The days and nights of „Laughing Stock“

„a portrait of an album by Talk Talk“

Mein Musikbuch des Jahres 2026 steht schon jetzt ausser Frage, es ist schlicht exzellent: Graeme Thomsons „In Another World – The Four Seasons of Talk Talk“.

Das Album „Laughing Stock“ ist der Herbst von Talk Talk. From the flowflow diary, years ago:

„The guy from „Zen Sounds“ is strolling through Mark Hollis‘ life, and time‘s rush (and the coffee I am drinking some miles before Bremen) is now filled with sugar and sadness. By chance, I made one of the two last interviews he ever did, in 1998, in Hamburg, before the release of „Mark Hollis“. And I was meeting him before In 1991 or 1990.

In that week when the huge cover of Talk Talk‘s „Laughing Stock“ circled on the roof of Polydor Records‘ skyscraper, I sat in his little appartment near „Angel Station“, with Markus Müller (who is now the CEO of the Monschau Jazz Festival, remember his FMP book, or the ECM exhibition in München…), and we listened to his stories, for example about Mark’s neverending love for that first Duke Ellington piece of his only album with John Coltrane… „listen, these first moments of Elvin Jones there“, and whenever I come across the name of that Underground station, it hurts. „Angel Station“.

When meeting him again in the big Hamburg hotel, there was (really strange, and unexpected) this joy, unfiltered, similar to seeing an old friend again, a big smile on his side, on my side then, too. In those two hours, while drinking tea, there was a very kind, heartfelt connection. If I now think back to that scene, after all those years, it brings a tear to my eyes. I’m NOT „romanticizing“ this. All these special moments in life, you don’t return to them necessarily in your last moments, on the deathbed, you can bring them up – en passant, and they can serve. Everything wounded will flow.“