Musings on LUSH Lord of Misrule, and a big shout out to Tiny Fragrances

Engraving by George Cruikshank via Wikimedia Commons

Sorry I have been missing in action for nearly a month...I have been surprisingly busy caring for other people's pets and gardens, the lush vegetation in one of which has inspired me to write another post entirely, but for the moment I would like to talk about the other LUSH, as in the capitalised perfume house formerly known as Gorilla Perfumes, after formerly being known as LUSH.

Last weekend I had a roadying job up in Sheffield with The Monochrome Set, which I do from time to time when the gig is a little too far out of town to be conveniently reached on foot or public transport - and you try ordering a taxi on a Saturday night in any British city, as we tried and spectacularly failed to do one rainy and windswept night in Hull last winter!  At the sound check I was aware of a delightful sillage following Jane, the band manager, as she flitted up and downstairs between green room and venue carrying out her various duties, most importantly "hunting the rider". The rider wasn't actually tracked down till shortly before the band went on stage, whereupon we all descended on a selection of water, beer and wine with the zeal of seagulls in St Ives swooping down on a bag of chips.

I asked Jane what she was wearing that night and it turned out to be LUSH Lord of Misrule, of which I was quite unaware - which is pretty par for the course for me these days, to be fair. It smelt very familiar and alluring in a vanillic, "barnyard" kind of way, and I vowed to look into it further on my return.

Notes: patchouli, black pepper, vanilla

But first I would like to say a word about the splendid name of the fragrance, Lord of Misrule. Any coincidence between the timing of this post and the exit of prime ministers past, present, or somewhere in between, hehe, is of course purely fortuitous...

Illustration by Spencer Baird Nichols via Wikimedia Commons

From Wikipedia:  

"In England, the Lord of Misrule – known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason and in France as the Prince des Sots - was an officer appointed by lot during Christmastide to preside over the Feast of Fools. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying."

Christmas drunkenness and wild partying? Any resemblance between the origins of the perfume name and.........ahem.....moving swiftly on.....!

And I also found this in the blurb to an episode of "Funny in Four" on the BBC website:

"The Lord of Misrule was the ultimate disrupter - his sovereignty gives us a quick burst of anarchy that refreshes and revives."

Hmmmm....well, I guess it depends on your idea of "refreshment", for there is a fine line between a thirst-slaking glass of Perrier - or make that Robinson's Barley Water as we are in Wimbledon season after all (albeit I believe they recently ended their 86 year old sponsorship deal) - and having to knock back 10 pints of lager one after the other without burping or drawing breath. Sorry, mind wandering again. But yes, how inadvertently prophetic that I should discover a perfume of that name in what has turned out to be one of the most turbulent weeks in UK political history. "Febrile" even, which was another word beloved of the media in recent days, along with "tumultuous".

Back home, I soon set about ordering a sample. There are so many more sampling sites out there now compared with the early days of my perfume hobby when I routinely used to shell out the equivalent of a small mortgage every month to The Perfumed Court and Lucky Scent. I quickly lit upon a company called Tiny Fragrances, whose apt and endearing name appealed, and ordered a 2ml sample for £5.50 including free postage. The price apparently reflected the fact that the delivery might be longer than usual, namely up to ten days. To my surprise I received a notification from PayPal the next day with the news that Tiny Fragrances had refunded me 55p, having forgotten to apply the "slow delivery discount", which I of course had assumed was already factored in. And blow me down if the perfume itself didn't arrive two days later in a dear little purple velvet drawstring bag.

I wore Lord of Misrule finally yesterday, and though it goes on quite strong, the drydown does the same raunchy sweet patchouli number on me as it did on Jane. I was greatly exercised as to why Lord of Misrule smelt so familiar yet long forgotten at the same time, till a light bulb suddenly went on in my head - L'Ombre Fauve (or "Bestial Shadow", my preferred translation of the name). I found my short write up of the Parfumerie Generale fragrance from 2015 - here is the full post, if anyone is interested in other scents in similar "super furry animal" vein.

Notes: woods, incense, amber, musk, patchouli

"Now L'Ombre Fauve is wonderfully hoochy, but the patchouli lends a rough edge to the scent going in. I don't mean hoochy in a Hooters way exactly, but the opening is certainly not refined. It's earthy and ragged and a bit clod- - as in sod- - hopping. I never reviewed L'Ombre Fauve, because despite being such a fan of woody orientals, I find myself even more tongue-tied than usual in describing what I smell. What I can give you, if you can 'take it' (as all good mediums say), is an image of me sitting on a stool in a moodily lit tapas bar in Hamburg with my Swedish perfumista protegee Louise and several of her friends, while wearing L'Ombre Fauve. The whole party couldn't stop sniffing my wrist, having clearly succumbed to the perfume's animal magnetism, which proved more irresistible than even the dates wrapped in bacon and dainty morsels of chorizo."

Schankwirtschaft (now sadly closed) ~ Source: eventinc.de

So there we have it, a cheaper, smaller format alternative to the PG at just £25 for 30ml, or £4.95 for a Tiny Fragrance sample. Just remember to behave when you wear it.

Source: Lush UK

And as it happens, the set that night included a song called "Walking With The Beast". ;)

Katie Puckrik's tales of perfume and persona - featuring the sniffs of The Smiths and a Bonkers quote

Illustration by Lydia Silver

Perfume expert and multi-media personality Katie Puckrik has written a feature in this week's Evening Standard magazine, in which she reminisces about wearing Revlon Intimate, a raunchy animalic floral pinched from her mother's dressing table; it made her feel all grown up and ready for the sort of carnal capers that my father used to collectively - and disapprovingly - dub "filthy slop". 

"Wearing Intimate was my introduction to the power of perfume to transform dubious raw material into the person I was nowhere near being."

Katie goes on to explore this theme of "wear the perfume and you can be the perfume" with the help of fellow contributors Denyse Beaulieu, Tania Sanchez, Sali Hughes, Alison Goldfrapp, and Johnny Marr. And there is even a quote from yours truly - I am not accustomed to being in such august company!

What tickled me most about the feature was the inclusion of Johnny Marr's perfume MO. So okay, one Smith rather than the sniffs of the whole band, as the title of this post might suggest. For as I may have mentioned before, Johnny Marr and Morrissey bonded over a shared appreciation of The Monochrome Set, and were influenced by their music when they formed The Smiths. They went on to become much more famous and commercially successful, and then many years later, in one of those strange twists of fate, The Monochrome Set found themselves supporting Johnny Marr at a festival gig in Bognor Regis, which I attended. Those meringue peak canopies at Butlin's are hard to forget. So given my own close association with TMS, it struck me that there is a curious and amusing parallel in my now randomly "sharing a bill" with Johnny Marr in an article on perfume!

