202305 - It's been a long...
Hey it’s me, MJ!
I can’t hide the truth - I haven’t been lost in a black hole, I haven’t come unstuck in deep space, I didn’t lose my moonboots in Alpha Centuri and have to take a nightbus back there to retrieve them…
For all my space-themed gassing (is there gas in a vacuum? I’m guessing not, rather than googling it) there’s been so much going on. And that’s partially because it’s been 25 months since I checked in with you all via blog! In that time, approximately 6 stars have gone supernova and died out in our galaxy…
“The Milky Way produces stars weighing about 3 solar masses (equivalent to 3 Suns) per year. And, stars equivalent to 1 solar mass die every year”
So, here’s a whistle-stop tour of the past 2 years in the half-life of Temporal Comet:
2021
As we took tentative steps out of lockdowns and away from exponential viral spread, Temporal Comet released its first single in 2 years. ‘Shine’ was well received, but we suffered from a lack of places to play, and so the song didn’t get out to as many people as we had hoped.
Our two main shows in 2021 turned out to be our last as a duo. Both were eventful… Firstly, we played in our back garden in Whitechapel E1 with friends ‘Dreampark’ one sunny evening... Our performance could apparently be heard 300 metres away at the Tube station.
In October, Temporal Comet hosted a Halloween Spooktactular in Shoreditch, supported by a few groups I came across on Instagram. The event went well, but technical problems dampened out the fun a little during the gig itself and added a few strains to the working relationship within the group.
Things then continued to take a strange turn. Before Christmas, COVID21 got into some already existing cracks in the band’s dynamic. It soon became clear that differences were irreconcilable, and drummer Hugo was asked to leave the band.
There were some musical differences too - I favoured a drier, more experimental approach to drumming, and it was clear that Hugo aimed to inject more of a ‘rock’ sensibility into the group. At this point I’m much happier with bleeps and bloops than with drum fills and stick-twiddling, but it has to be said, I’m very particular about the music I want to write and the sounds I want to hear. Being solo would give me that freedom, but first I needed a break.
2022
I saw Hugo a couple of times to wrap up the business accounts for Temporal Comet. I was solo again, and orbiting without a map. By the way, for astronavigation, I swear by this one:
Although some of the previous songs I recorded were still not released*, I really needed some breathing space, to find out again what I wanted to do with Temporal Comet.
And so, by June I had only posted 3 things to social media, and some of you asked where I had gone. I needed to take a step back - 2021 had been difficult, even aside from the global pandemic-related issues which had taken such a toll on everyone (perhaps even the 1%…)
And then in July, my universe got turned upside down and shaken about a bit. When the dust settled, Jupiter was next to Mercury and Earth looked a little worse for wear.
Jumping back about 20 years, I was playing in a group called ‘The Astronauts’.
I had met Mark ‘Astronaut’ Wilkins in a record shop in my home town (Welwyn Garden City) and he had surreptitiously tried to sell me a Led Zeppelin bootleg. We exited the shop, and got chatting. It transpired that he was also looking for a bass player for an upcoming gig as The Astronauts at Bowes Lyon House in Stevenage. My first gig, at a venue where Jeff Buckley had played 15+ years earlier!
We supported Big Day Out and Jane Bom-Bane, and I passed the audition. I continued to play with The Astronauts for a few years, at punk hotspots such as Hobgoblin in Brighton and Chat’s Palace in London. When I left the group, it morphed into ‘The Otters’, and back again, into another version of The Astronauts.
Mark was always reinventing the band, and his music. Anyway, it was always so varied and diverse that for me, The Astronauts is really a vehicle for the wit and creativity of Mark, and the outlet for him to express what was in his head. I drifted away, but always stuck to the space theme - later forming ‘To The Moon’ with Dennis White (one time Otters drummer) and later, living in Paris, continued the theme when helping to come up with the name ‘Temporal Comet’.
Once an Astronaut, always an Astronaut, I guess…
Time-travell back to July 2022, and another lapsed friend and Astronaut, Dom, messages me to say that Mark has lost his ongoing battle with long-term illness.
