Postman Batt

A Monster Poem for Isla Campbell

2012-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

A monster with a purple head
Jumped out on Isla Campbell,
And chased her up the stairs to bed
As fast as she could scramble.
And there she hid beneath the sheet
For two weeks and a day,
With only marmite toast to eat
Until it went away!

by Mike Batt

THE PASSION AND THE PIFFLE (a blog for the moment) DEC 2011

2011-12-18T09:36:00.000-08:00

I thought I might try to write a SENSIBLE blog for once. Then I thought, “fuck it”. So here comes the usual wonky mixture of passion and piffle. If you want sensible, go to my mate, Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend’s weekly column (that he COMMISSIONED HIMSELF to write). It’s usually about the cost of school shoes and the state of youth nowadays. You’ll love it. He does. I wonder if he pays himself for it. If so, however much he gets it’s too much. Far better to hire someone like me to write an irreverent 2,000 words on everything from Chris Hitchens’ views about God to my personal recipe for a miniature fry-up starter to excite your dinner guests. His loss.

So let’s start with Chris Hitchens, who died a couple of days ago. Our loss. He can’t have been the first to point out (as I have many times) that God and Afterlife aren’t joined at the hip. I rarely pray (turbulence in planes sometimes sets me off,) – and I’m not so much an atheist as a “how-the-hell -should-I-know-ist”. There is no instruction manual. Not an official one, you’ve just got all these books written by prophets and stuff. In fact, my own personal religion is available now online. It’s usually free but we’ve gone one better than that this Christmas and halved the price. http://www.isnt-ism.com . Seriously, Chris and I had/have (what with him being dead and all) a point. IF there is a god, why does that mean there’s an afterlife? What optimist connected those two ideas? What if God, when she created us, gave us one life only. If you fall off a cliff aged two before you get converted to Catholicism, at least you don’t go to hell. What if there is a god but he’s an evil git? Loves watching road crashes and earthquakes, in fact rewinds them and watches them slowly. Records them to watch later. (Otherwise why does Sky TV exist, answer me THAT).

What if there’s an afterlife – purely naturally, - and no god? Perfectly feasible. We crawled out of the sea, grew legs, - unless you don’t believe in Darwin and think Adam actually did nick an apple – because a SNAKE told him to – as if (!!!!) and condemned us all to a life of punishment (see above) and then, when our souls matured enough, that is to say not when we were Newts, some time after that – we got the key of the door and there IS an afterlife, but obviously not for newts, just us. Yay! Keep out the riff raff.

Ok so for the fry-up recipe for eight guests you just need 16 quails eggs, a few small Hovis miniature loaves, those mini-schmini ones, eight cherry tomatoes and some very streaky bacon. You’ll need to cut the quails’ eggs open with nail scissors beforehand because the little membrane inside is too thick to allow the clean cracking of the egg – and each egg needs to be stored on a soup spoon, a line of which should be ready near the frying area. (This is TRUE). The reason for this is that when your guests are sitting down, you can’t waste about half an hour opening 16 quails’ eggs, they’ll be going home in that taxi afterwards holding up a big number two. Should I re-phrase that? No. Plough on.

Cut the streaky bacon into mini-sminchy little rashers.

Slice the micro hovis loaves into thin, toastable slices (and don’t forget when it comes time to toast them, do NOT put them in the toaster, you IDIOT) – put them under the grill. Cut the tomatoes into two.

When the guests arrive, tell them a joke, show then your knob, if you’re a bloke, or whatever you do to greet them, put on some Christmas music, tell the chef you’ve hired to cook the main course (because I haven’t given you the recipe for that and you may not have the ability to think ahead all by yourselves and cook three courses) – that you are about to serve the starter. While he or she is liquidising the live snails for the main course, get ripping with your mini fry-up starter.

Use at least two frying pans – so you can control the heat of each item separately. A bit of olive oil. The two halves of cherry tomato per person go into one pan, the toast AND THE BACON go under the grill, and voila! The eggs go one at a time, slipping happily off their soup spoons into the fat AS CONTEMPORANEOUSLY as possible.

Serve two bits of micro-toast per person, one with 2 fried quails’ eggs and one with two halves of fried tomato, the bacon on the side. When you get up to grade eight I’ll show you how to make miniature baked beans using red lentils and the sauce from real baked beans. That’s cheating but I don’t care because I’m not religious. We non-religious people have no morals and are completely devoid of feeling for fair play or the comfort and well-being of our fellow man. Or maybe I AM religious, I just don’t know.

So another year ends. I’ve Wombled at Glastontury in 82 degrees in a Womble Suit but don’t tell the kids. They get very very angry if they think there might be people in the costumes and it could completely fuck their Christmas up, if not their lives. I survived that without doing a “Tommy CoopER” on stage. In fact it was exhausting but tested my endurance and increased my pelvic floor strength.

We’ve made a new album with the “at-the-top-of-her-game” Katie Melua, and I’m dying for you to hear it. It’s got lots of songs and stuff on it. She’s in a happier place than ever. The album is called “SECRET SYMPHONY”. It’s available to pre-order on Amazon and iTunes etc already (*plug!*) – coming out in first week of March.

We’ve “broken” the fabulous Caro Emerald in this country, (Google her) taking her Platinum last week – or maybe she took US platinum. Either way, we like Platinum. Congrats to my fabulous cottage-industry team of about a dozen at Dramatico records, led by my passionate and impeccable Managing Director, Andrew Bowles, and in Germany (Dramatico GmbH) by our smart and arty MD, Sven Meyer. We say a sad goodbye to our New York office, with great thanks to our US company boss Josh Zieman, who is moving to pastures new, - and team. Re-structuring and re-positioning is taking place there, and our new Dramatico USA incarnation will pop right back up again in 2012.

We’ve started animating the new, CGI Wombles series. Really good fun. Animation was what I would have done if I hadn’t become a musician, so I’m hoping to become the next Walt Disney before I die. Afterwards would be too late.

This isn’t supposed to be a review of the year, but as probably my last blog of the year, inevitably is a bit like that. I wish you everything you would wish – and I hope you all have lovely Christmases. In fact the same Christmas, but lovely in plural when viewed from your own individual and, in a sense, collective points of perception.

Maybe I am religious after all. Bloody Hell.

Love,

Mike

PS: Apologies to those who have seen the recipe before

THE DAY ORINOCO GOT CARRIED AWAY!

2011-12-16T01:01:00.000-08:00

Hi Kids,

There has been some talk that the Wombles “aren’t real” because of the apparent removal of a “Womble costume head” at the end of their appearance on the Simon Mayo Show on Radio 2. Some parents have claimed the removal of a Womble “head” has “ruined Christmas” for their child, - as if! Everybody knows a Womble can’t take his head off.

I would like to explain what happened, because, I can assure the Wombles are VERY REAL INDEED and did a splendid job on the show. Before their first song, Wombling Merry Christmas, and just after it, Simon interviewed Orinoco, - but after the song Orinoco sounded completely puffed out and many people suggested to me – as their manager – that the show should be stopped and Orinoco given medical treatment. However, it was too late for the show to be stopped when Orinoco launched straight into “Underground Overground” and we management-team-humans were very worried that he might hurt himself or have a heart problem.

Luckily, I carry a fancy dress Womble costume with me to all Womble appearances, so if the real Orinoco is too puffed out (because he is the fat one, and hardly does any exercise) I can run in, like a substitute in a football match) and take over, - which is what I did. We managed to get the real Orinoco off, during a cut in the camera coverage, and he was given oxygen and some nettle tea.

I jumped on stage and took over, just for the goodbye bit. When Simon cued an Amy Winehouse record I asked if we were clear and was told that we were – whereupon I took my “head” off. Little did I know that one camera was still “live to air”. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, just a misunderstanding Anyone watching would have seen that THE OTHER WOMBLES DID NOT TAKE THEIR HEADS OFF. Why? Because they are real. I was the one who did it, because I was taking Orinoco’s place in a fancy dress costume made to look like a Womble. Everybody knows a Womble can’t take his head off. Bungo, Wellington, Great Uncle Bulgaria and Madame Cholet didn’t, did they!? They all just walked sensibly to their dressing room, and Orinoco soon recovered and joined them. I packed away my “emergency costume” and put it in the medical kit we carry with us.

So, kids, that’s how your Mum and Dad might have thought the Wombles weren’t real. Tell them you know the truth, It was their manager, Mike, saving poor Orinoco from falling over because of the heat in the studio!

Meanwhile, everybody at Radio 2 and Wombles - @Womble_HQ (on twitter) are the best of friends and have happy memories of their Wombling afternoon!

Merry Christmas from

Mike Batt
(Friend and manager to the Wombles)

(Those interested in the appearance can check it on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 It was a lovely, funny interlude enjoyed by all the Wombles and Simon and his team)

ABBA - some memories

2011-08-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

On Twitter just now, I resolved to post a blog about my experiences with Abba, - how I met them, etc. All this nostalgia was triggered by my noting on Twitter that I always remembered word Aber (pronounced “Abba” and meaning “but”) in German by imagining Agnetha’s butt. That was my word association. This triggered a string of Tweets in which it emerged that I had once produced Frida (for a Cameron Mackintosh musical called “Abbacadabra”, and that more recently, Agnetha had done one of my songs “Sometimes When I’m Dreaming”. Several Abba memories come to mind so I thought I’d set aside my workload for today and clear my brains out (yuk, what a nasty idea) by writing a blog about Abba and me. Then I remembered that there is a section in my unfinished autobiography, explaining how I met them, so I’ll start with that. Here it is:

(Excerpt from autobiography)

The task of following up “The Wombling Song” with its rather jolly-but-nonsensical lyrics and French horn “jazz” intro was a massive challenge. Why would radio stations play a second Womble song when they hadn’t played the first? (Except for Tony Blackburn, bless him). Did the World need another Womble Song? I didn’t care what the World needed, I needed another! So I sat in my garage of my three up, two down semi-detached house in Surbiton, and analysed what it had been that had made the first one a hit. Well, it was a simple song with “whimsical” good-natured lyrics. It was not unmusical, - it had an instrumental intro which was quite complicated. After a day’s grafting, I emerged from the garage with “Remember You’re A Womble”. The simplest three chord chorus, - just “Remember You’re A Womble” repeated several times on the three chord trick often used in pop songs, - was almost a rip-off of something by Gene Vincent or Carl Perkins or anyone else who had written three chord pop songs in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll. To balance this simplicity with musicality and memorability I added an intro for two violins in counterpoint that might have been (but wasn’t) taken from a Vivaldi piece, or, if you looked at it differently, an Irish jig. We went in and recorded it with Chris Spedding on guitars and Clem Cattini on drums. Jack Rothstein played the first fiddle.

I managed to get it featured as the “entertainment” during the judging break at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which happened to be hosted in Brighton that year by the BBC. We made a film of all of us Wombles pratting about in Rottingdean, the village just outside Brighton, - and I had to go onto the programme “live” as Orinoco to wave and give a rose to presenter Katie Boyle. For the film, the BBC used my vocal from the record but replaced the music backing track with an absolutely awful orchestral arrangement of the song, played “live” to a click track and conducted by Ronnie Aldridge, the BBC’s Music Director. Artistically, it spoiled the whole thing for me, but still made it available to an audience of millions of people – enough to make the record a huge hit. It went to number three in the charts. Backstage at the Eurovision Song Contest, there had been a couple of girls who looked WELL worth talking to. I sidled up to them (not in my Womble costume – maybe I’d have had better luck with it on) – only to discover that their husbands were part of their group. I spent the day getting to know them all, and wishing them luck. I even stayed backstage while the votes came in, watching their faces and sharing a drink as they won. It was Abba, and “Waterloo” obviously wiped the board, both as a Eurovision song and as the launch pad for their incredible career. I stayed in touch with them and often ran into them backstage at various European TV shows we all performed on by coincidence. Because they were on CBS, as we were, I experienced their career growing alongside mine, saw each single go out, enjoyed their success second hand, and was often around the CBS offices when Abba strategy decisions were being made.

(end of excerpt)

As I don’t really want to spend all day writing this I’ll paraphrase a little.

Being fellow CBS artists, Abba and The Wombles or myself as a solo artist would often meet up backstage or cross each other’s paths in hotel lobbies. To be greated loudly by Agnetha across the lobby of a ringy hotel foyer “Hi, Mike! How ARE you?” was such a thrill, almost electric, -and then the whole group coming over to shake hands and hug. And yet, looking back, it hardly ever happened. I’m writing it as if it was a weekly experience!

I do remember one particular night when we had been on the same bill on a German TV show, and there was a kind of tented banquet afterwards where we all sat together. I started showing off how many schnapps glasses I could pile up in a tower (I was quite good at it) without them falling over. You had to drink the schnapps and then add the glass to the tower. After that, we all (the four of them and I) went out to find a club where we could dance. It was a funny little German town out in the middle of nowhere, and the only “nightclub” in town was just closing. Realising it was Abba, the guy agreed to stay open, so we had our own private drinking and dancing club for an hour or so! The guys were chatting away happily and I got on the dance floor with the girls. I’m not a great dancer, but I was quite pissed so, hey. Great memory.

I don’t think “Dancing Queen” had come out by then, but whenever I hear that song I think of that night!

Years later, after the split of Abba, Tim Rice and I started to write a musical called Chess (him as lyricist, me as composer). It was his idea. We had several meetings and one song of mine which he liked and wanted to rewrite, lyrically to make fit the topic. Then I went away on a boat, around the world for 2 years! Tim visited us in Antigua, for a holiday, and we did a bit more thinking about Chess.

However when I got back to the UK, Tim had hooked up with Bjorn and Benny, and had written the musical. I can’t remember whether I ever got a “Dear Mike” phone call, and I didn’t feel hard done by. I hadn’t exactly been available! Also, their score and lyrics were superb. If I had written it with him, the World would have been deprived of “One Night In Bangkok”, “I Know Him So Well” , “Anthem” and such a fantastic score, one of the best, in my opinion. Benny Anderson is the best melodist writing songs and musicals bar nobody in our generation. Well, maybe me. (Only kidding). Shortly after that, Tim and I wrote “A Winter’s Tale” – which became a big hit for David Essex, and we have remained the best of friends to this day.

One day, in the early eighties, when Chess was still being created, Bjor, Benny and their arranger, Anders visited me at my London home. They knew I was into big orchestrations, (Snark etc) and Anders was keen to know a few things that I could help him with regarding how to cram all those notes for a symphony orchestra onto normal score paper – when writing for triple woodwinds and full brass and strings. It happened that they also needed a studio and I was able to get them some time at CTS Studios in Wembley. I remember popping into the sessions briefly. Anders had done some great arrangements!

A little later, I launched my “Hunting Of The Snark” concert version with the LSO at the Barbican. In the audience were Cameron Mackintosh, Tim Rice, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson. They weren’t just there to support me – which was part of it, - but also to check out how a concert version of a musical might work. They obviously thought it worked, because shortly after that, they toured Europe with the LSO in exactly the same format I had used that night at the Barbican, in order to promote the album of “Chess”. (Cameron wasn’t involved in that, he was busy with Les Mis and Phantom).

Bjorn joined The Society Of Distinguished Songwriters,(SODS)a social organisation for songwriters of which I am proud to be a member. Bjorn hardly ever comes to meetings to drink champagne and have dinner but always pays his subs, so in a sense is the perfect SOD.

Some years later, Judy Craymer (who had been Tim Rice’s assistant in the Chess days, and who was also a huge Abba fan) asked me to help her put together a TV series based on Abba tunes. We even got so far as having a meeting with Maureen Lipman as one of the stars. Maureen was a little unsure, because she felt she wasn’t as good a singer as she was an actor. Anyway – ultimately, Judy couldn’t get the money together and it all fell through. Another happy accident, - because she turned her attention instead to the Musical “Mamma Mia” – and then look what happened!

I’m going to draw this to a close now, because we’ll all fall asleep (me writing it and you reading it) – but suffice to say that although I am not close friends with any Abba members, I do call myself a friend; although I haven’t seen the girls for years.

I was truly delighted to know that Agnetha had recorded my song so beautifully.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMm6fC22fmg

Thankyou, Agnetha for (liking and interpreting) The Music. I’m sorry I made a joke about your bum.

All the best to all.

MIke

Royalty, Reality and Royalties

2011-05-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Evenin’ all.

This is my second run at doing a blog lately. I tried to write one just after we did our Buckingham Palace show, and then realized it was so full of the very recent Buckingham Palace thing, that it dominated the blog, and risked being indiscreet or self- aggrandising. Now with another week’s distance I feel I can write a blog that is more balanced and covers more subjects.

Yes indeed, we have been working on the show at Buckingham Palace for quite a few months, and it did become all-consuming. No-one (that I know or with whom I sympathise) would ever begrudge doing things for The Queen; it’s always a huge pleasure and I’ve been lucky to have been involved in some thrilling Royal events at Buckingham Palace or elsewhere. The people who run the Household, from the lowliest chambermaid to the Master Of The Household are all so welcoming and “normal” that you just feel like a friend or colleague going about a job, but surrounded by such layers of history and goodwill. The first few times I went there it was a bit like recording at Abbey Road for the first few times. You would (and still do) wonder if the valve U47 microphone you are using was the one used by John Lennon on “All You Need Is Love” – and it probably was. Similarly, you pass a painting given by Queen Victoria to the love of her life, Prince Albert, and you feel an electric charge of emotion and sympathy, not to mention admiration for the painter’s work.