And at that gig in Bognor, I wore the punch-packing Salome by Papillon Perfumery, following a visit to Liz Moores' house in the afternoon. Salome perfectly illustrates the notion of trying to assume a ballsy persona that may be a little incongruous or too big for one's boots. I let the band sniff it on me as well as one of Liz's raw ingredients, African stone - here is an extract from a post about that day.

"The band duly sniffed both the remnants of Salome AND the African Stone, intrigued by my explanation that it was the fossilised excrement of the rock hyrax, an animal I tried to big up by likening it to a robust yet endearing variant on the guinea pig. They continued to chew thoughtfully on slices of the family size pepperoni pizza several of us were sharing, and didn't bat an eyelid - or flare a nostril in disgust.

Now my wearing of actual African Stone may have been a lifetime one off, but in the light of this rock 'n' roll nonchalance in the face of the ne plus ultra of poo, I plan to wear Salome to the next gig without a backward glance..."

I shan't give away any more spoilers to Katie's article, which is full of memorable stories and insights into the transformative potential of perfume, so do check it out!

The Monochrome Set in sadly small print!

NB Note the perfume blotters tucked into the programme...;)

Taking stock: an off the wall quiz for off the wall times

About a month ago, the lead singer of The Monochrome Set took part in an interview for Paris-based Le Village Pop, which describes itself as "International web radio focused on music, cinema and artists' words". VIPop, as it is also known, is noted for its podcasts, which aim to "discover an artist from a different perspective...An elegant mix of music and words of a musician (pop, rock, folk, soul, etc...)."

The entertaining half hour podcast is a medley of Monochrome Set songs interspersed with tracks from other bands, and with Bid's answers to a most original set of questions. For their part, the Village Pop team were delighted with his responses:

"He is the one who answered our questions and he wins to this day the Grand Prix for the most laconic answers among all the episodes of the VIPop Collection!...This band is definitely not like the others...And we love it!"

I can thoroughly recommend the original podcast HERE for Bid's amusing and quirky answers alone, even if you are not a fan of the music as such.

Now...the New Year is generally a time for taking stock and looking back on the year gone by, making resolutions etc, and never more so than in 2021 after the white knuckle ride we've just had in 2020. Many of us not working on the front line - or working at all in my case! - have had ample opportunity to re-evaluate our lifestyles and relationships during the isolation of lockdown.

I love this reader comment quoted in a blog post by Mark Manson on the impact of the pandemic, entitled: "You Only Know Who You Are When Everything Is Taken From You". In it the commenter observes that the pandemic "brought out the 'factory default settings' of everyone. The paranoid became more paranoid. The needy became more needy. The anxious became more anxious and the optimistic became more optimistic".

Like a lot of people, I have been doing a lot of navel gazing over the past year, and this quiz appealed to me as the questions were so unusual. I have taken part in a few interviews in the blogosphere, for example this one on Olfactoria's Travels from way back in 2013, as part of her series "People in Perfumeland". Looking back, Birgit's questions were also a bit different!

So as this is the time of year for ponderings, I thought I would have a go at answering the Village Pop questionnaire myself...As a market researcher, I am usually the one wielding the clip board, so it is fun to be answering rather than asking the questions. I do hope the Village Pop team don't mind my taking this liberty - or 'liberté', even! (I have messaged them to ask for their permission, and will obviously take down the post if need be.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 1) Growing up, what virtue did you see in your parents that you hope to emulate?

Finding a redeeming aspect in even the most depressing situations. [My mother's special knack. Case in point: a holiday in Crete where there was more rainfall that week than at any time since 1923. Marooned in our hotel, Mother remarked cheerily on how much the plants must be enjoying a drink.]

2) What poem or song really moves you? Can you share a line from it?

Louis MacNeice's Snow:

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

3) When have you recently felt overwhelmed? Describe the situation?

Lying awake night after night for four months listening to a mysterious hum / whirring from next door. The noise has gone now, but I appear to have encoded the memory in the form of tinnitus. That was overwhelming initially too(!), but am gradually learning to live with it.

4) What's the best bargain you've ever found?

A black Kookai jacket in a vintage shop in Berlin, for 8 euros. It is not so much the price in itself that was a bargain, but the truly incredible amount of wear I got out of it! It has finally been retired, due to extreme fading and a large reddish patch on one arm; it had got to the point where the jacket could only be worn during the hours of darkness - a limiting factor for at least half the year. ;)

5) If you were assured you wouldn't fail what would you attempt to do?

Write a book and try to get it published.

6) Has your heart ever lied to you, or do you think it always tells the truth? Can you

explain?

My heart doesn't lie as such, but it can be error prone and is much given to paranoia and catastrophising. [Case in point: when the sample from my routine blood test was rejected by the lab yesterday, I instantly assumed there was something wrong with my blood. Further research suggests there is a 2% chance this is in fact the reason, as opposed to a glitch during the administering of the test itself, but me being me I went straight for the more worrying possibility! NB If it was my blood, I will be sure to come back and tell you.]

7) When do you feel insecure?

Oh, on more occasions than you can shake a stick at, haha... Finding unexplained scratches on my car (a disconcertingly frequent occurrence); looking in the mirror, especially barefaced; lurking at parties where I hardly know anyone; tackling DIY projects, and problems with phones, wifi and computers, all of which are outside my sphere of competence. Oh, and cooking meat, which - like Alsatians - sniffs fear in the fryer.

8) What is unforgivable?

The insidious downspec-ing of trusted household brands, eg Andrex and Fray Bentos.

9) What paradox or contradiction in life have you had to learn to accept or embrace?

That everything you buy in T K Maxx, intending to give it as a gift, comes with a price tag that is impossible to peel off.

10) If you could change one thing about the culture you live in, what would it be and why?

The pressure on women not to age, as though it were a kind of failure, like death to Christian Scientists.

11) Is it better to love or to be loved? Why?

Both matter: as a baby you need to be loved by your primary caregiver to avoid attachment issues in later life. For as with donning oxygen masks in an in-flight emergency, it is important to love yourself first before loving others. I would also observe that unrequited love can be exquisitely painful and ultimately unsatisfactory for the sufferer.

12) Is there a family tradition that has a special meaning to you? Can you describe it?

Clean sheets on Christmas Eve.

13) What advice can you give about how to conquer fear?

That the thing you fear is rarely as scary when you finally screw your courage to the sticking place and get stuck in. With the notable exception of rock climbing if you are only 5' 3".

14) Is there one thing you know for sure?

I will continue to spill tea on pale carpets.

15) If you could bring one person back from the dead who would it be and why?

My mother, because she was simply lovely in every way, and I never got to say goodbye.

16) How would you define freedom?

Going on a 'living room crawl' of local friends' houses.

17) What do you recommend to overcome self pity?

