I don't listen to that many podcasts. I know they're the new thing, and I know this one is legendary.
Now we're talking, right, That's how we want to be introducing this podcast every single week. It's taken us one hundred episodes to manage to get somebody to say something nice about the podcast, and then, in a way that's quite out of context, edit it and make it sound like they weren't being a little bit sarcastic. But we will take it. Thank you for downloading episode one hundred of Midnight Chats. It's hard to know whether Greg or
I thought we'd get to one hundred episodes. In many ways, I think we probably did, because we're very stubborn people and we tend to carry on making things regardless of the demand for it. But I am happy to say that we have had lots of listeners and lots of incredible guests on this podcast, far more than we were ever planning on having our hope to have. So thank you to everyone that has ever been on Midnight Chat, and to you for listening, even if this is your
very first time here. There are all these other episodes that you can go back and explore. But if you're only here for Javiskoka, that's completely understandable. A great guest for us to have to mark one hundred episodes. I spoke to Jarvis. When was it. It was two days after his birthday, I think, is what I say in the recording. So it was in September time, end of September time, and we had a great chat over Zoom. Thank you to Javis, not just for coming on, but
for recording his voice in such an incredible quality. He had a great recorder. So this episode I think sounds particularly good, especially on Jarvis's side. We had a good chat. It's quite a long the one. This one. I just figured, hey, we've got Javiskocker, so let's just get it all in there. Also, he is extremely funny and dry and just a good conversationalist. You obviously know who Javis Cocker is best known for pulp, but also a broadcaster and a writer and lots of
other things during Lockdown. Earlier on in the year, he released an album with his new band, jav Is. It's called Beyond the Pale, and I believe and I will stand by this, I'm sure in years to come. I think it features what is the best track released in twenty twenty called house Music All Night Long. We talk a little bit about that in the podcast and a load of other nonsense. Really, it's quite a rambling, loose conversation, so let's get into it. I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for letting us get to one hundred, and hopefully there will be many, many more. Here is Jarvis Cocker number one hundred of a legendary podcast, Bid Night Chats by a Loud and Quiet. So we're recording this on a Monday. On Saturday, it was your birthday. Happy birthday.
Well thank you. Yeah, Now I had a very good birthday.
What did you get out to?
Cycled to Richmond Park and I I had a real desire to see some animals, but not in a zoo or something like that, you know, because I mean, we've been like animals in a zoo for the last couple of months. I wanted to see animals just wandering around doing their own business. And I remembered that there are
deer in Richmond Park. So me and my girlfriend cycled down to Richmond Park and it was brilliant because as soon as we went through the gates, there was a big herd of deer, just like waiting, like a like a kind of reception committee.
They knew you were coming, they knew that you wanted to see them.
Kind of. Yeah, and so you're supposed to keep like twenty meters away, but I thought I've had enough of safe distance. I believe in it for humans, but with deer it's different. So I went and I didn't get super close, but I kind of laid down near them.
There's a great photo on your Instagram of you with the deer in fact that I saw there.
You go, that's that's that's the nearest I could get.
Yeah. I did a similar I went on holiday a week before last to Cornwall and I did a similar photok a similar photo, but I was in front of some cow. It wasn't as it wasn't as glamorous. It was just some cows. But I was quite in there with them. It felt and it did feel nice to be surrounded by animals and being seeing some animals.
Yeah. I don't know why. I think it must be an instinctive thing, because because we're having to think about every single human interaction, the idea of being an animal just wandering around in your herd, or flock or whatever seems appealing. I think it came from and something I'd seen on Instagram that a friend of mine was in crete and they were driving over a mountain and then they had to stop because there were goats blocking the road.
And then the goats came and they were like putting the head inside the car and like looking, and for some reason I just thought, Oh, that seems really nice. I kind of an encounter with nature that doesn't seem dangerous. It seems just seems just pleasurable and pleasant. So I think that's what inspired it, really.
And how are you generally with birthdays? Are you a fan of birthdays? Do you run a mile from them? What's your relationship with them?
Mike? I, yeah, I have been bad well in the three weeks leading up to a birthday, I tend to get into some kind of dark mood. And I've always been like that. I mean, like, there was one birthday when I went to a graveyard that was a long time ago, honestly, that's true. Was I think that was something like my twenty first birthday or something like that.
That's a big one. That's a big birthday to be spending in a graveyard. But I think in a weird way, those big, those milestone birthdays are sometimes the ones that kind of make you feel the darkest, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I generally get a mood. And that's why this year was better, because I know that I've got that kind of tendency to go towards the dark side and get it myde down in thoughts about mortality and stuff like that. But I didn't go there this year, so I was kind of pleased.
