothing of: Is it me or is that actually tweed?

I may produce a range of Momo-branded tees:

FREE
YOURSELF
FROM THE
FETTERS
OF
CREDIBILITY.

[Download Momo:tempo at…]

Best bit may well have been watching everyone try to process all this while I belted baritone Yiddish lai-lai-lais at them, arms flung wide over the relentless international theatre of The Travel Writer. Was worth it just for that.

Ah. Who wants to fit in anywhere anyway. Not when you’re already having fun.

Look out for more live dates soon.