Watching a 'forensic detectives'-type programme, and thanking my lucky stars I wasn't murdered in a horrible way and my body dumped in a wood when I was only 19.

18) In what area of your life are you immature?

I am diffident and mealy-mouthed when complaining, though less so than I used to be.

19) What is your greatest achievement?

Such things are hard to quantify...arguably being subjected to a violent assault by a stranger in a park on a Sunday afternoon, and doing an A-Level exam the next morning. Also up there was getting compensation out of Ryanair - years before making claims for flight delays were 'a thing' people knew they could do. I had to escalate my case all the way to a director at the CAA before Ryanair coughed up, but they did - in full, bar the cost of a beer to soothe my frazzled nerves on Day 3 of the flight delay. I guess they felt the need to retain a little bit of control...I am proud to say that a local business travel agent used my complaint letter as a template for years afterwards. 

20) If you could take back something you've said what would it be?

Telling an examiner in my university finals that I enjoyed the dark humour in the works of Samuel Beckett, despite his "bottomless contempt for the human condition" and jibes at the marginalised and disadvantaged...before discovering on shaking the examiner's hand that he only had three fingers.

21) When do you feel sad what do you do to find comfort?

I knit furiously, burn incense, and occasionally wallow in Stina Nordenstam records. In extreme cases, I go to bed and write the day off, as (another maternal truism) things often look better in the morning.

22) What do you dream about most often? How do you interpret your dream?

My dreams are insanely varied, and invariably bad. I'd rather not try to interpret them, but be grateful they were only dreams.

23) Is there one question you're asking yourself these days?

Will life really return to normal?

(Photo of La Pensadora via AWa, Wikimedia Commons)

Brief - and Wet - Encounter: meeting Undina and her vSO on a rainy day in London

The keen-eyed reader - if I still have any of those left given the sketchiness of my posting frequency - may have noted that I have yet to post Part Two of my report on the US tour with The Monochrome Set back in March. I am not sure why I didn't finish the travelogue closer to the time, but the band are going back next spring (I am giving that one a miss), and could always post Part Two as an anniversary tribute while they are actually on the road over there, possibly having similar experiences(!). We'll see... But meanwhile I have just returned from a rather fraught week with them in Germany, and as that is top of my mind at the moment I shall make it the subject of the next post. Lord knows it won't be the first time on Bonkers that I have cocked a snook at chronology. ;)

Now the last time I saw Undina and her husband was during that trip in March, and by a quirk of chance, I got to see them very briefly the day before I set off on this latest one. I can't be sure that we will always keep up such tidy synchronicity, but for the moment I associate band tours with meeting The Undinas.

The travel issues referenced in the title started at Stafford in fact, when I discovered a sleeping man in my forward facing, window, power socket-supplied seat. And next to him, his sleeping girlfriend with her head on his shoulder. I let it go, though friends have since suggested that he was probably faking it, and that I should at least have given him a hard stare or an admonishing poke.

Undina and her vSO were flying into Heathroom from the Ukraine at the same time as my train arrived in Euston, but it took a while before they finally got their bags and could make their way to their Airbnb in Bayswater. They were due to pick up the keys to it in a little supermarket nearby, so I staked the shop out from an outside table at the cafe next door, despite the inclement weather.

Eventually the by now familiar pair hove into view, suitcases in tow, and we hurried to their apartment as best we could in the pouring rain. The first time I met Undina and her husband was also at their accommodation - in Paris back in 2013. I got there first, and the landlady showed me up, and explained how all the various appliances worked, including the all-important washing machine. In a neat parallel, when we got into their flat this time round, the first thing Undina wanted to locate was a washing machine. We eventually found it, and a drier, concealed in cupboards in the living room to the right of the fold up bed (also concealed in a cupboard). The kitchen wasn't concealed in a cupboard, but was barely bigger than one, and we remarked that it was the smallest kitchen we had ever seen. Everything else about the apartment was perfectly proportioned, and there were tall windows overlooking the leafy terraced street through which one could comfortably pass an hour or six staring at the pouring rain.

While the pair were still getting their bearings in what was to be their home for the next week, I handed over a pint of milk, which I had bought round the corner, thinking it one of life's absolute necessities, right up there with the washing machine. Having recce'd their accommodation and its compact amenities we collapsed on the sofas, and the ritual exchange of perfumes between Undina and me commenced, preceded by the ritual exchange of small presents (I wasn't counting the milk). Undina gave me a cat-themed foldaway tote bag from Ulster Weavers, which - given where I am from - is a welcome example of carrying cats to Newcastle...I mean Belfast.

Meanwhile, in another neat parallel, I gave Undina a make up bag / pouch with a Voysey-esque design on it. I bought it from a museum shop in the UK, but couldn't resist a wry smile on spotting that it was in fact by a brand in New York.

Although it was only a short catch up, there was also time for Undina to show me several extremely sweet videos on her phone of Rusty having his tummy stroked. As they were away for a while this time, they had engaged a live-in pet sitter, whose daily footage of their blissed out cat was testament to the fact that he was being well cared for in their absence.

Now I am back from Germany, I am just getting into trying the samples Undina gave me. She has a very good sense of my taste - which could be summed up in a nutshell as furry ambers and powdery orientals for winter, and sultry florals or refreshing colognes for summer. For our meeting I had drained the last of a sample of Long Courrier, from Pierre Guillaume's The Cruise collection, which was kindly donated by Sabine (Iridescents) many moons ago.

I see that the name means 'long distance flight', which could certainly apply to the one Undina and her vSO had just come on.

"...a solar oriental built around a core of salty vanilla, the perfumer evokes faraway destinations, beaches on the other side of the world, lazy days gorged with sea spray and the delicious scent of suntan lotion…"

In hindsight, that was an ironic choice for a wet and blustery autumn day in London, which set the tone for the wet and wayward week that followed in Germany, of which more very shortly!

Editor's note: special thanks are due to John, the band's keyboard player, who kindly stowed Undina's samples in his instrument case for me, as I was travelling on hand luggage only, and they wouldn't have fitted in my already bulging(!) transparent plastic bag you take through security.

A Twilight zone Tom Ford encounter, meeting the Undinas, extreme burritos, and pancake urges: Part Two

I don't know about you, but I find shoe shopping quite a fraught business. However, undeterred by my usual trepidation, I have just ordered a pair of grey lace up plimsolls online. Or sneakers, as American friends might term them. Or gym shoes - or gutties, indeed - as comes more naturally to me. Pumps, if you will. It took me over an hour to find 'the ones', though that was a vast improvement on the seven hours I spent researching microwaves recently. There are of course so many factors to consider:

• Price - £5.99 is worryingly cheap, while over £30 is pushing it
• Customer reviews on quality and fit
• Not having excessive lettering or logos
• Not having gratuitous colour accents that hamper outfit coordination
• Minimal white soles and toes - some of them look like a hovercraft
• Returns policy
• The website not making reference to 'millennials'

So this is the pair I have bought, for £25 including postage. Toes crossed!