Are you an easy person to buy gifts for?
I would say probably not.
No, I mean what, Yeah, I'm just thinking what would I get you? What would I buy? I don't know what? Do you do a list? Do you do a list for people?
It's not Christmas?
I know, but I know, right, But my mum is like a real stick for a list. And it's actually got to a point where, which sounds quite nice, but it's not actually quite She's she's so organized about it. She's taken any of the fun out of it. Where you send her a list and we're one step away from her just putting some money into my bank account. You know, that's how bad it's got. But she won't buy something without like my absence, without me telling her exactly what I want.
Okay, well, you know, I suppose I can see the logic in that, but I don't know. I like, I really like buying gifts for other people. I like that thing of thinking about someone and then trying to find something that really suits that person. Or I mean, I don't know if I always get it right. Maybe sometimes I think I've come up with the perfect president and the person's thinking, what the focks he brought me here?
But I I like that idea. But I think probably I am a bit difficult to buy for because some quite particular. So I guess that's a bit intimidating when you come to buying at present.
Yeah, there's nothing more disappointing then having bought someone a gift, thinking they're going to love it, and being really excited about giving it to them, and then you can just tell when they're pretending that they like it more than they like it.
Yeah. Yeah, but I didn't have to do that this year. It was a good birthday this year. I had at one point I had grandiose ideas for it because I was fifty seven. So I came up with this Heinz concept. I thought, well, Heines. Their trademark is fifty seven varieties. So I thought, well, I'll invite people. That's one of
the reasons why I'm down here in London. I thought, well, I'll come to London because there's quite a few people that haven't seen for a long time because of the lockdown and everything, and restrictions seem to have been eased little. So maybe we could meet out in a garden and we could have a picnic, and all the food on
the picnic would be Hinz products. But then when I actually looked at what Hinds made, once you get past tomato ketchup beans and tomato soup, it starts to get pretty rank really quickly, and you probably would have a lot of people being physically ill if they had to eat nothing that hind stuff for a whole meal. So I was quite lucky that they brought in the rule of six and kind of put paid to any idea of a social gathering.
Yeah, they saved your blushes for that because and your guests.
They saved your guests. Really. Yeah, Actually, no one would ever have come to a party that I gave. Ever again, I think I'm just trying to think what else?
I mean, I know the beans catch up and the soup, well, I mean what else?
I can't believe you got salad? Cream is okay? Sandwich spread divides people. Some people like it, some people say it looks like someone's being sick on a slice of bread. You used to have those things called toastoppers. They were really horrible. You're probably too young to remember.
What's what's the toastopper?
Toastopper was a small tin and you opened it and then, as the name suggests, you would put it on a slice of toast and then put it back under the grill, so it was making a kind of pizza like thing. But what used to happen was then you took it out from under the grill and it would it would develop like a kind of skin on top of it, like like you know, like you get a skin on
top of a rice pudding. And then you would buy into it, and this kind of lava, molten lava hot stuff would ooze through the the the breech in the skin and burn your the roof of your mouth immediately, really horrible and really vile flavor as well, And that really did look like sick.
Okay, okay, well this is this is already an education for me. Do they still make that? They still make toast toppers?
No, I don't think. I mean, there are probably websites devoted to it because you find that, don't you With discontinued foods, You'll find they're still made in some weird country, and then people will be important it. I think I think it's been discontinued, but maybe after this podcast is broadcast we'll find out differently.
Yeah, so you were up in the Peak district for the majority of the last few months.
Was that?
I mean that sounds like was that a nice place to be during the you know, the the lock in?
Yeah, for sure, because that's a place I've been visiting quite a lot. It's quite near to Sheffield. That's how I first got to know the Peak from going on family outings as a kid, which I hated at the time, but then in later life kind of came to appreciate it. But yeah, I mean it's the countryside, so you couldn't really tell that anything different was happening. It was funny. I realized that for a good two months I saw more sheep than people, and that's definitely the first time
ever in my life that has occurred. You know that I was hanging out with sheep more than other humans.
Are you? How are you generally with your own company?
I'm much better than I used to be. I used to hate it as a kid, and as a younger person, I couldn't stand to be on my own in a house who I would start to freak out and I would just have to go out on any kind of pretext just to be with other people. I didn't like to be left alone with my own thoughts. I don't know, it just wasn't comfortable with it. So I've come a
long way. I'm okay now. I think it's a thing that you really have to grapple with, and I think it's because it's like that, it's basically like the foundations for all your other kind of social interactions. If you are okay with yourself, then it's going to make your social interactions better, because, like I say, when I was younger, I would just kind of go out just because I
couldn't bear to be on my own. So you're starting off your interactions with other people and a kind of slightly desperate note there, like you would just want them to distract you from yourself, whereas if you can handle yourself, okay, you might actually go out and just have fun with people.
