By The Landlord
"Have nothing in your home that you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." —William Morris
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
“Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.” – Charles M. Schulz
What strange times we are currently in. It’s hardest for frontline workers and their families – medical staff, the emergency services, teachers. But also many businesses are badly hit – hotels, bars, restaurants, and of course, music venues and musicians. But local shops might at least now thrive, and of course, with people stuck inside, DIY stores. So by sheer coincidence, with a certain amount of enforced isolation, this week we are going to spruce up the Bar with the topic of decor, that is decoration of a room with anything that’s not bare walls and walls – furnishings, wallpaper, paint, curtains, carpets, rugs and more. It’s time to take some artistic licence through isolation, and pick from your palette of musical paints to fix up, adorn, harmonise and help create playlists that decorate the mind. Naturally though, our Song Bar doors are wide open for everyone to gather, unfettered and without fear any health effects other than excessive good cheer, banter and musical stimulation.
Playing with your ceiling ideas?
I grew up in a messy, unfussy home of 1970s browns-and-orange patterned peeling wallpaper. My parents were eccentric, untidy, and definitely not house proud. So when the craze of home decor TV programmes mushroomed with hyped crazes in the 1990s and 2000s, I responded with indifference, disdain and a two-fingered salute. I didn’t own a home until the new millennium anyway, and saw all this “Changing Rooms” stuff as a load of superficial tosh. I still think it is to be honest. If I saw Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and his like approach my door, I might reach for a pitchfork.
I think it’s great to do up your home nicely and all, and I admire people who’ve created something really beautiful out of a shell (that means you, my friend Betty in Liverpool). Then, I reckon, life is for living once you’ve finished with that decor, and I take a leaf out the book of Salvador Dali, who says: “Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it,” and the melancholy philosophy of Karl Pilkington. “Stop looking at the walls, look out the window.”
When on walls, colours may not be as seen on screen. That’s handy.
While I’m doing a quite a bit of home improvement to our house this year, and there is often paint on my fingernails, I shrink with frustration that I have to send off for and look tile samples that turn out to look nothing like they do online, or have to choose from a series of paint colours with ridiculous names. Burnt orange, sunlight yellow, olive, blue-grey? Fine, and I might be just stirring it up here, but who in their right mind would even consider buying absurdly expensive paint called things like Mouse's Back, Churlish Green, Eating Room Red, Charlotte’s Locks, Arsenic, Pale Hound, Elephant’s or Mole’s Breath, FFS?
Mic lamps, anyone?
But while most of us mull over whether to go for white, off-white, or something else, let’s dip into some glamorous decor. So then, for inspiration, the Song Bar spies have been having a sneaking peek inside the stylish, or otherwise homes of a few famous music artists, and the result is a carousel slideshow. It opens with an image of David Bowie relaxing in his Mustique retreat comprised, tastefully of course, of Japanese and Scandinavian–style pavilions, but the rest are less obvious, though with a few visual clues. Fame and fortune can bring both good and bad taste of course, and some inherit it from previous occupants, or the skills of designers and architects. Can you guess to whom each belongs? Answers will come as the topic progresses through the weekend.
Musical artists’ secret home decor carousel:
So you might see Mediterranean or Roman inspired villas and neo-classical pillars, New York triplex apartments with tiger stripe velvet, endless white cushions and cream walls, ranches with wooden branches, wrought iron and Shaker furniture, walnut staircases decorated with gold discs, dark Renaissance libraries, art deco jazz pads, Brutalist modern houses, seventies wallpapers browns and bedrooms bedecked with red velvet carpets and ceilings, lots and lots of carved wood, brightly coloured modernist art, or double-height living halls inspired by a church nave, party houses designed for a rave, pink palaces and glass effigies, homes inspired by heroes, eras, learning, emotions, sex, and most of all themselves. As interior designer David Hicks says: "The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them."
Of course these are just the ones of which we've got a glimpse. Others are probably far more opulent, or on the other hand, they could be complete shit-holes, with piles of socks, dust old Rizlas and guitar strings. And while there are some pristine and magnificent home music studios (see Peter Gabriel's, for example), the great English painter Francis Bacon created in complete mess, to which images of studio bear witness. Another of his particularly eccentric leanings was to hang out in the dodgier, edgier corners of London's east end, particularly in the 50s and 60s, keen to get a rough action seeing-to from various geezers, including, in a part of sexual act, getting a bit of defenestration (ie being thrown through a window), to which might remark, brushing off the broken glass, cuts and bruises. "Thank you. I really rather enjoyed that."
A very different decor – Francis Bacon
So no fancy decor for in Bacon's world. And on one occasion, hanging out with boyfriend George Dyer in a London pub, the story goes that another man got chatting to him and heard Francis was a painter. Except he assumed it was of the painter and decorator type.
"Tell you what," says the bloke. "If you're handy with a paintbrush I can get you some work next week. Got a whole house that needs doing if you fancy it."
"How very kind," replied Bacon, "I'll check my diary." He bought him a drink, and was also too kind to tell the guy that he was in fact a very different kind of painter and had recently sold a painting for over a million.
Another favourite painter-decorator misunderstanding comes in the form of Paulie from The Sopranos, in one of the greatest episodes (Season 3, Ep 11 Pine Barrens) where he and sidekick Chris are charged by Tony to get rid of a Russian rival in the frozen woods but turns out to be a bit of a handful and manages to escape.
But here at the Bar, no doubt there will be no misunderstanding when it comes to decorating our interior with great music, painting musical timbres with only the finest taste. So then, feeling all feng shui (wind-water)? Is it time to master the art of Chinese geomancy, and harmonise your fixtures and fittings in musical form?
Shed any light on this?
So it is with great pleasure that I hand you over to this week’s chief decorator, no doubt mixing paints and telling many jokes and anecdotes from up a ladder, the generous and gregarious George Boyland aka sonofwebcore. Decorate the comment section with your song nominations in comments below by last orders at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published on Wednesday. Let’s decorate.
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