I mention this purchase partly because as you know I have a habit of blogging about whatever happens to be uppermost on my mind at the time of sitting down to write a post(!), but also because there is a genuine link to the next part of my US tour post. In the end I decided to split it into three, so this is the perfume part. No, really it is!

A Twilight Zone Tom Ford encounter

For at the New York gig - held in Lower East Side's historic Bowery Ballroom - I hooked up with friend and fellow fan Brian, who is based in the Mid-West and had flown over specially, and his wife's cousin Peter, who lives in the city. Brian was keen for me to meet his cousin-in-law, for while his main business is an understated brand of Italian-made 'luxe sneakers' - he really does just say 'I make shoes' if you ask him what he does - Peter has been a creative and artistic director in various guises down the years. And one of his projects was coming up with the packaging design for the entire Tom Ford perfume line. (That's boxes and bottles.) This left field nugget of information knocked me properly for six, having owned examples of both the standard ribbed bottles and the tall rectangular version of the Private Blends collection. Peter readily admitted that it was just another brief for him, and that he doesn't have the same visceral connection to fragrance that we fumeheads have. Which makes it all the more of an achievement to have come up with such elegant and aesthetically pleasing designs. And in the case of the ribbed bottle, a haptically pleasing one to boot. (I promise I wasn't trying to shoehorn in a footwear pun there!)

Brian, Gerry and Peter

Anyway, Brian and Peter came out with us to dinner - stood us dinner, no less!, which was very kind - and then we all headed back to the venue. The gig went down a storm and garnered some very good reviews afterwards. I was chuffed to see my own handwritten set list feature in one of them. It even gets a mention in the title!

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/the-monochrome-set-bowery-ballroom-pics-setlist-video/

Source: P Squared 

After the show I got into conversation with some other fans, including Diane, whom I instantly recognised from the gig a couple of days previously in Philadelphia. I had clocked her there as a person who looked nice, and broadly my age, but never managed to have a word on that occasion. However, on seeing her again I didn't let the opportunity slip by, and soon we were chatting away at breakneck speed about all sorts of things. The speed being due to the fact that Diane had to catch the last train back to Philly shortly. And as we stood together, I noticed how good she smelt, and asked her what perfume she was wearing. "It's Tom Ford", she replied. Whoah, I thought. It is going to be one of those nights...! D wasn't too sure which, except that it had Vanille in the name. I think it may well have been Vanille Fatale, but will check. It has to be either that or Tobacco Vanille, but I think the word Vanille came first, which would point to the former.

Source: Fragrantica

Top notes: saffron, coriander, myrrh, olibanum
Heart notes: coffee, narcissus, frangipani
Basenotes: vanilla, mahogany, suede

Source: mixedgems.co.uk

Mixedgems closes her review with the observation: "This will be for you if you like to feel a ‘good enough to eat’ scrumptiousness when you catch an air of your fragrance." And having sniffed Diane I can but agree. As we were talking, we were joined by Bid, the singer, and at my suggestion he also leant in and had a sniff of my new fumehead/fan friend, whom he also pronounced to be very fragrant. While she had a reciprocal sniff of his chest, or what was visible of it, though I am not sure he even knew what he was wearing. The scene was all rather primal, indeed we were not unlike a trio of sniffer dogs - not to preempt a theme of Part Three, mind...;)

Meeting the Undinas

So that gig was on the Monday night, and by Friday we had made it to San Francisco, via Seattle, Portland and Redding. After the sound check, during which I diligently crafted my latest version of the set list (still without mistakes at this point!), the band headed off to one restaurant, Steve, our driver, peeled off to another to meet friends, while I hotfooted it to another eaterie again (all three in the vicinity of the venue) to meet Undina and her vSO. It was called Corridor, and we sat upstairs - that is our table for four - though we were of course three - in the far corner below the long mirror.

Source: Yelp

I had exactly two hours with Undina and her husband, which simply flew by. Having been in this exhausting but highly entertaining 'band on tour bubble' for the past ten days, where our whole routine is dictated by 'get ins' at gigs and radio stations, check ins at airports, and pick up times by vans and occasionally cabs, it took me a little while to adjust to being in the company of friends from a different sphere, though I have met Undina and her husband twice before, in Paris and London. And here I was on their home turf. It was all a bit discombobulating, but as lovely as ever to see the two of them. They kindly treated me to dinner too, and Undina gave me a zipped up cosmetics case full of samples, through which I am still steadily working my way, some six weeks on. Undina knows my taste very well, and the strike rate of success with this selection is pretty high, Maybe I could do a bunch of 'tiny unreviews of unprecedented vacuousness', as I keep promising Portia I will some day. Not that the perfumes don't deserve a better standard of review, it is just that I have such trouble describing what I smell. Shortly after 10pm, the Undinas hurried back to their parking garage, as their ticket was about to expire, while I plunged back into the murky gloom of the venue and snapped back into tour mode, marvelling that that brief encounter with a favourite fumehead friend and her vSO had really happened...

The rather pink green room at Rickshaw Stop, SF

UPDATE: Have checked with Diane, and it was indeed Vanille Fatale she wore to such great effect!

A Twilight zone Tom Ford encounter, meeting the Undinas, extreme burritos, and pancake urges: Part One

Somewhere in Oregon

I will be 60 soon. A milestone age that focuses the mind wonderfully, and one to which I am wholeheartedly looking forward, in a way I never did with my 50th. For the big Six-O will usher in an era of free bus travel, free prescriptions (except I get those anyway), and penalty-free pension access, as well as an end to nearly thirty years of payments on an income protection policy on which I have never claimed. My bad for not breaking my neck while the going was good.

I should say that by and large I have been backwards in coming forwards about celebrating big birthdays. I spent my 21st on a solo moped trip in the South of France, my 30th getting lost and ripped to shreds by brambles in the New Forest, my 40th on my tod at a health spa, before downing a whole bottle of Bollinger and provoking a richly deserved hangover before the day was out. Then my 50th was marked by a quiet gathering down the pub to which I was oddly fearful that no one would come. And so for my 60th I decided to do something a bit more memorable and 'out there', not least because it wasn't even my birthday at the time.

For I have just returned from a band tour of the USA, largely funded by an unexpected legacy from my much missed friend who died last year. I knew that had she been less ill towards the end, M had planned to spend her money on a busking trip in Spain, so I felt sure she would have approved of my putting it towards another music-related travel experience.