Sure, did you have a lockdown routine? What would a typical day to day thing have been. It's kind of a bit different now, I guess because we're kind of out of it, a little bit, not fully out of it. But there was that period at the beginning where it felt like every day was exactly the same. Did you have a continual routine that you would just do every day and like just repeat.
Well, it's funny you should say that. It does seem like a long time ago now, doesn't it, or it seems like another era. I did realize at the start that I needed some not particularly a total routine. But I think it was hard to kind of concentrate at first. I think because we're all used to just wandering around and you know, check something on your phone, then go
somewhere else. Over the last few years, we've got used to kind of have this kind of pecking at things, attention span and always kind of moving around, and as you said, being stuck in the same place. Suddenly time, the shape and feel of time altered and at first I found that my mind it was still trying to peck, but there was nothing to peck out because it was just you were just there in one place. So that
felt very It was slightly disturbing. So I did try and write a little bit of a timetable, even though I knew I wouldn't stick to it. I think if you've got a timetable, then at least if you got distressed, you could walk into the kitchen and look at the piece of paper that you'd celltate to the wall and think, oh, yes, it's two o'clock I should be going for a walk now or whatever. I guess I was looking that if you're a person who works in the creative arts, then
you can do stuff like I started. I started reading some stories and posting them. I started doing discos on Saturday nights. Yeah, I just kind of And also there was a record that was about to be released, so I was doing like these. I was doing like two zoom calls a day, so that kind of meant that I was kind of socializing as well. So I was
really lucky. Actually it didn't really I didn't have to do a lot of you know that zombie shopping where you have to stand outside waitros in a queue and all that stuff with everyone.
Yeah, I was going to ask about the zoom thing. Are you feeling zoomed out at this point? I mean, we're talking on zoom, but I know it's one of those things that if you do too much of it, you get to a point where you need a break. You're like, I can't speak to another one for you zoom right now?
Well, yeah, I mean I was going to ask you about that because I find it quite tiring. That's what I found, And I was trying to work out why I felt tired when all I'm doing is sitting on a settee talking at a computer.
But a friend of mine tried to explain to me why he thinks it makes well his theory behind why it's so tiring, and it was about how you're interacting with someone where you're just focusing on their head and shoulders, and if you were to do that in real life, it would be very strange and bizarre to just be staring at someone like you and I are right now. It's actually quite it's actually quite intense, and it kind of takes its toll. And that that was what. I
don't know if there's anything to that. It sounded sensible and clever when he told.
Me, I suppose so, but you're not sure. Yeah. I do think it's something to do with that that it feels you can see someone so it feels like you are of a conversation. But for instance, if I want to have eye contact with you, now I'm looking at your eyes, but that means that I'm not looking in the camera. If I really wanted to have eye contact, i'd look in the camera like that. But that feels really weird. So there's all these things where it's just
a bit off. So I think that's what makes it a bit disturbing, because your brain is trying to find out what's really going on. And I think also things to do with timing as well, because it's not so bad in this situation where it's just a conversation between two people, but like, for instance, towards the beginning of Lockdown, we had a zoom meeting for the people in the band and we were all talking and then we thought, oh, look we're all on the same zoom. Let's try and
play a song. And then as soon as we tried to do that, we realized that everything was out of sync because everybody's Internet connections would be at different speeds and we were at different distances to each other. So that really pointed out the fact that it wasn't like being in a room with people where you can just
play a song without thinking about it. There are all these weird latency and time like things, which you're probably not consciously aware of them, but they are making that interaction a little bit more strange and therefore a bit more tiring to engaging.
Sure, you did you do any zoom quizzes with friends? That was a thing for a while.
Yeah, it's weird. I mean because I've thought about that, because I should have been all over that, because I historically have been a big lover of quizzers. I used to like again at parties. This is again maybe why people don't come to my parties, but I often would have a quiz as part of the party. I used to like doing my own version of who Wants to Be a Millionaire? One year we did Mister and Missus. I don't know if you know that quiz. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so we used to do Mister and Missus. So, yeah, I would have thought that I would have loved quizers, but I only I think I only took part in.
