Like a lot of people I became something of an A&R man this summer.  Under the spell of Amerie & Rihanna.  Again.  But that wasn’t everything.  And I think that’s what really got to me about the whole Jarvis Cocker meltdown series shenanigans.  It just seemed like an edition of MOJO or Uncut magazine.  Where was the risk?  The adversity?  The perversity?  The sense that, hey, we’re well into the second half of the first decade of the 21st Century.  The programme just did not seem to have any spark or kick.  And that was just such a wasted opportunity.  Y’know new building, new start, but same old same old.

That’s why I started the Hey! Cocker campaign.  Just as a bit of mischief making.  But with an underlying serious side.  You know.  You see these earnest and inevitably lanky geeky young men walking round in their Harry Palmer specs and old cord jackets, thinking Jarvis is Jesus, but fogeys and phoneys – we’ve had our fill of them.  So it seemed quite funny to tap in to the whole MySpace and Facebook networking thing, and we, our campaign site, must have struck a few chords ‘cause Hey! Cocker caught on like an unfortunate rash.  So much so that we started to get communications from the people at the South Bank Centre, suggesting that we were being unhelpful, and might like to desist.  As if!

Next thing I knew the actual artistic director was in touch, suggesting we might like a chat.  So I was like, why not?  I sort of knew of her, and had even gone along to the RFH opening Overture weekend, and shed a few tears at the schoolkids singing Waterloo Sunset at the New Beginnings event with the great Harry Beckett.  I wasn’t against the South Bank per se.  And so yeah I was a little bemused at how it was all getting out of hand, but hey ho.

It was a nice chat anyway.  Very grown-up and civilised.  And I deftly deflected suggestions I was being a menace.  I think it had got to the stage where I was actually generating quite a bit of interest in the programme of events.  Anyway, where she was really clever was in putting me on the spot over what I would have done had I been curating my own Meltdown.  That threw me.  So I thunked quickly, and said well, erm, er, jeez, my main problem’s the sense that Jarvis’ stuff seems not to reflect what matters now.  It’s all like classic rock with a few quirks.

Look at the programme.  What’s it about? Goodbye 21st Century?  What about Skull Disco and Scandinavian disco progressives?  The magical mystery mixtapes?  London’s own MCs with their treasure troves.  Tinchy. Trim.  Skepta.  The notes from the soul underground.  Like what about Sunshine Anderson?  I mean, it’s criminal, her momentous new record, Sunshine At Midnight, her first for five years or more.  After all she’s been through.  Just.  Buried alive.  For whatever reason.  Not allowed to out-bounce Beyonce.  But this is soul.  Soul.  Glorious soul.  Nothing quite like it.  So she’d need to be involved.  Can’t miss out on that can we now? 

And Jill Cunniff!  We’d have to have her.  Her solo LP City Beach is wonderful.  So, ok, it’s not yet officially out here yet, but it’s set the scene for the summer.  All warm acoustic melodies, and the hip hop beats from a distant radio butting in.  Here’s your hook.  “Campfire intimacy melts into block party revelry, as downtown devilment meets uptown sophistry”.  Yowsah.  Jill captures a sense of beach enchantment and city encroachment.  City Beach Samba.  That’s the theme.  That’s what the South Bank needs.  Some sand between its toes.  Let’s have a party.  Let’s turn it into a block party.  A beach party.  Best of both worlds.  Like that Luscious Jackson video where they’re all dancing on the bus.  Get down now …

And, and, and.  City Beach has got this real bossa thing going on.  Right.  And I have read how Jill’s really into the great Brazilian female singers.  So it would be great to …and don’t forget that I’m ad libbing here but really getting into my flow.  So I suggested that the centrepiece of my Meltdown programme would be a big event or exhibition to honour the Elenco label.  And it felt good because I got a really quizzical look back, and an impressive pair of raised eyebrows, so I pressed my advantage home.  Yes, Elenco, I said, leaning forward animatedly.  Elenco.  You don’t know about Elenco?  Oh!

