On each 21^st of November for five years between 2005 and 2009, Bill Drummond promoted and celebrated No Music Day. After that he let it lie. But he did not switch off the No Music Day website, he had decided that should remain as a museum piece.

Since 21^st of November 2009 and early in November 2020, he did not think about No Music Day once. Then he received an email from someone in Vienna, who announced to him that they were going to be celebrating No Music Day this coming 21^st of November.

This someone is called Scharmien Zandie.

And this is their website

Although Bill Drummond no longer marks No Music Day, he has in his private world established a music free life.

To document this fact Tenzing Scott Brown has written one of his Forty Second Plays. It is entitled A Music Free Life. It features two characters. They are Music and the other is Bill. This is it:

Music:

What the fuck?

Bill:

What do you mean?

Music:

A Music Free Life?

I mean do you attend Music Lovers Anonymous?

Bill:

No, but…

Music:

For a start, I caught you listening to Gram Parsons on your Spotify app only last night, when you thought no one was in the house.

Bill:

Yeah but…

Music:

‘Yeah but’ nothing. I know you listen to more music now than ever.

Bill:

Yeah, but that is because everywhere I go there is a Spotify Play List playing. And…

Music:

And that is a good thing.

Makes the world a better place – something to be applauded.

Bill:

No!

Music only exists to make you do things you don’t want to do.

Music:

Wrong!

Very wrong!

I exist to make you do things that you didn’t know you wanted to do.

Anyway get the kettle on.

The End

And that is the end of that particular Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown. For further research explore the question ‘What is Music for?’

And…

Find out which way Scharmien Zandie is celebrating No Music Day this coming 21^st of November in a world riddled with the global pandemic of social media. A pandemic that did not exist back in 2005. And one we as yet have not found a vaccine for.

At times Bill Drummond is asked to pass comment.

At times Bill Drummond responds to being asked to pass comment by instigating one of his other selves to write a Forty Second Play.

One of these other selves takes the name Tenzing Scott Brown.

Four of these Forty Second Plays were written at the corner table of the New River Café, N16.

They were written over a period of four days in early September 2020.

The titles of these four plays are:

The Glorified Walking Stick

There Is An After Life

The Public Execution of Pop Stars

and

The Nik Kershaw Minifig

But…

In March 2020, Bill Drummond wrote a Forty Second Play, entitled Questions, Questions, Questions.

Questions, Questions, Questions was written as the introduction for a book entitled questions.

questions was written by Andrew Shaw.

questions was published by The Silent Academy in Port Townsend, Jefferson County in the state of Washington, USA. For further information about questions or to order online click HERE.

The Glorified Walking Stick is a forty second play by Bill Drummond.

The Glorified Walking Stick is set on a blue skied Monday morning sometime between the spring of 1968 and the autumn of 2020.

The Glorified Walking Stick features two characters, Tenzing Scott Brown and Kristina Bruuk.

Tenzing Scott Brown is one of Bill Drummond’s other selves trying to break free.

Kristina Bruuk is an imagined poet and artist. She has been imagined by several generations of loner women scattered across Europe.

Kristina Bruuk is originally from Helsinki in Finland.

Each of these loner women are unaware that there are other loner women imagining her.

Kristina Bruuk and Tenzing Scott Brown have been friends over several decades and various continents. But they have never been lovers.

Kristina Bruuk once recorded an album of her own songs. It was titled Between Heaven & Helsinki. The record company never released it.

Some say that Kristina Bruuk ended her life with an overdose of heroin. Others think she is now an aged lady living out her life in a two-roomed apartment in Naples.

But for the purposes of this play, she is of an uncertain age and is walking down a tree-lined boulevard in Paris, taking in what the day has to offer. And wondering why she burnt the hand written memoir she had spent the past seven months writing.

As for Tenzing Scott Brown, he is sitting at one of the outside tables of a street café, taking the last sip from his second café-au-lait of the morning. There is a white plate on the table. On the plate is a scattering of crumbs. The crumbs are those of a fresh croissant that Tenzing has just eaten. As usual he had spread the freshly baked croissant with Normandy butter and blackcurrant jam. This is what he has every morning, at the same table, at the same café, on the same street, in the same French city. Or has done since…

There are some pigeons on the ground close by, hoping for these crumbs to fall to the ground. There is a lone crow flying across the Parisian sky, surveying the scene. Tenzing is also imagining a lone red balloon drifting across the same Parisian sky – but there isn’t. He imagines this most mornings.

In his hand Tenzing is holding a copy of Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking by someone calling himself The Perambulator. It had arrived in the post earlier this morning, it was addressed to him personally. There was no covering note inside the package – thus no explanation why this book had been sent to him. The postage stamps on the package were Finnish, the postmark said Helsinki.