We had been asked (Craig Hassall, MD, English National Ballet) and I, to co-produce an event as a focal point for a reception, given by Her Majesty, to celebrate young people in the performing arts. The Queen often celebrates various sectors, whether agriculture, industry or even the music business (I attended one such reception a few years back). Usually it’s just a drinks reception but often with a related event on the same day. In this case, we were asked to do a 30 minute show in the palace ballroom for The Queen, The Duke Of Edinburgh, other senior royals and 450 guests from all stratas and ranks of the Performing Arts community.

I’ll cut to the chase before this blog starts to compete in length with the more detailed one which I discarded last week!

I won’t say it was easy putting it together. We wanted to achieve the right mixture , between let’s say “High” art and, - well, normal everyday art – which I would contend (and which was proven on that Monday) can be every bit as “High” in its artistic effect and the techniques and dedication required to perform it at its best. I’ve nearly broken my promise not to give a long account of the putting together of this show, so I’ll skid to a halt in a minute if you don’t mind (or even if you do). Let’s just say that the three artistic directors (Justin Way, Royal Opera House, -overall director), Luc Mollinger (freelance, associate director) and myself – (general all-round collaborator and Musical director) did manage, over a number of months to rally a large number of volunteers to be either orchestra players , crew, lighting, sound, chorus, corps-de-ballet, stars , stage managers, runners. The show was fast moving and such a buzz to perform. I conducted the Docklands Sinfonia (about 55 piece, young orchestra) – and we themed the show around Romeo and Juliet – using Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev (with ENB performance) “West Side Story” – with Jo McElderry and the National Youth Music Theatre chorus, plus a sensational street dance section performed by Flawless, with Alleviate, Sara-Jane Skeete and rapper Ironik. There were also acting performances by distinguished players including Tamsin Egerton and Anne Reid MBE, and we finished off with Rumer singing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”. The show was introduced with a speech by Dame Kiri te Kanawa.

There are some pictures at the following sites:

http://tinyurl.com/3cdj8r4
http://tinyurl.com/3bxz5tk
http://tinyurl.com/3d3sxjk
http://tinyurl.com/4xsgvfo

Meanwhile, I have been flitting in and out of Europe to catch the Katie Melua “House” tour on its triumphant run around Germany, France, Belgium Portugal, the UK and now off to Scandinavia. Katie is singing better than ever, after her “breakdown” which had caused postponement of the tour from the Autumn. She’s been getting the best reviews she’s ever had, pleasing existing fans and converting doubters (usually who had never seen her perform “live” before) along the way.

That was a full-on job, funnily enough! Earlier blogs will give more detail, but a lot of time and preparation went into it, both musically and visually – all at the same time as the above Buckingham Palace activities. Add to that the enormous planning it is taking to coax the Wombles from their burrow and get them ready for their forthcomng Glastonbury appearanvce - together with even grander plans for their future- and you might get some small clue as to the manic nature of my life at the moment. The above three projects don’t even come close to describing it. Add Caro Emerald, (who I can now announce is poised to crash into the UK top ten of the album charts this week, on Dramatico Records) Sarah Blasko, Gurrumul, TD Lind, Marianne Faithfull and Asa – to name only six Dramatico artists requiring tight focus at the moment, - oh, and putting together a new Media company to raise finance for our own ambitious film, TV and stage exploits. For the Caro Emerald success, - apart from thanking Caro and her team themselves, I need to thank Andrew Bowles, our Managing Director at Dramatico, for driving the whole project along. It’s a great feeling when things go right– which I promise you, is not always the case. While I’m thanking people individually I should say a special “thanks” to Jody Hardy, our Head Of Events, for her steely and superlative handling of the Palace project from start to finish, or “from GO to WHOAH” as my wife says.

It all sounds a bit too much, doesn’t it?

Well, nothing changes. I guess I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. When I stop enjoying it I’ll stop doing it.

This Thursday, after ELEVEN wasted or delayed court hearings, a close friend of mine was acquitted of a stupid charge of spitting at someone on the Underground at Waterloo. This man – after working with me for over 5 years, has never even once used a swear word in my presence, and is the most courteous and well-mannered person I know. For him to have committed an assault like that is inconceivable, and I was called as a character witness. Thankfully – after a farce of incompetence by the Crown Prosecution Service, their barrister turned up without his file (having lost it) and the complainant was out of the country on holiday and just didn’t turn up– resulting in a huge waste of our time and massive costs for the CPS. It really does beggar belief. The only regret was that we weren’t able to prove in court RESOUNDINGLY that he didn’t do it. The case was just thrown out, albeit after more than a year of worrying and waiting on my friend’s behalf. Somehow, the CCTV footage that my friend had begged to see (to prove his innocence) had gone missing – the police had somehow failed to download it. I wonder why!

My daughter is home at the moment from Boston where she is studying music. She’s making up for lost time and hitting the town with a vengeance.

This weekend I was Grandpa, looking after one of my two six-year-old grand-daughters (I have two, one by each of my elder daughters) – if you are trying to work it out, bear in mind that I was a child bride the first time around!

That’s it for another month or so – unless I get hot under the collar or jubilant about something.

Oh yes. I’ve just remembered I am both of those things about the Hargreaves Report. Jubilant that his recommendations are that there should be no (mis-described) “fair use” clause in UK copyright law, unlike US law, - (to help Google take over the World at the expense of copyright owners) and hot under the collar about proposals for a copyright exemption for “Parody and Pastiche” – so you can change people’s lyrics and tunes without waiting until they are out of copyright. It’s the first step on a dark and dangerous road to the complete decay of copyright . Anyway – the effort goes on.

Re super-injunctions and their breach on Twitter and the web generally, the Lord Chief Justice recently said that he hoped that ways could be found to “curtail the misuse of modern technology” which was “totally out of control”. Thank goodness for a voice of reason. It also applies to illegal downloading, - and governments who don’t realise the need to chase after this horse that has already bolted from the stable will regret it – on behalf of their citizens one day. Modernists say the web is a great opportunity, and it is. It is an opportunity to steal copyright material and to libel innocent people with little fear of reproach. I admit it is also wonderful thing. It’s like a car. It can get you to places, but it can also run people over and kill them. It’s the latter aspect that hasn’t been properly dealt with, and it isn’t just music theft I’m talking about. There are many other misuses emerging. We have to get sensible about this before the REAL judgement day (as distinct from that hilarious rich preacher in the States who said we would all die in an earthquake at 6pm yesterday)!

Wow, that was a good rant. I think I’ll go for a lttle lie down now.

Lots of love,

Mike

PS. I thought the Royal Wedding was fab. He should have kissed her for about a second longer, though.

PPS. I'm flattered by the attentions of some online "followers" setting up a campaign for me to be considered for an honour. I'd be a liar if I didn't say I think we'd all secretly love to be honoured, but (a) there are others far more deserving and b) even if I was eligible, I think a web campaign is likely to be counter-productive. I'm not being ungrateful. I hope you understand. For those who may presume I have played a part in instigating the campaign, I haven't!

Getting ready for Katie Melua tour, - and more.

2011-03-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

So here I am writing my blog about the last few weeks of getting Katie ready for the big European tour that had had to be cancelled because of her illness, six months ago. Of course there have been lots of other things going on at Dramatico and in my life generally, but I’ll “top-load” this blog towards the tour, because I get the feeling that’s what you’ll find the most interesting.

From the early planning stages – back when “The House” album was released last year, Katie was pretty sure she wanted to tour with a small band, just a tight nucleus of four, and not have a fifth (or even a sixth player) doing violin/flute, extra percussion, etc. My feeling was that – of all tours, this one might need that 5th player, because of so many songs from the House having weird noises and twinkly bits provided by William Orbit who produced it – whereas the first three albums had a more “organic” feel and didn’t need augmentation. But it’s Katie’s tour, and it was her decision, (the right one as it turns out)- because Jim Watson, our great keyboard player is not only a terrific piano player but can trigger all sorts of samples and stuff from his Keyboard rig. So the band line-up was decided as Jim, plus Henry Spinetti on drums. Tim Harries on Bass and Luke Potashnick on guitars, - all of whom are Katie’s treasured “core” band.

Katie always leaves the design of the stage to me, (after discussion) but I take it as a brief that she has to approve, as if I were a freelance designer. This time we needed a set that could play Arenas in continental Europe and theatres in the UK. (Katie prefers more intimate shows in the UK, around 2,000 seaters). The way we’ve achieved this is by flying three trusses with projectors on the downstage truss, hanging tabs – or drapes, on the mid-stage truss and a full width/height screen on the upstage truss. There are steps up through the band so that Katie can get from her normal position in front of them, up through Henry and Tim, onto a higher level just behind the band.

We are lucky to have Chris Lambourne, our usual Lighting Director on this tour. He and I work well together. He just does what I tell him to do! (Just kidding) I couldn’t light my way out of a paper bag – but projection and stagecraft I do have a specialist interest in. Sorry that last sentence ended with a preposition, I’ll try not to let it happen again. I don’t know what I was thinking of.

Because the band and Katie had already played many of these songs at summer gigs last year, we tacked on only ONE week of “refresher” musical rehearsal at a big place we usually go to, near Tower Bridge in London. By the time we got to the musical rehearsals (a couple of weeks ago) I already had my main ideas for the projection designs, and was working with John Gosler (our Art Director at Dramatico). John had painted the house and mountains, balloons etc that we featured on the “House” CD cover and campaign materials, and we decided to use that house as a basic theme to several of the visual treatments of the songs. I won’t give much away – but there are some pretty stunning backgrounds. John’s work (on Ergo –the movie we are making about a slug) can be seen at http://www.ergotheslug.com

The rest of our “studio” team at Dramatico are Michael Dunne, -our video editor, who always manages to juggle the editing of “pop videos” with all the other edit suite jobs that come up, like TV commercials or EPK edits, - with things like this big Katie tour; then there’s Steve Sale, our chief sound engineer, who engineered all of Katie’s first three albums, here in my house. Funnily enough, the fourth album “The House” was the only one not recorded at the house! It was recorded at Air Lyndhurst Studios. Then we bring in Stuart Fortune, an absolutely BRULLIANT Sco’ash COMPOSITOR whenever we need this kind of work done. His job is to take our images and either animate them or make them into 3D landscapes using software called After Effects. He then places virtual cameras and lights and makes it all come to life. He’s done some great ones this time. Tiny Alien is one to look out for. No more clues!

We started work some weeks ago, and weren’t finished by the sound rehearsals, so on sound rehearsal week I was driving every day from mornings down here in Surrey with the visual guys and afternoons and evenings with Katie and the band at Tower Bridge. It was quite exhausting for an old git, but we managed to get it done in time. I hired an additional compositor, Chris, for the last week or so, because the workload on Stuart was just too great. When John, Stuart, Michael and I are doing a big job like this, they usually stay at the house, and it’s a bit like running a hotel, but very relaxed and sociable. We work very long hours so it’s good for them not to have to travel home in the early hours of the morning. We do this when we record here too – the band always stay over. It makes the house a very creative and busy social and business “hub” and gives me access to both audio and edit suites at the same time.

So this week – having liaised by e mail with Steve Croxford, our tour manager and Roland Beckerle, our producton manager – about all the practical things like the load-bearing capabilities of trusses or the power of certain projectors compared to others, (things that Roland deals with before overseeing the construction) we all convened at a brand new rehearsal space in Acton, North London. This place is a massive warehouse style building, purpose-built for rehearsing big tours like Take That and War Of The Worlds. You can build a full sized arena set in there. So last Wednesday we decamped to there and have been working on combining the visual aspects (lights/projection/drapes etc) with the musical and sound elements.

All went really well, - except the guys whose job it was to synchronise the visuals with the music had a lot of trouble, and we spent days trying to make it work using different combinations of time codes and midi codes. It was a nightmare but we solved it eventually. That was the one thing that slowed us down, - and thankfully Katie and the band were not only patient and relaxed, but on fantastic form. After her enforced break, Katie is singing the crap out of this material. We record everything we do in rehearsal, on multitrack – and I think I could release most of it after a very rough mix if I wanted to. (NO, I’m NOT going to, so don’t ask!!!) If anything, her vocals are better than on The House album, because she is so much more familiar with the songs.

We interrupted production rehearsals to go to Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus to record a one-hour special for Radio 2, with special guests William Orbit- (on guitar), plus Beth Rowley and Jack Savoretti. It went out on Thursday last – and I was sitting in the production rehearsals with the visual team, programming, when we listened to it. Those who heard it, - I hope you agree it sounded fantastic. It made a good “dummy run” for the tour. We also did a gig at The Guildhall on the evening of one of the music rehearsals - for the Lord Mayor, with Bond, Chris Difford and Bryan Adams. That was a charity thing organised by the City, called “City Rocks” and was a great evening, with a posh dinner afterwards.

So after four days of production rehearsals, yesterday (Saturday) we ran the show from top to bottom, twice. I’m reasonably confident it will all run smoothly in Dresden on Wednesday (our first gig), subject to a couple of things that need tightening up on the projection cues, but one thing’s for sure, the music will be great – and it will all look fantastic. It’s just little things that I notice at this stage, and I am sure they’ll be nailed by then.

Other things that have been SIMULTANEOUSLY been happening have been things like the acquisition of a wider range of rights on The Wombles – about which an announcement will be made soon, and a very exciting production we are doing in conjunction with English National Ballet and others for a Royal reception – about which I can’t say much yet – but it’s lots of fun and lots of work, including planning.

The record label keeps on keeping on, with Marianne Faithful getting great reviews and LOTS of column inches – funny, “column inches” takes on a new meaning in the context of Marianne’s recent press quotes! We’re proud to have her on the label, - and I sadly had to miss a fantastic night when Andrew Bowles, our MD took her and her manager out for dinner. I had to bunk out at the last minute, partly because the production rehearsals were still going on, and partly because I wasn't feeling well – probably the stress of all this stuff at the same time! (I’m fine now).

Caro Emerald (who is already, -as I’m sure you know) MASSIVE in Holland, is doing well here on Dramatico, and Radio seem to love her. Check out the album “Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor”. http://tinyurl.com/4b5ptoz We are holding back the absolute killer single until just the right moment, when hopefully she can come over and promote it.
We’ve also got a great new album out by TD Lind “The Outskirts Of Prosper”. Go to http://www.dramatico.com/ to see his EPK.

Better not prattle on about all our Dramatico music stuff, or the one artist I don’t mention will get miffed! Suffice to say we are a VERY busy little company at the moment and this bright spring Sunday morning is a welcome respite from the excitement and pressure that always seem to go together! A cup of coffee, and a blog to write. TIME to write a blog, -I never see it as a chore, and you will have noticed that this one is way too long! Anyway. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading some of it.

I’ve had time to spend some weekends with my daughters (Robin and Sam) from my first marriage, -and their kids. So I haven’t COMPLETELY workaholicked my way through the last few months. My grandchildren are growing up fast – and are a great delight (two 5 year olds) – except I guess I don’t see them often enough, which is my own fault. I don’t go into family matters much in blogs – I’m not sure it’s healthy. Some things are private, so I’ll leave it at that.

There's also been lots of stuff going on with Government and copyright, - which I get involved with in my role as Deputy Chairman of the BPI., but my last blog covered a lot of that.

Have a good next few weeks. Maybe see you along the tour route somewhere.

All the best,

Mike

If Music Be The Food Of Technology, Tuck in for free!

2011-01-18T10:32:00.000-08:00

THE MIKE BATT GUIDE TO WHAT THE IAN HARGREAVES INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REVIEW TERMS OF REFERENCE REALLY MEAN

The Government has commissioned an Intellectual Property review, the Hargreaves IP Review which has tasked professor Ian Hargreaves and a team of Chosen Ones to deliver a report making recommendations about whether Intellectual Property (copyrights of songs, films, books. etc) is perhaps a bit too protected, and judging from the Terms Of Reference, there is a suggestion that perhaps copyright protection is getting in the way of the establishment and growth of - well, "growth". They don't specify growth of what - but it's pretty clear they mean growth of the internet delivery/dissemination industry (Google, ISPs, download and streaming sites, etc.,) not the industry which is founded on and caring for the protection of copyright works. Copyright generates lots of money for the country and provides some, not all, artists, writers and entrepreneurs with a living so that they can continue to create high quality art and entertainment for the consumer. The music and film businesses are under heavy threat and are shrinking because of illegal downloading and piracy. The Digital Economy Act, passed just before this government was elected, gives scant, but at least some protection against illegal file sharing - but it puts a massive financial responsibility on the creator or entrepreneur (the music and film industry) to pay for the "policing" of the system. It doesn't help that there is a free appeals system for those who get caught illegally file sharing, so technically, everyone caught doing it could appeal for free, and jam the system. And trust me, they will! If they can throw fire extinguishers off Millbank Tower they can organise a mass appeal against illegal file sharing. It's not rocket surgery.

By the way - I speak as someone who stayed up all night at Millbank watching the results come in, and walked home at 6 am happy that David Cameron would almost certainly become Prime Minister, and I am still a loyal supporter of Cameron and his team. I just think Mr Cameron has some people whispering in his ear, who are very misguided on the matter of the protection of copyright -v- the right of the people to get free music, and the right of startup delivery systems to get a leg-up at the expense of the copyright owners and creators. David made a speech recently saying that Google could never have started up in this country because copyright law is too tight. That is utter bollocks. Sorry David. Steve Hilton, David's senior spin-doctor, is married to Rachel Whetsone, a paid lobbyist-and senior executive of Google. I'm sure there has been no influence there, of course. I'm assured there isn't. The reason Google started up in Silicon Valley is because that's where you go to start up an internet business, that's where the understanding internet entrepreneur banks, investors and technology are.

