I know I'm mostly posting pictures and posters at the moment. This is because of things happening in my private (and political) life that are taking up a lot of energy.
The Clerkenwell Festival was loads of fun, especially the silly Dog Show and the star turnout.
I even got 'recognised' myself, twice!
One of his colleagues recognised him when I posted this on Twitter; I've just sent a scan of the drawing to him so he can print it out on nice paper. Apparently he now thinks he's a poster boy for the service!
I'll be playing at Barnaby's Lounge in Hastings on the 19th of September with Jude Cowan Montague. It's an early-evening gig.
https://hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk/arts-culture/music-sound/helen-mccookerybook-songwriter-6
I remember last time; sparsely populated, though it was lovely that Lee Edgington came, and Robert Rotifer and Judith showed up later.
Why so empty?
The sign on the door said 'Closed'!
This is the day after I open for The Wouldbegoods at the Water Rats, but I guess an entirely different kettle of fish as far as audiences go, which is why I said 'yes' to it!
A week ago, I made pots of blackberry jam from a 20 minute picking spree which was curtailed by a sudden rain shower. Despite getting extremely wet, I managed to pick two pounds of fruit. There is a glut this year and I could afford to fail; despite pretending that it wasn't going to set, it did so and it tastes wonderful- there is a very fresh taste to it that you don't get with commercial jam. We went to pick some more yesterday and on the way back there was a box of cooking apples by someone's fence, so this lot is going to become a blackberry and apple cake. I no longer have a freezer big enough to freeze boxes of blackberries, so they all have to be used straight away.
And music? Last week I made an acapella jingle for the Outsiders radio show. Today's project has been the continuation of a remix for the Brighton indie band Assistant. I think it's almost there: it feels emotionally right, but I'll have to wait till tomorrow for fresh 'ears' to listen to it. I didn't know whether I still had the patience to mix someone else's songs, but once you start to inhabit their music, it's fascinating. It helped to have a vocal take without reverb so I could make an atmosphere that I am used to.
On Tuesday I went to Gina's to listen to her new work in progress. There are some really good songs there, and I had some ideas and suggestions, one of which was to play a fuzz guitar line along with the vocal, a bit like René Lussier in his General De Gaulle speech. Steve Beresford suggested the track to me years ago after I'd recorded an episode of Gardener's World when it was presented by Alan Titchmarsh, which I had been planning to orchestrate and make Titchmarsh: the Musical. I've still got that recording on a DAT tape, but I never got around to doing the music. I also have recordings of a whole bunch of bus drivers and conductors from Golders Green Bus Garage that I interviewed for the same purpose.
If life had gone in a different direction and one of the many crossroads I've encountered, I would have become an experimental musician, or at least an experimental musical writer!
That's the crisps eaten, the music mixed, the claim for the disastrous rail journey submitted. It's time of the ironing (urgh) with Terry and Arfur, followed by The Professionals charging about with their guns and hairdos. No match for me and my steam iron!
You have to travel up via Inverness, which is a city crying out for a makeover: beautiful buildings stand adjacent to scummy pavements, and the commercial focus on drinking is sad and depressing. The city has a good heart, however.
The bus to Ullapool leaves early in the morning, and smoothly exits Inverness, heading west, through what must be some of the most lovely countryside in the whole of the British Isles. Pale green mountains are alternately illuminated and shadowed by the sun and the clouds, with tiny silvered aspen and birch trees throwing black shadows on the grass when the light peeks through. There are babbling waterfalls running through and over blocks of grey granite, and unexpected heather gardens atop huge boulders. Streams of bog cotton run across the moorland. In places, Scots pines rise through darkened woodlands, their red trunks contrasting with their dark green leaves.
By mid-morning, the bus arrives at Ullapool pier, ready for the ferry which waits to take passengers to the Isle of Lewis. Little fishing boats nestle close to the jetty and small sailboats bob about on the grey sea, with a background of darker mountains spreading into the distance.
This is Laura's book of poetry, which I was honoured to provide the cover illustration for!
Thanks to Ruth Tidmarsh for the photo, Sot Otter for the poster, and Bernie Harrison for the collage.
The 'hotel' that I stayed in last year was terrifying; I suspect it was a smack dealership. This year I checked in to the Imperial, an imposing hotel about half a mile from the town centre on the seafront. My room had it's weirdnesses (a volume control for the TV by the bathroom mirror, and a huge window that opened on to a flat roof that was too anxiety-inducing to leave open at night. But it was comfortable and the walk to and from the Winter Gardens along the deserted front was spectacular at any time of day: just sea and sky and the sound of (I think) skylarks over the sand.
