At The Barbers

 

Pilot Flying

Well, I've sent off the pilot after editing it today. I found a great site that has free bleeps (I had to bleep out a name), after trying and failing to say 'bleep' loudly enough to use. It was really good fun listening to them to find the right one.

Drudge-wise, I thought the central heating was broken, called out The Chap and realised that I hadn't turned on the thermostat! It needs to be serviced anyway, and he's coming back to do that later in the week. 

My daily dunce moment was counterbalanced by the fact that the vacuum cleaner was badly blocked, and the obstacle was in the curve of the pipe that was unreachable by the longest bamboo garden cane that I could find. So I unscrewed it from the machine, and ran water from the cold water tap through it- and the water pressure drove out a sock that had jammed itself into the crook of the pipe. After hanging the pipe from a tree branch to dry, the machine has been reassembled and works perfectly. Boring, eh?

I should be re-doing the final replacement vocal today, but I've had a 'flu jab and I feel like a spaceman on the moon: big steps for womankind, oddball announcements and the sensation of a space helmet that only allows a person to look in one direction. Instead, I put the songs in order, typed up the lyrics and made a data sheet. It's so close to being finished, just a whisker. Funny to have got to this point just as Kev's film Punk Brighton is completed and out there to watch. It's going to be screened at The Duke of York's in Brighton on Wednesday 28th October, and The Rio, Dalston on the 29th: https://riocinema.org.uk/Rio.dll/WhatsOn?f=2886423

L to R: me, Johnny Piranha, Dave from the Depressions, Tony from Flesh, Rose Barnard, Stu Jones from Attrix records, Phil from The Lillettes, Johnny from Johnny and the Lubes.

Woman Selling Baskets

 

Amended Gig Poster

11/10 Betsey Trotwood with Robert Rotifer
wegottickets.com/f/22135
12/11 Old Hairdresser’s Glasgow with Lorraine Lucas
wegottickets.com/f/26674
13/11 Todmorden with The Sunbathers
14/15 Louder Than Words, Manchester
22/11 Bristol Knowle Club with Anna Kissel
26/11 Rochester Micro Brewery with Allan Crockford
29/11 Supporting Nat The Hammer at the Servant Jazz Quarters (album launch)
18/12 Brighton Prince Albert with Asbo Derek both supporting each other

wegottickets.com/f/23920 

Faffing

I've already been faffing today- did I choose the right banjo take? Would the clawhammer be better, scratching away? I tried it, and it isn't- but I'll do just a vocal and clawhammer mix for fun later on.

I've been running through the songs: my smashed fingertip still a bit dicey but it'll do for the gig next Sunday.

I'm also within sneezing distance of finishing the pilot community radio show I'm doing. I've interviewed Molly Tie and Johny Brown (postcard from Newcastle and postcard to Newcastle), Little Bruv has chosen some tracks from the area and done mini-intros, I've scripted and recorded mine, and now I think I'll do a jingle! Currently the washing machine is on, so not till later when the swishing's finished.

Yesterday evening I didn't an interview with Jane Duffus for her zine about the punk embroideries that I do. Jane embroiders too. It's a slow, but very therapeutic, process and it's the first time anyone's interviewed me about my arty stuff!

Giggling

 11/10 Betsey Trotwood with Robert Rotifer

https://wegottickets.com/f/22135

12/11 Old Hairdresser’s Glasgow with Lorraine Lucas

https://wegottickets.com/f/26674

13/11 Todmorden 3 Wise Monkeys with The Sunbathers

22/11 Bristol Knowle Club with Anna Kissel

18/12 Brighton Prince Albert with Asbo Derek

https://wegottickets.com/f/23920

Badges for Bandcamp

It's Bandcamp Friday, and I've got the Darkside Truth badges up on Bandcamp now:

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/merch/the-darkside-truth-badge

Finishing Post In Sight

I've done a bit of everything today: singing, playing guitar, chopping up sound waves, moving parts of songs around, deleting, cutting and pasting. And panicking, too. What if something happens to my computer before I've finished? I can remember everything I've done and could reconstruct it all if I had to, but...

Then I began to edit the community radio pilot show till I realised that I'll have to write a script to link the interviews, and that really felt like a job for tomorrow. The project is open and ready to go, which is better than it was a couple of weeks ago when it felt like an enormous hill to climb. A structure, a structure, so many things need a structure! There have been scaffolders out the back in a neighbour's garden. I feel like a mental scaffolder: the construction without the clanging. Anything to make sense of the scribbled lists that feather the chaotic nest of my planned projects.

Ho hum, all the rest is private and ever more so now that Google has set Ai loose on everything it provides to the public!

Couple Taking Photo At The Royal Robemakers

 

Juggler In The Park

 

Dear Mixing Diary

This album's taking a lot longer to mix than the other one. It's a bit like altering a garment and then having to alter it again because it doesn't quite fit yet. Yesterday, I had a crisis of confidence and felt that I was creating the most massive turkey the world had ever heard. Today, it's more of a chicken and I hope to have a beautiful egret by the time it's finished!