The british music business (and by the way these are my views as an individual, not officially imparted in my role as Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry, although I feel passionately about it in that capacity too) - is ready and willing to help Government achieve its aims to create growth so that copyright and technology can hold hands and skip together through the land of milk and honey, but it does rather wear you down when you fight for years to get a rather inadequate copyright protection Act (the DEA) and then see Terms Of Reference for an IP review describing music/film business interests as BARRIERS to growth. Growth of internet companies, you understand, not growth for all.

I think I am a Red Tory, by the way, - having only just read about what they are. I'd never heard of them, but if I've got them right, I AM one; it's what I've always been. You think TORY when it comes to business encouragement, and help for growth, and for good economic management, and you think SOCIALIST when it comes to using that wealth to help the disadvantaged and to give people a leg up to the bright side of life, hopefully using and enabling their own human endeavour. When I was asked to write the music for William Hague's General Election campaign I asked to be assured that the party would be moving to the left (ie to the centre) and was assured that this was indeed all that was human and natural. But it didn't. I felt a bit betrayed, but I've kept on supporting them recently, because I truly believe that DC and his team really are going to try as hard as possible balance the see-saw from the middle.

So, not as an anti-government activist or disgruntled government opponent, but as a concerned member of the artistic working classes (defined as "those who work and would quite like to get paid"), here is my Guide to, or translation of, the Terms Of Reference of the imminent review.

Firstly, here are the REAL terms of reference:.

QUOTE:

Intellectual Property and Growth: Terms of Reference

The Review will develop proposals on how the UK's intellectual property
framework can further promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth and
social and commercial innovation. It will examine the available evidence as to
how far the IP framework currently promotes these objectives, drawing on US
and European as well as UK experience, and focusing in particular on:

• Identification of barriers to growth in the IP system, and how to
overcome them;

• How the IP framework could better enable new business models
appropriate to the digital age.

Among the subjects to which the Review is expected to bring this perspective
are:

• IP and barriers to new internet-based business models, including
information access, costs of obtaining permissions from existing
rights-holders, and investigating what are the benefits of “fair use”
exceptions to copyright and how these might be achieved in the UK;

• The cost and complexity of enforcing IP rights within the UK and
internationally;

• The interaction of the IP and Competition frameworks;

• The cost and complexity to SMEs of accessing IP services to help
them to protect and exploit IP.

The Review will make recommendations:

• on how the IP system nationally and internationally can best work to
promote innovation and growth in the 21st century with a view to
setting the agenda for the long term;

• on what short and medium term measures can be taken now within
the international framework to give the UK a competitive advantage.

The Review will report to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and
Skills and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in April 2011.

(UNQUOTE).

And now, Da Daarh... here is

THE MIKE BATT GUIDE TO WHAT THE IAN HARGREAVES IP REVIEW TERMS OF REFERENCE REALLY MEAN

Intellectual Property and Growth: Terms of Reference

The Review will develop proposals on how the UK's intellectual property
framework can further promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth and
social and commercial innovation for the interests of internet delivery and dissemination operators.

It will examine the available evidence as to how far the IP framework currently promotes these objectives, drawing on US and European as well as UK experience, and focusing in particular on:

• Identification of barriers put up by creators and copyright owners to growth of the interests of delivery system operators, and how to overcome them;

• How the IP framework could be weakened to enable new internet dissemination operators’ business models appropriate to the digital age, at the expense of artists, writers, performers and entrepreneurs in the IP ownership sector.

Among the subjects to which the Review is expected to bring this perspective
are:

• IP and barriers (put up by creators who seem to want to be paid for their work), to new internet-based business model entrepreneurs, including information access, costs of obtaining permissions from existing rights-holders, and investigating what are the benefits of “fair use” exceptions to copyright and how these might be achieved in the UK, with no examination of whether such “fair use” provisions may be desirable or of benefit and protection to copyright owners and those consumers who benefit from the existence of a rewarded artistic and entrepreneurial rights-owning community

• The cost and complexity of enforcing IP rights within the UK and
internationally, because paying a market value for something just doesn’t seem right, and contracts are so jolly hard to understand and negotiate.

• The interaction of the IP-owning bastards and Competition frameworks;

• The unfairly disadvantageous cost and complexity to internet SMEs of accessing IP services from creators to help them to protect and exploit IP for their advantage and development rather than that of the IP creator or owner.

The Review will make recommendations:

• on how the IP system nationally and internationally can best work to
promote innovation and growth of internet delivery companies in the 21st century with a view to setting the agenda at the expense of creators and IP owners and ultimately the consumer for the long term;

• on what short and medium term measures can be taken now within
the international framework to give the UK internet delivery and retail startups and existing operators a competitive advantage over rights holders.

The Review will report to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and
Skills and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in April 2011.

Elisabeth Beresford - A Lady Who Changed My Life

2010-12-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

Elisabeth Beresford, - writer, broadcaster and creator of the Wombles, died on Christmas Eve, aged 84.

With apologies to both my wives (mainly the current one!) who have each shaped my life in their own way – it can’t be denied that Elisabeth changed my life dramatically and irrevocably when in the late sixties, long before I knew her - she dreamed up the Wombles while walking on Wimbledon Common with her children Marcus and Kate. One of the kids mis-pronounced “Wimbledon Common and called it “Wombledon Common”. When they got back home, Liza (as we always called her) made a list of Wombles characters based on members of her family. In her mind, they didn’t yet have pointy noses and grey fur. That would come later, when the great stop-frame animator, Ivor Wood – he of Magic Roundabout and subsequently Paddington and Postman Pat fame, would design the “look” of them for the first BBC TV series) They were just…Wombles. They lived underground and came up at times when they were unlikely too be spotted by humans, and would convert all the old rubbish left behind by us, into useful items to use in their daily life.

The first book “The Wombles” that appeared caused quite a ripple of interest and was featured on the TV programme Jackanory. After that the BBC commissioned a series of 5 minutes Wombles episodes which were aimed at a pre-school audience but which had the good fortune to be narrated by Bernard Cribbins and also to be broadcast just before the six o’clock news, - a peak crossover spot when the whole family would be watching. Ivor Wood had redesigned them from the book illustrations, in which they were really nothing more than Teddy Bears, - so that now they had the familiar pointy noses and hats and scarves to distinguish between the characters of Bungo, Orinoco, Wellington, Tobermory, Great Uncle Bulgaria, Madame Cholet and Tomsk. Ivor had correctly worked out that seven characters were plenty for a pre-school audience to get to know.

I was brought in to write the music. I was asked by Ivor Wood , and producer Grahame Clutterbuck Managing Director of FilmFair Ltd, the producers, , if I could come up with a signature tune. I suggested that a song might be better, because I could sprinkle it with Womble names and make it sound intriguing. So I came up with “The Wombling Song” (thus becoming the inventor of the word “Wombling” as a verb, which did not exist in the first book). The company liked it, and offered me a fee. I said I would prefer to have the character rights for promotional entertainment and recording purposes instead. They thought that was fair enough, as they were worth nothing to them. So I made a record, which I then had great difficulty selling to a record company. It’s a long story, which I’ve written about on many occasions, but it led to my forming the Wombles pop group and having so many hits that we became the biggest selling singles group of 1975 according to Music Week Magazine, with me as Orinoco, the lead singer, and all of us wearing costumes made by my mother.

Even though the Wombles took up only two years of my 42 year career to date, even to this day I am still referred to as “The Man Behind The Wombles” a fact which I would imagine must have irritated Liza as much or more than it irritated me (although she never showed it).. I guess I was the man in front of the Wombles, being the singer and songwriter.

There was quite a lot of contact and discussion between Liza’s company “Wombles Ltd” and myself in those first days of Wombles’ success. The combined force of the books, the TV show and the pop group had launched the Wombles into a special place in people’s hearts and they had become a national phenomenon.

I did not always agree with decisions made by Wombles Ltd. It wasn’t Liza herself, but the two businessmen who ran Wombles Ltd together with Liza’s husband Max Robertson with whom I often crossed swords. I pulled my hair out with frustration when, at the height of the Wombles pop group’s success, they mounted NINE Christmas stage shows – of very poor quality – all over the UK. Because I was “The Womble Man:” I was deeply embarrassed to think that people would blame me for the shows, - and they did. They were horrible, scruffy shows, badly directed and produced on a shoestring budget. More importantly, they destroyed , in people’s minds the idea of the pop group being unique. There were nine Orinocos, Nine Wellingtons, Nine Uncle Bulgarias . Good grief!

To us (although probably ONLY to us) it seemed like having nine John Lennons and Nine Paul McCartneys. The specialness of “a pop group” had gone. Consequently, on the day the story of the shows hit the press (and it was front page stuff), we began to lose the race for “Christmas Number One” with “Wombling Merry Christmas”. Our daily sales figures halved, and the record which was heading steadily for number two “Lonely This Christmas” by the group Mud – overtook us and snatched the number one spot. That was when I lost interest in being a Womble for any more of my life. I was A CHARACTER in a band called The Wombles. I was “their” lead singer! Would I ever escape that? Probably not.

So I stopped doing it. And the Wombles disappeared from TV screens and the spin-off merchandising activity ground to a halt.

Through all of these ups and downs, Elisabeth and I had nothing but good conversations. She moved to Alderney, and when the children were grown up, she was divorced from her rather domineering husband, Max, and lived on the island until the end of her life. She always called me “Dear Heart” in the way characters in an Agatha Christie novel might. But I am absolutely sure it was nothing special; I’m sure everyone was “Dear Heart” to Liza, - rather like some people call everyone “Darling”. But she herself was a darling. She would write to me occasionally. She lost a lot of money – as did her husband – in the “Lloyds Name” scenario, and lived for many years in relative poverty.

I visited her once on Alderney, with her son, Marcus – who had been about thirteen when the Wombles had happened, in the seventies. He was by then grown up and had his wife and his own young son, Charlie, with him. Charlie’s Grandmother, Liza, was her usual charming, maternal self and we had a very pleasant couple of days thinking about the impending remake of some Wombles material, this time by ITV.

Recently, I’ve been talking to the even more grown up Marcus and Kate – the two children who had been walking on the Common with Liza on that fateful day, - the day that changed their lives, their mother’s life, and mine. We’ve been talking about the possibility of a Wombles revival. None of us was particularly enamoured by the quality of a remake by a Canadian company about twenty years ago, and we have been talking about making something special. Something Liza would be proud of. Liza has been ill for some time, but aware of our discussions. I know Marcus would particularly have liked his Mum to have seen the new, high quality incarnation of the Wombles, and to have shared in the fun.

Alas, that is not, now, to be. But I do think Marcus and Kate will have kept Elisabeth up to date with our progress, and now, all the more, I feel a duty to help to bring about a new awakening for the Wombles – in memory of the very special woman who created them.

Postman Batt breaks silence on silence.

2010-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

So I’m sitting there fielding a few tweets and someone asks me the old question about whether it was digital or analogue silence that I stole from John Cage in 2002. Well, that’s an old line I used at the time, that my silence was better than his because it was digital. But it made me think, “enough’s enough, I’m going to spill the beans on how this old story came about”, so I “confessed” that it had all been a “scam".

Actually, it was a TEENY bit scamesque but not totally. It came about from a real situation.

What happened was that I had been mastering the album “Classical Graffiti” by The Planets group which I produced and managed. Classic FM radio had told me they couldn’t play tracks with electric guitars on them, but apart from that, they loved it and would have made it album of the week. So I went into the studio and did a set of “classical” mixes of the tracks, with Ben, the guitarist using his classical, gut-strung guitar. They sounded good that way, and we didn’t feel it was an artistic compromise. But I didn’t want the “shape” of the album to include these repeated tracks, so I put a minute of silence in between the main album and the handful of more classical sounding mixes, to distinguish them from the rest of the album.

While I was mastering them, I thought it might be fun to give the silence a name, at the same time as having a dig at John Cage, who famously wrote a silent piece called 4’33”, - which was literally that length of just silence. I called my track “A One Minute Silence” and credited the writers (Mike Batt/Clint Cage) on the label copy that I supplied to EMI Classics. Why “Clint” Cage? Because I didn’t want to be accused of misusing John Cage’s name, even though I thought it highly unlikely, and – in the unlikely and almost unimagineable case of a copyright challenge, I would be safe. The Performing Right Society and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) allow a writer or composer to have two registered pseudonyms, so I became, and still am, Clint Cage. Clint and Mike had co-written a silent piece called “A One Minute Silence”.

The album was released and went straight to number one in the UK Classical charts and stayed there for three solid months. Some time during those delightful months I had a letter from the MCPS informing me that they would be upholding a claim from John Cage’s Publisher,- Peter’s Edition – for half of the royalties on “my” silence. My secretary brought the letter to me one lovely sunny day when I was having lunch on the terrace of my house, with my mother. I exploded with laughter. I couldn’t believe anyone would take a bit of silence seriously. My mother (bless ‘er, still with a great sense of humour, aged 85, said “Which bit of his 4’33” silence do they claim you pinched?”. That night, I couldn’t get into bed for roaring with laughter. I was convulsed, it was just so delightful. Of course I did eventually get into bed but you know what I mean. I couldn’t for a while, then I did, after the laughter died down. Don’t ask stupid questions, and sit up straight.

I wrote back to the MCPS telling them that they’d got it wrong. My co-writer was not, and was not CLAIMED to be, John Cage, but a certain Clint Cage – in other words myself. I could prove that I had registered the pseudonym at the time of writing the “piece”, as I still had the letter to PRS, and I also had a copy of my label copy notification to EMI. The situation had been made a little more complicated by the fact that – on receipt of my label copy sheet showing “(Mike Batt/Clint Cage)” as the composers, some bright spark at EMI had shortened it to (Batt/Cage) – giving the impression that I was masquerading as the great man.

Eventually, I got to speak to the MD of Peter’s Edition, Nicholas Riddle, and he told me that they did indeed have a case, and that it was based on my use of Cage’s name. I said that I was sure we would sort it out in a gentlemanly way, - perhaps by them giving in and admitting I was right. But they didn’t. There was a certain amount of humour in our conversation. I thought he seemed a nice bloke and said to him that whatever happened, any reportage of the incident would raise awareness of the EXISTENCE of copyright – which cannot be taken for granted. He agreed.

I challenged him to a public duel. We would meet at Baden Powell House on the Cromwell Road, and The Planets could play my piece of silence and he could bring a musician or band to demonstrate/perform the Cage piece. We invited the world’s press, expecting perhaps someone from the Big Issue and a couple of sex-crazed Planets fans, but in fact the World’s Press DID turn up, and Nicholas and I found ourselves in heavyweight press conference situation. After the two performances – during which the Planets swayed about, doing nothing, but looking great, and a young clarinetist “played” 4’33” by, er, doing nothing for 4’33”. Nicholas and I engaged in a robust debate and took questions. We both gave at least 3 TV interviews. It was featured on the National TV news that evening, It made a big piece in the Telegraph and many other papers the following day, and then got picked up as a story, internationally. I was interviewed by several American news radio stations. The story even made it to Time Magazine and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Job done, or so we thought. We all had a bit of a titter, but not in public, - but, horror of horrors – Peter’s Edition DID NOT drop their case.

After a while, I thought of a way of spinning the story and having a bit more fun with it – and bringing closure to the situation in a dignified way for the Cage Estate/Peter’s Edition. I called Nicholas and made a proposal. I told him there was no way on Earth he could win, but that I had an idea. I would make a donation of an “undisclosed sum” (actually 1,000 pounds) – to the John Cage Trust, so long as Nicholas received it on the steps of the High Court in London in front of The World’s Press, - giving the impression that we were settling out of court to avoid a costly battle, but NOT ACTUALLY SAYING THAT. This was pure scam, pure publicity stunt on my part, and I’m not sorry! Nobody got hurt, - and the fact that copyright exists and can be protected - and has a value, - was once again being demonstrated.

We met on the steps of the High Court a few days later, and everyone from Reuters to Whippet Trainers’ Monthly turned up. Nicholas and I gave our respective TV, radio, press and TV interviews as the Planets stood around looking sexy. Someone from Reuters was pushing Nicholas to disclose the “undisclosed sum”. Was it four figures? Nicholas shook his head. Was it five figures? He said “No Comment”. Was it SIX figures, perhaps?. Nicholas caught the eye of my assistant, She caught my eye. I nodded to her. She nodded to him. He nodded to them. Three naughty nods, it was, but harmless fun.

The next day, the headlines read “Batt pays 110K for Stealing Silence” and stuff like that. There were pictures with me and the scantily clad girls from the Planets – I wonder why the boy members of the band were cropped out!

The story went around the world again and has passed into recent legend. Oxford University held a debate about it, even asking me to attend and speak, but I was unable to make the date. Professors of law and students of copyright have variously argued about it. Friends sympathized with me at the injustice. I winked and told them not to worry – all was not what it seemed. Rivals and enemies (do I have any?) – well if I do, they hugged themselves at my foolishness and pointed out that all would have gone my way, had I not been so stupid as to credit Cage as the writer.

That’s it. So all these years I’ve kept silent about that silence. I’ve allowed people to think I was a bit silly to let EMI credit John Cage as the writer. “Cage” is only a surname. If Peter’s Edition represented a young songwriter called Angus McCartney would they be challenging every Lennon/McCartney song on the grounds that it carried the same surname as that of their composer?