One about you, you know, I'm I'm still in one now. I started doing on with my my brother. My brother set one up with his in laws and invited me and my wife and my mum, and we were doing it every Saturday night. That got a bit intense. We've gone down to every other week now, and I don't know if it's ever going to end, Like I feel like we're kind of stuck in this now. But I mean, I'm enjoying it. I don't know they might be listening to this. I am enjoying it everyone. But yeah, it's
it that is very tiring. I find I find actually the quiz thing quite exhausting because we do it well. We all write a we all write around each and then you're the quiz master for your own round, and then you'll sit out of.
That all right. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. So it's not like you search online for a quizz or get it from a book. You actually have to devise it yourself.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We make it ourselves. So that's quite fun. But then it turns out that's actually quite time consuming.
Yeah.
When we did the feature for the mag a few years back, one of the things that we spoke about was TV. And I remember you saying that you watch so much TV when you were a kid, that these days you don't really watch that much TV. In fact, when you're in a hotel, if there's a TV in there, you'll cover it up or put it away so you don't have to see even the dead TV in the room. Yeah, have you have you? I was wondering if you've lapsed back into TV through this time.
You're not working for the TV license? That is that? No comment, It's just I keep getting I keep getting letters through the mail saying they're going to come and check check me that I ain't going to tell it. I don't own a tell. I just want to go on record there. But occasionally, Well, the one thing that I've watched, I haven't really watched much TV. I have stuck to that. I do think that I've had enough
TV to last me my whole life. But then my partner's daughter was talking about how she was watching the Sopranos during lockdown, and and we realized that I've never ever seen the Sopranos, and all the DVDs were in a cupboard somewhere. So we are watching in the Sopranos. We started and we're please don't tell me what happens.
I've not seen it. Yeah, i've been. I've been meaning to. I'm like you, I'm really late to it, and I've got it and I've been meaning to watch it.
All right, well i'll tell you it's worth it.
Okay, how far in are you?
We're approaching the end of season four, right, so we're over halfway. Yeah, it's it's really good. I have to say, I don't know why. Obviously it's quite old now, I mean that's one of the good things. It doesn't really seem very dated. I don't know they've really I suppose it were lucky. It was made just as mobile phones came in. In fact, they kind of come in during the series.
And computers are there, but like really clunky computers, but they're there, so it's it's almost like it just managed to get those things in, so it doesn't seem hopelessly dated. It's good. It's it's really good. I mean, as for why I didn't watch it at the time, I can only think it's because the theme tune is a song by the Alabama Three. Yeah, we woke up this morn and
of myself, I god, it goes like that. And there was a guy in the Alabama Three who just always used to bug me when I was out, like it was always kind of bent my ear drunk when I was out, and it really really irritated me. And so I think maybe when I knew that they'd done the theme tune, I thought, there's no way I'm watching that program.
I was thinking yesterday when I was when I was thinking about the fact we're going to be talking today, it reminded me that the last live show that I have been to was your live show when you played on the second of March in a club in Canning on next to Canning Street Station. Basically, wasn't it. I can't remember the name of the place, but Steallyards, Steal Yards that was it was. It was just before the
lockdown started, like there was murmurings of it. But that's the last time I've seen any live music other than on screen. Few live stuff on screen and stuff, But I think it was it the day that house Music All Night Long came out on that day or the video of it came out on that day.
Maybe it was that was why we'd organize the concert because and actually the records arrived that day, and I was really excited. I spent most of my time backstage taking pictures of the records because they were there, you know. But yeah, I think it was maybe a fortnight before the lockdown came into effect. So yeah, people were talking about it, and yeah, I mean, I don't know. You didn't catch it that night, did you. I didn't know.
No, I'm touch would I've been, Okay, I've not yet.
As far as I know, none of us in the band got it. I haven't heard of people getting it from there. So yeah, it was great. It was great to it seems like so long ago. It seems like forever ago, which is maybe why I forgot that. Oh yeah, that's the last gig I went to. I liked that you did it in that club as well. I've never been there, but I've certainly been to clubs like that when I grew up. It was the kind of nightclub
that people go to after work in the city. It's like in the Arches for anyone that's not been to the steel Yard. But it was a great show. And it was nice that it was the last one. Did you ever go to clubs like that, that type of after work leaving do clubs? I mean, the reason we had it there was because the record that was coming out was House Musical all night long. I kind of wanted it to be like a place that you could
imagine a rave to happen. At one time, we were looking at the arches underneath Waterloo Station, which are a bit more kind of scuzzy, so that place. Because it was a school night, you know, it was a Tuesday, I believe, so we could Because at first I was thinking, oh, yeah, we could do it like a back in the day where people have to kind of go and meet a guy at a chip shop with his mobile phone and he tells you the next place you have to go to, you know, because that's what used to be like back
in the rave days. You would you would get coordinates to meet someone at a service station and then they would tell you the next part of the journey and finding the actual party was a big part of the night out. So I was thinking maybe it'd be nice to do something like that. But then, as I say, because it was a Tuesday and people probably wanted to get up for work the next day. We decided to do it in a place that had the look because it was in the old railway archers, but it did
have a bar and plumbing and toilets and things like that. Yeah.
