33f Getting Fresh
If you thought that folk was getting way too popular lately, prepare to be shocked by the notion of it being involved in marketing cosmetics and spa treatments. Elizabeth Kinder isn’t complaining though…
S
ay the word ‘Spa’ to Imagined Village supremo Simon Emmer- son and he’d tell you it was where you popped in after a gig for a Ginsters pasty and a pack- et of crisps. Then with the vagaries of the music business making it difficult even for him, one of the country’s fore- most musicians, to bring home the bacon, he was on the point of seeing his local Spar Supermarket not just as a ‘con- venient shop’ but as an attractive employment option.
But his particular bacon was saved by a phone call from Mark Constantine OBE, co-founder with his wife Mo OBE, of Lush, the ‘fresh handmade cosmetics’ chain. It came out of the blue for Emmerson and in the nick of time. Emmerson had no idea who Constantine was, and Constantine, though proud possessor of all Emmerson’s records, had no idea about the music busi- ness, cheerfully admitting he didn’t even know it was in precipitous decline. He just knew he needed some music for his spas and thought “Wouldn’t it be lovely if Emmerson took on the job”.
And now, on Lush's Fresh Handmade Sound label, there are four beautifully pre- sented CD and DVD packages, stuffed full of exquisitely recorded birdsong, sea shanties and through-composed music rooted in traditional English songs, with gorgeous images of the countryside and coast to go with them: an English idyll in sound and vision. If these were shipped out by the English Tourist Board, we’d have holidaymakers from across the world hot- footing it to Devon and Dorset in droves.
They might also want to pop into the Lush Spa in Poole for a massage whilst they were at it, for each CD/DVD combo relates to a particular treatment of which the music is an integral part. Listening to the music alone it has its own internal integrity; supporting the DVD images it makes sense as a soundtrack; but hear it whilst you’re having a treatment and you realise its true meaning. It’s as if Emmer- son’s written a few ballets and you become a still, core part in a marvellous dance as the massage is performed in time to the music pouring out of the surround- sound speakers.
Emmerson’s concept of ‘spa’ has clear- ly expanded. There’s no way he could have come up with any of this without experi- encing the treatments, a fact he confirms when I meet up with him and Constantine, aptly enough at Cecil Sharp House, the day before the Constantines go off to get their gongs from the Queen.
I’m here under strict instructions to discuss business models, but we get onto the subject of birds. And it’s difficult to get off it, not least because their passion for the subject is infectious. We are not talk- ing about the type you form indie-rock bands to attract – as Emmerson did in the early ’80s with his hit group Working Week. We are also not talking about casu- al twitching – popping out to the local reservoir with a pair of binoculars and a thermos of tea on a sunny afternoon – but absolutely dedicated bird analysis, result- ing in the discovery of new species. In Con- stantine’s case bird-watching entails being dropped by a helicopter into feet of snow in a Norwegian fjord to spend hours in temperatures which peak at minus 17 to record the call of a Hawk Owl.
Simon Emmerson & Jackie Oates of Walking With Ghosts
Photo: Richard Hill
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