Hee hee. Silence is Golden.

And now, a REAL breach of copyright, for which I apologise in advance to the authors of the correspondence I shall now quote – from the site, linked:

http://johncage.org/blog/hyde_riddle_exchange.html

and declare that I will gladly take down the following letters to which they OWN THE COPYRIGHT, should they ask, - even though by having been posted on another site I presume they are now in the Public Domain. Wikileaks, eat your heart out.

Lots of Love,

Mike Batt

PS: “A ONE Minute Silence” is available on iTiunes for 99p

Lewis Hyde/Nicholas Riddle Exchange

Dear Nicholas Riddle,   I have your name from Laura Kuhn at the John Cage Trust. I wrote to Laura a while back because, in a book I am writing about "cultural commons" vs. proprietary work, I think I may use the story of Mike Batt listing a minute of silence under the "Batt/Cage" credit--and the Peters Edition suit that followed.   I know about this from various news reports, such as the one I paste below (see Cassingham essay.)
Cage was/is an important figure for me (he appears in a chapter of my book, TRICKSTER MAKES THIS WORLD), and mostly I am amused by the philosophical implications of this tiff. (For example: much copyright law is based on the idea of the work reflecting the author's personality; Cage, of course, went to some lengths to remove personality from the work.)
I rather assume that there is more to this story than what's reported in the papers. Is there? What might you tell me?   All best wishes, Lewis Hyde

From: Nicholas Riddle
Sent: 10 July 2008
To: Lewis Hyde
Subject: John Cage & Mike Batt – a query

Dear Lewis (if I may),
Very many thanks for your message - Laura had mentioned that you would be writing. I'm certainly very happy to answer your questions as far as I can, the only proviso being that we did make a confidentiality agreement over some details, and so some specifics have to remain private to the people and organizations involved. However, I suspect that much can be deduced from more general statements.   The first thing to say is that the press went considerably beyond the facts that they were given and in some cases did not entirely understand the import of what they were being told. It might also be worth knowing that only a couple of journalists turned up for the "final round" on the steps of the High Court, and their impressions of what was happening then traveled around the world and became the holy writ of the story - in spite of the fact that they had not entirely accurately grasped the matter. In particular, neither Mike Batt, nor I, nor any member of the Peters team or the Cage Trust, has ever quoted any figure to the press in connection with the settlement.   Perhaps it would be helpful to use the text you forwarded as a basis for a brief commentary:
British musician Mike Batt produced the album Classical Graffiti for the rock group The Planets. The album had two distinct styles on it, so Batt decided to put a minute's break between the two sections.

"I thought for my own amusement it would be funny to call it something, so I called it A Minute's Silence and credited it as track 13, and put my name as Batt/Cage, as a tongue-in-cheek dig at the John Cage piece," Batt said.
So far so good, but it might also be important to know that his record company forwarded the label copy to MCPS, which was handling the mechanical royalties for these CDs. They then identified Cage’s 4’33” as the work in question and started to pay out pro rata royalties to us as Cage’s publisher. It was some time before this turned into a late June news story in one of the broadsheet papers. After some discussion between the parties, we agreed to a run-off between the Batt piece (performed by The Planets) and the Cage piece, performed at the clarinet by our London firm’s Head of New Music, Marc Dooley – a real virtuoso on the instrument when a work actually calls for notes to be played, by the way. A great deal of press turned up for this at Baden Powell House in London, with television coverage and many slightly stereotypical journalists who had not the faintest idea what we were talking about, but wrote quite entertaining – if also misleading – stories about it.
The Cage piece he refers to is a 1952 "composition" called 4'33", a "famous" bit of "music" -- 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence -- by American avant-garde composer John Cage, who died in 1992. Cage was granted a copyright for 4'33". Batt's acknowledging it, even in a cheeky way, was a big mistake: Peters Edition, Cage's music publisher, sued Batt for copyright infringement on behalf of the John Cage Trust, asking for a quarter of the royalties from Batt's album.

That's right: the lawsuit claimed Batt stole his silence from Cage. "As my mother said, 'Which bit of his four minutes and 33 seconds are they claiming you stole?'," Batt said at the time. None of it, he insisted. "I certainly wasn't quoting his silence. I claim my silence is original silence." Perhaps in the world of lawsuits, such a claim makes some sort of logical sense.
Of course, the claim was nothing to do with stealing silence from Cage. The issue was entirely that Batt identified this silence as having Cage authorship, leading to a presumption that he was quoting in some sense from 4’33”, and was so successful in doing so that the collecting society started to pay out mechanical royalties for it. There were really only two options here: either, the track really was intended as a quotation from 4’33” or some other unidentified Cage work, in which case mechanical royalties were due; or, he was misappropriating Cage’s name in the context of a musical work, and that also would not do. He, after all, was the one who claimed it was Cage in the first place. Was he passing off something else as being by Cage, or was the work actually Cage? Since performances of 4’33” could be said in some sense to be self-identified as such, it was really his call.

When the infringement claim came to light, few thought it could possibly prevail. Duncan Lamont, a British lawyer specializing in the music industry, was one expert who rolled his eyes over the squabble. "Is [Cage's composition] a work? Has it been written down, is it a literary, artistic or dramatic work? The argument will be there is no work because there are no notes." If there is "no work", there could be no infringement and the case would fail.

Well yes, it has been written down – in three versions, as a matter of fact. There is another point here: what makes a performance of 4’33”? Partly it must be the announcement of the performance, the attendance of the audience, the intention of performer and his/her/their adherence to the instructions in the score; but one could argue that it is also the apparatus around it – the concert hall and its traditional accoutrements, and perhaps also the payment of performing or other royalties that attends the performance of any work of music. Well, that’s one of the more theoretical issues in the story. In fact, the question Duncan Lamont put is only partly related to the issue. If there was no performance of an artistic work here, then Batt is still open to question for having used Cage’s name as he did.

Batt, too, was feisty. "Has the world gone mad? I'm prepared to do time rather than pay out," he told the press. "We are talking as much as 100,000 pounds (US$155,000)" in royalties. Besides, he said, "mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."
If a 1 minute piece on a 76 minute CD could, on a pro rata basis, generate £100,000 royalties, just imagine what the overall royalty rate would have to be – or alternatively, how many copies one would have to sell to reach these figures…
But just a few months later, Batt was done -- he settled out of court for an undisclosed six-figure sum, or pretty much what he was afraid he would have to pay if the suit succeeded. He handed over a check on the steps of the High Court in London, saying he was "making this gesture of a payment to the John Cage Trust in recognition of my own personal respect for John Cage and in recognition of his brave and sometimes outrageous approach to artistic experimentation in music."

See my comments above on what I can and cannot say. However, the events described above did indeed take place. Actually, here’s something nobody knows: the cheque he handed me on the steps of the High Court turned out actually to say “Pay the Bearer: An Undisclosed Sum” – which was very funny at the time, and perhaps just showed that he did not want the details discovered by accident if one of us were to drop the cheque. However, he followed it up, good as his word, with a real cheque shortly thereafter.

A spokesman for Peters Edition, Cage's publisher, called the payment a "donation" which was accepted "in good spirit." He said the company had been ready to go to court to defend the copyright they controlled.
Well, not quite. We carefully said that we would willingly go to court to defend the reputation, works, and legitimate interests of our composer – a distinction that was lost on the reporter.
Donation, or extortion payment? You be the judge, but be warned: now that you know of this case, you really can't afford to be silent about it.
Well, obviously it was not the latter. Mike Batt really did make a donation, and he did so as his proposed solution to the issue, which we accepted.   Although we didn’t actually talk about this in arriving at the settlement, my personal take on this is that it is important to remember that Mike Batt is also a composer and that a significant part of his income is from royalties earned on his existing works. The same applies to CDs of his music or the music of the bands he creates and promotes. He is heavily invested himself in the concept of intellectual property and its value. And rightly so, in my view. Artistic creativity is one of the things that truly differentiates us from the animal kingdom (as well as opposable thumbs), and is one of the most distinctively human characteristics. It has always seemed to me that the current generation has its sense of values completely screwed up: artistic creativity is one of the most valuable things on the planet, worthy of more protection and appreciation than most of the things on which we place emphasis and consider valuable. The people who think that artistic creativity of all or any kinds should somehow be valued like the air we breathe, or the water we need to live, simply don’t understand what kind of human gold dust they are dismissing as so much air and water. It’s the crown jewels of the human race. Of course, it should be made available to all, but the creators should be protected and valued for what they say about what it means to be really human.   Hope this has been of some help. If there’s anything else you would like to know (apart from the things I cannot go into, obviously), please do not hesitate to get in touch. 

 With best wishes, Nicholas Riddle

From: Lewis Hyde
Sent: Between 10 July and 23 July 2008
To: Nicholas Riddle
Subject: John Cage & Mike Batt – a query

Thanks so much for the helpful background on the Mike Batt dust up. I had suspected that the issue had more to do with attribution than with infringement.
I end up with one set of questions about the case, which I'll preface with a few somewhat philosophical reflections.
First of all, I agree with you about the value of intellectual property although, as I am deep into a book about this, I feel there are many nuances to be teased out. One of those nuances appears in what follows; beyond that I'll simply say that I think the 1710 Statute of Anne was a wise and just law, combining authors' rights with a term limit such that created work eventually feeds the public domain. Much of the puzzle in IP policy is to figure out how to balance public and private rights such that both are preserved.
As for the Batt business and the nuance it raises, I would now frame the conflict as a moral rights issue, where such rights include the right of attribution, the right to prevent false attribution, and the right of integrity. As I understand it, the concept of moral rights comes out of a tradition (beginning with Kant) asserting a connection between an author and his or her creation. Moral rights protect the personal and reputational, rather than purely monetary, value of a work to its creator.
We don't really have this tradition here in the United States--with one exception, and that rather recent: the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 speaks to both attribution and integrity. That law says that these rights "are considered personal to the author and cannot therefore be bought, sold or transferred"; moreover, they end with the death of the artist.
A chapter in my book, TRICKSTER MAKES THIS WORLD, is devoted to the creative uses of chance and, of course, contains considerable reflection on Cage's practice. At one point I contrast Picasso and Cage:
"Picasso ... was quite happy to work with accident as a tool of revelation ('From errors one gets to know the personality!'), but Cage was not ('Personality is a flimsy thing on which to build an art.'), for Cage was after [Jacques] Monod's 'absolute newness' of pure chance. He was not out to discover any hidden self, nor did he think chance operations would reveal any hidden, already-existing divine reality, as ancient diviners thought. 'Composition is like writing a letter to a stranger,' he once said. 'I don't hear things in my head, nor do I have inspiration ....'"
Elsewhere I contrast Cage and Jackson Pollock:
"Pollock's working assumption was that the wildness of his paintings expressed his deep, primitive, and feeling self, and Cage would argue, I think, that no matter how 'deep' the self is, it's still the self. 'Automatic art... has never interested me, because it is a way of falling back, resting on one's memories and feelings subconsciously, is it not? And I have done my utmost to free people from that.' Cage much preferred the incidental drawings that are scattered throughout Thoreau's JOURNALS: 'The thing that is beautiful about the Thoreau drawings is that they're completely lacking in self-expression.'"
You write that artists help us know "what it means to be really human." I agree. In Cage's case, what he wanted us to know is that the impermanence of personality is a gateway to perception.
I am aware that there are complexities here, that Cage for example used chance in composition but then cared very much that his pieces be performed as composed, not submitted to further chance.
That said, and to come back to the Mike Batt affair, what interests me is the seeming disconnect between Cage's Buddhist practice that sought to suspend self-making and personality, and the philosophy behind moral rights which assumes, as some European law asserts, that the work contains "the imprint of the author's personality." Though not working from the same tradition, U.S. Copyright law has sometimes touched on "personality" in a related way. A key Supreme Court case from 1903, for example, concerned whether or not there could be a copyright in something as mundane as printed posters for circus acts. In affirming that there could be, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "an artist who draws from life ... makes a work that is the personal reaction of an individual upon nature. Personality always contains something unique. It expresses its singularity even in handwriting, and a very modest grade of art has in it something irreducible which is one man's alone."
Such is the set of ideas out of which I'm musing on the Mike Batt story, with one addition, I suppose, and that is Cage's sense of humor wherein there is a strong link between happiness and being open to happenstance. For it seems to me that this tale begins with a joke on Batt's part, and that once the mechanical royalties appear, the joke continues--the "run-off" between the two pieces seems entirely in the right spirit.
But then things seem to have gotten serious, I presume because of the background moral rights issue (as you say of Batt, "he was misappropriateing Cage's name"). All of which leads me to my questions:
You write that Batt's donation was "his proposed solution to the issue." What had Peters Edition ask for, such that a solution was required? Was a legal action ever brought or suggested? If so, what was the point of law? If not, what issue needed to be solved? If the issue is "reputation" and misappropriation, and if Batt--himself a composer--understood that, why not a simple apology and change in the credit line? Why a donation? From the outside, at least, the donation has the look of an out-of-court settlement.
I really appreciate your having taken the time to reply to my original e-mail.

All best wishes, Lewis

Short Blog - Purely re current matters

2010-10-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

I thought as my last blog was LONG, therefore hard to stick around for ((being 2,600 words from my autobiography-in-progress) - I'd do a SHORT, original, purely bloggy one. Well, today I've been escaping from my lovely bluely-dressed wife who has been doing a girls' dinner at Batt Battlements in Farnham, (Blue Belles, don't ask!) - - and so I am looking after LONDON, - quite a brief, but nothing has gone wrong so far and Boris seems to be behaving himself.

Heard from one's 19 yr old daughter (studying bass guitar at Berklee in Boston) who is living it up in our New York apartment with her boyfriennd, so it was an understandably short letter.

Had lunch on Thursday with Jeremy Hunt (Culture Secretary) and Andrew Feldman (Conservative Party Chairman) and others at Milllbank Tory HQ this week. What nice chaps, - which I knew already as they are sort of mates - and how wonderfully they will run the country IF THEY HELP THE MUSIC INDUSTRY BY MAKING IT NOT FREE TO APPEAL AGAINST ANY ACTION VIA ISP"S RELATING TO ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING UNDER THE DEA (Digital Economy Act) - and of course look after the social services while still making the essential cuts (!!!) . This one facet of the DEA act could make it totally unworkable, because every copyright thief would automatically appeal, without fear of cost implications! Loss of jobs in Music Industry is the cost - so vote me in as a notional Union rep! Jeremy and Ed please take note!

Back to happy friendly, unpolitical life. Had lunch with Katie 3 days ago. She's good. Getting better and looking forward to her tour in March 2011 onwards.

That's it - I told you it would be short (as the Bishop said to the actress).

Love

Mike

Confessions of a young musical arranger

2010-09-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

THE LAZIEST BLOG YOU'LL READ FOR A WHILE - just an extract pulled from my yet-unpublished autobiography, - explaining the pain and hardship of being a BLUFFER. Are we all bluffers? Or just the lucky ones? Now read on...

One day, as I was riding on a bus in Southampton, I read an ad in Melody Maker. It said “LIBERTY WANTS TALENT”. It had been placed by a talent scout/A&R manager called Ray Williams who had just started working for Liberty Records, - quite a successful US label starting up in this country. It was unusual to see a record company advertising for talent. I replied and got an appointment with Ray. I went to see him at the smart, Mayfair offices of Liberty. He was the epitome of “swinging London” as it was called then. Twenty-three years old, he wore a sharp, dead-cool suit with flared trousers, blue shirt, kipper tie, and had the looks of a slightly more handsome version of Robert Redford. I played him my best song “Mr Poem” which includes the line “Hello, they say, your fame has made you gay”. Ray thought that he has found the next bisexual or gay pop star. I didn’t even know what he word “gay” meant. He asked me what the line meant and I said it just meant that the guy is happy and bright. Ray suggested there and then that I should sign to Liberty’s music publishing company as a songwriter. He wanted me to meet Alan Keen, the head of publishing, who had just joined them after being Programme Controller at the legendary pirate radio station, Radio London. The government had recently legislated against pirate radio and when many of the pirate disc jockeys had joined Radio One, Alan had got the job as Managing Director of Metric Music, Liberty’s publishing company. He was an advertising man, a salesman at heart, - used to sell advertising space for Titbits magazine when he was younger. Now he was a forward-thinking, alert music executive with a great sense of humour and a love of jazz, particularly Blossom Dearie and Bill Evans.

So I was ushered into Alan’s plush office the next day. Alan and I got on ridiculously well, and he signed me to an exclusive contract with Metric Music, Liberty’s company. I was just so pleased to be signed that I agreed to all the terms. Luckily, because the law is on the side of the young creator rather than the big exploiter, - I was able to walk out of this contract one year later because it afforded me such terrible terms that it was unenforceable. No advance money, - just a royalty percentage - and the copyrights to all my songs exclusively to remain with the publisher until seventy years after my death! Now that’s what I call an unfair contract! But great, because I was able to walk out of it. Meanwhile, back in 1968 I’m jumping up and down with glee because SOMEONE has shown an interest in me.

The weird thing about the first day I met Ray is that I didn’t find out until months later that the two guys sitting in reception with me, waiting to see Ray, were Reg Dwight (soon to become Elton John) and Bernie Taupin (soon to become the hugely famous lyricist of Elton’s songs). Elton and Bernie had not met until that day. In his attic office with red chairs with raffia seats, Ray teamed them up on the day he met me and brought me into the company as a writer. He didn’t sign Elton to Liberty; maybe he had an agenda to take Elton somewhere else. But he did act as the catalyst for one of the most formidable songwriting teams ever to work together, - the team that would soon write “Your Song”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Candle In The Wind”. Ray Williams eventually left Liberty, to manage Elton, - signing him to Beatles’ publisher Dick James’ record company DJM, - and in leaving, made a job vacant at Liberty Records, which eventually would be offered to me.