Well I think that stuff was appreciated by the people that were there. Yeah, to be honest, did you did you that well that you were just talking about where you kind of it was like a puzzle to find out where the rave was. Did you you obviously did some of that back in the day. Did you do much of the rave scene?
Yeah? I mean, I think that's why it stayed with me so vividly because it was just after I'd moved down from Sheffield to London. So I moved down to go to Saint Martin's in September nineteen eighty eight, and the acid house scene was going their warehouse parties and stuff, and the first one I went to was in May nineteen eighty nine. We got a ticket. Well, it's like it says in the pulp song sort of freeas and Wiz,
that's basically a documentary representation of what happened. We bought You could buy tickets from this strange flat in Camden Town and there was a coach that went from Soho Square at ten o'clock and I had kind of left Sheffield. I used to go to There was like a really bad kind of indie nightclub in Sheffield that I'd been going to twice a week for five years since I left school. And when I left Sheffield, I thought, well, that's it. You know, I've done my time in the clubs.
I'm going to get serious now I'm going to learn all this kind of thing. So I wasn't intending to have a nightclub experience once I got to London, but as luck would have it, this scene was in full swing and some friends said, oh, you've got to come and see it because it's really amazing, and so I kind of went, not with particularly high expectations. I'd been
kind of badgered into it. But once I got there and you know, we were in this aircraft hanger with a with a big wheel outside and giant platforms and lasers and smoke and everything, I thought, oh shit, this is this is why, this is what I always wanted nightclubs to be, like, you know, some kind of really sci fi experience with people dancing all night and all that kind of thing, and so I kind of got hooked into it. Yeah.
Well, the track the track house music all Night Long, because it was released back then two weeks before Lockdown. As you say, it kind of sound that soundtracked a lot of my early Lockdown. That song. I even went roller skating to that song, and I don't know, I don't roller skate, but but I I have some roller skates and I went out on and that's how powerful your song is.
Well, yeah, thanks, that's as far as I know. You're the well is. You're certainly the first person I've heard of who's roller skated to that song. So I take my hat. I take my hat off to you.
It's the perfect roller skating song. And because of the lyrics of that song, a lot of people, I think, thought that you must have written it. It was about Lockdown, and you wrote it in Lockdown. So friends of mine certainly said that when they first heard it was like, oh, it's just been written about the current situation. But it wasn't, was it. It was written?
No? No, I mean that's the strange thing. Really. Emma, the woman who plays the violin in the band, a friend of hers got COVID quite early on and had to self isolate. And she was the first person who pointed out the fact that the lyrics seemed to be about that experience of just be stuck in a house not being able to go out. But yeah, the song had been written like a year and a half before.
It was all about a weekend when I was stuck in London on my own and I was jealous of some people who'd gone to this there's a festival in Wales called Houghton. You know that, It's like a dance music festival. No, I don't know that, all right, it's supposed to be really good, and some people I knew had gone, and I was stuck in London and all my friends weren't around, and I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, and to kind of distract myself from that, I went and got a keyboard out of the basement
and started playing. And then that's when I came up with the tune for it. And I guess because of the circumstances that the idea of me being stuck in a house on my own feeling jealous about people dancing the house out in Wales, there's those two connotations of the word house kind of gave me the lyrics. So that's where all that kind of stuff about claustrophobia and
all that kind of stuff come from. But yeah, it just kind of weirdly came out seeming like it was written with Lockdown in specifically in mind.
I mean. The other thing that is kind of strange timing I guess with like the new band and Lockdown happening is that although the album came out during Lockdown, the band is kind of a live band, isn't it more than it is an album studio band, Like you hadn't planned to make a record and then go and tour that record. You are like a live band first and foremost, and that's how people should kind of want to experience it. It must be really annoying that you've
been able to play it. You're not being able to like do that side of it. In fact, the only thing people currently have is the album.
