Clerkenwell's Nice Cups of Tea and a Boy Band

Nick Ball, Jon Butterfield, Matt Redman, me

Sorry about the break in entries. I did a gig with the Flying Aces at the prestigious Forge in Camden and wanted to write about it, but didn't have the pictures or videos yet. It'll still be a bit of a wait, so that'll be out of sequence. Boring! Sorry.

Also have done a spate of Vintage Fairs. Interesting! They all have cupcakes! All! I wore a lot of Bettie Page repro dresses and put silk flowers in my hair for them, and got all helpless around Community Hall PA systems and learned a lot about the different types of people who go to these things.

Envy and Claire also provide wine-gums. 

But this last Sunday I did the VERY FINE Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair, which I would recommend to anyone who wanted to try a Vintage Fair but didn't know which one to start with. Here the fun factor is as much to the fore as a decent selection of proper clothes to look at. Some stalls have delicate, museum-quality Victorian and Edwardian items, and some just specialise in those diaphanous 20s and 30s bits of nothing that ladies wafted around in while Hercule Poirot solved murders. And then there are plenty of sturdy, flattering 1950s numbers with their nipped-in waist. Also two of the best vintage hair and makeup stylists in the business: Envy Greene and Claire Cross. And the old Finsbury Town Hall! It is Victorian Rococo magnificence.

So no room for any reproduction frocks here, or just relying on a few clip-in silk flowers, no matter how convincing the general effect.

Envy Greene. and a genuine New-Look Hat. 

With the very dapper Matt Redman

Savitri, who started the Clerkenwell Fair and who runs it with stylish but businesslike efficiency, wanted me to try on a dress of hers, which she thought would go with my colouring. It was a shade I would never have dreamed of. Or thought would work. But there it was, and there it did. Envy Greene worked with it using several shades of eyeshadow. I think she achieved it. I'd been told that there would be an ugly door behind us, and to bring something to cover it up. So I took a few random sheet music covers (oh this is a tiny, tiny fraction of what I have!!) and colour-copied them, and taped them together. Not a bad effect, and Envy's makeup also seems to draw on these covers for inspiration. I have to say that I've never heard the phrase "hang on while I get my 1930s lip-liner" before. And if I had, I wouldn't have thought it'd be in earnest! But it was. As I say, one of the best in the business. I would have loved to have had Claire do my hair, and their prices are extremely reasonable, really a tiny amount compared to what salons charge, and they do a better and far more authentic job, but I had my 20s wig all ready, and it went with Savitri's dress.

Victorian Rococo Splendour. Matt and Nick, on the right, arranged the songs in the album.

There's something for all the five senses at the Clerkenwell Fair. A table of pomades and colognes and perfumes; silks, satins, furs; an artist who draws frocks in the manner of a 1940s fashion illustrator for Vogue; the substantial lemon drizzle cakes and the teas and the sandwiches made right there on the spot; the velvety-smooth brushes of Envy and the bristly proper brushes of Claire; and the Lovely Parlour Trio, referred to on the day as the Lovely Parlour Boy Band! 

We played songs from the album, and the 23rd was also the day that four songs were launched on Amazon, 7 Digital, Play.com and HMV Digital..A Nice Cup of Tea, We'll Gather Lilacs, The Honeysuckle and the Bee, and Let Him Go Let Him Tarry. Our rendition of A Nice Cup of Tea drew smiles amongst the nice cups of tea.

Nick Ball's new drum demos, fabulous Choro, and Time for Tea

Yesterday I paid a visit to Shoreditch's "Time For Tea". I'd met a man named Johnny and his lovely daughter over a stall at Vintage on the SouthBank. The stall sold fairground tat from the fifties....the REAL thing. Hideous buck-toothed, red-nosed and ginger-moustachioed masks, boxes of tiny plastic babies, novelty brooches (cannot hope to describe). If you really want to see (and you ought to!) go HERE. But there's nothing like running it all through your hands!!

In any case I said "It's like that shop where Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard steal stuff on a dare," and a girl in a leather jacket with an angelic face said "Exactly!!" Her name is Tillie. She tap-dances, and her dad owns Time for Tea.

I bought three of the horrible buck-toothed masks for the band I was going to see later that evening.

This was Vila Verde at the Jamboree in Limehouse. Vila Verde plays Choros, which could be described as Brazilian ragtime. Delicate, melancholy filigree masterpieces, these Choros. The lovely Emily O'Hara started the band and they have gone from strength to strength. Her passion has translated itself into a thing of beauty. They even sell green t-shirts for a fiver.

Showed off my "Chic on a Shoestring" book and gave the masks to the band. Emily says that she had nice dreams that night, and that my evil plan had failed.

In any case! Yesterday went to Time For Tea. Johnny Vercoutre is remarkable. We had an interesting conversation on how "vintage" is getting too predictable. He suggested I shave my head. I felt very complimented but couldn't help concluding that the man didn't really get a good look at my ears. He effectively lives in a shop on Shoreditch High Street, which he has gigs in, rents out for parties, and opens for tea on Sundays. The rest of the time it's his home, and people stop by to pet his MASSIVE dog, talk about old bikes, and generally be neighbourly. All on a high street. More people should do this; the world would be a better place.