Having signed to Liberty as a songwriter I was obviously keen on developing my writing, but I was also keen on getting a record deal as an artist. Because he paid me no money as a writer, Alan Keen – head of publishing for Liberty - offered me work writing out “lead sheets” or “top lines” for songs in the Liberty catalogue. A songwriter would deliver a song to the company on tape, but for copyright reasons and in order to have simple sheet music to offer producers who might be interested in recording the song, they needed the tune, lyrics and chords to be worked out and written down. I did it for one pound, ten shillings (1.50p) a song. So if I did 10 songs a week I made 15 pounds a week, which was almost enough to live on in 1968. I wanted to be the best topline writer in London, so I spend extra time making sure I got the tunes down accurately, and then spent ages writing them out with a music stave pen, adding the titles with Letraset (the only way to get a printed-looking title in those pre-computer days) and sometimes even illustrating them with little thumbnail pictures along the top.

One day I was in Alan’s office and John Gilbert came in. John was the son of film director Lewis Gilbert, and was then managing the hottest band in town – Family. Featuring Roger Chapman on vocals this was the band that everyone, including the Beatles, - rated as the nearest thing to the next Beatles. They were the talk of the rock social scene (not that I was part of that scene, being too young and totally unknown). They had agreed to sign to Liberty, and I had written out their top lines. The demos had just blown me away. Fantastic songs, brilliantly recorded. We played them loudly in the office and declared them to me more exciting than drugs, - not that I knew the first thing about drugs, but it felt like being blown into a different world, listening to these superb, weird, creative records.

John, seeing that I had done the leadsheets, asked if I arranged strings. Being passionate about arranging, - never having done a string arrangement for a record in my life, I said yes. John hired me on the spot, to write the string and brass arrangements for Family’s debut album “Music In A Dolls House”, - to be recorded at a session at Olympic Studios in Barnes, the following week. The deal was that I would get five pounds per arrangement, plus a credit. The next day, Roger Chapman, John Whitney and the rest of the band came in and we met in Alan Keen’s office where there was an upright piano. We talked through the material. They had specific ideas about which songs needed strings and brass, where the climaxes should begin and peak, and where they just wanted “something”. The song that interested me the most was one called “The Chase”. It was already fantastic without strings or brass, - a song with a kind of hunting rhythm, about the thrill of the chase to get the girl. With Roger’s rasping, almost angry vocal, it was a thrilling track. I thought it would be good with a couple of French horns imitating hunting horns, and a string section chugging along to add excitement. There was another song called “Old Songs, New Songs”. It was another of those which had blown me away when I’d heard it in the office, weeks earlier, and written its topline. I couldn’t see how it could be improved. The band said they wanted a jazzy brass section to build slowly through the track, but before the track started I should add four big major chords as a kind of fanfare to start it off. At the end of the meeting, the band left, and Alan Keen came over to me. “Ooh dear, they smelled a bit, didn’t they?” said Alan. He was right, but they actually smelled of oil of patchouli. Everyone wore it in those days, at least everyone who was part of the hippie culture, the rock ‘n’ roll end of the business, or designers, King’s Road boutique owners, cool people. It smelled a bit like you’d slept in your clothes for a week and/or had been chain-smoking joints. Family probably slept in their clothes, smoked joints AND wore oil of patchouli.

At that time I was living on other people’s floors. One of the floors I sometimes slept on was a flat in Carlton Hill, St John’s Wood, where a group of recently-ex Cambridge students lived. I can’t remember where I met them, but I was impressed that one of them had been on University Challenge. Anyway, I remember doing the Family string and brass arrangements while lying on the floor of someone else’s bedroom, because as a temporary visitor to the flat I didn’t actually have a bedroom of my own. I used textbooks to tell me how high and how low the instruments went (the ‘compass’ of the instrument). Then, back at home at my parents’ house in Winchester I checked them on my free grand piano, which was still there in my downstairs “bedroom” blocking the way in, unless you got down on hands and knees and crawled under it.

On the way to the session at the famous Olympic studios in Barnes, (southwest London) I bought a baton so that I could conduct the orchestra. I was quite nervous, having had only a week to do five arrangements, and no idea that it would end up a disaster, a triumph or anything in between.

As I entered the huge studio, the strings were tuning up. I was taken into the control room to meet the album’s producer, Dave Mason, the star of Traffic – the band who had recently made one of my favourite albums, “Mr Fantasy” containing the brilliant hit, “Hole In My Shoe” – brilliant even though it featured that annoying young girl speaking over the music, saying “We climbed on the back of a giant albatross…”
There were various members of the group around, - a few girlfriends, people rolling joints. Quite a community. I felt like a schoolboy in contrast to all these cool people smelling of oil of patchouli and looking beautiful, which all of them did, particularly the women. Luckily, I had with me, as my protection against feeling completely inferior, - but mainly for moral support and a bit of telepathic love through the glass window of the control room, my indescribably attractive girlfriend, Michelle, of whom more in a few paragraphs’ time.

I made my way to the studio floor and stepped onto the podium. Big studios like this usually have quite an elaborate conductor’s podium with a hook for your headphones, a phone to the control room, and sometimes a small table behind you for your scores. I tried to look nonchalant, as if I did this often, but I’m sure the musicians had me sussed from the start. We started with a song called “Mellowing Grey” which just needed strings (we would overdub the brass separately as soon as we’d recorded the strings). I raised my baton at the fateful moment and brought it down crisply to bring the strings in at the right place, as the rhythm track played in our headphones. To my surprise it sounded great. Strings, even if you make errors of judgement, have a way of sounding good. They find their own balance. Obviously they sound better if you arrange them brilliantly, but as long as the notes you write fit the chords of the song, you can’t really make a complete bollocks of it.

Encouraged by how well the first three tracks had gone, with the strings, - including “The Chase” with which I was very pleased - we then moved on to the brass. The string players went home and the brass section came into the room. I was a little awestruck by the fact that the section was led by the great jazz legend, Tubby Hayes, on tenor sax. I gave out the parts; two trumpets, two tenor saxes, a baritone sax, a tenor trombone and a bass trombone. The first song to be recorded was “Old Songs, New Songs”, - the one that the band wanted to have four big chords at the beginning. The backing track had clicks over which the brass chords were to be recorded before the entry of he band’s rhythm section. As these clicks clicked in my headphones, I brought my baton down again, and the most horrendous noise I have ever heard came blasting from the brass section. It was avant-garde, to say the least. I stopped the band. I just wanted the floor to develop a huge hole right under the conductor’s podium and suck me out of sight. I imagined all those cool people in the control room laughing or rolling their eyes in disbelief. I had forgotten to transpose the Bb instruments in the brass section (trumpets and tenor saxes play a D when they mean a C), with the result that it sounded like a complete and utter cacophony. Just as I thought I was going to be sacked, Dave Mason came bounding towards me and started shaking my hand – even though it was shaking all by itself already anyway.

“Brilliant, man!” He exclaimed. Totally fucking original. How old are you? Eighteen? Fucking hell, this is great. Let’s record the rest of it”

The brass section and I knew that it wasn’t quite that simple. Where my ineptly arranged brass chords had sounded avant-garde on their own without accompaniment, - as soon as the rhythm section came in, the game would be up. The odd, discordant tonality wouldn’t match the backing track, and I would be exposed as an incompetent teenager rather than the brilliant new bohemian genius that I had been for about four minutes. It was Tubby Hayes and the brass section that came to my rescue. Realising (as you would) that this was my first gig, and taking pity on me, the brass section transposed the erratic parts by ear, so that they sounded right. So when the sound of Family came crashing into our headphones, playing the phenomenal rhythm, with harmonica riff grinding away throughout, - my beautiful brass section sailed on through the track, building, building, soloing and sounding like stars, with me pumping my shop-new baton up and down, like an expert. The cool people in the control room, - including the snooty chicks – all thought it was brilliant. I have never been more grateful to a group of musicians in my life. They really did save me from looking like a complete twat. This was a real lesson, - to be prepared, to be careful, not to be afraid of making an idiot of myself - but most of all, - if I want to make discordant noises like Bartok or Stravinsky, - not to be afraid to do so.

To this day, you can still put on the Music In A Doll’s House CD and turn to “Old Songs, New Songs” and hear my set of four inadvertent major ninth chords at the beginning, - the four chords that taught me to be brave, take chances and not to care what people think, and in hindsight those chords sound very tame and normal.

Twitter makes me a lazy blogger

2010-07-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that Tweeting makes you lazy as a blogger. At least in my case it does. I think, “Oh I just Tweeted” so I think that’s all that’s needed. On top of that, I’ve been so busy lately that a proper longish blog has been hard to get around to. Please excuse the fact that the sentence before this ended with a preposition, something I’m not proud of. So how far back can I reasonably go without boring the crap out of you, but still spilling the beans on life at Batt Battlements and beyond to an extent that will quench your thirst for the detailed machinations of my life, dreams, hopes, favourite colour, recipes for fish pie and more?

Ok, so we shot Katie’s video (“A Happy Place”) in Berlin. That was a laugh. I’d long had this idea that the Radio Berlin headquarters’ lifts (called Paternoster lifts, after the catholic Hail Mary-type beads) – would be a good location for a video. They have no doors, and continuously go up on the left and down on the right, like a fairground ride. You just step onto the next one that comes along. Very dangerous actually, and it’s illegal to build them these days. So I went out a few days ahead of the shoot, to do a recce, and to recruit a crew. The lifts pass through 4 floors so I wanted a camera on each floor, to catch Katie and other characters moving around in the lifts in real time. We used these fantastic newish cameras called “Reds” which behave like film cameras but are really HD video cameras. They have a narrow depth of field, and if you want a “film” look you use Prime lenses. Really great cameras. Anyway, our night shoot was, shall we say, interesting. It was the most hurried and stressful shoot I’ve ever directed – we only had 5 hours of shooting overnight, due to miscommunications with the art department and lots of things going wrong from start to finish. We were blessed by many really talented people, - from Christian Valle, our Brazilian/UK choreographer, to Quin Jessop, our UK Director Of Photography(operating camera one) and a crew of very good German camera operators and focus pullers. The dancers (auditioned in Berlin 3 days before the shoot) were absolutely terrific. The result is a weird video that I admit is not everybody’s cup of tea, but a lot of people love it,- and I’m fine with that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCdRA0lQq38&feature=avmsc2

It’s certainly unusual. I think some people have objected to Katie looking so “Extreme, - and one guy (I hate this kind of ignorant comment) said “money-grabbing Dramatico have made Katie do this” – or words to that effect. Everything about Katie’s slight shift in musical and visual emphasis has been led by her, with me and others advising from the sidelines. She is as, or more deserving of the credit (and blame) for what she is doing than anyone else in the team, including William Orbit and Guy Chambers. It’s always hard for an artist to make artistic progress without upsetting a few people. In this case, most of her fans have remained loyal, and a whole “flood” of new ones has appeared including critics and TV/radio producers who never “got” her before. Anyway, nobody died, so if you don’t like it, - I’m sorry, and you’ll get over it! Maybe the next album will be her singing the great American songbook with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. (Or maybe not!).

The album shot straight into the number one slot of the European chart Billboard figures) on the week of release, - which means she had a lot of high chart positions around Europe, like number 4 in UK, number one in several continental countries. We are very proud of her. (Again!)

About the same time – in fact exactly on the day of “The House” being released,- I had my concert at the Cadogan Hall. It was a huge thrill, - and I’m definitely going to do more shows like that. (in fact I did a similar thing in Stuttgart last week, which I’ll come to in a minute). Cadogan not a big hall, about a thousand people, - but a beautiful place - and we had a big orchestra (“The Secret Symphony Orchesta” my new, 55 piece session/concert orchestra available for weddings, bah mitzvahs, highly paid corporate events, etc) and Florence Rawlings as chief backing vocalist and star of two songs. We had Kruky (Michael Kruk) from The Planets on drums and Jono (Hill) from The Planets as leader of the orchestra (first violin). I conducted, sang and played the Joanna. Sarah Blasko lent me her guitarist, Ben, who was a great addition – a perfect combination with Louis Ricardi on lead guitar and Matt round on Bass. We made a lot of noise. I always enjoy doing “The Ride To Agadir”, which goes well because with Florence “leading” the BV’s and me, Louis and Ben, we had a pretty good vocal harmony block. We’ve recorded it for TV etc but won’t have time to edit it for ages. Just filmed it for posterity really, so when I’m an old man (in a few months’ time) I can look back and kid myself I was famous once.

This year I was Artistic Director of the Stuttgart Open jazz festival, - and we did a big concert called “Starry, Starry Night” - which was originally going to star Katie Melua, Jessye Norman, Curtis Stigers, Til Bronner, the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra and moi. I found it very difficult to communicate with Jessye Norman about the repertoire she wanted or didn’t want to sing, in the weeks leading up to the gig. Quite honestly, I found it impossible; it was spoiling the whole gig for me. By pure coincidence however, she developed an eye infection on the day I left for Stuttgart and she pulled out. Although I was sorry to hear about the eye infection which I hope is now better, it was like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. I immediately rang my old (young) friend, Soprano Anna Maria Kaufmann, and although she was busy on the Saturday and the Monday, doing concerts, she very kindly agreed to step in for rehearsals on the Friday and the show on Sunday. I didn’t have time to worry about someone dropping out, I had a prime time gala TV concert to put on for five thousand people (at the Porche arena) . It was a joy to have Anna Maria, who is helpful, pretty and a beautiful singer.

We had loads of orchestral rehearsal time but not much with the actual “stars” who mostly arrived the usual 24 hrs ahead of the concert, so the last rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon was a big panic. I had done a special arrangements of “All You Need Is Love” for the orchestra and ensemble – as a finale, plus one of Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) which we had to abandon because we never got around to rehearsing it properly. You can’t rehearse a three hour concert in two hours! But “All You Need Is Love” turned out to be a huge hit with the audience.

Anyway – it was a triumph. We are now huge fans of Curtis Stigers – whose combination of a great voice and a fantastic attitude – not to mention being a brilliant sax player – give him a star quality that added so much to our concert. He’s on at Ronnie Scott’s in a week or so and my wife and I are going down to catch his set and be fans.

Another great addition to the concert was trumpet maestro Till Bronner, - one of the best jazz talents to come out of Germany in the last ten years. He’s another impressive character who made a kind of pair with Curtis as our two cool jazz dudes. They already knew each other, so that helped. Katie had to arrive from Montreux on the afternoon of the show so we had minimal rehearsal time with her; but she was a pro, as usual, and pulled it off with aplomb. So many people were full of high praise for Anna Maria Kaufmann. I’ve recorded her before and would love to do so again some day. The 90 minute TV show goes out nationally – as I said as a prime time Gala, on ARD I think, but I don’t know the date yet.

So now I’m here in Mallorca with my family, staying with another family who are great friends and have a really lovely villa. I can see out across mountains and sea. Yesterday we went to a beautiful tapas place in a courtyard. I don’t take a lot of holidays but that just makes a week away all the more enjoyable. Katie is currently enjoying a week off, with her family, after a round of summer gigs, and my concert last Sunday.

So that’s the latest. Not funny or clever, just true. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

More soon.

Peace and love

Mike

The Big Rocks

2010-05-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

I can't claim credit for this story, I just thought it was worth passing on to those who haven't seen it. It's one of those things people send round on e mail. I got it ages ago but just found it again. I think it's quite good.

Here it is...

The busier you are, the more important it is to stop and read this story. One day, an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget.

As he stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers, he said,
"Okay, time for a quiz."
He then pulled out a one-gallon, 'wide-mouth' mason jar and set it on the table in front of him.
Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one by one, into the jar.

When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, "Is this jar full?"
Everyone in the class said,"Yes."
Then he said,"Really?"
He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel.
Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks.

Then he asked the group once more. "Is this jar full?"
By this time the class was on to him. "Probably not," one of them answered.
"Good!" he replied.
He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand.
He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel.

Once more he asked the question. "Is this jar full?"
"No!" the class shouted.
Once again, he said, "Good!".
Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim.

Then the expert in time-management looked at the class and asked, "What is the point of this illustration?"
One eager beaver raised his hand and said, "The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it."

No", the speaker replied, "That's not the point.
The truth this illustration teaches us is this:

If you don't put the big rocks in first, you'll never get them in at all.
What are the big rocks in your life?
Your children.
Your spouse.
Your loved ones.
Your friendships.
Your education.
Your dreams.
A worthy cause.
Teaching or mentoring others.
Doing things that you love.
Time for yourself. Your health.
Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first, or you'll never get them in at all."
If you sweat the little stuff (i.e. gravel, the sand) then you'll fill your life with little things you will never have the real quality
time you need to spend on the big, important stuff (the big rocks).

So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question:
What are the "big rocks" in my life?
Then put those in your jar first.

Rant about Politics and stuff

2010-04-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

I suppose I ought to write a bloody nother blog again. It’s a bit like going for a run around the park, you drag yourself out of bed and get on with it and when you get into a pace it’s quite fun, and then when you get home you’re glad you did it. I’m not even over the road into the park yet in blog terms but maybe I’ll get into my stride.