Tenzing Scott Brown has been reading it without a break for over two hours at his table at this street café in Paris. He is captivated by the words, the flow, the atmosphere. It’s as if the book had been written for him. He had just read the last sentence of page 211, the one that reads “I catch Rena’s eye and look down to my feet” when he stops to look up at the sky to see if there might be a red balloon floating across it – there isn’t.

But…

Instead he sees Kristina Bruuk approaching.

Kristina Bruuk is always approaching even when she is almost disappearing.

Thus…

This is where the actual Forty Second Play begins.

Kristina Bruuk:

Hey Tenzing, what are you reading?

Tenzing Scott Brown:

I think it is a novel, but maybe a memoir.

Hard to tell these days.

Set in Helsinki and it seems to feature you.

Kristina Bruuk sits down on one of the chairs across the table from Tenzing Scott Brown

Kristina Bruuk:

They all feature me, even when they don’t know it.

Any good?

Tenzing Scott Brown:

Twisted.

Kristina Bruuk:

Twisted?

Tenzing Scott Brown:

Yeah, like any great book set in Helsinki should be.

Kristina Bruuk:

And the walking stick?

Kristina Bruuk is referring to the hazel walking stick with the honeysuckle spiral, leaning against the table.

Tenzing Scott Brown:

It is my version of The Glorified Walking Stick.

Kristina Bruuk:

Is that supposed to mean something?

Tenzing Scott Brown:

If you read the book…

Anyway, any news on the release of your Between Heaven & Helsinki album.

Kristina Bruuk:

Not until after I am dead. 

The End

Although that is the official end of this Forty Second Play called The Glorified Walking Stick, Kristina Bruuk orders a café-au-lait from an unseen waiter

Picks up the copy of Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking

Flicks through the pages

Puts it down

Picks up the glorified walking stick

Admires its honeysuckle spiral.

And while this is happening we the audience – whoever and wherever we are – hear Pleasant Valley Sunday as performed and recorded by Kristina Bruuk playing on a Spotify playlist for the lost and the lonely.

Fade to grey…

Post Script:

Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking by The Perambulator is to be published by Hesterglock Press in late 2020.

Between Heaven & Helsinki by Kristina Bruuk was recorded in Helsinki in 1997 for Kalevala Recordings, it might never be released.

There Is An After Life is a Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown.

There Is An After Life has been written in response to BBC Scotland wanting to interview Bill Drummond about the eponymous Strawberry Switchblade LP, for the second series of Classic Scottish Albums.

The Strawberry Switchblade LP was originally released in April 1985.

There Is An After Life has two characters and a narrator. The two characters are an actor playing Tam Dean Burn playing Bill Drummond and an actor playing Kirsty Wark playing The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop. The narrator is an actor playing Laura Kuenssberg, who will be reading this. But this is not the Forty Second Play. The Forty Second Play does not begin until the dialogue between the actor playing Tam Dean Burn playing Bill Drummond and the actor playing Kirsty Wark playing The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop, begins.

The narration proper begins now:

There is an after life, or there was in the head of the “real” Bill Drummond when he woke from his dream at 1:27am this morning – as in a Tuesday morning in early September 2020. He was awake but he was still dreaming  he had left this life, but had not yet reached the After Life proper.

The gates were not pearly.

He was sitting at a table of a street café in Naples.

He was being questioned by Laura Kuenssberg.

You know who Laura Kuenssberg is?

Laura Kuenssberg was wanting to know the history of his sex life in the life he had lived before he had died.

Laua Kuenssberg was wanting to know if the sex life he had, had always been consensual. She needed to know the details before she could allow him to get to the next level towards the After Life.

He told her that there were times he had sex out of duty, even though he did not want to have sex. 

Laura Kuenssberg told him that was consensual.

He told her there were times he had sex, even though he knew his sexual partner was having sex because she hoped to get pregnant, but he would make sure he would withdraw before he came.

Laura Kuenssberg told him this was still consensual, but it was getting grey.

He told her that his favourite colour was grey.

He then told her that there had been times that he knew his sexual partner was hoping the sex might lead to a proper relationship, when he knew that he hoped that after sex, he could disappear into the night. Not because the sex was not good, but because disappearing into the night was better.

Laura Kuenssberg then asked him if he had seen I May Destroy You.

He said “Yes”.

He then asked Laura Kuenssberg if he should go to his wall under Spaghetti Junction and write the words “I DON’T THINK I HAVE EVER RAPED ANYONE BUT…”

Laura Kuenssberg said “No”

Laura Kuenssberg then told him, he had now passed through this level, the Sex Life level.

Only one more level to go.

The most important one.

The Pop Life one.

Laura Kuenssberg then got up from the chair at the table of a street café in Naples and disappeared.