Well, I don't know whether it's annoying. I mean, it's annoying for everybody who's in the band. You know that concerts aren't allowed. It was I mean, if anything, in one way, I was kind of pleased that we'd made the record in the way that we'd made it, because, as you say that, the band was formed basically as a live thing, and at one point we thought we
never would make records. We would just play these songs that we'd written, and the songs would change over time, and if people were interested, they would have to come to a concert to see what was happening. And then I don't know, I guess I can't help it. I was brought up in the age of records, so kind of do start thinking about that kind of thing. We ended up making a record, but the a lot of the versions of the songs that are on the record,
that the basic takes were made during live concerts. So there are two that were recorded in a cave up in the Peak District in.
What was that cave called the Devil's Ass.
Well, I prefer to call it Peak Cavern. Some people do call it the Devil's Ass. They change the name to Peak Caven when Queen Victoria visited it in the late eighteen hundreds. And I'm not really into Victorian values generally speaking, but I am in that case because I don't like the idea of playing in an ass devils or not. But yeah, and then there was another song
we recorded at the Primavera festival in Barcelona. So I'm glad that we did it that way because, as you point out, there's there's no way to do that now that there are no concerts happening, so we kind of took advantage of it while it was there, and you know, it must come back. I I think I've only seen
one concert during lockdown. I went to there's a place in Peckham called Peckham Levels or something I think it's called, and there's like a bar on the top floor of there, and there's an arts place called Bold Tendencies, and Hannah, the woman who runs I was determined to start putting events on again, so I went along. I think it
was around the beginning of July. There was a cello player and his sister who played the piano, and they've played some classical music and everybody has sat on chairs at safe distances, and it's in an old multi story car park, so it's got lot of ventilation, so it was a safe environment. But just to be sat there, even in that kind of slightly constrained situation, just the fact that you could see someone playing it right there before your eyes. You know, it wasn't coming down a
live stream, it wasn't pre recorded. Was a really great thing. It was a really beautiful feeling to witness that and be part of it. So my hope is that people will this kind of hiatus will have made people realize how much they do like those live experiences, and I think that maybe we'll have a bit of a you know, a flourishing of live events when we're allowed to do them again.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's one track on the album well House Music is obviously the one that I love. As I say, it made me, it made.
Me roll escape.
But there's also a song on the record that I really like called Swanky Modes. And one of the reasons I like it so much is because it's about my neighborhood where I live now, I believe anyway, because I live just off the Camden Road, which is mentioned in the first line of the song, and you used to live around there, right, It is like a song about a time and a place that you lived in. When was it, When was that written? When was it that you were in that kind of area?
Well, that's one of the mysteries of song writing actually, and I've wondered about this because the events I'm describing in that song happened basically thirty years ago. Towards the end of my time at Saint Martin's. I was living in a housing co op place on Dual Jianna Street. You know, if you know where Georgiana Streeter is, It's like it's just off the Camden Road, but it's it's it's there's a garden center at the end of the road. I do know it. Yeah, do you know where that is? Yeah?
Yeah, that's name my house.
Yeah, all right, So there was a housing co op there, and I'd been on the books for ages and then eventually got offered a room in a in a shared house there. It was. It was quite a random household. It The main guy who lived there was a was a drug dealer, but he was in prison at the time. But all his friends were there, and so they tried to put me off taking the room in the house. So when I went around for a viewing, they were all just kind of really wasted and doing like disgusting things,
like a guy started trying to fuck the settee. So I guess they thought that I would be appalled and just so I can't live here, but you didn't. I just thought they're just trying to put me off for that. I've been waiting for the flat for ages and it had always been my dream to live in Camden. When I first moved down from Sheffield. Camden was one of the few places I'd been to in London and I just thought it was like the coolest place probably on
the planet. You know. They had you know, they had shops that sold records and clothes and badges and things like that. You know, I just thought it was great. And I tried to get a flat though when I first came and that fell through and ended up squatting for quite a long time. But I eventually got my Camden flat and that would be around yeah, nineteen nineteen, nineteen ninety one.
Sure, So then were the housemates? Did they behave themselves? Once you did move in and once they realized we've not scared this guy off, he's moving in. How are they? After that? Did they calm down?
Not much? And there wasn't much SETI fussing after that, but it was still well, it just wasn't very pleasant living in a house because the guy got out prison quite soon after that, and so whenever I came back home, there were just lots of random people waiting to score in the living room. So that's not the most convivial, you know, living circumstances. But I lived there for a while, and there was a shop just up the road called
Swanky Modes, which was a woman's clothes shop. I've since found out it's kind of known in certain circles because it was completely run by women. The clothes were designed by women, the women ran the shop. I think one of the women who started the shop is now lecturing at Saint Martin's. But as I say, why suddenly these events, because I didn't live in that place for that long,
maybe I lived there five or six months. So it's quite weird that suddenly all that story that's related in that song would just suddenly float to the surface of
my consciousness thirty years later. But that's one of the things I like about being a songwriter really, that you end up kind of giving life a narrative in a way, because I mean, I do believe that really life is pretty random, but sometimes your mind will weed out stuff and remember certain things and forget other things, and it's kind of like it kind of writes you a life story,
and I've got a memory now of that time. Maybe I would have ended up totally forgetting about Georgiana Street, but I never will now because I've written a song about it.
