The Dean Street Session

An audio juggernaut 🪫

In February of 2014, we flew to London on our first promotional jag for the new UK label, 100% Records. 100% had acquired the rights to TV en Français the previous summer, and released the Business Casual e.p. that autumn, so although they had been marinating in the band’s music for a while, our capability as self-marketers was still unknown. 100% were about to discover that they had just signed a “promotional juggernaut.”¹

While in town, we were scheduled to sit for interviews, sign hundreds of copies of TVeF for preorders, appear on Channel 4’s beloved/tolerated Sunday Brunch, play a show at the storied shithole Camden Barfly, and host the first The Fly Awards (a live music awards show similar to The Grammys, if The Grammys were put out of business by their awards show). In addition to all that, we would perform an exclusive meet & greet & cocktails for press and a few lucky fans at the legendary Dean Street studios in Soho. The Dean Street session was sandwiched in the middle of a long day (I guess one should say “tomatoed” or “cheesed,” since it was just one layer among many inside the sandwich), and we had arrived the evening before from two days of promo in Berlin. Nevertheless, we sound pretty okay. Take a listen…

W.A.S. at Dean Street Studios, 5 February 2014

Okay, sure, there’s a palpable limpness between songs — we seem incapable of speech above a mutter toward the end. The song-playing is solid, though, and remember, this was our schedule that day (addresses have been left in, in case you want to plot our course):

09:25 Keith Carne arrival LHR. Flight No: DL 001 Term. 4 [Ed.: Keith Carne had flown overnight from New York, not having attended the promo days in Berlin.]

10:00 Car booked, Addison Lee. K-West Hotel to 6 Music

10:50 6Music - Matt Everitt (pre record 11am) - BBC, 99 Great Portland St, London, W1A 1AA

11:45 1 hour free

13:15 XFM - Phil Clifton pre record - Global Radio, 30 Leicester Sq (30-40 mins)

14:00 Lunch

15:00 Barfly Soundcheck; Cleared by 5pm - 49 Chalk Farm Rd, London NW1 8AN

16:45 Car to Dean St Studios (Van or cab) [Ed.: Not very nice of 100% to disallow by omission a helicopter.]

17:15 Dean St Studio- Soundcheck - 59 Dean St, London W1D 6AN

18:00 Dean St Studio - 30 min set. Filmed by Secret Sessions. [Ed.: Where is this film? Lost to history, it seems.]

19:15 Dinner

20:20 BBC R2 - Jo Whiley pre record. Cleared by 9pm. - BBC Radio 2, 99 Great Portland St, London, W1A 1AA

20:55 Car, Addison Lee. BBC to Camden Barfly.

21:15 Barfly set time

You can bet we were very drunk, very loose, and yet somehow terribly winning at that Barfly set (cf. “promotional juggernauts”). Anyway, not such a terrible showing at the Dean Street gig. I’ve heard worse. What, you want me to name names? Okay, I’ve heard worse from Paul McCartney, The Strokes, and Miles Davis.

Now, a number of S.D.I.R. readers will recognize this audio as that which was lasered into a CD you received from 100% Records last fall as a sort of apology for delivering your TV en Français, 10th Anniversary vinyl a little late.² We hope that by re-publishing it here, we haven’t diminished the consolatory value of that earlier gift. We figured that several months of exclusive access to a short, middling, 10-year-old live set was nothing to sneeze at.

The fact is, we had zero recollection of The Dean Street Session when label man Ed unearthed it last summer (it was Ed’s idea to send it to TVeF vinyl customers), and still needed reminding when, a couple of days ago, we thought about flinging it out to the S.D.I.R. community. Absent our own memory banks to reference, we decided to plunder Ed’s. We found him to be a willing and helpful victim, as this unexpurgated, lightly copyedited What’sApp conversation will attest…

Chris Cain: I’m gonna substck that TVeF bonus concert you dug up last summer, the one you sent as a CD to TVeF orderers. Do you recall the context in which the recording was made? The nature of the show, etc.…?

Ed MacDonald: I do!

Ed MacDonald: It was recorded at Dean Street Studios which self-describes as legendary on the basis that David Bowie did some work there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Street_Studios

The session was done as part of a promo trip that you made to the UK ahead of the release of TVeF. Other activities undertaken at the time included a secret gig at the Barfly in Camden, your hosting of the inaugural/final The Fly awards, your signing of a lot of records in a very damp basement under our shitty old office, and most importantly the cocktail-drinking and flower-arranging appearance on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch at which you performed Make It Easy

https://www.musicweek.com/news/read/the-fly-awards-2014-all-the-winners/057560

Ed MacDonald: The purpose of the session was to attract media types to an exclusive performance somewhere in central London, and make their life as easy as possible. It could be noted if you wish that this did not result in front page status on NME!

Ed MacDonald: (How’s that for memory?! Toby was only praising my long term memory this morning)

Keith Murray: An impressive run of recall. But what color socks was I wearing?

Ed MacDonald: You weren’t wearing socks at all you liar

Keith Murray: That’s right. I was completely naked from the waist down.

Chris Cain: Possibly keeping us off the cover of NME.

Chris Cain: Was the Dean Street session calculated to suggest to UK press that we were in roughly the same league as David Bowie?

Keith Murray: Whatever! TheHogBlog.com loved it.

Ed MacDonald [replying to KM: “That’s right…”]: As I recall, that bit was ChrisCain when hosting The Fly Awards

Keith Murray: Fun fact: Dean St. Studios is (was?) owned by Keith Top Of The Pops, of Art Brut Associate fame.

Ed MacDonald [replying to CC:“Was the Dean…”]: I was too junior at the time to really have a view on this, but yes I think I can confidently assert that this was Toby’s plan

Keith Murray: Although that’s not reflected in that Wikipedia article. Maybe he just stole the keys?

