When you look at the sky, what do you see?

Dreams? Distant stars? A comforting vastness of possibilities dwarfing your troubles?

Or maybe you see pigs fly.

..Yes, well good for you. You’ve been at the thinners again. And as I’ve said before, that stuff is just for paint brushes, mate – gimme that.

But while we’re tarting up our metaphysical scenery here, what images does music paint for you?

—

There is a word the music industry would rather no-one ever mentioned. Though I think I mention it all the time. And you‘d rather I stopped mentioning it. Because it pricks the bubble of romance that the entire industry is built on – and the notion of building anything industrial on the petal pink fancies of romance ruins everything, so hush that thought, you clumsy oaf. And don’t say that word. Credibility. Bugger.

It’s the word that everything in the business of selling records is built on, ‘credibility’. It’s relative, kind of – but the very coolest of cats always seem to have universal credibility, don’t they? Which everyone knows when they see. ..Dippy white boys from Bournemouth do not – they have to sweat feverishly at trying to work out what the hell it is, while others breeze into a recording studio and grunt their instant qualification with some inarticulate magic about them. This is how gifting is handed out; some people can simply see magic eye posters. Or understand why JLS splitting up has any meaning.

But if credibility is the ugly diesel engine under the floorboards, there is something else that is the parabolic observation roof it thrums along to open with mechanical majesty.

Wonder.

Music is meant to get you staring at the sky. Wondering. Dreaming. Forgetting real life. Or seeing it differently. ..Hoping. If the magicians at their instruments are to stand a hope of suspending your baddass cynical disbelief, however, they had better be credibly sorcerery. God-like in their spell casting. Creating such a first impression that you want to stop and listen at all. So credibility is sort of the animatronics behind the curtain of the music industry, but I for one don’t want to look. Like I’d know it if it leapt from behind the curtain and tore my throat out anyway.

Yet, the greatest illusionists, like the greatest servants of humanity, are the invisible ones.

—

Every band has members you don’t see. Phil who drives the bus. Martine who convinces thirty venues from Portsmouth to Port Stanley to part with a timeslot for her ragged band of squabbling indie brothers. Whole sailing ships of crew taking Columbus over the edge of the world. Terry Gilliam in Monty Python.

Storm Thorgerson in Pink Floyd.

Music needs no help at all in putting ideas into your imagination. But putting the idea of a music artist or band into your imagination takes more than music.

When you are thinking of Pink Floyd, you are really thinking of the graphic work of Storm Thorgerson.

One of the most iconic album images of all time is, of course, the cover to Dark Side Of The Moon. That was his work. And the two men shaking hands, one of whom is on fire, on the back cover of Wish You Were Here – Thorgerson’s art direction again. But his qualification to be called the unseen member of the band – though I don’t know if anyone ever called him this directly, perhaps since Syd Barrett seemed to corner this role early – is built from more than a couple of nice bits of work. For one thing, he went to school with founder members Barrett and Waters and was also teen chums with David Gilmour. These guys knew each other as people.

But the truth of his work for Pink Floyd especially is that he built a whole visual language around the group’s music. He articulated the idea of them, while they were articulating all kinds of musical ideas. A brand – an impression, a perception – built on the edgy credibility of a certain surrealism. A questioning. And what is teenage music meant to be if not a protest or a statement or a questioning of the status quo? Which is why Status Quo’s band name is a bit ironic, you might say. But you’re being mean.

His work famously reflects modernist icons like Man Ray and Dali – as appropriate as I can think, not just because these artists were questioning our ways of seeing, which any edgy progressive band worth its salt would wish to be seen to do, but because they themselves were blurring the lines between art and stunt. Dali was as much showman, making self-conscious teases of modern art as he was instinctive artist. And Thorgerson, studying film and TV as well as literature, understood the language of advertising and visual communication so well, his work is a blur between art and design.

In the days when information on and evidence of your favourite band was rare as production photos of your favourite science fiction show, the LP cover wound open the parabolic roof over your head. With nothing other than it to focus on, in 1973 you’d have strapped into your favourite headphones on your parents’ record player and lost yourself in the sonic playground of wonder that Pink Floyd painted across your mind. But all the while, you’d be staring at the images across the varnished cardboard that you carried the vinyl home in, looking for clues. Hints of meaning. Left ambiguously incomplete, like true art – porous, for your own dreams.