Did you leave Camden before like the Heart before Camden became the britpop thing? Was were you out by the time that it became cool in that way? And were you still? Were you still there when things kind of kicked off?
No? No, I was by that time, by the time of the Good Mixer and all that I was. I was South London by then, I was Peckham.
You'd gone south of the river.
I'd gone south of the river.
That made me think of another thing that I've always wanted to ask you, And I'm sure you've been asked this before, so I apologize if this is a really boring question. But I think there are still a lot of people who don't necessarily realize that your first record came out in nineteen eighty three, because obviously britpop was so much later than that, you know, ten twelve years later. How did being in a band in the early eighties compared to being in a band in the mid nineties.
Well, that's a difficult one because, like you say, there's ten for over ten years between them. And also when the band was there in the eighties, you know, I just left school. I started the band when I was at school and then carried on and I was just kind of learning how to do it then, you know, I really it was a thing that I'd wanted to do since I was a little, tiny kid. So it kind of ended up not working out. And that's that's why I eventually left Sheffield because I just it was
like my dream had gone. It's very sad this part of the story. So it's like, you know, I could just see it wasn't going to work out. Sheffield was a pretty depressed place at that time in the mid eighties. You know, it was statues Britain. You know, people who didn't live through that can only guess at the horrors that happened during that time. And so when I moved to go to London, I kind of thought that was
the end of that. It was a new chapter. But in a similar way to what I said earlier about how I thought that my disco days were behind me, and then I got involved in raves. When I moved down to London. I don't know. There was a friend who'd already moved down from Sheffield the year before and he joined the band, and even though the band wasn't really playing, it was kind of comforting to have it
as an idea. And then with the going through the rave experience and stuff like that, and then towards the end of college, we just got asked to play a concert and played a concert and it felt different. It felt like people actually liked it, and maybe I was a bit more relaxed about it because I think probably the biggest difference, I suppose, thinking about it now, is that when I was in Sheffield at the beginning of
the eighties, that was it was. It was like my whole life depended on it, and that's why I took it so badly when it didn't seem to work out. When I did it again in the nineties, it was like I'd done college. I wasn't really expecting so much of it, and then it just started to happen. So I think the lesson that I took from that was don't try too hard.
Yeah, maybe you wanted it a bit too badly when you were at college and studying at college kind of before the band did then start to happen again. Was there something you were going to do when you left college that wasn't music that you had? Were you going to be an artist or what was the plan?
Well, I've been really lucky in my life and I've never really made very serious plans. I've always tried to follow my instincts, really, and I was making I made some films at college. They weren't particularly good. I kind of thought maybe I would like to make a film eventually.
I'd done a few videos, like whilst I was at college, some friends from Sheffield started the Warp label and some of the earlier, earliest tracks that they released, I made the videos for those, along with another guy, Martin Wallace I was at college with, and so I thought, well, maybe I could be a promo director. You've got to remember in those days, people spent like, I don't know, fifty grand on a video or stuff like that. You know.
It was like there was that guy Tim Pope was always going off to the Amazon and shooting the cure floating down the Amazon in a canoe or something like that. You know, I thought, that's that would be all right. That wouldn't be so bad as a career. I'd still be involved in music, but i'd be in a different aspect of it. So but as to say, I hadn't
really worked it out. And then around the time that I was leaving college, when I suppose I would have had to think a bit seriously about what I was going to do, we started playing concerts and people liked it, so I thought, Okay, fuck that, let's go back to music.
Then I've really enjoyed your You mentioned it earlier, your disc goes from home? Have they been? Was that down here in London or was that when you were up in the Peak District?
No, that was in the p District. That was from our living room. Yeah.
Those were really good fun and you also did the stories which people can still listen to. I'd encourage people to go back and listen to on your Instagram account on like Instagram TV. You did It's a Sunday Night, I think, wasn't it when you did bedtime Stories?