Checking in, I met Herman de Tollinare (who archives Dutch women punk band activity) and his colleague from The Netherlands, and Michelle from Brigandage. It took a while, but as soon as I had my wristband I went to look for Herman. He'd disappeared into a non-Rebellion pub full of awful baying, screaming white men and I simply couldn't face it and went to get a pizza. Palmolive and her family were there and invited me to join them, but I wanted a bit of thinking time and sat by myself- until Del Strangefish, who was at the next table with his son, struck up a conversation. He had been at the Woodingdean pop-up Chefs gig with his wife, and reminded me that he was the guitarist with Peter and the Test-Tube Babies, one of the best known Brighton punk bands. He's now a solo artist and author (see later) and gave me a copy of his album. He's now given up touring and turned down a tour of Australia recently, having taught a friend how to play all the songs. The service in the caff was slow, but it was a sunny evening and it was really relaxing to sit there and chat with assorted punks drifting past on the way to the festival.
"Look mam, there's a punk!', piped up a little voice. Well yes, rather a lot of them actually.
On Thursday I did two interviews on the Literary Stage, the first and last of the day. The first one was Paul Eccentric, he of the Rrrants Poetry Collective then, now the author of The Periwinkle Perspective series of steampunk books, and still a performer. The books are hilarious romps through plot and parody and despite a leg in a cast, Paul was on a roll. I went to see them later in the florid environment of the Spanish Room where the acoustic stage is situated. As always, their smutty humour attracted a nipper and their dad, but the nipper had ear protectors that appeared to filter out the smut as well as the volume. This was Paul as a member of The Antipoet duo, and they had their posse with them cheering them on.
Just before Palmolive on the Literary stage, Roadent (ex-roadie to The Clash and The Sex Pistols) was being interviewed. He was quite nervous, but his anecdotes and life story were really engaging. I particularly liked the story about wages (The Clash, £5 a week; The Sex Pistols £10 a week) and his eventual source of additional income, which was selling original Who Killed Bambi scripts from a box he found in the rehearsal studio for £50 a pop!
The interview with Palmolive went really well, mainly because I didn't have to interview her because she is a natural raconteur. Just beforehand we whizzed down to see a bit of Essential Logic. Even that tiny fragment of the gig was wonderful, and made my hair stand on end. I wished we could have heard more, but we had a job to do ourselves. Paloma is very funny and very frank, and I really relate to her decisions just to get out of situations that made her feel dispirited or uncomfortable. She did accidentally call Bernie Rhodes Bernie Sanders a couple of times, but this only endeared her to the audience. This was the first time (third time lucky!) that her Powerpoint had worked, and the photographs tied in perfectly to her life story as an early punk. Afterwards she retired to the Art Market, which had stayed open late specially, and did a thriving trade in signed posters and artworks.
The walk back to the hotel was spectacular; the sea was glowing with a greenish hue and the sky was a weird colour. It was still quite hot, and it felt like walking through a deserted Miami. There are a lot of cream-painted thirties-built architectural sproutings between the road and the beach along that north Blackpool promenade, and they loomed out of the gloom like the set of a film waiting for its stars to turn up. The whole time, Blackpool tries to upstage the drama of floods of punks in all their finery. I'm not sure which one wins; it's a very exciting combo, anyway.
In the morning, I went for breakfast and looked on while a couple of rufty-tufty punk chaps helped some older women out of their mobility vehicles into chairs outside the café. I don't think I've ever known a bunch of people with such perfect manners.
At the Literary Stage, I listened to Paul Raggity's funny stories with a bunch of regular lunch break story-time fans; Zoe Howe was next, and she spotted Palmolive in the audience while she was talking about her book on The Slits. One of her comments later in the interview, about songs being magical in the way they can affect feelings and emotions in a very short space of time rang very true: I have always felt that they are like spells and incantations. It was a real pleasure to see her again and I had a quick chat with her and her husband Dylan afterwards.
Later, John Robb interviewed Dale Vince from Ecotricity. I had mixed feelings about him; there was an undercurrent of him magicking money out of somewhere to manufacture windmills, an electric car and various other things despite his insistence that he'd scavenged everything from dumps and other places where people discard things. Maybe I have an innate distrust for the stories of entrepreneurs, especially when they insist they have been really poor.
Photos and blah coming later from my two days at the Rebellion festival, Blackpool.
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