Seeing one of these iconic covers, large, in a record store rack, or in poster form on the wall, you’d have stopped in your tracks to gaze and want. It would make you pick up the musical work of the band. Only then, once Storm had done his job, would Gilmour and Waters and the musicians take over. It would be up to them then – you’d only go back to live in that sonic world again if they’d done their job. But if Storm never had, you’d never have known either way.

Mercifully, all members of the band did their work. Together they created wonder and myth. Helping eachother paint landscapes of a particular attitude that won legions of loyal fans and fellow wonderers. All of who collectively created far more meaning and potential in those images and those sounds than the band themselves ever had in their minds when instinctively writing.

Wonderous, indeed.

—

Storm Thorgerson was in demand in the 70s especially and is responsible for a dizzying host of successfully well-known LP designs, right up until the last few years. He even made music videos. His health caught up with him last week, however, and he died on April 18.

I’m tempted to say that the greatest artists are prolific. Probably because they are restlessly driven to explore. Thorgerson seemed so and as such his body of work is a testimony to this true motivation behind all great creativity and, indeed, wonder. The romantic bit is the real bit – however much the record companies need people like Thorgerson to bring alive the marketing of their latest four-piece commodity, the best graphic artists will be a true band member – inspired by the same creative instinct and vision as those wielding instruments, not cameras or pencils.

Storm Thorgerson said he liked to mess with reality. To bend it. If, worldly wise as you are now, when you consider your teenage dreams of music you ask yourself jadedly: What is real, and what isn’t?… you’re still playing right into his hands.

Go on, look up. That IS a pig flying.

—

 

There are many things in the evolving 21st century that fly in the face of all the horror and uncertainty and inequality and rotten pop music. The ubiquity of cupcakes. Touch screen technology. Still having a job. Fifty looking sexy.

And being able to like, love, be and enjoy all kinds of whatever you want with no fear of being socially cast out.

And I should know. Not simply because, well… you’ve seen my hair, right? But also because I have had an inordinate number of people admit publicly to liking Momo’s damn-fool music lately. We live in enlightened times.

—

I mention this offensively obvious contemporary truth because in days of yore you – yes, you, you well-adjusted ordinary person – might well have instinctively mocked someone joining a dating agency. And now you’re signed up to one. And similarly you don’t see anything remotely socially funny about dropping into the local arts centre to browse the merch stalls of a science fiction convention.

In fact, you fit in a treat, now that you have all those tats and piercings and steampunk boots and a ukelele. But then, you always were a bit of a fashion victim, bless you.

—

I’ll tell you now, I don’t know who is a geek any more. Or rather, I don’t know who isn’t. We are so many of us out and proud – it’s fun to really love something. Or really know about something. Especially when it’s something deeply imaginative and playful and clever and perspective changing.

When four of us leaped up the steep steps of the splendid old Exeter Phoenix on Sunday afternoon, it was into some corner of my own private universe, I think. There was a Tardis parked outside. A pink dalek called Candy trundled about in the foyer. Darth Vader passed with two storm troopers. Oods queued at the bar. The bar served a nice humous wrap. Two apes from Planet Of The Apes joked in the corridor. An X-wing pilot politely squeezed past me. And many assorted friendly people in Victoriana swapped conversations in the gallery spaces that were showing different interpretations of a post-modernist fixation with vintage futurist architecture. While OMD or something played on the sound system.

Simon and Lee had not put on Phonicon before. This was the very first attempt at a science fiction convention in Devon and they had no idea if anyone would really actually come along. As we passed through the crowded, grinning, chattering rooms of the friendly former Victorian college, it was obvious that they had in fact very much come along.

—

I’ve not had this confirmed, but I think the lovely first lady of Momo and I have reverse-engineered the name here.

The Exeter Phoenix is presumably so named because it arose from the ashes of a good few sad years completely empty and unloved. Phonic FM, broadcasting from its basement, presumably felt it immediately obvious to take its name from an abbreviation of the venue’s into a nice play on words to do with sound. Simon Brett and Lee Rawlings, DJs on the community station, were drawn together by a love of electronic music and put together a show dedicated to this – but subsequently discovered a mutual love of iconic TV programme Doctor Who as well, and convinced the possibly skeptical broadcast board to give them another monthly radio show for the presumably seen as rather self-indulgent purposes of blathering on about it for an hour. I can then imagine the obvious shining eyed moment of glee and tea mug clinking at the quick development of the name of this show to The Phonic Screwdriver. When Exeter’s film community and nerd family began to inexplicably swell behind the idley bandied about boast of throwing an actual whole fan convention on the back of this show, a quick promise to the radio station that it would be a fundraiser for them secured both a location and an unavoidable name for the event – Phonicon.