I had lost one of my best, and longest, friendships. It felt like 2016 again, when we lost David Bowie. Mark (like Bowie) was someone who informed my teenage years and musical tastes - without him I would have a different, less compassionate social/ political view, and certainly wouldn’t have discovered half the bands I love today, from Kevin Ayers to Curved Air, from Zappa to Blur…
I have already had the opportunity to write (albeit to a word limit) about Mark, for the Other Lives series in the Guardian (UK) newspaper, but suffice it to mention that without Mark, I’d be on a different trajectory today, no doubt.
Mark’s death in July came just a few months after we’d been to see mutual favourites Van der Graaf Generator at the Palladium in London, and although it pained me to realise that my gig buddy and great friend was gone, there was at least a warm and fuzzy feeling produced when I realised that I had helped him close a loop; Mark’s first gig, which his parents took him to as a child, had been at the same venue, back in 1963!
And in a final action, Mark had nudged the trajectory of my life once again…
It had been years since I had seen most of the faces in our Welwyn music community. In the intervening years since I stopped playing bass in the Astronauts, I had moved first to London and then to Paris, France, and then back to London again. I had lost touch with so many friends (I’m notoriously bad at maintaining friendships because I have a slight self-esteem issue which gets in the way of my relationships.)
Mark’s funeral rolled around, and there, in a packed crematorium near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, were 200+ people that loved Mark and his music. Among them, the community I had lost.
As scared as I was about the prospect of catching up with my past, I wasn’t going to let the day go by without collecting a lot of contact details and promising to myself that I’d do better to stay in touch with all these amazing people, this time around.
2023
As true to my word as possible, 2023 has seen two major changes in my life…
1 - I have joined a band with one of those friends from 15 years ago. Short Rouge is comprised of Dan and Dudu (drums and bass) along with one of those lapsed friends, Lee, who was such an inspiration and great friend back in my youth (yes, I really am saying “when I was young” haha). I’m playing guitar and we’re making some experimental music which sounds like a mash-up of The Residents, King Crimson, Blur, and This Heat. Not bad! Plus half of these artists are ones that Mark Astronaut introduced me to the in the first place (you see how important he was to my musical taste!)
2 - I have embarked on a project of recording some of Mark’s songs.
The Astronauts (i.e. Mark and whichever musicians he had around him at the time) must have recorded over 100 songs. Largely undiscovered, many of these tracks deserve to have a continuing (and increasing) audience. I know that other friends, such as Dom Perez-Silva of the Otters/ Astonauts, and Wasp, vocalist and breath-taking front-person of Rites of Hadda are doing their bit, creating their own versions of Mark’s songs, and between us (and others, including groups ‘Blyth Power’ and ‘Pog’) we will make sure that Mark’s music isn’t allowed to disappear - it always deserved a larger audience than it ever got.
You can listen to Dom’s versions at bandcamp; Rites of Hadda haven’t yet recorded their full-force (full-frontal?) version of Mark’s ‘Everything Stops for Baby’ yet but stay tuned on their Spotify where they have already released some excellent songs. Also, checking them out live is practically a no-brainer, and everyone should see them perform, cos they’re great.
I have started work on 5 Astronauts’ songs, spanning Mark’s songwriting career from the late 70s to 2022. Meanwhile the remaining Astronauts are working to release the final Astronauts album, album 10, which will hopefully be ready by Mark’s birthday on 27 August this year.
I’ve got some stellar help, in the form of Lee Hague (amazing drummer from the Otters/Astronauts) as well as Wasp, and many others. I wouldn’t be able to do this project without Kostas Michaloudis for whom I’m grateful every day!
I don’t have a release date for my covers of Mark’s songs, but I’m also allergic to planning. So stay tuned!
It’s been an interesting few years, in which I’ve lost two friends but gained some great perspective - please tell me in the comments what you have missed out on, what you have enjoyed, what you’ve been most grateful for since the pandemic.
* those songs, ‘Two Sides’ and ‘Silencio’ remain unreleased. Furthermore, my distributor (company that uploads my songs to Spotify, Tidal, etc changed their business model, removing three Temporal Comet songs from streaming platforms in the process. We lost ‘Anticipation’, ‘Falling’ and ‘Rising’… but when I work out the best way to do it (without spending a lot of money and time), they will be back. If you have any recommendations for distribution, please let me know, I’ll be eternally grateful.
In the meantime, you can still play some of the songs on Bandcamp or Youtube. Thanks in advance for having a listen!