OK so the Man In The Golden Tie “won” the first Prime Ministerial debate, but for one main reason. He – and he alone, looked down the barrel of Camera One all the time he gave his answers. None of the others looked into the camera once – except in their opening and closing pitches.

Job done. At the moment I want Cameron to win, not least because I can’t stand another 5 years of a further-empowered Brown. Bloody hell, does ANYBODY? A hung parliament is a potential disaster. We should give Dave a go. If he fucks it up we can vote Gordon back in in five years’ time (!). I’ll be dead or at least badly ill by then. The fact is, Governments get arrogant after 13 years in office. Let’s let a new lot in and then kick them out after their 13 years of becoming tired and arrogant. The “Vote For Change” motto is quite good – except I suggested to party treasurers they should have their own badges made saying “Notes Or Change”. (Geddit?)

Hey, I’m over the first bit of park, starting to run round the Serpentine. A few Canadian Geese jump out of my way as I head towards the swimming changing rooms where lunatics swim every morning, wearing BATHING CAPS. Surely if you are hard enough to swim in the icy waters of the Serpentine you don’t need a woossy bathing cap? Dear me, what are you, vegetarians?

Anyway so tomorrow we have the launch party (not the actual release) of Katie Melua’s fourth studio album (although I would say this wouldn’t I?) it’s a CRACKER!!! People from all over the world have been unable to come because ICELAND who have crap supermarkets, crap banks and crap volcanoes have decided to let one of theirs off just before our party. Bastards. Volcanic ash we don’t need. Can’t people keep their volcanic ash to themselves? Or does this signal the fact that the World is just one big place and we should pool our resources, - like volcanic fall-out, - have a World Government (headed by, er…) and share our volcanic ash and our cash and our territorial boundaries. Muslems would be free to kill anyone they want for violating their religion if they are – (or especially if they aren’t) OF their religion, and Catholic priests could be as lovely as they like to choirboys. Labour and Tories wouldn’t exist. Only Lib Dems would. Yellow would be the only colour of government – let’s face it, it’s the colour of sun, wheat, butter, bananas, guaranteed anti-cholesterol margerine, puss, er – oh, I said puss, sorry, I meant piss, oh no sorry, I meant beautiful Chinese girls waving banners and singing songs about working together. And those lovely little ducks for the bath that you get in hotel rooms - at least, in the ones I go to, not no-homo B+B's. Canyou imagine:
“You’re homos are you?”.
“Well, sort of”.
“OK well we have strict rules here, no fags, so piss off. Unless you are a LibDems, in which case, just don’t tell anyone, but I’d be obliged if you sit at separate tables at breakfast, and make sure you eat the sausages in a sensible, no-nonsense sort of way.”

Fucking hell.

The World’s gone mad. Actually it’s BEEN mad since Coelacanths turned into humans , some time just before the first World War. So it’s ALL OUR FAULT. We shoot each other, pillage, win by-elections against each other, spit in customers’ food, burgle each other’s houses. (I’ve often wondered what a burglar would think if he got home from a night’s burglaring to discover someone had broken in and stolen his video and fucked his wife) – anyway moving on, or MAYBE NOT.

Maybe that’s far enough for one night.

In blog/jog terms I’m already passing the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens and on the final straight. It may have been bollocks bit at least it’s been MY bollocks.

“And now the end is near…”

Katie album coming out on May 24th. Phew, New suit, one would hope. New trainers.

Eric Pickles said at the special Conservative screening of the live debate this week that he bought his shirts at Marks and Sparks, unlike Brown and Mandelson, who clearly shop at Turnbull and Asser. I proudly claim that everything I wear EVERY DAY is from Marks. Suit, shirts, socks, -er, undies, - just my shoes come from the finest shoemakers in the land. That’s fair – I’m a reasonably famous songwriter. We are supposed to have posh shoes. Aren't we? Can I get a socio-economic popularity steer here?

The Osteopath From Hell

2010-03-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

We were shooting the video for Katie’s new song “The Flood” at Elstree Studios a couple of days ago, and I had a bad chest pain that I thought might have been, but probably wasn’t, a heart attack. The pain had started the day before and I’ve had that same pain years earlier and it had all been radiating from a vertebra about heart-level, between my shoulder blades. Since I broke my C2 and nearly died, six or seven years ago, I don’t like going to osteopaths, - it just isn’t something I like to do, understandably.

Anyway, this pain was SO bad, and I was working on the video (I wasn’t directing this time; Kevin Godley was) – but I said to my assistant that I really thought I ought to see an osteopath to get me through the day! It was bloody painful. Anyway, it turned out that just across the road was an osteopathy place, so she was able to make an appointment for me, well-timed, right during our crew’s lunch break. Perfect. Except they DIDN’T tell her that they were a “College Of Osteopathy” and that I would be a guinea pig. In other words a student would ”crack” my back, observed by others. Not mentioned.

So off I go to the place, at lunch time. As I walk in, I notice it says “College Of Osteopathy” but just think, that’s fine, some of the best hospitals are “teaching hospitals”. A young bloke in a white jacket, dressed up like a doctor, comes out and invites me into a room, saying “I’ll be treating you today”, and informs me there will be some observers. I’m in so much pain I don’t mind about observers. Key information missing was “…and I myself am a student, as in not a qualified Osteopath”.

So I sit there for 45 minutes answering a huge load of questions, - really detailed medical questions. There’s one girl “observing” from the other side of the room, so I still think this guy is the osteopath and she is the student. He asks me way more info than you usually get asked in situations like this. Can I shit normally? (I normally can), whether my Mother and Father are alive (yes and no). Just to be clear, it’s not that they are both sometimes alive and sometimes not; my Dad has died and my mother hasn't.

After the 45 minutes the guy tells me that of course (of course!) a student will treat me, as in crack my back. At this point I’m thinking “Hang on, nobody told me or my assistant about this! So I say, “Look, nobody told me about this: I broke my neck a few years ago – as you know because I told you half an hour ago in huge detail, - and I’m a bit nervous about being here at ALL. A student cracking my back is out of the question I’m afraid. I’ve already spent an hour now, getting here and being here, and nobody mentioned this. What’s more, I’m in agony and I have to get back to the studio to get this video made”

He goes off, and five minutes later comes out and explains that this can’t happen. This is a college and a student ALWAYS does it.

Another, older bloke, not wearing a doctor’s outfit (presumably the owner or principal of the college; maybe the Headmaster) walks in and starts arguing with me, saying I should have known a student would do it because it says “College of Osteopathy” on the door.

I said “Are YOU a qualified Osteopath” He says, ”Yes, I’m highly qualified”

I say, “Well, could you please make an exception and treat my back for me because I’m trying make a video over the road and I have to go soon, - and I paid your receptionist on the way in?”

He says “I could, but I’m not going to”.

I say, “You mean you’re a qualified osteopath, and you’re going to let me walk out of here in agony when you could help me?”

He says, “Yes”.

I say, “I’m leaving; don’t worry I’ve already paid. He says “You can have your money back” but I’m already half way out of the door. “I haven’t got time” I call, as I close the door quietly behind me. Should've slammed it, really.

So I spent the whole day in pain, with restricted movement and chest pains that could have actually been a heart problem if the osteopathy had been given the chance to illiminate the idea of it being anything more than a skeletal problem

What a bunch of turkeys! And if any of you are reading this and thinking of suing me, for defamation, just try it. You behaved unprofessionally by not warning me either on the phone or in person that I was to be a guinea pig for a student, and you wasted my time on a day when I could ill afford for it to be wasted, and had a floor full of artists and crew across the road, waiting for me to get back and work with them. Thanks for nothing. If you don’t destroy my intimate medical notes it’ll be me suing you.

If Music Be The Food Of Love...

2010-02-13T19:55:00.002-08:00

A poem WHAT I wrote. You might find it amusing (or might not).

If music be the food of love,
and lyrics be the wine,
Whose songs are dodgy bread and plonk?
And whose, a feast divine?

Whose songs are caviar combined
With vodka served on ice?
And whose are bits of bacon rind
With Chateau Notseau Nice?

Like chefs, our efforts never cease
But still the song we sing
Is sometimes Ivy or Caprice,
And sometimes Burger King!

Mike Batt
© Dramatico

If Music Be The Food Of Love...

2010-02-13T19:55:00.001-08:00

A Blast From The Past

2010-02-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

I was looking through some old blogs on the archive on my website: http://www.mikebatt.com/newsletter_2002.html when I came across two paragraphs of subsequent blogs from 2002. Thought you might like to share them. (Or not).

Sunday20th October, 2002

I've signed a new artist this week, too, and I'm not telling you anything about her, him or them. I'll tell you next time, but he she or they are or is going to be huge. Just remember where you heard it first. Remember that I told you somebody was going to be huge but didn't say who. At least I gave you half the information, and that's got to be better than nothing. I have already made a short promotional film, carried out a photo session and recorded seven songs, and I'm very excited about him, them or her.

And in my following blog:

Sunday 8th December 2002

I can now reveal to the World that my new signing to Dramatico is KATE MELUA. There's no real reason to tell you this at this stage, but I promised in my last letter to tell you when I next wrote, so I'm keeping my promise - that's the sort of guy I am. Katie is from Georgia, near Russia, she's 18 years old, and she's a singer and songwriter. We're going to make an album together, starting in February. It will be bluesy, classy, and cool. (We hope). 

_____________________________________________________________________________
If you want to see the original blog – in context with other things jhappening then, just go to the link, above.

Love

Mike

Runter vom Sofa

2010-01-23T09:42:00.001-08:00

Runter vom Sofa
That’s what she said
Runter vom Sofa
I wished I was dead
Runter vom Sofa
A dream, no more than that,
I had a dream that I was her cat
(Runter vom Sofa, Runter vom Sofa)

(it means "get off the sofa")

A short poem by, er...me.

Inspired by RuntervomSofa - the actual user name of a Tweeter @runtervomsofa

The Way We Bankers Think

2010-01-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

Bankers seem to be making headlines these days. Two of my closest friends are seriously senior bankers _and very wealthy. Lovely people. Other bankers I know are rank and file and all stages in between. They are a mixed lot, like people generally. I've met some real shits, too. One was a bloke who was "supervising" a loan my company had taken in order to buy copyrights - some years ago, before Dramatico records took off. We so much hated his style of supervision that I just went and got a huge advance from my publisher and paid them off. That got him off my back and frankly if I never see him again it will be too soon. The guy used to say I had "over-borrowed" even though he got his interest payments on the button every month. Later when his own bank nearly went under - last year - and was hugely bailed out by, well - us, as taxpayers, I wrote him a note reminding him of our history and telling him I thought his bank had "over-borrowed". It was one of those letters we all write but don't actually send, A Cathartic experience, I think they call it. So I didn't press "send". I did enjoy writing it though.

I remember my first banker was a man called Skinner. I was 20 and Head Of A&R at Liberty/United Artists Records. He was Senior Manager at Midland Bank (Now HSBC) - Old Bond Street branch, near where I worked. He said he's happily lend me 700 quid to buy a van or something "useful" for my business (erm, I wasn't IN the delivery business!) - but wouldn't lend me the identical amount to but a beach buggy (more appropriate I thought, to my job, and incidentally better for "pulling"). I changed banks immediately. You do meet some tossers, don't you?

The song lyrics below were written to be sung by The Banker in my adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting Of The Snark". THe Bellman is recruiting crew, and when asked if he'll join up, the Banker responds with this song. It's based on the idea that bankers often like to be the last into any deal, and - to protect their risk - the first to receive payments when and if the project is a success. Last in, first out.

THE WAY WE BANKERS THINK

I'd love to come along if I could
But I must behave as a banker should
The last aboard I must surely be
But if we sink in a stormy sea
The first to the lifeboats will be ME
It's the way we bankers think!

(There are also verses for the barrister and the broker)

By the way, we are doing two performances in London - of the costumed concert version of "Snark" - in late November. It's only a small concert Hall so keep your eyes open for the announcement. I'm not allowed to announce it properly yet. In the meantime I'm doing a solo concert at the Cadogan Hall on May 24th . I think this is the link: http://bit.ly/8EFhUl so maybe see you there? I expect I'll do a few Snark songs.

Good luck to Barrack Obama in his stand against Wall Street excesses, by the way. Let's get real! There's greed and there's Greed.

Love

Mike

Snow Business Like Snow Business

2010-01-07T03:52:00.000-08:00

“Well here we are Don’t Be So Ridiculous Valley…” These words ring in my ears today not only because I put the rough demo vocal onto my orchestral track yesterday – for the “Opening Scene” of Ergo – The Chronicles Of Don’t Be So Ridiculous Valley, but also because Batt Battlements DOES look out onto a vast valley and it’s covered in 12” of snow at the moment, honest!

It’s like a beautiful Christmas Card, - but of course impossible for any of my stalwart colleagues to get in to the studio today.

Looks like this is a good day to do my “normal” blog. I usually tend to use the POSTMAN BATT blogsite for random, odd thoughts and little essays on stuff. Seems it’s turning into the place where my regular blogs first appear before being distributed to Myspace and my main site. BTW, you can hear the results of yesterday’s labours at http://www.myspace.com/mikebattofficial. It’s (clearly) the opening song of the movie! Ergo the Slug looks out from his bedroom window, in his house in the Slug Quarter of the little town he lives in, to see the Don’t Be So Ridiculous Valley Marching Band parading down the High Street. This forms a basis for the opening credit sequence. We are now at an exciting stage in the production. We’ve been working on the artwork for two years, and have all the characters designed, and most of the locations drawn and painted ready for CG building. We also have Ergo and his (he wishes) girlfriend, Little Else, - built as proper virtual characters, and have some initial animation tests on them. Now we just need 50 million quid. But we are working on that, and it’s looking good. I’d really like to make this the first real Pixar-quality blockbuster CG feature to come out of Europe and be made IN Europe by European animators, although we are also looking at Canada as a production possibility. Watch this space (and other spaces). We do have a website for it but I’d rather wait a bit longer before unleashing it – only a few more days. The idea is – as things develop, you can check out the characters being built, the scenes, the script being developed from its current fairly advanced draft, stuff like that.. Meanwhile, in that spirit, you can already hear the opening titles with non-final vocals!

Other exciting things are happening. (There are boring things happening too, but I thought you’d prefer to hear about the exciting ones).

Katie Melua’s fourth studio album is nearly finished. She has been working with William Orbit as producer, and I have kept very much in the background, as Executive producer, and of course as her manager. Oh, and I wrote the string and horns arrangements, which we recorded last Saturday at AIR stidios in Hampstead, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Yours Truly. Lots of fun. Hope you like the album. It represents a big step for Katie, and she’s spent a long time getting into the right head-space for it. She’s written or co-written most of the tracks. I’ve only written half of one song, and even that may not make the album out of the 18 songs they’ve recorded. I won’t give TOO much of the game away, but suffice to say, there are some killer songs on it and it will be out in May. I hope it will appeal to a whole new audience at the same time as being welcomed by her existing fans.

Before the snow snew, - a couple of days ago, we had our first day back in he office at Dramatico, and have been making plans for what will be a hugely busy year for us. We have lots of plans centred around the wonderful Gurrumul – Australia’s phenomenal indigenous singer/songwriter who is currently top of the World Music charts in many countries. We are getting ready to release his album in the States, so lots of liaison with our New York office, and a trip over there quite soon. We have also recently signed Sarah Blasco (from Australia), http://sarahblasko.com and are really looking forward to getting her album, “As Day Follows Night” out in Europe (inc UK) on May 5th following the single “We Won’t Run” on April 5th.

Meanwhile, we are bracing ourselves for the physical CD release of Florence Rawlings’ album “A Fool In Love”. http://www.florencerawlings.com Her single “Love Can Be Battlefield” is playlisted on Radio 2, and both it and the album are out in the UK on January 18th. My God, this is becoming like a Chairman’s Report at an Annual General Meeting. Maybe I should write a poem or smething. To lighten it up. Before I do, - I’ll just add that I’m doing a solo concert myself at London’s Cadogan Hall in May (date to be confirmed) and a weekend of “Hunting Of The Snark” Concerts in late November, probably also at Cadogan Hall. Really looking forward to that . The Snark concerts will be costumed concerts of the full musical, and I’ll be auditioning for actor/singers to play the characters.

The Mike Batt Music Cube is “properly” released in February, - containing 16 discs, two of which are Snark . One is the first audio recording we did back in 1983, containing only the first 40 minutes of embryonic Snarkness, and the second disc is the DVD of the TV concert we shot at the Royal Albert Hall in 1987, with all the star cast. http://www.mikebatt.com/news

This year – in September, I plan to record the FULL LENGTH Snark, just as it was in the West End production. It’s never been recorded before. Meanwhile, the Snark double disc set and all the other doubles in the archive series will be coming out on DRAMATICO at intervals over the next six months.

So you can see it’s going to be a massive year of activity for us. Oh (Doh!) *slaps forehead with palm of hand * I forgot to mention I’m also going to be the Artistic Director of the Stutttgart Jazz Open festival in July (silly name of course because if it were CLOSED nobody would be able to get in) – and conducting a couple more concerts with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra.

I think I’ll go and have a little lie down, now. Tired but happy.

Cheers!

Mike

Bright Eyes: A Bushy Tale

2009-12-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say thanks to the friends who pointed out that I made it to number 35 in the “Most Annoying People Of The Year” ,on BBC TV3 last night:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gh304

- beating Heather Mills who only managed number 36. If it’s any help, we froze most of the rabbit meat from the rabbit cull on my “vast” country estate and are donating it to charity, and the fur coats we made were sent to Oxfam. Actually we only shot 5 of the little buggers, the other rabbits took the hint and f****d off round to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s place on the real Watership Down, near Newbury, 20 miles to the West of here. I’m sure they’d rather be shot by the man who owns Watership Down than the man who wrote “Bright Eyes”.