In the past I have taken to calling these tours 'gruelling fun', and this one took gruelling to a whole new level. On three occasions we were all up for 24 hours, and normal days were very, very long and almost entirely lacking in downtime, or any demarcation between day and night. The clocks going forward the other Sunday robbed us of another precious hour of sleep(!). But despite the physical toll of our punishing schedule, the trip was a truly extraordinary experience, and I don't regret going one bit. One of its main satisfactions was the fact I survived, showed up on time each day, and didn't fall ill and become a liability to everyone else. That said, I might not rush to go back again, even if cost was not a barrier, as it ordinarily would be. Or not to the exact same places, say. There wouldn't be the same novelty factor second time round, plus I would go in knowing how ridiculously knackering the whole thing was!

My set list fail - "I had one (small) job!"

On tours to Germany and France I feel I add value in terms of translation and interpreting, but clearly in The States there was no such need for language services, and I was without obvious 'portfolio'. That said, on Day 1 I was assigned the small yet important role of copying out each night's set list. Apart from neat, accurate writing without any smudges or spotting, and the requisite spatial awareness to ensure you can fit all 17 tracks on one sheet of A4, I had to have my wits about me as the set changed from time to time - songs were left off or added, or played in a different order. I dutifully performed this task for the first seven gigs until we got to San Diego. By this late stage in the tour we were all dropping with tiredness, and I forgot to put in the extra track from the day before. I cannot even pretend it was a Freudian slip - it was not a song I particularly cared for - as it was a simple oversight on my part. When the band discovered the error mid-set, the singer announced the fact to the audience, while the bass player screened his eyes with one hand and peered pointedly into the crowd, as if searching for the miscreant. I apologised profusely afterwards, but it was all okay in the end, as they had in fact decided to take it out for good anyway after that gig. It seems I was merely ahead of the game...

As the tour wore on, I did acquire other (very minor!) roles. A smorgasbord of little ad hoc tasks that I was free to execute, being the spare person in the party. These included cutting pizza, finding entrances, dispensing essential items I happened to have on my person (moisturiser, tissues, bandage, scissors, sleeping aids and sweets (not a euphemism) ), holding things, carrying things, guarding things, muling cigarettes through Customs, waking people up on planes when their food arrived, scurrying ahead to recce eateries, fixing wobbly tables (a surprisingly common occurrence), executing a clean sweep of remaining green room snacks at the end of the night, and flushing overly sociable band members out of venues while I was about it. There was one task I didn't manage, however, as I didn't have time to go back to the hotel between the meal and the gig to carry it out, namely to 'squeeze' someone's wet laundry. I was flattered to be asked, mind.

Not being challenged for our ID

On arrival into Seattle, having been up already for more hours than we cared to calculate, we were pretty peckish, and several of us were craving something all-American like pancakes. In my disorientated state, I was still vaguely aware that 5th March was Shrove Tuesday, which seemed to seal our choice, and I promptly steered the party towards a nearby I-Hop. A cursory appraisal of the menu revealed a whole section devoted to dishes for the over-55s, to which the qualifying members of our party (all but one) instantly gravitated, thanks to the twin appeal of the meals being tailored to our demographic, and a bit cheaper. Which didn't stop us feeling distinctly crestfallen that the waitress didn't ask any of us for our ID...

Source: Pinterest

Napkin-intensive 'fist food'

Early on in the trip I had an embarrassing incident with an oversized wrap from Subway. It was absolutely stuffed to the gunwales with filling, and was the size and weight of a small infant. I only managed half of it in the end, and that very messily. T S Eliot's Prufrock famously wondered whether he dared eat a peach. He clearly hasn't tried one of these greasy torpedoes if that is the most undignified foodstuff he can think of. I ended up wiping my mouth after every bite, which led to the coinage of a term to which we had much recourse during the trip - 'napkin-intensive'. And yes, 'finger food' doesn't cut it either, as you needed both hands to get purchase on these squelchy zeppelins.

Source: Chew Boom

Pick up trucks with nothing on them

In all the miles we travelled by road - over 2000 at a guess - we passed a lot of pick up trucks. We have them over here, but they are an even more common sight on roads across the pond. And nary a one had anything on it, not even a dog or a pot of paint. What's that about?

Passive spliffing in venues

I mentioned in my last post that you only have to stand at certain points along my road to catch a whiff of waccy baccy. To my surprise I learnt that weed is legal in a number of states, mainly on the West Coast, such that venues in the second half of the tour were routinely fragrant in that - to my nose - still louchely 'erbal way, and there was some talk of skunk varieties in the green rooms. Largely amongst the indigenous support bands, to be fair.

Source: Portland Marijuana

My unprecedented hotel toiletry haul

Anyone who has stayed in chain hotels in Europe lately may have noticed the steady switch to wall mounted soap-cum-shower gel dispensers. It is a sad trend in my view, as one of the few perks of paying over the odds these days for a quite ordinary hotel pretty much anywhere is to nick the stuff in the room...from hotel pens and pads you really don't need (though that is not the point) to tea bags, sugar sachets, vanity kits, shoe polish sponges, and little bars of soap and bottles of shampoo. I always leave a token bottle of conditioner behind, not because I am ashamed of my minesweeping abandon, but because I can't be bothered to embrace a two-step hair washing process. You can imagine my delight in the US when every hotel without exception had 'takeaway toiletries'. Check out my haul below, insofar as Truffle's photo bombing permits. It is not even the definitive set, as I found six more bars of soap and a couple of shower caps since this shot was taken.

The leftover eating - and drinking - imperative

Living at such close quarters with seven other people means you get to know their little quirks.  I am mindful that I have a fair few idiosyncrasies myself, notably a phobia of lukewarm or cold food that is meant to be hot. Plus an aversion to gratuitously added value teas that purport to be 'something recognisably Breakfast', but do in fact have a surprise slug of caramel and spices in them. And one of our party happened to be most particular about not leaving waste food or drink, and I tried very hard to accommodate his strong line on this, finishing anyone's plate as needed, and swigging entire bottles of water on the very point of going through airport security. I got into the habit of getting a box to take my own leftovers back to the hotel, where we had increasingly started to find both fridges and microwaves. By the last day, I had stockpiled several pancakes the size of plates and a mound of quesadilla quarters, which sadly I didn't manage to dispatch before our flight home, though I had valiantly eaten reheated quesadilla for breakfast the previous morning. You may be wondering at this point why it says 'extreme burritos' in the title, when I appear to have been mostly eating quesadillas. In fact it was a bit of both, as Mexican cuisine proved to be the happy intersection of all our respective food requirements (carnivorous, vegetarian, vegan), such that we had floury wrappy things quite a lot. The burritos were as big as the aforementioned Subway wrap, which is why I moved onto the more manageably flat quesadilla in the end. And I borrowed the term 'extreme' from a menu option in Jack in the Box, which tantalisingly offered 'Extreme sausage'. If you absolutely have to eat there, please at all costs avoid the vile grey slime masquerading as hash browns.