When you make an album there is always at least one tricky track that feels like it's a dud; you have to work at it, and to that end I'm going to re-sing the vocal and then cluster in the rest of the track around that. The instrumentation had taken over and was fighting the sense of the lyrics.

Then you have another song that tries to be a Favourite Child. You can't have that, so the whole album has to be nudged up to that level. And the sequence of tracks has to work as well, especially with this one because of the storytelling aspect. The problem is that in life, things tend to happen all at once and then not happen at all: there's not a tidy order that makes things proceed in a coherent fashion. It reminds me of being freelance, with the plastic carrier bags by the door: a children's musical, a soundtrack, a songwriting workshop each in separate bags lined up and ready to go when they were needed. Life would be incredibly busy for two or three months and then there would be several months of nothing in which it felt as though everything had ended- then a glut of work again. 

Those punk years really were chaotic. There were no brakes on anything, and no boundaries on what might happen. Trying to tidy it into episodes has involved some heavy-duty editing and a clear understanding (again) that when you reminisce about the past those stories are entirely from a personal perspective, and that other people remember entirely different aspects of the same thing in entirely different ways.

Back to sound, though. Somehow, tiny changes made over the weekend have crystallised out most of the music. I'm now at the automation stage which can be quite tedious, and that's why I'm writing this. The dual concentration between what you see and what you hear plus keeping an eye on what you're metering sound-wise is fatiguing. Also sitting still for such a long time is not good: you start to feel like a scarecrow with poles for arms and a solid rod through your back. Unfortunately bendy housework may be the only solution (said the grubby floor), but an ears-rest is also good because you become a little more objective than you are when you're immersed in the detail of sound.

And I've had a radical haircut in anticipation of a radical operation that I was told was imperative. It was a stage on the way to a complete crop; I thought I'd progress it in a sequence of bearable cuts. Then I found out the radical surgery is not going to happen. It's nice not to have strands of wispy hair getting in the way of everything though, especially when you're taking headphones on and off constantly. Long hair + guitar leads + headphone leads + boom mic stands = stress, stress, stress. And mess, mess, mess. 

OK. Cleaning time.

Boof Boof Boof Bass

I found a sound.

I liked it.

Was it right to put it on the track that I thought didn't need bass on it?

I'll listen tomorrow.

I'm so nearly finished mixing, enough to turn off the mixing desk in my head that keeps me awake at night.

Badges Arrived

Yesterday was busy. I put a bass-line on a song that I wasn't sure about and it ended up being just right, especially sound-wise. I now have to use that sound on at least one other song: I may re-play that one today.

I went to interview Johny Brown of the Band of Holy Joy down at Resonance FM for the 'Postcard To Newcastle' part of the radio show pilot. Just like with Molly Tie, the chat round the edges was really interesting too.

Trying to walk along the riverside to get to Waterloo station, after half an hour's slog I ended up right back where I started, which meant that I missed the first act at Scaledown, but the next two weren't disappointing. Chris Leeds played a home-made African instrument with great skill and sang poignant lyrics in an almost Cutler-esque timbre. Some of his playing sounded rather like The Penguin Café Orchestra, which was beautiful to hear.

The Beach Bullies were also in fine form, augmented by Mark Braby playing some excellent lead guitar. I also particularly liked the unison singing, two male voices together. The male gender's not doing too well at the moment, with some of its most vocal representatives charging around clad in black, wearing masks and claiming to be protecting women when in fact they are completely terrifying to us all. Hearing two gentlemen bonding through shared vocal melody was a completely charming antidote to all that tedious machismo. 

In fact, just that morning I'd had a very hostile interaction with a delivery man with a parcel for next door. He rapped on the door extremely hard, and I opened it to see a tall man with a misogynist's beard and minimum politeness. Unfortunately, I've read so much about toxic internet behaviour from men of a certain age that I've stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt, and have categorised the lot of them as aggressive wasters. Isn't that intolerant? I know it is, but it's for my own safety. One of them came in to do a repair job (it was supposed to be his father doing it) and was so unpleasant that I've stopped asking his father to do handyman work in case he sends the son again. And yes, he had That Beard: a sort of dense biblical bush pointing angrily outwards directly from his chin. Snip, snip, snip, said David!

Today, these have turned up. I think the album will be finished mixing-wise by the end of the week, then there are gigs up to Christmas and beyond, and hopefully a vinyl version once I get organised with that.

Punk Brighton Doc'n'Roll, October 28th Brighton, October 29th London

Hats off to Kevin for finishing this documentary on 1907s Brighton punk, and to Doc'n'Roll for screening it!

https://www.docnrollfestival.com/films/punk-brighton/

Coming Up In November In Glasgow

Only just over a month away! I hope I know all the words of my new songs off by heart by then!

Support is from songwriter extraordinaire Lorraine Lucas

Tickets here: https://wegottickets.com/f/26674