The TV people actually invite you on the programme to talk about what an annoying git you are, but you’ll have noticed I was not present in the flesh, having refused to partake, forcing them to use “younger”, better-looking footage of me. (I was even better looking when I was younger; I know it’s hard to believe).

Anyway. Happy New Year.

What a laugh. Pass the 12 bore and the vodka, and some ammo. And some ice. That’s it, I think.

Get Yourself a wife who can mend things.

2009-12-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas isn’t always Christmassy but this year is, at our house because for the first time my 4 kids and two grand daughters are all here. My elder daughters are the mums of the two toddler-girls. If you think I am not old enough to have grandchildren, you are right. I was a child bride when I married for the first time, - and a cradle-snatcher the second time.

So we get up in good time to put the turkey in the Aga, only to discover it has conked out for the first time in 13 years we’ve been at this house. What a bastard.

Julianne, my pulchritudinous next of kin, spent half an hour lying on the kitchen floor with a screwdriver. After she’d finished her cocktail, she set about trying to mend the Aga. I’m not really into technical stuff like hanging pictures and mending Agas, so Jules is the one with a tool kit of her own and a certain Aussie “three wheels on my wagon/never say die, make my bloody day” attitude, useful for times such as these. Luckily we also have an electric oven. Our butcher does four sizes of Turkey: Pathetic, Normal, Huge and Fuck Off. We had a Fuck Off one, so it was going to take 4 hours, and the Aga had thrown a tantrum. Luckily, after a short prayer service in the kitchen and all of us holding hands and thinking lovely thoughts, the pilot light popped on, and the turkey was doomed.

If you’re not married yet, don’t marry one of those pooffy little wives that can’t mend washing machines without calling a bloke and who keep squirting perfume on themselves. Get one like mine, she smells nice without perfume (saving a fortune) can come in from shopping and change into a ball gown and full make-up in five minutes, AND knows how to set the burglar alarm or jump-start the car with those funny red and black wires, which I don’t.

Anyway, so she’s got dinner (lunch) for ten on the table, hot, with everything perfect and all I’ve got to do is carve Horace. I thought I’d give it a name this year. One of my two four-year-old grand daughters throws a fit because the other one has pulled her cracker first, - and is now howling and screaming the place down. She is banished upstairs, by her mum. We’re all trying to ignore it, and ultimately it’s Grandpa Mike who goes upstairs to calm the furrowed brow and coax the unfairly pre-crackered child down to the lunch table.

Now I’m on piano duty. The little kids have both got fairy outfits on (good job they are both girls) and are grand-jete-ing around the front room as I play selections from Coppelia (which they don’t know) and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (which they do). Next year, they are getting tool kits.

Have a great Christmas, you guys. Don’t grumble unless you really deserve to. I’m off to escalate myself to the next level of alcohol poisoning ready for this evening. My son –in-law, Peder and some of the rest of the family enjoy a bit of a jam, so I bet the ukeleles will be coming out.

Don’t forget, - Christmas is when you have to be nicer to each other than usual, so if you feel like kneeing someone in the bollocks, do it with a smile and buy them a drink afterwards.

Love,

Postman Batt

Mozzyman's Restaurant

2009-12-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

HERE COMES A REPRINT OF A RESTAURANT REVIEW I WROTE FOR THE SUNDAY EXPESS A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO. THOUGHT YOU MIGHT GET A CHUCKLE FROM IT. (Or not!). Love, Postman Batt.

Places To Eat in Southern Italy – for gourmet Mosquitos

MOZZYMAN’S RESTAURANT

It could be a scene set in any new restaurant. Anton Mozzy, proprieor of Mozzyman’s the smart new place for Mosquitos to visit in Positano, Southern Italy, patiently takes another order as the place fills up to heaving point. Mozzyman has chosen as his location - Mike Batt’s body, asleep at Villa Maura on a hot August night. And it’s a happening place. The clientele includes bog standard Mosquitos, flies and more importantly in terms of cutting edge (and we mean cutting edge in a flesh-tearing way) - some of the top movers and groovers from the new strain of Tiger mosquitos now prevalent on the Italian Riviera.

“I’m afraid we have only two servings of Mike Batt’s left knee, there’s been a run on it” says Anton, to a frustrated group of the Tiger Mosquito in-crowd, - “ but the ear lobe, lightly marinated in sun-tan oil is very popular and full of vitamins. A warm bum cheek salad with mixed leaves complements it very well”

Here's a blog from KATIE

2009-12-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

This one is a PIGGYBACK BLOG, - I'm just passing on Katie Melus's latest note that she sent me today and which is now going up on her own site (http://www.katiemelua.com)

'Ere it is..

Cheers

Mike

_______________________________________

Hi Everyone,

I'm such a poor 21st century candidate, I haven't done a blog a tweet or even taken a picture of my pet dog for anyone that might be interested. Please accept my apologies. I know I need to catch up on a few things. First of all thank you for all my birthday cards and wishes back in September. I received and read them all and I was so touched by the effort and time you put into them.

Since September, things have been pretty crazy leading up to the studio time and it's now been two weeks since we started recording. Iit’s been suggested that to take small bites of pictures while we're in the studio- (as William does) - as a way of staying in touch. I think I'll try it. Otherwise it's so easy to go underground and stay hidden in the recordings. For some reason the studio we're in and the way the control room and the live room are set out really remind me of the Star Trek Enterprise Star ships. I keep picturing us flying through space and time!

I don't want to talk too much about the album as you'll hear it soon enough but one thing I'm working on at the moment is a song which has so many words but no breathing space and I am totally adamant not to cheat with protools so just now I've been practicing getting my lung capacity to be bigger and get through a whole verse with just one breath. I'm not too far, there are ten lines and I can do seven so far. I'll let you know how I manage!

Ironically I had a small incident with air supply last Saturday. Mike (@Mike_Batt) tweeted about me nearly drowning. I told him about my little "episode" the other day in the studio cafe, when he came to visit and see how it was all going. The incident was all my own fault. What kind of nutter goes scuba diving in December in a lake near Heathrow airport? I did! You see, I'm really keen to get my drysuit diving qualification done. For those of you who don’t know about diving, - people usually dive with a wet suit, which is just like skin. It keeps you warm but you get wet. With a dry suit you stay totally dry, and they're usuful in extreme cold waters. I want to quilify as a drysuit diver so I can fulfil my longtime wish of diving in the Arctic or Antarctic circle and see penguins, whales and ice!

So there I was last weekend shlugging my airtank, BCD and the heaviest rubber suit you've ever seen! One thing I forgot to mention is that your neck is where the drysuit ends so it has to be super tight round you neck. My neck was so small they had to add a rubber band round the opening to make it extra tight! Getting to the water was both extatic because the gear becomes much lighter, - and horrifiyng cause the water is 7 degrees. We swam out to the middle of the lake and when we first descended I was shocked by the icy water hitting my head; it felt like the North Pole in my brain. We reached the bottom which was luckily only 15 meters down.

Once there, we were practicing standard procedure, taking out the regulator from your mouth (your air supply) and replacing it. I don't know what happened, I think I was stressed by the cold, the tight rubber ring round my throat plus the visibility was very poor - the water was pitch black - so I wasn't concentrating. When I tried to replace my regulator I didn't do it properly, so I breathed in and choked on a lungful of water. I tried to stay calm and clear the regulator but I kept choking on water. Because of the pressure, the force and speed at which the water invaded my mouth was such a shock. I did start to panic, especially as you can't go to the surface because of the bends. It was the first time (out of 40 or so dives that I've done) that I had to pull the "out of air" hand signal. Luckily my teacher was right there helping me through my sorry state of horror. She replaced the regulator in my mouth and I managed to summon up the strength to breathe out any tiny bubbles of air to clear the water out of the regulator, and when I next inhaled I finally had some air! Looking back at it now I was such an idiot! There's a button on the regulator that clears the water and it's probably what my teacher used to help me, as well as having it properly in my mouth. I really hope this hasn't put anyone off diving, it's still one of my favourite things in the world to do and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Hope you are well, wherever you are. I’ll try to get some pics and more frequent blogs going from now on!

The new album is scheduled for next May, so we have a busy time ahead.

All the best,

Katie

General Blog on life at Batt Battlements, Nov 2009

2009-11-22T01:20:00.000-08:00

Here comes the blog. They used to be called newsletters when I first started doing ’em. It’s quite like making yourself write a diary. I looked back the other day and found the blogs I wrote (in the archive) when I first found Katie. Even before that, when I was forming the Planets. I used to write a proper diary. I’ve got books full of personal diary stuff, but there are huge gaps. One year, I was only writing on email (we had experimental early email computers back in 1982, before fax came in, would you believe) to my then new wife, Julianne. She was in Sydney doing a TV series and I was in London. These people we knew had the very first “web” system, - the earliest internet. We each had a tiny computer and a phone modem that actually fitted over a phone. We used to upload letters to the “mainframe” and download them. You could even be online together and write stuff to keep in touch. One year’s diary is just my printouts of those letters because we wrote to each other every day for six months giving full details of everything including thoughts about events. Then when fax came in, mid eighties, we thought those guys had gone out of business, and suddenly WHAM, back they were! The internet – every home should have one, etc.

Funny old world, innit!

Writing my autobiography. I’ve been writing it for about four years now. Stopped in my tracks a bit by my mate Gary Kemp’s book, - it’s really well written! But just because his is brilliant doesn’t mean mine won’t be OK. They are different I style. His reads like a novel, almost. There’s a conscious effort at good writing. I’m just spilling my brains out, a bit like this now. Trouble is, I’ve written about 80,000 words and I’m only half way through my life to date! Only up to my boat trip around the world. I wish I could take three months off and finish it properly. There are also all sorts of dilemmas about which beans to spill and when to let sleeping dogs lie (just to mix my metaphors for a moment). There certainly are a lot of funny and not-so-funny stories about life trying to make and maintain a living in the music business.

There’s a short extract at my recent POSTMAN BATT blog at: http://tinyurl.com/ygemuru

Katie goes into the studio this week with new big name producer (Not T Bone Burnett as previously announced) – all will be announced in Duke Horse. I’m very excited about her and this producer working together. Also she’s written some great songs either solely or with various co-writers. Can’t wait to hear it finished.

Gurrumul is in town at the moment. Andrew Bowles, our Managing Director, took him record shopping at HMV in Oxford Street on a day off. He’s got really wide tastes (is a huge Cliff Richard fan) – and insisted on paying for all his own records. He is just back from a triumphant TV duet with Sting, on French TV. Germany and now France have taken him to their hearts, just as a large number of UK broadcasters have, and our “gradual” organic marketing of him seems to be working here. He has built up a healthy sales base – not Earth-shattering but respectable, and it keeps growing. His new single “Gurrumul History (I was born blind)” has just been added to the Radio 2 playlist and is out soon.

Florence Rawlings has just finished her thrilling two-month tour of Europe supporting Sir Tom Jones – who was brilliant – (what a voice!) His crew and management were really kind and helpful to Florry, and her band and crew, so if any of you are reading this, thanks! F was also great, (what a voice!) as were the band. Her album, although already available for download, is coming out on CD in the middle of January. The new single is “Love Can Be A Battlefield”, on January 4tth. http://www.florencerawlings.com

We finally finished the art and mastering of my MIKE BATT MUSIC CUBE which is a bit of a collector’s item, being 16 discs (two of which are DVDs) and costing a couple of pence shy of sixty quid. I know it’s a lot but if you divide by sixteen it’s not much per album, and represents a life’s work. My two favourites are ones that haven’t been out before. There’s the orchestral Suite to “Watership Down” and by contrast, an album I’ve compiled and called “The Orinoco Kid” – [Early singles and curiosities] – Starting off with Summertime City, which I’ve never allowed to be re-released since it was in the charts in about 1976 – and going through some rare singles of mine at the time, followed by seven Wombles tracks, - not the obvious ones. That was a fun one to do. There’s more details on this site (I mean my main site, if you’re reading this on MySpace).

Just got back from a 12-day stint at a great spa-detox place in Austria. There’s no caffeine or alcohol there, and they feed you very small amounts of nice but medically supervised food, and you learn all about the importance of chewing food and stuff like that. I came away feeling great. Trying to keep up the regime now I’m back.

The Ergo movie is going from strength to strength. We have our first two virtual (CG) models made and rigged ready for animation – Elsie and Ergo. The first animation tests on Ergo look great. I’ve been tinkering with the script but now I think we are ready to record the character voices and start storyboarding. It’s a really fun project to work on, and we have a small but great team of people working on it.

Well, that was more of a NEWSLETTER than a blog, really. If there’s a difference. If not, it was just as much a newsletter as a blog. Whatever it was, it’s the end of it now, so stay cool, boogie down, mind the fleas don’t bite and get well soon. (If you are ill, which I hope you aren’t).

Peace and Love

Mike

Katie Melua made me think about the Bay Of Pigs

2009-11-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Katie, (Melua) has just written a song with Guy Chambers, -called “Here Comes The Flood”, for her new album. The week after it was finished the UK is now flooded – apparently the most rain we’ve had in a thousand years. I hope she and Guy don’t write about a nuclear war. That reminds me of the Cuba “Bay of Pigs” missile crisis.
– forgive me quoting my own as-yet unpublished (unfinished) autobiography:

“Then we moved to Bradford. By now my Dad was “Chief Assistant” at the engineer’s department. Which meant he was a chief, but also that he was still an assistant. His job was involved with sewage. He had a trench coat and wellies and would often be called out in the night to go walking through sewers, which basically meant walking through shit. We lived on the edge of the posh district of Heaton, near Manningham Lane. I took the 11 plus exam in Bradford, and apparently surprised my parents by passing it. I got to go to Belle View Boys’ School on Manningham Lane, where John had already been for two years. It was an old, Victorian style school, noted for the fact that J B Priestly had gone there. Not that we knew who the fuck he was.

We played a lot of war games, killing Germans in the park with hockey sticks as machine guns, shouting ak-ak-ak-ak-ak. We learned to roller skate at 40 miles an hour down Emm Lane and just save ourselves from falling under the wheels of lorries and busses by doing a rapid 90 degree turn on Manningham Lane.

The Bay Of Pigs crisis happened while we were in Bradford and we all really thought we were about to be wiped out by a nuclear war. I was annoyed that I was probably going to die before ever having sex (preferably with either Janet Williamson or Allison Peebles from school, neither of whom had ever shown more than a coquettishly rejective interest in me, but for whom I had got the cane for chasing in the school playground at age eleven). Kennedy and Kruschev faced each other across the world stage and played the ultimate game of brinksmanship as Russian warships headed towards Cuba under threat of nuclear retaliation from America. My 13 year-old brother John worked out that the nearest target town would probably be Leeds and that the blast would come from there. We took over the cellar of our house without telling our parents and accumulated a hoard of tinned food, stolen, tin by tin, from the larder. We hoarded blankets, torches, maps, clothing, food, drink and a radio. We were ready, so that if it happened, we would be able to offer our parents a solution.
After the crisis was over, it was in Bradford that I “remember where I was” when president Kennedy was assassinated. I was at home at 7, Marriner’s Drive, Heaton, and we grew up overnight watching the reality of it all.”

I suppose quoting bits from a previously written account is a slightly lazy way to do a blog, but the I am feeling slightly lazy today. It is Saturday after all. For those expecting a funny story like http://tinyurl.com/l83nf7 or http://tinyurl.com/ygcyawg sorry to disappoint. I WILL be writing a new “newsletter” (which is what we called blogs when I started writing them, many years ago - when I started my website),for my main site http://www.mikebatt.com later today. All my blogs going back years are archived there, for those with time to kill.

How To Have Fun Without Any Clothes On

2009-10-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

You know when you are in a hotel room, you can see the crack of light under the bathroom door? Always useful for finding it in the dark, especially when you are in a different hotel every night, as is often the case for me these days. I was on tour with Katie Melua, and we were in York. I got up for a wee in the middle of the night, and, using the light under the door as my guiding star, I wandered, half asleep and completely naked, towards the bathroom. Eyes half closed, not very alert, - I opened the door and stepped into the bathroom. Except it wasn’t the bathroom. It was the corridor of the hotel.

Just as I heard the sickeningly final clunk of the door closing behind me I realised the awful truth. I was standing, completely naked, with no key, in the brightly lit corridor of this medium-to-posh country hotel. My door was firmly locked behind me. There was not even so much as a magazine or room service napkin lying around to offer me any “cover”.

Luckily, at 4am I was the sole occupant of the corridor. It didn’t take me long to realise that I had only one option. To go down to the hotel reception and see if there was a night porter to let me back into my room. There was. He was sitting at the desk reading a newspaper. I decided that being shy would be more embarrassing than pretending this sort of thing happened quite often, so I just strode up to the desk as nonchalantly as possible, leaned a casual arm on the check-in desk and told the guy I’d accidentally locked myself out of my room. I didn’t need to mention that I was totally, stitchlessly, bollock-naked.

To his great credit he just got up, all stiff upper lip and sang-froid, took the master keys, said “This way, Sir” and led me back up the stairs to my first floor room, let me in and wished me goodnight.