But I’m only guessing.

—

 

Some months before all this pantomime joy, Simon had gotten in touch with me out of the blue with an inexplicable amount of enthusiasm about Momo:tempo. Through the kind thought of a Momo Sobo amigo called Shep, Simon had been tipped off about “this bloke in Bournemouth making slightly bonkers electronic music you might really like” and subsequently lit up said bloke’s social media with follows and sign-ups and a bashfully muttered crazy idea about playing a scifi con in the West Country.

Now, I grinned. But it was only as Simon went on to explain the almost accidental development of Phonicon that it began to dawn on me that getting involved might be just too much fun to say no to. For, as he had approached actors and writers and other creatives connected with Who and other spacey cerebral goings on, he’d begun to hear about their other creative exploits away from their better known fan-loved work.

It was when he said: “It’s basically going to be a sort of collision of science fiction, arts and electronic music” something in my head said loudly: “HANG on…”

And then it had another idea. One that might test the bold assertion that we’re all beyond cool nowadays.

—

 

Setting up in the oddly comfy-seeming big old rehearsal room known lavishly as the Voodoo Lounge, I had to be immensely grateful to our fellow main act for Phonicon And On that Sunday night, a couple of months later. For Low Tide Theory were not simply genial, patient and gracious, they took up very little stage room and set-up time. Which was a massive mercy, given how very the opposite a certain Momo:tempo Electro Pops Orchestra usually is. And definitely was.

“So sorry, chaps. Our percussionist alone can footprint half of any stage. Thanks awfully.” I muttered, awkwardly. Paul and the other chaps made no fuss and went on to share some delightfully civilised and melodic OMD pastiches from their new LP Big Sky, released the following morning.

By the time I rolled up behind the white piano and hit Play, I had been up for quite a while. Not least of all because my brother-in-law had been down for days until only the afternoon before with five of his less than inhibited kids. So it will come as no surprise to you as a politely interested follower of Momo’s antics that the bloke berking about at the front forgot half of what he was supposed to play, say, sing and do during the hour or so’s set.

Oddly, though, undoubtedly due to the professionalism of the five musical heroes who joined me all the way beyond Dorset’s western frontier, the god-love-’em Phonicon tribe jumped about and cheered and made me feel as though I wasn’t some visiting work experience boy. They seemed to, dare I say it, rather enjoy our big beats and horn blowing and chapping about incoherently. Very rather, in fact. I couldn’t have been more grateful or made to feel welcome.

I must say that of all the very kind Twitter comments and Facebook thanks we received on the delirious drive east that night, the one that seems to sum them up is from an artist who kindly joined us on stage for one number, adding a touch of terribly needed alternative edge and glamour – Mojo Jones. A ‘nerd burlesque’ artist, as she puts it, Ms Jones shared a neon fan dance to I saw you get on would you like to get off – and subsequently said online afterwards that Momo “makes music that spreads joy”.

I can’t think of a compliment higher, can you?

I have to say, I know we all felt the story of Momo’s playing at Phonicon would likely be one of our best live recollections, and now we’ve been we all came away feeling loved up and appreciated. I can’t think of a little community that has welcomed us more or joined in with our musical outlook so generously and enthusiastically. And such very nice new chums I have met.

To Simon and Lee in particular, so good of them to open Phonicon’s arms to us with such positivity. But also to Mark at Nerdology who has done so much to also promote Momo through his podcast and a very nice interview we did over Skype before hand. To Mojo too – a witty, interesting nerd queen, I think – and to others such as Cameron the sound engineer, who was another interesting chap and gave us some of the best hassle-free sound we’ve enjoyed as a challenging sonic set-up.

But of course, whenever we ride out, it is to the family of maestros I owe the greatest thanks – John, Pat, Mark, Mellish and Addy on this occasion. Admittedly, I can’t promise burlesque dancers every time we play, but they make it fun and fulfilling wherever we daftly find ourselves.

And that creds-testing other idea? Our first ever cover. And something that is very sexy at fifty.

Who cares about cool, anyway these days?

Watch Momo:tempo’s first ever cover, live at Phonicon.

Hear Momo talk to Nerdology.

See a few nice pics by Gareth Selley of the shenanigans.