Doomed attempts not to lose stuff

Following a distressing lost rucksack incident in Barcelona last year, I was determined to have nothing stolen and leave nothing behind anywhere on this trip. Well, that went well. From the very first day my long and ripply scarf kept falling off and winding up on the floor, and various members of our party repeatedly drew my attention to its dangerous trailing proclivities. I also left my wallet on the floor of a toilet that must have just flirted out of my handbag somehow - have you noticed how valuable items have innate leaping abilities? Luckily I realised the mistake at the bar a moment later before anyone else went in there! Then I also managed to leave an Urban Decay eyeshadow palette in some hotel or other (I console myself with the thought that it was rather long in the tooth already). I thought I had additionally lost a blusher, scissors, and eyelash curlers, but they all turned up in odd places by and by. Luckily, I was not alone in my carelessness. Three other members of our group left rucksacks behind in hotels and restaurants, but were quickly reunited with them by thoughtful staff, while the keyboard player left his laptop in one venue, without which his instrument would not have produced a single note at subsequent gigs! The following morning, after finally getting hold of the promoter as he emerged from a dental appointment, and making two eye-wateringly expensive cab trips into town and back, the keyboard player recovered his laptop, and the show could go on. Oh, and the drummer left a beloved jacket behind in San Diego. So glad it's not just me then.  ;)

Dunce cap of light

Perfume aspects of the trip coming up in Part Two!

The Analgesics Mini-Tour: The Monochrome Set in Germany, May 2018

Headache not helped by sound check ~ via Mike Urban

I have already written about the serendipitous colliding of my perfume and music worlds in this post about Geza Schoen and his friend coming to a Monochrome Set gig in Berlin. In it I mentioned that at some point I would write up the travel aspects of this mini-tour, which also took in Cologne, Mainz, and Hamburg. Predictably on Bonkers, that time has come somewhat belatedly, and I may have picked up one or two other travel anecdotes from later gigs that I will append here, using a dollop of chronological licence.

And rather than adopt a chronological approach to this travelogue, I will opt for my tried and tested formula of grouping incidents and observations thematically, starting with...

Going by our middle names

At St Pancras, on the way out to Cologne, Andy the bass player had the whimsical idea that for the duration of the trip we should refer to one another by our middle names. This yielded some amusing discoveries before we even started playing the game:

Me: Jane
Singer (Bid): Tara!!
Bass player (Andy): Peter
Keyboard player (John): Paul
Drummer (Mike): refused to tell us ;), so we promptly gave him a German name - Joachim (when we could remember), and Juergen (when we couldn't).
Dave (merchandise team): Alistair (spelling is approximate)
Jane (merchandise team): 'haven't got one', so that is exactly what we called her

It didn't take long for the game to fall into complete disarray, as we kept forgetting to use the alternative names, though not before I had worried a couple of them by threatening to 'rob Peter to pay Paul'.

Signally failing to eat satsumas

Although there is sometimes fruit as part of the rider, it can never be counted on, and I decided to clear my fruit bowl before I left and bring seven satsumas out with me rather than let them go soft and mouldy at home while I was away. I dutifully dragged this fruit on and off trains and from hotel to hotel, periodically offering them to the others...but only had one taker in the four days. I then forgot to eat any of the remaining half dozen myself, and brought them all back home again. However, I am pleased to report that they did in fact withstand the rigours of the journey, and I promptly juiced the lot on my return.

Ongoing pillow disappointments

The pillows continued to disappoint on this tour, being mostly of the large square flat variety, which is neither use nor ornament - or not any use for sleeping, anyway. Occasionally these 'expansive flaccid travesties', as I came to term them, sported a curious embellishment in the shape of a tiny boudoir pillow perched on top, to which someone had administered a swift karate chop. It was so small that it was completely futile as a second layer. As ever I ended up trying to fold the main pillow in half, but when I stuck my head on it, it quickly had the same effect as the karate chop on the little one, and I could feel myself sinking right down to the level of the mattress, as though I were 'sleeping' (I use the word advisedly) in a feathery gorge.

Eating leftovers in a timely manner

Eating on the run has its downsides, not least the lack of a fridge to store any remnants of food you might have. My natural squirrelling tendencies mean that I hate waste, and often fashion eclectic meals at home from an array of unrelated leftovers. I get excited at the uncharacteristic appearance of a mini-bar in hotel rooms - not because of the drink contained within, but the boon of a refrigerated appliance for storing food. Thus it was that I kept a few wedges of pizza left over from a late night snack in Berlin in my mini-bar, before packing them to take on the plane back to Gatwick the next day. It was very hot that Sunday, yet amazingly the food was still cool to the touch when I opened my case at the airport, and shortly afterwards I stood munching cold pizza on the platform at 3pm, feeling smug that I had got it down me before it became unsafe to eat. To be fair, I would have felt even smugger had it been warm, but I can't see me travelling with a microwave in tow anytime soon.

Cold pizza not pictured!

Bananas as an airport security risk

While we are on the subject of food and airports, I could mention a conversation about bananas I had with Andy - sorry, Peter - at the airport in Berlin. We were both eating the fruit in question simultaneously, and I explained to Peter that I had given the working title of 'Banana in the Briefcase' to a humorous travel book I have yet to write about my escapades on work - and latterly also band - trips (though a fair bit of potential copy ends up here, which I may repurpose one day...!). Peter immediately twigged to my intended meaning, namely as a metaphor for an accident waiting to happen, because of a banana's propensity to turn to blackened mush at the drop of a hat, which can of course be disastrous if you keep any important papers or a favourite fountain pen in your briefcase. This in turn prompted him to observe: 'Better eat up, or Security will construe them as a pulpy liquid and take them off us.' And we all know how many alarming attempts there have been to hijack planes with bananas that are well past their best...

Musicians as scent mules

Also at Berlin airport, I realised that thanks to Geza's generosity with samples for everyone, I was now well over the limit of toiletries one can reasonably stuff in those plastic freezer bag things you take through the X-ray machine. So there was nothing for it but to distribute my surplus amongst those in our party who had hold luggage with room to spare. Consequently, some of Geza's perfumes went in Tara's guitar case, along with my own perfume selection for the trip, while the majority, still in their cardboard box, were packed away with the drummer's cow bell. Oh, and my deodorant went with the merch team, who were flying to Luton, not Gatwick(!), so I was reunited with that item some weeks later. Jane whipped it out of her handbag with a dramatic flourish at an Indian restaurant, much to my amusement. And it would have been funny if the various members of our party who had acted as mules for me had been asked if they were 'carrying anything for somebody else', and had all said: 'Oh yes!!' and pointed at me...;)

The running joke of glass in Tara's foot

Quite early on in the trip, Tara the singer announced that he had a splinter of glass in his foot, which was giving him considerable gip. Over the course of the week he poked and prodded it in a bid to wiggle the sliver to the pinprick-sized hole where it had got in in the first place, before burrowing laterally under the skin. At one point, Peter came out with the cruel yet priceless quip: 'If we laugh at your poorly foot, would that be 'Shard-enfreude'?