Yeah, at nine thirty every Sunday I would release a new story because I thought, I mean that was just because I again, at the beginning of Lockdown, I realized that I wasn't sleeping so well, I think a lot of people had that because we're in such a new situation, it was especially bad. I stopped watching the ten o'clock News because I realized that was a real no note because you would watch the ten o'clock News then try and go to bed and you'd have all the kind
of apocalyptic images from it going through your head. So the series I used to do for the BBC the Sunday Service, I would occasionally read stories, so I had a bit of a stockpile of stories, so I just thought, well,
why not put them out? Because once, if I ever read a story to my partner, she's asleep within three minutes, which can be really irritated sometimes when you're reading a story, because you know, you might not realize that the person's asleep until ten minutes later, and then you're just reading to yourself. You feel a bit of a burk. So I think that my voice has a certain boringness to it which can make people fall asleep, which I think is okay.
It's hard to tell, isn't it. Is it a compliment or is it an insult that they fallen asleep? Does it mean you're boring? Does it mean you're soothing and calming.
Well, I prefer to think the second one, and I have made a thing of that. I suppose, like the Sunday Service was all about trying to create this kind of quiet, low energy, mellow zone that people could kind of lose themselves in if they'd been out on a Saturday night and we're feel a bit fragile or something.
And then the other series I did for the BBC Wireless Nights would was generally broadcast around eleven PM or eleven thirty, So again I tried to go for that kind of almost like a hypnotist, as you know, you talk in that voice like this, and you say you're viewing very sleepy, and because I like, you know, that's basically what I use the radio for a lot if
I wake up in the middle of the night. I did it last night, so I woke up about four in the morning, and you know, I hate that thing of lying there and then you start thinking of one thing and then another, and then behind that you're thinking, go back to sleep, go back to sleep. But the more you think that to yourself, the harder it gets.
So I generally will like go downstairs and put the world service on and lie there and just I'm not even really listening to what they're talking about, but it's just as a human voice they're talking, and somehow that helps with feelings of loneliness or whatever. And just kind of usually within kind of twenty minutes or so, I'm back asleep.
You're done. What about podcast? Do you listen to many podcasts?
I don't listen to that many podcasts. I know they're the new thing, and and I know this one is legendary.
Yeah, thank you, No, I.
It is a really through choice. It's just I mean, occasionally I've listened to audio books or something. The thing is, I'm looking for something that doesn't really that I don't have to kind of stay awake to hear the end of Yeah, you know, I'm looking for something that just helps me drift off. Yeah.
I really like Radio four did a series called slow Radio. Listen to that, and it is it's kind of sound recordings. Really, it's like of somebody walking for a forest or a trip down the Amazon in a canoe. Just the sound of that. And that's great for falling asleep too.
Yeah that sounds good. Yeah, well I think you know that that's a that's a very kind of essential function that radio or podcasts and things can provide. So I'm I'm personally not insulted if people fall asleep whilst listening to me. I like it means I take it as a compliment. It means they feel safe and relaxed. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean you must have been people asked you to do to host your own podcast. You must have had people say that to you, because you do have you have a broadcaster's voice.
Dare I say, that's very nice of you to say so, I mean, I'm talking to them about the podcasts for as I bears, I haven't no, I mean I could do, I'm sure if I wanted to, and I'm still doing the I think there is going to be another series of Wireless Nights, and I do like that one because for people who might have heard it's it's really just a way of checking up on the things that people do at night times, and that can vary from Like we had a guy who went out night swimming, just
like to go swimming off Dungeoness in the nighttime, and he wore like a waterproof microphone, so who could kind of talk about his experience and then one another time I was like a night watchman in an office building. Actually, office buildings wouldn't be much different to how I saw them in the in the night. All they're all deserted now. But it was quite weird to be in the center of London in this big building with no one else in it but me. So all things like that, things
that take place during the night. We once were in a power station with the people who were looking after the national grid and stuff like that. So for me, that's great because I'm always curious to know what people are up to. It's a way of me eavesdropping without you know, getting arrested for it. So yeah, I like that show. And because it's broadcast at night, we try and weave the stories together, so it's kind of like
something that you can drift off to. And I do believe that if you fall asleep with the radio on or with a podcast on, I think that information in some way does kind of go into your dreams as well. You're kind of absorbing it in some kind of way.
Well, Jarvis, thank you so much for talking to me. You've been out. You have actually been our one hundredth.
Guest really, so thank you. Well, you know what, I'm very honored by that.
Yeah, you're you're a star guest.
Well, thank you. Sorry, my alarm was going off there. That was like a celebratory alarm that was going on. Well no, well thank you. Yeah, I mean, and if if you're asleep now whilst you're listening to this podcast, congratulations. Anyway, good night,