Alex James

Slow Life | 13 June 2009

Magic moments

issue 13 June 2009

My heart’s beating faster. I’ve been completely immersed in pop music all week. Spent the days playing bass with Blur in a rehearsal studio complex, a dozen or more sticky soundproof cells right next to Pentonville Prison: overhearing The Pretenders, Ash and Feeder on my way to the bog; unidentified waterfalls of soul and volcanoes of rock billowing and erupting from windowless corridors. After ripping through 40 songs at high volume on Tuesday I went to meet my music publisher at the café by the Serpentine.

Well, he was full of beans. Always is: the music industry runs on a mixture of enthusiasm, gossip and serendipity. We sat in deckchairs in the shade of a willow yammering 19 to the dozen as the sun went down. ‘The talk’s not great on the Florence and the Machine album,’ he said.

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