Ed MacDonald: You also stole one of the not-very-good award trophies from The Fly, and they were in sufficiently dire financial straits that they begged us to get it back to them

Ed MacDonald: You displayed it during your performance on Sunday Brunch

Chris Cain: Cheeky lads

Keith Murray: 😵‍💫

Ed MacDonald: Dave Cronen found the whole thing deeply amusing. He was right to [Ed(itor): Dave Cronen was W.A.S.’s UK manager at the time.]

Chris Cain: What else happened that Sunday Brunch, pray tell?

Ed MacDonald: I don’t recall as I had too many cocktails

Chris Cain: Yes, I do know there were cocktails before noon

Ed MacDonald: It was a very early call time [Ed.: The call time, discovered in contemporaneous emails, was 7:45 a.m.]

Ed MacDonald: and every other guest was assigned to cocktails except you

Ed MacDonald: you got flower arranging

Chris Cain: I love that we were just like, “It may be eight in the morning, but we’re not appearing on TV sober”

Chris Cain: Wait, the other guests were *making cocktails*? Did the booker do zero research??

Ed MacDonald: so you “took to twitter” in the green room to publicly complain about this. A researcher/runner came in with a tray of spare cocktails

Chris Cain: How assertive of us

Ed MacDonald: and as such you consumed more alcohol than any of the other guests. You went back to America that afternoon

Chris Cain: “You went back to America that afternoon, despite your plans, at the insistence of the British government”

Ed MacDonald: Obviously Musk has completely broken twitter so I am not having a huge amount of success locating those tweets

Ed MacDonald: it was on the old scientistbros account though

Ed MacDonald: Cronen deleted his twitter account which means the images of you flower arranging may be lost forever

Keith Murray: Somewhere, I have a photo of those cocktails being delivered. It was clearly the only notable aspect of that Sunday Brunch visit.

Ed MacDonald: BOOM

Ed MacDonald: Yes, I believe I am in shot creasing up with laughter

Chris Cain: What about the fact that we permanently changed the way flowers are arranged in the UK?

Ed MacDonald: If memory serves (which it has been doing pretty well today thus far) ChrisCain gathered a bunch of entirely green foliage with no flowers whatsoever

Chris Cain: Flower buds are overrated. The foliage is the real shit.

Ed MacDonald: And the lady who was explaining it all really didn’t know how to react to this, so she simply didn’t

Chris Cain: Check out the comments. What was the deal with rum punch? Was there mythology concerning my criminal activities after drinking rum punch?

Ed MacDonald: Now this I do remember! You somehow managed to end up speaking about rum punch on stage at the Barfly gig

Ed MacDonald: ‎Here you are, entertaining the nation…

Chris Cain: Who’s drumming, Aaronson?

Ed MacDonald: Carne!

Chris Cain: Oh, snap! And so did he do the Dean Street show? Keith was thinking it was Burrows. [Ed.: Told you. Our memory banks are cheesecloth and spider webs.]

Ed MacDonald: He was around for it all yeah

Ed MacDonald: Barfly, Dean Street, Sunday Brunch

Chris Cain:

‎Chris Cain: Fly Awards, I take it? I have no memory of this. What’s going on with the two guys on the left?

Chris Cain: Looks like Damon Albarn is trying to interrupt John Mayer’s speech, and Keith is like, Can we get Chris a cape?

Ed MacDonald: Fly Awards yes!

Ed MacDonald: I actually did not go to the Fly Awards myself but I was suitably horrified to see this picture

Chris Cain: And this must be backstage at Sunday Brunch…

Keith Murray: Oh, shit. We probably just poured all of those drinks into one urn and drank the mixture through a straw.

Chris Cain:

Ed MacDonald: That’s the stuff!!

Ed MacDonald [replying to EM:“…gathered a bunch of entirely green foliage…”]: I knew my memory wasn’t faulty!

Chris Cain: Batting a thousand, Ed.

Ed MacDonald: February: We Are Scientists host inaugural The Fly awards

March: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/07/the-fly-music-magazine-closes-after-nearly-15-years

Ed MacDonald: Here is some important history too: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579358112148743&id=253767121374512&set=a.262140740537150

Chris Cain:

Ed MacDonald: Hahahaha!

Chris Cain: We’re both smiling in the picture he’s commenting on…

Keith Murray: I wonder if this is the only time in recorded history that we’ve been accused of being too serious?

Ed MacDonald: Obviously Keith didn’t have a good poker face on screen following the terrible news that you wouldn’t be involved in cocktail making

Chris Cain: I imagine we were both probably pretty sulky at that table due to the spikeless OJ

Chris Cain: I do like the epithet “misery guts”

Ed MacDonald: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=579422132142341&set=a.26214074053715

Chris Cain: That guy with the goatee and light gray shirt is misery guts, it looks like!

Ed MacDonald:

Ed MacDonald: To be fair, if they had done their research adequately and put you on the cocktail segment, the show would have been substantially better

Chris Cain: Dave Cooper is nuts. Top 10 all time Sunday Brunch eps, for sure

Mercifully, it ended there. Hope you enjoyed the Dean St. Session, and related esoterica. We certainly enjoyed having our memories exhumed and reanimated, or at least described to us by a third party. [Thanks, Ed! –Ed.]

Mixing begins this week on the new record. 🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨

💞,

Chris’n’Keith

Keith taking a quiet moment to re-energize before doors at The Fly Awards.

Wonder which one we spirited away?

1. Actually a reference to the Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons. In a 2017 article, Yahoo Finance Canada referred to Tim Hortons' "Roll up the Rim" contest as a "promotional juggernaut."

2. Something like 6 months late.