Clerkenwell, And Short Films

O Northern Line! Where are you when we need you! A convoluted route took us to the Clerkenwell Festival, which feels more like an open air members-of-bands party than a festival. We missed the Dog Show (oh how I loved last year's lookalike competition, with the sad bulldog and the sad bulldog owner!).

Everyone was in the distance or close-up: I chatted to Ruth Tidmarsh, Peter Momtchiloff and Mike Slocombe, and traded waves and smiles with almost everyone else. We'd missed some of the jumble although I was tempted by an enormous Hawaiian shirt with colourful vinyl records printed all over it, but decided to savour the memory of last year's Cowboy shirt instead.

Everything was running a bit late and I missed Swell Maps' set as I headed over to Hoxton on the bus to the Art 'Otel (awful name) that's built on the grave of that superb pub, The Foundry. Oh, it tries very hard to be hip but ends up being more like Elon Musk's enormous echoing tin bowel. 

It was hosting the Kino Festival of Short Films, and my friend Valerie's son had produced one of them. All of last night's films were under the umbrella of Is This Where I Belong? and were documentaries about displaced people. I don't know how long this link will be active but here they are: https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/wwmk6n-kino-london-short-film-festival-where-i-belong-30th-aug-artotel-london-hoxton-london-tickets

They were all very, very different and were incredibly moving. Daniel's film In The Clouds tells the story of a little Iranian girl whose imaginary playmate is an older sister who has perished at sea (you don't discover this until the end of the film). Some of the films were utterly chilling (The Long Spring, about a group of people trafficked in a container, which was based on a true story), some heartwarming (Karim, about a Syrian boy who finally makes friends with a fellow football fanatic in the Netherlands), and some angering (a beautifully-shot film, We're All Black Down Here, about the consequences of racism towards a Caribbean miner in a coal mine in the 1950s). 

In The Clouds was touching, sad and charming in equal measure. Beautiful.

The films had a very deep emotional effect on me and I left feeling the seriousness of the terrible imbalances of power we have as humans. Documentaries are really important: the people who make them spend time thinking about constructing a reality out of an unreal format, film, that conveys the intensity of human situations. Things we see out of the corners of our eyes are brought into full focus so we can't ignore them. 

Strangely, the night before I'd watched Wham! Ten Days In China and there was a very odd disjunction between that and the content of short films- especially knowing what eventually happened to George Michael. Life turns some people into stars and some people into victims of terrible people and terrible circumstances. It's probably best (a) never to compare your circumstances to anyone elses, and (b) enjoy every second you possibly can, because every second matters.

The journey home by tube was populated by people returning from Notting Hill Carnival, many of them very sparkly, and some of them clearly having imbibed a jolly amount of booze.

Nothing to report on the recording front, apart from some fiddly editing in passing this afternoon...

Singing

This morning I woke up determined to manage everything a bit better. My finger is strapped up tightly and I'm not even going to think about it- the main thing was to see if I could get better vocals on some of the tracks.

I did three takes on one of them. When you get to know the song properly you can 'live' the singing while you're doing it, and that has started to happen. I won't listen back again today, I'll leave the different versions to rest for a while.

What made me really happy and optimistic is that there was flexibility in my voice which I thought I'd lost. Simply by standing up to sing, everything changed. I might have to wait ten days before I can do more but there are other things to get on with (that means you, finger: get better!). Full of energy, I started another song- then next door put poor lonely doggy Arfur outside to bark. 

'Arf, Arf, I'm bored, take me for a walk!!' he pleaded.

Oh dear, or rather oh dog.

I did a couple of takes then started to get hoarse. Or horse (sorry).

I'm resting now: time for tea and a read through the day's actual newspapers, the rustling sort that you don't have to scroll through. After that, one more take then furniture moving to prepare for the builder next week.

Finger

Guess who dropped a box of ceramic floor tiles on their finger. 

Looks like it's going to be vocals and editing next week!

Contributions

Today is very much working around the edges, because I've had to pack everything up for a bit. I did some useful editing yesterday (oh what a difference it makes!), but just now I had a go at adding some contributors' stuff to one of the tracks and I got a big lump in my throat. 

It's just the spirit: people have not been beaten down by life, I can hear it, and that is fantastically hopeful .

The overarching psychopathy of global politics is to make people feel powerless, hopeless and small. When you get together with a bunch of fighty people, whether on- or offline, you remember that you are not alone. The Venn diagram of what musicians have in common is sometimes chaotic and illegible- but it's there nonetheless whether overt or symbolic. 

Long live the way we organise our sound and resistance!

Countermetronome

All set up for an early start! Vocals first, or so I thought.

Next door has the builders in. The hammer is thumping a counter-rhythm to the metronome, occasionally punctured by a musical drill that vibrates the floor. 

So it's guitar: headphones on, concentrating on the click and not the thump. I think I got a first take that I won't have to Flextime: it drifts, but in an appropriate way. Doo-dee-doo, dum-dee dum.

The page of notes (blue for what needs to be done, red for when it's done or who needs to do it) looks like a Bayeaux Tapestry of woven scribbled writing.

Shall I do another guitar re-play or move to bass and replace some of those awkwardly-played lines?

First I'll cross out some 'done' tasks.

The Adventures Of Recording At Home

A poor pigeon was wedged next to the bin. I suspect Cowcat (a local Tomcat with Friesian cow markings). I lifted the unfortunate bird into the garden behind a plant pot, and gave it some water to drink.