Gig in the round, King Georg, Cologne ~ via Mike Urban

Miscellaneous missions

Scarf retrieval

One of my roles on tour is to be a kind of 'runner' / 'gofer' / 'woman Friday', responding to any requests as they arise, often on an emergency basis. A prime example of this was when Tara realised he had left his scarf in his hotel room, just 15 minutes before our train was due to leave. I was immediately nominated as the fastest jogger, even on a hot day as it was, and despatched forthwith to the hotel (under an underpass, up a hill). I made it to the seventh floor, somewhat breathless, just as the 'chamberman' was cleaning Tara's room. There on the corridor floor was his scarf, which I scooped up in a flash, calling through the open door: 'This belongs to one of our party!' before hotfooting it down seven flights of stairs rather than waiting for the lift.

Source: hotelbb.de

Holding things

Holding and carrying things is one of my main jobs, from guitars to drinks vouchers, to drinks themselves, to train tickets - and even lighted cigarettes. On a previous tour, Joachim the drummer had asked me to take his rucksack back to the hotel and keep it in my room overnight, while he went clubbing, unimpeded by the extra weight. He only went and realised at 2.30am that he had left his key in the rucksack that was now in my room(!), whereby hangs a tale...These past experiences rather conditioned me to expect to have to hold and keep things for hours at a time. Thus it was that at a gig in the UK the following week, three of the band were getting out of the car when the drummer handed me his rucksack, saying: 'Would you mind taking this?' I immediately asked if he wanted it back in the morning, to which he replied: 'No, only while I tie my laces.'

Impromptu photo shoots

The band had an official photo shoot in the afternoon before the gig in Mainz. The relaxed shot below was taken by Jane of the merchandise team, who was snapping away at the same time as the professional photographer:

Silly photo opportunities were not missed at any point, however. Here is a snap I took of them all (and a chap from the venue) in A Very Tall Lift at a theatre in Hamburg.

And here is one of me and Peter being all kinds of silly with the word 'Blumen' (flowers) in Mainz.

The Mutter of all headaches

On the first night of the trip, I drank a couple of strong glasses of red wine rather quickly - for logistical reasons with which I shan't trouble you. That evening (a Wednesday) an evil headache set in as soon as my head hit the flat pillow, which was to dog me till the small hours of Saturday morning. Everything became a struggle, especially in the heat, but I kept going, lapsing into lulls of pained slumping whenever the opportunity arose. As the week wore on, I ran out of my own stocks of Solpadeine, so members of our party stepped into the breach, offering their own analgesics of choice in ever increasing dosages and strengths. I tried paracetamol, ibuprofen, Co-codamol and finally, at midnight on Friday in the band dressing room, I popped a tablet of neat codeine kindly donated by Jane, and it saw the headache off in seconds!

I can't believe it's gone!

Now I have taken to calling life on tour as 'gruelling fun', and this trip was very high on the 'gruelling', but I felt so euphoric when the headache lifted - which segued into the happy encounter with Geza Schoen the following day - that it was almost worth the pain of the past few days, 'hitting your head against a brick wall and it being so nice when you stop'-style. Okay, I might not really mean that.

But you can be sure that while I still have the stamina, and the resilience to deal with the logistical curved balls that will inevitably arise when on the road, I will do it all again in a heartbeat.

Lighting at the Nachtasyl, Hamburg

When Smells and Sounds Collide: Meeting Geza Schoen in a surprise intersection of the Perfumer and Monochrome Sets

Source: Digital Bauhaus Summit 2017

I have long been an admirer of Geza Schoen and his work. He is one of those spendidly maverick perfumers, whose daring launch of the Molecule range based around a single aromachemical was a groundbreaking departure from the classic conventions of perfume construction. I am also a big fan of Ormonde Jayne, for whom it latterly emerged that Geza Schoen was a nose working alongside Linda Pilkington. Ormonde Jayne is the house with which I probably enjoy the highest 'strike rate' of any brand, as explained in this (rather preamble-y) post on the range's potential as a capsule scent wardrobe. Or I certainly did with the relatively compact offering prevailing then. I must admit that I haven't managed to keep up with their recent releases, though I know they have more exotic back stories.

And then there is the fact that Geza Schoen famously 'scented' my home town of Belfast, after spending a couple of days wandering around inhaling the city's smells, an intriguing project I reported on here. And finally he lives in Berlin, a stone's throw (more or less) from the venue where The Monochrome Set often play when they come to the city, a venue in which Geza himself has given a perfume talk! I even wrote about that coincidence some four years ago in my account of the band's 2014 German tour, when the idea of meeting the man himself was not even a twinkle in my imagination, never mind my eye. It makes me smile to re-read that post, and see that I called the section in question: "Channelling Geza Schoen". This was because I had chosen Ta'if as my SOTE to wear to the gig, before I discovered the perfumer's links to the area and Monarch itself.

Monarch (upstairs) - in Geza's 'hood!!

"Wow, if I had known that Geza Schoen - to whom I feel a particular bond because he once scented my home city of Belfast - was a local, I would have spent longer hanging out in the falafel parlours on Skalitzer Strasse.  I did have a couscous in a tagine restaurant on Lausitzer Platz, and a mushroom pancake in a cafe on Oranienstrasse, but there was no sign of his distinctive rangy form in either eaterie."

Fast forward to 2018, and there has been a further twist in the tale, namely that I have made a little bit of progress in my quest to make the band adopt perfume on even a very occasional basis. For the singer has taken to wearing Ormonde Man as a stage scent every now and then, the nearest thing to having a perfume 'in rotation', as we fumeheads would say, though I don't wish to overplay it. ;) He was cheerfully unaware though of the increasingly organic connections between scent, venue and perfumer, but when I brought him up to speed, jokingly threw down the gauntlet to me with the challenge: 'Get him down the gig!'

Well, I know it was just a flip comment, but it wormed away in my mind for a while, until eventually a head of steam built up and I psyched myself up to message Geza (who, like so many people in the perfume industry whom I don't know in real life, is a friend on Facebook), explain all the connections that have curiously arisen between me/him/band/Kreuzberg/Belfast, and suggest meeting up before the gig for a drink and a chat about perfume. I added that he would be most welcome as a guest at the concert itself, only I had no idea what his taste in music was, such that a refusal would absolutely not offend.

And Geza wrote back in the affirmative - to meeting up for a drink initially - before later confirming that he would also like to attend the gig, and could he bring an English musician friend too? Why, of course he could, and it further transpired that his friend knew of the band, liked their music, had one of their albums, and had commended them to Geza. All of this was starting to feel pleasantly surreal. I had been amazed in the past that fellow perfumistas had been fans of the music and/or up for coming along to gigs, but never would have imagined this particular intersection between my perfume and music worlds.

