Saturday, March 20, 2010

Oldies, and why I am so tired tonight

I have put a whole load of oldies on my Myspace.
www.myspace.com/helenmccookerybook
The night at Cafe Oto was fabulous- a mixture of environmental films and photographs and three helpings of The Gluts: the place was packed. Some of the speakers were a little heavy on the shouting-agitprop-man stuff, but there was a lovely little film about the police raid on the bicycle activists at the Copenhagen conference.
Hayley's other band, the Dollies, were cheerleading out front with pom-poms made of frilly lettuce, and The Gluts themselves were hilarious. It's the ad libs... I loved the cruel chef joke (he beats the fish and batters the eggs) and the good humour that radiates from the stage. All sorts of people had turned up: Akiko was there with her Bunnies, Val was there with her pen and notebook, Judith was there at a table across the way; there were people making instant fanzines and films, and James from Temperatures was working there, and I haven't seen him for ages.
I was desperately reciting the words in my head the whole way through and half dreading, half excited about my bit, talking away to people with the words tumbling through my brain at the same time.
It went fine though- it was wobbly and yes, I forgot the words of the last verse, but I really enjoyed it.
I am pretty sure I got quite a lot of the chords wrong but not enough to stop a chap in a white beard and a black hat coming up and asking if he could have the words of the song so he could play it (later Gina told me he was from the Swell Maps). I accidentally banged the uke on its mike a couple of times and grinned like a maniac: but isn't that what Friday night is all about?
Thank you Gluts for the invitation to play with you, I was greatly honoured to be an honorary Glut for the night!

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