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

A Flying Visit

Yesterday, I hopped on a train to Newcastle to interview Molly Tie for a pilot Community Radio show. I will divide it into two sections: A Postcard From Newcastle, and a Postcard To Newcastle. On Friday, I'm due to interview Johny Brown of the Band of Holy Joy, who was brought up in North Shields and has relocated to London. Molly has moved to the Toon from Portsmouth, and her 'postcard' is all about what she has discovered since she has been there.

Molly did a really great interview: she said lots of really interesting things. I will be putting it all together next week. 

It was a lovely sunny day, and I whizzed up Northumberland Street hoping for a haircut at Wildes, which unbelievably has been there since I was seventeen. I had a cut there when I was working at the RVI in the X-ray darkroom on another very hot summer years ago. Alas, it was closed because it's relocating to Blackett Street.

I had a quick dip into Fenwick's (their store detective followed me around last time because I had my fave scruffy green cord jacket on, so I'd dressed posh for the occasion). 

We had chatted for a longer time than I'd thought so the Grainger Market was closing and so was Mark Toney's, but it was so refreshing to be there. I still find new nooks and crannies on every visit, even though it was my stamping ground as a teenager.

Big thanks to Molly: we will be on a panel together at Louder Than Words in November, along with Penny Kiley. I'm looking forward to that a lot- and to interviewing Zoe Howe about her revisited book The Story of the Slits.

One Of Those Days

Tissue in the washing machine.

Pearly Queen Watches Magician

 

Next Gig! Matinée At The Betsey Trotwood

https://wegottickets.com/f/22135

Tricky Song Finished

A tricky song, hours of trouble, hours of strife. 

It wouldn't sound right and it wouldn't look right either (it was the sound waves: they looked like scrumpled-up paper) 

Then

It worked

Phew.

Mouldy Warburtons Toastie On The Ground, Gypsy Hill

 

50 Years Of She-Punk, And Contributions To The Documentation Of Hidden Women Musicians

I registered the words she-punk in 2018 when it became apparent that the words were being exploited commercially without proper acknowledgement of the fact that they originated with me. In academia this is called plagiarism.

You might not believe it, but the term didn't exist until 2015 when Gina Birch and me proposed a documentary idea to Andy Linehan at The British Library, followed up by a commission to show the work-in-progress of Stories From The She-Punks: Music With A Different Agenda at The British Library's celebration of 40 Years of Punk in 2016. He asked us for a title and I thought of it the same day- a riposte against the tabloid term of the time, 'punkette' (yeuch) which I'd had a few conversations with, including with Zillah Ashworth of Rubella Ballet (an east London punk band), who had also made a film about punk women, She's a Punk Rocker. The difference is that ours focuses primarily on instrumentalists, with interviews with many of the women I'd spoken to for my book The Lost Women of Rock Music- female musicians of the punk era.

Here's a link to the event in 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20201108112648/https://www.bl.uk/events/stories-from-the-she-punks

Here's a link to the film, in case you haven't seen it yet- it's very DIY, very easy to dip into, and features women from those first punk bands from lots of different places in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zki9nj8tjZA&t=1393s

Here's a link to Zillah's film too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHoJHMV0ybA&t=3s

The term she-punk seems to have entered the vernacular, which is a good thing (I think), but isn't it ironic that a woman who has spent a lifetime making 'invisible' women instrumentalists visible (not just punks, but also engineers and producers) is being rendered invisible years later? 

You might be interested in this book if women instrumentalists in punk bands are an inspiration to you (I do sometimes have these books at my gigs):

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lost-women-of-rock-music/helen-reddington/9781845539573

And this one if you're interested in why it's important that we have female sound engineers and producers as well as men (incidentally, that sound wave is someone saying 'she's at the controls'):

https://www.waterstones.com/book/shes-at-the-controls/helen-reddington/9781781796511

However, I am delighted that women punk musicians are being brought to the forefront in the anniversary celebrations: hats off to everyone involved, then and now. 

Businessmen In Blue Suits Having A Street Meeting (unfinished)

 

Silly

1. I made a messy sandwich that was slopping all over the place.Tucking the plate close to my chin so I didn't drop food all over the place, I failed to notice that the flap of my shirt pocket had slipped between the slices of bread, and took a big bite of fabric.

2. I thought a box of spring bulbs had been delivered about ten days ago. The box was in the bathroom. I've just opened it to see what recommended dates they gave for planting, as I fancied an afternoon's potting. It was a box of records and CDs from Tiny Global. They are no longer trading, and had kindly sent me the remaining stock.