Then I had to do the housework. The floor was a gritty/sticky combo that was no longer bearable. The vacuum cleaner smells, because it was second hand (environment, etc etc). I discovered that a brand new one would have been the same price; polishing my halo has become tedious as the odours of many student bedrooms permeates the house. Horrible.

Just as I set up to do the vocals, next door's dog Arfur (he barks like this: arf! arf!) started up randomly.

As soon as Arfur stopped barking, a loud fly came in the back door and started Exploring All Areas of the house. 

Zoooom! Into the living room. 

Zooom! Past the microphone. 

Living room again? Yes! Zoooom! 

Microphone! Sure thing! Zoooom!

Why oh why oh why, ad infinitum.

I think my voice is good today now that it's stopped being dry roasted by the heatwave, but I've only managed to sing fragments as the distractions and interruptions pile up. Thunderstorm this afternoon, I believe.

The thing is that on every vocal track there is the sound of the big kitchen clock regularly clanking past the seconds, but I like that: a bit of roughage. I know it's there, but nobody else does. It's these random things that disrupt the serenity.

Nothing else to do now but watch Bargain Hunt.

Later...

No, my voice still has a way to go, but it's better than last week. 

I know that some of my fellow-songwriters have embraced Artificial Intelligence in their songwriting; not even the production, but the songwriting. I can hear it. It's making me feel that I should keep the rough edges in the music I'm making. And have even more clock!

Shoe Shine Man Waits For Customers In The Arcade

 

On Having a Contrary Nature

I lay awake last night thinking about things to come that I'd rather not think about.

I changed the channel.

Today, I planned, I would replay some of the guitar parts on the album and get them sounding different. But craposo- they didn't sound any good. It wasn't even that my fingers wouldn't do as they were told; I wasn't in the mood, after spending half the night getting in the mood. I was sabotaging my own self!

Instead, I decided to sing. Normally singers don't do mornings, but I managed an OK vocal on one song, then another. Then another. Dammit. I'd been saving vocals till last!

The album has done what albums always do: it has taken on a life of its own and started dictating what it wants no matter what decisions I think I'm making.

I've thrown a real wild card in at the end. Let's see what happens.

Glasgow Gig 12th Thursday November

I'll be playing an all-new set of songs, The Darkside Truth, about the early days of punk. 

Support from Glaswegian songwriter and music entrepreneur Lorraine Lucas

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

Back Through The Mists Of Time

Years and years and years and years ago... Lester Square and me organised what we called Music Halls, but what were really Music Free For Alls (time limit ten minutes to avoid boring acts). we put one on at the London Musicians Collective in Camden with free sausages and rough cider, raising money for the London Lighthouse Aids Hospice. 

The following year, we took 30 people up to the Edinburgh Fringe to perform at the Rifle Lodge. Bloody hell, it was fun! Often, there were more people in the cast than there were in the audience. We had Dada poetry, members of the band Furniture as a big band playing interval music, Lester Square as an MC, Carmen Miranda Tribute act, a Women's Health and Beauty tribute act, a clarinet act, a play about a Marine Biologist condensed from an hour into ten minutes, and more. Dry ice! I dressed in tap shoes and galloped around on a plywood horse with moveable legs singing a fake music hall song called She's A Girl Who Likes To Have A Horse Between Her Legs ('she's a rotter to that trotter, she's a stinker to that steed').

Lester Square sent me these photos the other day, some from each one, I think. Some of the cast slept in layers on the floor of McMum and McDad's flat, some at Lester's sister's (it had just burnt out a few days before, so those people smelled of smoke) and some in an old Post Office van. 

Woven Together, Ortus Gallery, Camberwell

This is a small but perfectly formed exhibition of textile works by artists from the Bethlem Gallery. Stars of the show are a denim jacket with custom patches made by individual members of the workshop group, a black leather jacket with a beautifully painted back, and this crocheted map of the Bethlem Hospital grounds in Sydenham. The gallery has regular exhibitions at its Sydenham site, but these examples are on view in Camberwell in the gallery/café just behind the Maudsley hospital. I found them to be quite inspirational. Offsprog One has been involved in setting this up, and it's great to see it up and running!

Thanks To Loud Women

Thank you Loud Women for 'seeing' me, or maybe that should be 'hearing' me. I am loud in my head and in my heart!

https://loudwomen.org/2026/08/20/rebellion-2026-saturday-highlights/

'Helen McCookerybook on the Almost Acoustic stage on Saturday, bringing decades of DIY music history into a setting made for songs and stories rather than sheer volume.

From punk beginnings to a long solo catalogue, she is a reminder that the history of women in independent music is much wider than the names that usually get repeated. A quietly essential Rebellion booking.'

Photo by Jeanie Jean

Part Of A Huge Film Crew, Denmark Street, London

 

Lost Doll In The Weeds

 

Dammit

Arfur, next door's barky dog (Arf! Arf!) has just given up his morning barkfest; now the builders have started up over the road with their whining drills and clanging hammers.

What's a girl to do, trying to home-record vocals this week?

Actually, I've already been playing guitar and bass this morning and I'm resting the track to see what it sounds like before doing anything else to it. It's a song that was sounding turgid, so I upped the BPMs by ten and it has come to life. Playing bass has made my back ache: it must use muscles that are normally dormant. It's very tempting to start up drumming classes again because I think that's a similar area of the body, muscle-wise.

I've just arranged to have Gran's banjo looked at. It has no bridge and I'd rather get one from the correct era put on it if at all possible. The repair man sounded excited. That's the sort of repair man you need!