Just thought I’d pass it on. Don’t ever trust that crack of light

BRITISH AIRWAYS TEA

2009-09-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

What is it about British Airways tea? How do they get it so black, thick and stewed? As representatives of Britain, they generally do fairly well, but am I the only one who has noticed they can’t make a simple cup of tea? I personally drink my tea with smidge of milk, almost none, and sometimes black. So I’m used to strong tea, but BA tea is evil, stagnant stuff that probably takes the lining off your stomach.

We Britons drink more tea than anyone else, - it’s our national drink, - but when it comes to making a good old British cuppa, BA get nul points.

Maybe they run special courses in “How To Make British Airways Tea”. Maybe there’s a special ingredient apart from tea and water, that you only get told about when you pass your STEWardess or STEWard exam. Why don’t they just give you a tea bag and a mug of hot water so you can dangle the bag to create your perfect colour.

BA passengers of the world, unite! March on their offices, Jam their computers. DEMAND a better cuppa; because you’re worth it.

Here comes a poem WHAT I WROTE about BA Tea. *clears throat*

"The BA Stew"
(Ode to the inadequacy of British Airways Tea)

Maybe we British just hate to complain,
Maybe we’re wary of seeming a pain;
We sit there and suffer again and again,
Yearning for “builders’ brew”
But drinking the BA stew.

What’s going on in that stainless steel jug?
Can’t they just give us a tea bag and mug?
I’d be so grateful I’d give them a hug,
Just for some soothing sips
Of Tetley’s or PG Tips.

Think of the wonders Great Britain has done,
Think of our telescopes aimed at the sun;
Think how the Battle of Britain was won,
(So many owing so few),
But still we drink BA stew!

DON'T TRUST YOUR SATNAV LADY (OR ANYONE ELSE)

2009-08-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

A Night In The Wild Woods

Something told me she was lying but I still wanted to believe it was true. “In a quarter of a mile, turn right”. She’d been right many times before, and the prospect of a right turn in a quarter of a mile was normal enough, so despite the unmettalled surface of the road down which she was directing me, I ventured onwards. I was further seduced by the fact that the area is criss-crossed with many equally small, seemingly impassable but metalled roads which DO lead somewhere. There, I’ve given the punch line away. My satnav lady was indeed leading me down a road that led nowhere. Or at least, nowhere from whence I would be returning that evening, or at any time without ropes and shovels.

I looked down to check the little map that was unfolding before me on the satnav screen, bemused that it would choose this route. As I did so (I later found) I omitted to notice and therefore drove past a sign which said “Not suitable for motor vehicles”.

It was dark, and as I drove into the road, I could see that I was driving downwards, through a wooded area. The “road” was getting narrower. It was now a footpath. I thought maybe I should turn back, but the lady said, “In four hundred yards, turn right”. Ok, I thought. She sounded good-looking, which didn’t help. I think I am programmed to obey good-looking women. On I drove. In any case, it was dark, and I was now far enough down this track to realise that reversing out was not an option. Tree roots started appearing to the left and right of me, further narrowing the bridle path which the road had now become. I was now driving with nearside and offside wheels up on the mud bank, in some cases several feet from the ditch below. The canopy of trees was now low enough to scrape my car, and on two occasions I experienced the “holly tree carwash”. By now, all I was hoping was that I could somehow get the Bentley through this ditch and that the woman would not have been lying, - that that the right hand turn that supposedly lay tantalisingly ahead, would indeed exist, and that I could get through this ditch before it became completely impassable. At this most lonely of moments, feeling like Mr Mole lost in the Wild Woods, and now with my nearside wheels in the ditch and my offside wheels six feet up on the mud bank, so that my car was at 45 degrees to the ditch (the ditch itself being too narrow for the Bentley to be driven horizontally) I heard the reassuring, fresh sound of this lovely girl saying “In two hundred yards, turn right”. Yes! So there WAS a turn in two hundred yards! What did it matter if my car was scratched to hell, it was only a car. Only a Bentley. I’d get it re-sprayed. It would be an insurance job, but I’d be free, and home again soon for a pint with my son before closing time.

It was not to be. The little yellow line which followed the little green line on my screen showed me I was nearly at the corner. Possibly with my suspension in a mess and my car needing to be completely rebuilt, but NEARLY AT THE CORNER. I turned right. To my dismay, the road she had promised would be there wasn’t there. I was lodged at 90 degrees across the farm track, with no room behind me, just a high mud bank, two feet of grass in front of me, then a strong stock fence and no way of manouvering because every time I tried, my wheels spun hopelessly. I got out for a good look, leaving the engine running and the lights on, as there was no other lighting in this Nowhere Land. Realising I was completely and hopelessly stuck, I decided that the time had come to make a phone call to a rescue service. Except when I tried to open the driver’s door, it had locked itself. Engine running, lights on, I’m nearly out of petrol and my phone is on the car seat. “Bollocks” was the word that came into my mind first. I’ve had this car for three years, since it was new, and because I’d locked myself out of it before, when I first got it (late for a meeting, stopping to get something out of the boot) I knew there was no way to get into the car other than to break the window. On that first occasion the guys at Bentley had said, “Oh yes, it does that. The only way into the car is to break the window, Sir”. So, knowing there was no point in calling Bentley, - and it was 10pm at night anyway, - I looked around for something heavy that I could use to smash the window. A large log seemed promising, but after slamming it against the offside passenger window three or for times, I gave up. There now seemed no option but to walk back up the quarter of a mile ditch, leaving the engine running and the lights on, but at least the car was locked.

So I began my journey up through the pitch-black woodlands, protecting my face with my arms in case of brambles and sticking-out tree branches, using my feet to feel the ground before taking each step. I knew there were some houses at the beginning of the ditch. When I arrived at the “civilised” end of the ditch, I walked into the well-lit, gravelled back yard of the first house and knocked on the window, where I had already been spotted by the occupant, Mr Suspicious, who frankly I don’t blame for deserving his title. Opening the kitchen door just enough to talk to me, he seemed incredulous that anyone could get a vehicle down through the ditch, and I must’ve presented quite an unusual sight, - stressed and filthy, wearing just a shirt and trousers on a cold night. To him, I must have been Mr Potential Axe Murderer. “Didn’t you see the sign saying Not Suitable For Motor Vehicles?” he said. “No, I think I must’ve been looking down at my satnav” I replied. “I’m a member of the AA, would you mind letting me use your phone to call them?” Still acting with extreme suspicion, he looked up the AA in the Yellow Pages and handed be the phone through the three inches of open door.

“Hello, my name is Batt, I’m a member, can you please help?” I said. They couldn’t find me on the system. “Wait a minute, Sir, I’ll search the system”. He put me on hold, and on came Greensleeves or some other non-copyright tune. Then I realised. Shit! I wasn’t a member of the AA, it was the RAC that I was a member of! “Oh damn, I’ve just remembered I’m an RAC member, not an AA member!” I said, realising that Mr Suspicious was now becoming Mr Very Suspicious and I had just become Mr Dickhead as well as Mr Potential Axe Murderer. Nevertheless he looked up the RAC and posted the phone out to me again. “Hello, My name is Michael Batt.” I began.

“Do you have your registration number? Sir?” the guy says. I didn’t. I’ve never known my registration number; it’s never been something I’ve treasured as memorable or interesting. “NO, I’m afraid not, but my car is a quarter of a mile down a drainage ditch in woodlands, I’m locked out of it, the engine is running, the lights are on and I’m running out of petrol do you have me on your system?” I couldn’t help allowing a certain degree of stress and urgency to permeate my delivery.
“Yes, Sir, it’s a black Bentley Arnage T, you are on our system but we can’t help you unless you give me the registration number”. I couldn’t beLIEVE it. “So I have to ring my son, who hasn’t been answering the phone because he’s playing loud rock ‘n’ roll music, try to get him to answer, and then ring you back, while I’m standing in the FREEZING cold outside someone’s kitchen, on a cold night with just a shirt on?” (I made sure Mr Suspicious could hear; he had now been joined by Mrs Suspicious But Seemingly Less So).

“I’m afraid so, -you can call us direct at this office instead of the main RAC number” came the reply.

“Well give me your number then” I said, disgruntled and irritated.

There was a silence. Maybe he hadn’t heard me. “Will you give me your telephone number please?” I said. “Ah! You’ve said ‘please”. In that case I’ll give you the number” came the sanctimonious reply.

“Are you telling me that if I hadn’t said “please” you wouldn’t have given me your number, when I’m a fully paid up RAC member?” I asked, incredulous. “Yes, I am saying that, Sir, I don’t like your tone, and was about to terminate the call”. So the RAC man didn’t like my tone. I hadn’t even said “bloody”, although I had NEARLY said “You nasty little c**t”. I was a little stressed, for sure. I was stuck a quarter of a mile up a ditch and the man wouldn’t help, even though he knew I’ was paid up because I was on his system, but he wouldn’t give me the number because he didn’t like my tone when he told me he wouldn’t help. So anyway, everything’s alright now because I’ve said “please” and got his number. Now I have to try to get through to my house so my 18 year-old son can look up my registration number in the book, or, knowing what a petrol head he is, he probably knows it anyway. Trouble is, he’s playing loud rock ‘n’ roll on his guitar and can’t hear the phone going.

Finally, having explained that I need a hammer to break into the car window, and for another reason I was about to find out, Mr Suspicious suddenly becomes Mr Friendly Samaritan and invites me into the kitchen, something his wife has been silently urging him to do for a while now, by the rolling of eyes and the exchanging of glances. He offers to come with me, with a torch and a hammer, down the quarter of a mile woodland path to the car, to smash the window, switch off the engine and the lights, and get the registration number. I thought at first it was because he fancied the fun of breaking into the Bentley with the hammer. Maybe indeed I should by now have been regarding him as Mr Potential Hammer Murderer. But as we walk like two old friends, down the bit-that-looks-like-a-road-before-you-get-to-the-narrow-bit-where-you-can’t-turn-back, it all becomes clear. He says, “You’re not THE Mike Batt are you, the music bloke”. Ah, so now I know why I’m not still standing shivering outside the kitchen door. “It’s just that my daughter’s a brilliant singer – although I’m biased, being a bit of a proud father! Sings in the Hampshire Youth Choir, you know. Maybe you’d like to listen to her sing? She’s a huge Katie Melua fan, so even an autograph would be great”

We get to the car. Mr Proud Father rubs his chin and agrees I’m stuck. “The neighbours won’t believe this! Pity I don’t have a camera”. I’m thinking, “Thanks Christ he hasn’t got a camera”. I tell him to stand back and protect his eyes while I swing the hammer, and after three blows, it shatters. I reach in, open the driver’s door, switch off the engine, get my phone, write down the registration number and we start back up the ditch towards his house. Now the conversation has become music, how lovely Katie is, what do I think of the charts these days?

Now that I’m no longer Mr Potential Axe Murderer, I’m invited into the kitchen again. By now I’ve decided the RAC can go fuck themselves and we ring the farm near where the vehicle is. The lady is very helpful, but says it’s actually the people next door I should be talking to. I ring the people next door, and the lady tells me it really is rather inconvenient to have a Bentley at the bottom of her garden at 11.30 at night and that her husband has called the police because a lot of stolen cars get burned out in this area. By now I’ve told her that it’s a hell of a lot less inconvenient for her than it is for me, but I thank her for her trouble and I call the police myself, directing them to the address of Mr and Mrs Rather Nice After All. Soon, Police Constable “I Used To Be In The Met But Crime’s Worse Around Here I Can Tell You” arrives in a panda car. I tell him about the RAC. He says,” Would you like me to call our recommended contractor and get him to haul you out – but it’ll cost”. I say yes, just get my bloody car out of that hole, I don’t care any more. The policeman is quite enjoying this job. “Who’d have thought it, an Arnage down there? I can really sympathise”. He calls the garage that they use for this kind of job.

“You’re not THE Mike Batt are you?” says the copper. “Well, yes, I’m afraid so, - it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it” I quip.

Now that the policeman has arrived we get offered the cup of tea that would have been a lifesaver an hour ago, before they realised I was THE Mike Batt. We wait forever for the towing bloke because the policeman has given the wrong address. Mr Nice Bloke After All tells him three times what the address is, as we wait by the gate, - the policeman’s preferred place to wait, so he can have a fag. He’s supposed to be off at midnight but he’ll stay and see this one through, he tells us. He’s obviously dying to see the Bentley in the ditch. By the way, he says, what do I think of the charts these days?

Then the copper gets a call from the towing man saying he’s arrived at the address he’s been given. Mr Nice Bloke After All points out politely for the fifth time that the address was wrong. “Just leave this to me if you don’t mind, Sir” says the policeman, jumping into his panda car and speeding off. Returning HALF AN HOUR later with the towing man who has one MASSIVE recovery vehicle and one big one, driven by his younger pal.

So we walk down the gully again, me, PC Leave It To Me, Mr Nice Bloke After All and the Towing Man.
“I couldn’t get a mini down here, never mind a Bentley,” says the copper. “My four wheel drive couldn’t get down here,” says Mr Towrope. And we are still at the wide bit, - we’ve only walked 20 yards. As we get into the ditch bit, they are saying stuff like “How on Earth did you get a car down here” and “My God, this is going to be expensive!”

We arrive at the car. They are all inwardly delighted but outwardly sad to see that the paintwork is scratched to Hell. I suggest that if only Mr Towrope could get some wood blocks or planks I could drive the car out of the ditch and then do a 27-point turn through a farm gate. But we decide to knock on the door of the farm – which had been invisible to me in the pitch darkness when I had first got stranded. The lady there gets out of bed and came down, and – perhaps because the policeman is still with us, - rather more good naturedly than expected, shows us how, if we can get the car out we can indeed drive it through her neighbour’s field, although it would be a difficult drive partly across a hilly pile of dirt, instead of dismantling her stock fence. “This is the fourth one we’ve had this year, who came up the track because of their satnav” she says. In fact the other three had come the easy way, from the opposite direction, - I was the first person on Earth to drive a Bentley down that ditch from that direction, over those roots and gullies into that Place Of No Apparent Return. Mr Towrope was now becoming Mr I Can Get You Out But It Will Cost You, and saying there was no point putting wood under the back wheels, even though he had plenty of it with him. “You’ve got three tons of car there, mate, you’ll just drive the bits of wood further into the sand”. The fact that the car’s belly was beached on a mud bank, preventing the back of the vehicle from going further downwards, seemed to have escaped him. We’ll need to come back in the morning and bring our big vehicle in and use a block and tackle for this one” he says. “I’ll probably bring my boss for a look, first thing in the morning. Looks expensive, though!” So we thanked the farm lady and walked back up the gully. Mr Nice Bloke After All had already gone to bed by this time, and it had been he who had offered me a lift to Guildford Station, ten minutes’ drive away. So I asked Mr I Can Get You Out But It Will Cost You if he would could drive me, or get his mate to drive me there, - the plan being to reconvene at 11am the next morning. The young guy eventually agreed to take me when I said I’d “buy him a drink”. So off we set, and five minutes into the journey, the radio controller from Mr I Can Get You Out’s company comes on the radio singing “Underground, Overground, Wombling Free”.
“Who’s that?” I ask my young friend driving me. “Our controller” comes the reply. “Well tell him not to give up his day job,” I say. That’s the moment when I resolve to get the car out without the dubious help of these clowns OR the RAC.

At Guildford, I give the young guy twenty quid for his trouble and he drives off, happy. My son and his friend pick me up from the station, and we get home to Farnham at about 2.30am. A quick medicinal beer in the kitchen, a phone call to cancel the tow truck the next day, and I’m in bed by 3am.

Waking at 7am, I have already got a plan. I get the old Land Cruiser out, meet Nigel, our company carpenter down at the shed, and we load up with shovels, rope and wooden duckboards. I call Rosanna, my assistant, who lives over near Guildford, close to the scene of the incident. I ask her not to come directly into work this morning, but to go straight to the scene and sweet-talk the farming neighbours so that our path will be smoother when Nigel and I arrive. In the daylight it doesn’t all seem so terrible. Nigel and I arrive to find that Rosanna has made friends with both farms’ owners. The lady from the night before is a seemingly charming, horsewoman type who makes us tea and tells us that she has a daughter called Rosanna. Nigel, myself and Rosanna start digging away the mud bank so that we can roll the car about six inches backwards onto the wooden boards. Rosanna asks the horse lady if we could possibly borrow a trowel, and spends half an hour lying next to the car digging away the dirt, like an archaeologist looking for old Roman bones. We make a wooden ramp under the back wheels, so that if we can get traction, I’ll be able to drive out into the two feet of space in front of the car, make my 27 point turn drive off to freedom with a hearty “Hi, Ho, Silver!” Which is what happens. One quick turn of the ignition, a foot on the accelerator and the huge engine lifts the vehicle free, and I am able to drive it via the circuitous route through the field and the dirt mountain, up onto the hard standing that leads to the road.

Two days later, my car is returned to me by the local Bentley garage with a clean bill of health. Driving it down the wall of death with two wheels in the ditch has not harmed any of the underbelly or other parts of the car, except to loosen one small clip on one of the exhausts. More surprisingly, they manage to polish all the scratches out.

Funny, I never got a call-out bill from Mr I Can Get You Out But It Will Be Expensive. I’d love to have seen his face when and if he ever came back later that morning to be told that my secretary had dug me out with a trowel.

Mr and Mrs Very Nice After All got a Katie Melua autographed album, and our friendly farmers and tea-making horse-lady and her nice husband got flowers. I am left with a funny story to tell. The satnav company are going to get a piece of my mind; oh, and I’m going to join the AA.