I really was obsessed with the Elenco label at that time.  Possibly in terms of timing I was at that fantastic stage of obsession where you’re just piecing the jigsaw together.  Buying an old bossa record and another one there, as you know I have been doing quite a bit this year, it started to dawn on me that the word Elenco was something of a connection.  So I did some research, bought some more reissues, found the same connections, started to realise the covers were as special as the music.  Started to realise that we should be celebrating Aloysio De Oliviera’s vision.  The amazing collection of 60 or so LPs he put out on his label in the ‘60s.  Capturing a golden age of Brazilian music, and bossa nova in particular.  The designs of Cesar Villela.  The strikingly stark black and white sleeves.  As beautiful in their simplicity as Blue Note’s.  The photography of Chico Pereira.  Beautiful stuff.

I printed off all the stuff I could find on the ‘net, particularly via the great bizarremusic site.  And tried to get hold of as many of the reissues that have popped up here and there.  They are all so special.  Look I’ve got them all scattered around here.  The Astrud Gilberto album.  The infinite sadness of Jobim.  Nara Leao.  Look at that cover.  It breaks your heart it’s so perfect.  Sylvia Telles.  God bless her.  Isn’t that story of her being there at the bus station ready to welcome the young Caetano Veloso to Rio just perfect?  The sambas of Aracy de Almeida.  Nana.  Sidney Miller.  Maysa.  Odette Lara.  Rosinha de Valenca.  Not household names here.  Edu Lobo’s Cantiga De Longe.  Edu with Maria Bethania.  Baden Powell.   Chris Connor at the Village Gate.  You need to hear her Late Show.  Pure David Goodis.  Despair.  Dark despair.  Then there’s Vinicius and Caymmi.  With Quarteto Em Cy.  Anything by Quarteto Em Cy.  Ah Quarteto Em Cy.  Perfect perfect perfect.  What a gift the human voice can be.  When it is so often used to wound it’s a joy to know it can heal too.

And so even as I’m making a pitch for an Elenco extravaganza, she’s jumping down my throat, accusing me of being no different than Hey! Cocker, looking back.  And I’m like woah hold on a minute.  I bet five minutes ago you’d never even heard of Elenco, so that’s hardly the same as putting the Stooges and the Mary Chain on is it?  It’s not classic rock.  It’s not featured in MOJO and Uncut every week is it?  And anyway, I countered, my idea’s to involve some of the younger voices/DJs from over here.  To get that city twist on things.  Get them singing with Sunshine Anderson!  We could do with more Sunshine.

And then it was like I was facing accusations about bossa being a bit passe given the success of the Nouvelle Vague project.  I quickly responded, and you would have been dead proud of me here, saying yeah yeah but let’s turn things on their head and get the punk originals involved to reinterpret some of the old Elenco songs, the numbers that crop up on various records, like Pede Passagem, Dindi, Insensatez, Meditation, Photograph, and so on, and get in Tracey Thorn, Ana da Silva, Michael Head.  That’d work.  I don’t think you’d need much more than that to persuade Marc Collin to direct things, or your man Katerine.  We could even rescue some of the French singers from the allure of arcane Americana and tumbling tumbleweeds, and get Helena Noguerra or Francoiz Breut.  Or even …

And then I thought hang on a minute.  Why am I apologising for the Nouvelle Vague thing?  It’s a perfectly executed conceit.  And it’s introduced or reawakened us to fantastic singers like Camille and Alex from Spring and especially Marie Celeste who did A Forest and Sorry For Laughing on the first Nouvelle Vague set.  So I piped up, and said actually I’d want to do a special show as part of the programme to showcase the Cinema Enchante set by Marina Celeste, where she dresses up like Joanna Shimkus or Anna Karina, and breaks your heart wearing a Burberrys mac and sings old songs from French films in a beautiful bossa way.  What more do you need than that?  Beats Walt Disney whimsy, I said, which elicited a bit of a wince I thought, but then again ... 

So then when I think I’m winning on points, suddenly a chance of tactics, and I was being accused again of denigrating the current Meltdown season.  Sigh.  I thought I don’t need this, and made my excuses and left, because let’s face it no one is ever really going to ask me to curate a Meltdown programme are they?  But we’ve had ourselves a bit of fun, even if I never got the chance to do a Jarvis and rush on stage and slap Hey! Cocker on the patio.

© 2007 John Carney