Music Arcades: Dark Star: Twenty Twenty Sound

The second album in a row that I've bought on the strength of its cover.

Back last year, I mentioned that the artist Tom Phillips listened to cricket commentary as a soundtrack to painting, and knew of another artist who recorded cricket commentary, so he could play it back a few years later when he'd forgotten the result. At the time I remember trying to track down who that other artist was, but failed. Good news: I've now found my notes from the event at the ICA on 24 November 2007, where Tom mentioned this — they name David Inchall as the artist in question. Not so good news: there doesn't seem to be an artist called David Inchall. My guess is that David Inshaw is the culprit.

The event in question was Tom Phillips in conversation with his long-term publisher and friend Hansjörg Mayer, mainly about their collaboration on the Humument. If you think my music collection is bad, you should see my Humument collection. Tom retold a few anecdotes like going to see William Burroughs, who lived in London in the sixties, to ask his opinion on an early edition of the Humument. He arrived at Burroughs' home, and showed him the book, which Burroughs started to look through, passing comment as he did. This began at 10am, and continued until Tom left around 6pm "without food, drink or seat" throughout his stay. Old Uncle Bill was "very puritanical," as I wrote in my notes of Tom's story.

Some 44 years after he began working on the Humument, Tom is currently engaged with the fifth edition. He hasn't made a lot of money from this enterprise. As he observed, an artist's income frequently bears little relation to his own perception of worth. For example, he cited a couple of instances where he felt the financial reward was out of proportion to his efforts. "Dark Star album cover, paid more than TP thought it was worth. Ditto with something for Playstation. 'Awesome' was the one judgment they made."

I'd never heard of Dark Star — have you? Having now listened to this, their one album from about a decade ago, they're the kind of band that, if you had heard of them, you would in all likelihood have forgotten. They're not at all bad — they'd be memorable if they were — just unremarkable. Evidently they had lots of EMI's money spent on them, however, as the CD package is lavish, and Steve Lillywhite produced the album. There are credits for three managers, a booker, an A&R guy, and, finally, Tom Phillips. As Simon Napier-Bell put it, "A contract with a major record company was always a 90 per cent guarantee of failure." Here's their unofficial fan site, last updated in 2004.

Never mind Dark Star. I was on to the Internet the next day to pick up a copy of the CD ("Limited Edition Includes Three Prints") as an inexpensive (£9.23 inc p&p) way of extending my Tom Phillips collection. In truth, it's not his best work, but I was never led to expect that it would be. The inside of the gatefold is better than the cover, and one of the three prints has a neat effect I can't remember seeing in any page of the Humument.