Nick Ball has uploaded a series of early drum demos! VERY impressive. This is important work, to get the word out on how to perform music from the first two decades of the 20th century. I am honoured to be his colleague.

The rain held off just enough!

The crowd formed above the steps however...the stand is in a dip that's part of all that modern stuff comprising London's City Hall. Essentially, anyone taking a stroll along the Thames stopped in astonishment to hear music from 1901, 1924, 1933 issuing forth from an area that normally features rock, blues and the occasional folk. So we caused quite a jam for the Thames-side promenaders!

There were City-workers with their sandwiches, a well-behaved set of schoolchildren, several retired people, mums and their

toddlers, young hipsters, tourists. They all loved it, thank the Lord.

Photo by Debee Calveche

Nick Ball showed off his skills making the very U2-looking slick modern drum-kit provided by Scoop Music sound as if it was from 1920, and bringing out his spoons to display his unparalleled virtuosity with kitchen implements. He wore a bowler hat and 30s suit. Matthew Redman had 20s gangster pinstripes and a fedora. Orpheus wore his tails and a top-hat, seen here being adjusted by the very professional hands of Mr. Redman. Andrea had her lovely dark velvet and some silk flowers, and bassist John Baker had his morning-coat. I don't know what it is about John. When he wears it, he looks like a sixties mod in Victorian duds he picked up from Granny Takes A Trip on the King's Road. I cannot work out how this happens. He doesn't try for it, I don't think. It's a good look, though.

After the gig we posed for photos, with Debee Calveche, Matt's gorgeous girlfriend, behind the camera. She also did some videos which I hope we'll be able to post soon. Nick's girlfriend, the extremely talented Emily O'Hara, who has a band called Vila Verde, came dressed in a purple cloche hat and lovely little dress and some excellent high heeled mini-boots. Looked so damned good I felt like having her on stage even though she hadn't brought her guitar or ukulele.

Mind you she could have borrowed one from Matt, he having carted along a mandolin, a guitar, a banjo, a melodica and Nick's glockenspiel to play by turns, which he did to excellent effect. I wish I could sing

like a soprano, bass and tenor when I so chose. I do a mean impersonation of a countertenor though, and some people have said I sound like a castrato from time to time. How they'd know, I can't imagine.

Rehearsal in the Old Royal Naval College

Sort of a moment of truth today.

Does the CD work live?

Nick's and Matt's arrangements on the album use about 30 different instruments and effects (by which I mean real antique car horns, klaxons...) including accordion, cello, harp, ukulele, piccolo, congas, flexatone, spoons, violin, banjo, guitars, bouzouki, clarinets, double bass, souzaphone...! To tour some of these songs we're going to have to make do with less. So Matt's been head down doing touring arrangements for a week and this was our first chance to try them out. We met at the Old Royal Naval College, now Trinity College of Music, and we had a room right next to the Thames. It looked as if we could be flooded if it decided to rise. Wonderful old posters of Granville Bantock's bigger works were framed on the wall, including one called "Ali Baba". I'd like to sing in THAT.

We started with "Yours". The parts were handed round and instruments tuned. I got my recording device out for the sake of study later. Reckoned I'd start recording on the 3rd run-through of each piece; no need to waste the memory card on rough tryouts.

Nick counted "one, two, a-one two three four..." and this shimmering, magic perfection just sort of floated down as everyone started playing, absolutely, beautifully together. I scrambled to press the 'record' button. We ran through "Always", "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Come to the Fair", "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking", "Honeysuckle and the Bee", and "Can't Help Singing".

The answer, in any case, to the question at the top is YES. We are ready. Bring on the gigs. Bring on the ocean liners, the Orient Express Salon Concert carriage with its velvet and brocade, bring on the shopping malls. Get us accompanying the sipping of the tea, the cocktails, the dancing of stylishly-shod feet. Neither the stillness of an attentive concert audience or the rowdyness of a lot of costumed re-enactors and their idling Spitfires will faze us. Here's a heads-up to community theatres across the land: we are ready for you, and you will kick yourselves if you don't get in there now!!

Later, Andrea the lovely pianist and I went looking for 1930s-style dresses. I have quite a few, and Andrea has an array of beautiful black frocks, but she has none in colour. Collaborative pianists (one no longer says 'accompanist') are still expected to wear black in case the diva changes her mind at the last minute and, quel horreur, ends up clashing with, or wearing the same colour as, the girl at the piano. Once, when Andrea felt she simply had to brighten up her world and put on a little pink silk jacket for someone's audition about a year ago, the panel reprimanded her. In any case, Andrea's colour-ship has come into harbour!

The high street is awash with historical pastiche. All decades are here. Except in the matter of hem-length. It's to-the-floor or above-the-knee only. Maxi or mini. So many maxi-dresses out there these days that Victoria Station on a Saturday looks like the biggest Stepford Wives theme-party in history. Drowning in discounted Monsoon silk chiffon, it came to us in a flash: buy maxi, shorten to taste! Or rather, to 30s fashion-plate.