As he painstakingly wrote down the names of the guests on a piece of paper, Bid paused on Geza Schoen, remarking: 'That has to be an alias, surely?' Not at all, haha...

Source: Stadt Berlin ~ we sat on the lower terrace

So it was that at 8pm on the sunny Saturday in question, we met at a bar by the river just a hop and a skip away from Monarch, installing ourselves at a table on a terrace by the river. I drank beer and Geza had shandy, the German word for which I learnt was Alster, which is also the name of a lake in Hamburg, where the band had played the previous night. The venue's address was even 'Alstertor'. This was getting every so slightly weirder by the hour, though I am probably overly sensitive to Twilight Zone-y things. ;) After about 20 minutes or so were joined by Geza's friend, Paul - check out his own brand of electronic music here - and the conversation rightly shifted to more general topics.

Perfumewise, in the course of the evening we touched on Geza's training at Haarmann & Reiner - he was a contemporary there of Frank Voelkl, who went on to work with Firmenich. I had visited H & R myself on a study to do with fragrance ingredients (it was sadly just another chemicals job in those days!). I also explained my work connection to Kassel, Geza's home town (valves for the city's gas pipe network, since you ask), and inquired whether he wears perfume day-to-day much himself, or whether it is a bit like working in a chocolate factory. (Turns out it is!, although he is enjoying wearing a current mod featuring a ginger note.)

We talked a bit about the old synthetics vs naturals chestnut, and Geza was clear in his view that perfumes almost always benefit from a combination of the two. I asked him for his views on the 'skin chemistry' conundrum and he confirmed that it categorically is 'a thing'. He has a young daughter, and I was not surprised to learn that Geza is getting her to smell all manner of things from an early age, and confidently predict that she will go far in the business one day if she wants to. Then I surprised both Geza and his friend by saying that I had once blogged about the notion of being forced to wear the perfumes of only one house for ever, and whether that could actually put you off scent altogether. At the time - and it was many years ago, so possibly due for revisiting - Jean-Paul Gaultier was the house that might have tipped me over the edge in that way. I was thinking of two feminine fragrances in particular: Classique and the plastic mac/bubble gum monstrosity that is Ma Dame. (Sorry, FK, whose work I normally enjoy, notably APOM pour Femme, but this was not for me.) Maybe there are more congenial scents in the line by now, but those two I found quite alarming.

Source: Escentric.com

I also brought up the topic of a project Geza had worked on with Wolfgang Georgsdorf, involving a fabulously off the wall olfactory organ called The Smeller. If you only check out one link in this post, may it be this one, as The Smeller is as hilarious as it is ingenious. Here is a taster...

'The Smeller is an electronic olfactory organ. It looks like an alien from behind, huge, with 64 writhing metal tubes. Each tube leads to a source-chamber with a single smell in it. You could put anything that has a smell in the source-chambers: an aroma-chemical, a flower, a dead fish. Wolfgang ‘plays’ these smells like someone playing the piano.'

Yet another music and scent crossover right there...!

Stage edge to drum kit is a perilous matter of inches

And soon it was time to head to the gig, which was jam packed - or 'gerammelt voll', as they say over there. I explained that it is my wont (on account of 'tall German man at gigs' syndrome) to stand near the front if they didn't mind, and accordingly wiggled my way through the press of people to a vantage point near the stage. It was quite good that I did in fact, as the night was fraught with technical problems, and I ended up catching a light that fell on the floor and rolled under a speaker cab. The drum kit they had borrowed from the support band occupied a good two thirds of the stage area, which already seemed smaller than we remembered from last time. The other band members were in constant danger of either falling off the edge of the stage themselves, or knocking off any movable items such as bass drum, mike or music stands. The mixing wasn't great in the opening few numbers either, and between all the technical mishaps, the heat, and the delayed start to the set, I was worried that Geza and Paul were not seeing the band at their best to put it mildly, and frankly wouldn't have been at all surprised not to find them still there at the end. But amazingly they were... And said that though the sound was iffy to start with, it had got better as the set went on, and they had enjoyed themselves despite these minor glitches that had seemed all too major to me.

Post-gig scene with perfume samples

Before he left, Geza kindly handed over a box of perfume samples from his Molecule and Escentric Molecule ranges and the Beautiful Mind Series - 'for the boys to sniff through'. The unorthodox method of their conveyance back to Britain will be covered in a companion post on the travel aspects of the trip, and a week later I divvied the samples up and formally distributed them to the band in little organza bags, with the following results...

So...Bid, one of the relatively more receptive members of the band, olfactorily speaking, accepted a set, ditto Jon, who if you recall had asked me to help him find a new perfume after the Edinburgh gig that fellow fumehead Crikey attended. Thanks to the collective suggestions from Bonkers readers, that project is ongoing, and now Jon has even more things to try! In an amusing turn up for the books, no sooner had I given him his haul when he was accosted in the smokers' garden of the pub where they were playing by a girl who said she worked at McDonald's, and could he give her something to mask the smell of frying oil?! Then Andy the bass player asked if he could take them for his wife, who is Japanese, and wears scent, while he does not. And Mike the drummer said no thanks, he never wore the stuff, and neither did his girlfriend particularly, which means I have a set for reference.

But even though he claimed not to be interested in perfume, Mike burst into the venue after the sound check, running around holding Molecule 03 aloft, the most singular of the whole selection, though it was doubtless pure chance he had picked that one out. He must have nicked it from Jon's stash...And thought it extremely odd too, saying it reminded him of fish and chips. Eh?? He sprayed it on the sound girl, who didn't know what to make of 03 either, but clearly did not mind the random aspect of being spritzed by a band member, and seemed happy to keep the sample as a souvenir - for the box at the very least, as I said to her. It is funny how Geza's perfumes are finding their way into the world in unexpected ways...

Now in due course I will try to elicit feedback on what the band made of their windfall, as I will on the complete bunch of samples I gave Jon. If anyone can 'scent' The Monochrome Set, as in encouraging them to wear more perfume, it would surely be a true original like Geza Schoen. Both he and band leader Bid (the initials of whose 'official' name are also GS, just saying...) have a decidedly individualist and independent streak. They are free spirits who plough their own furrow and have turned their back on the mainstream. What's not to like about a man who, in an interview with Fragrantica, famously stated that if he hadn't been a perfumer he'd have been a 'really trendy lamp post' instead? And now - though I am still not sure that that really happened! - their paths have actually crossed...

I say, here is a pre-bagging collage of the band's samples - 10 scents x 4, except that one of the Escentric Molecules is missing (04).

I would rather like to think that was a deliberate omission on Geza's part, for I do like a curved ball.