He felt relieved that he did not have to go to his wall underneath Spaghetti Junction and write the words “I DON’T THINK I HAVE EVER RAPED ANYONE BUT…”

Then the actor playing Kirsty Wark playing The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop arrived.

You know who Kirsty Wark is?

And this is where The Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown begins proper.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop is dressed in a black and white polka-dot dress and her hair is tied up with red ribbons. In her arms she is carrying another black and white polka-dot dress and red ribbons.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop sits down at the table on the chair Laura Kuenssberg had been sitting on.

And she looks at Bill Drummond – or the actor playing Tam Dean Burn playing Bill Drummond. And this is where The Forty Second Play begins proper proper.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Bill Drummond, have you ever had a non consensual relationship with Pop Music?

Bill Drummond:

Yes.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Explain.

Bill Drummond:

I failed Strawberry Switchblade.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Explain.

Bill Drummond:

I should have never been party to Strawberry Switchblade signing to a major record label when they did.  Thus, the pressure to create a hit single and a cash in album that then failed both creatively and commercially, and follow up singles that were shit and even shittier. And then watched as Strawberry Switchblade were thrown on the dust heap of failed pop careers when it should never have been a career in the first place – but an adventure.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Was there an alternative?

Bill Drummond:

Yes.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Explain.

Bill Drummond:

After the release of the single Trees & Flowers on Will Sergeant’s 92 Happy Customers record label, Strawberry Switchblade should have been encouraged to evolve at their own pace. In that way they may have evolved into something wonderful and glorious and beautiful. Instead they dissolved into a forgotten one hit wonder.

The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop:

Bill Drummond you may enter into the After Life proper. But because of your crimes against the highest of all art forms – Pop Music, you will be obliged to wear this black and white polka dot dress and red ribbons, that I will leave for you on this table, for as long as this After Life exists.

The End

Or the end of the dialogue of this Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown.

What happens next is the actor playing Kirsty Wark playing The Fairy Bad Mother of Pop gets up from the chair she has been sitting on at the table in the street café in Naples and disappears.

Then…

While Trees & Flowers by Strawberry Switchblade is playing over the Spotify playlist for the After Life, the actor playing Tam Dean Burn playing Bill Drummond, stands up and takes off his pale blue Stanley workshirt and walking boots and his Levi Strauss, 501, red tab, button fly, shrink-to-fit, blue denim jeans. And puts on the black and white polka dot dress and ties the red ribbons around his head. He is now ready to enter the final door into whatever the After Life might be.

THE END

At this point the “real” Bill Drummond falls back to sleep.

Some hours later, the “real” Bill Drummond is sitting at his table at the corner of The New River Café in N16. The empty page of his Black n’ Red notebook in front of him, his green Pentel pen in hand. He writes.

Now go and listen to Trees & Flowers by Strawberry Switchblade and weep.

There is no End

The Public Execution of Pop Stars is a Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown.

The Public Execution of Pop Stars has been written in response to the writer Nick Duerden requesting an interview with Bill Drummond for a proposed book. A book about “how singers and musicians navigate their life after the first flush of fame; how they endure, reinvent themselves, and keep life interesting for themselves.”

This request came in late April 2020, at the height of the first wave of the global pandemic. This request sparked off a brief flurry of emails between Nick Duerden and Bill Drummond.

It is now the early Autumn of the same year. The second wave is threatening.

What follows is the Forty Second Play written by Tenzing Scott Brown in response to this request. As a play it has been much informed by the previous Forty Second Play, There Is An After Life.

Two women, deep into their middle years, dressed in black and white, polka-dot dresses and red ribbons in their hair enter the stage. They are carrying guitars. They face the audience – a worldwide audience. And in unison they recite the following lines:

“We are Strawberry Switchblade.

We exist to confront the world with certain truths.

It has been brought to our attention that mankind is the only life form on earth that is hardwired to destroy each other. And in turn destroy themselves.

This hardwiring must be unwired, if mankind is to survive.

Or…

We propose a departure from the tried and tested forms of self-destruction.

A departure that will celebrate Pop Music as the most vibrant and wonderful art form that has ever existed and ever will exist.

We propose that any future Pop Singer or Pop Group of any past, present or future genre, that has had a top forty record, and then follows it up with a record that fails to make the top forty will be taken to a designated public space and executed in front of the people. The failed Pop Singer or Pop Group will be given the choice of a noose hanging from a gallows or a razor sharp guillotine.

It is this course of action that will truly celebrate Pop Music as the most vibrant and wonderful art form that has ever existed and ever will exist.

Thank you.”

THE END

Strawberry Switchblade, then pick up their guitars and start to sing their song Trees & Flowers.

And the audience will then compare and contrast the beauty of this song with the power of theatre to impact social change as opposed to merely entertain.