I spent a big chunk of the weekend filling out a funding application for a future research project- calculator, spreadsheets, personal statement, calculator, referee, calculator, train fares, calculator, calculator...
Draining, exhausting.
Today is designated 'off' and I am off on some adventures that I will report on tomorrow.
I have been up early just finishing some work; time to dress in adventure kit, prepare the maps and tiffin, and head to the mystery destination!
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Solo CD Releases
Just thought I would list the releases out there: any of these are £12.00 including postage and packing; to use Paypal, just put a message to say which CD you'd like and use the same button as you would for Voxpop Puella.
(apart from The best of The Chefs which can be ordered from www.damagedgoods.co.uk)
Helen McCookerybook CDs
2006 Suburban Pastoral Label: Big Song
Tracks: Dreaming of You, Temptation, Heaven Avenue, Don't Know Why, Colour My Day, London, Hill of Fools, Songbird, Running Away, Swan, Hymn to Kent, Once in a Blue Moon, Britannia Great, The Word is, Goodbye
(guest musicians including The Horns, Lester Square, BJ Cole)
2008 Poetry and Rhyme Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: A New Day, January in Paris, Poetry and Rhyme, The Properties of Chalk and Sun, Butterfly, A New Day, I Feel It, Rock'n'Romance, Screaming, Sulkworm, Memento Mori, Dreaming of Narcissus
(guest musicians including Martin Stephenson, Gina Birch and Elle Osborne)
2010 Take One Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: Daisies, The House on the Hill, The Song of the Landsman's Soul, She Will Fly, Little England, Two Little Girls and Me, New Year's Eve, Gotta Have a Heart, Three Maple Men, The Song of the Unsung Heroine
2012: Voxpop Puella Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: One Cell Wonder, Sugarstuff, Hermit Crab, A Husband So Handsome, Brittletwist, Watching Myseif, Paradise, Saygudbye
(2008 Hamilton Square with Martin Stephenson: Hamilton Square, Black Eyed Rose, Glasgow Train, Making Love, Loverman, Stansted Ground, Love on the Wind, Sweet Saviour, Apple Tree Song, My Heart Beats a Song for You, Autumn Love, Can't Fool Love; 2012 Cafe of Tiny Kindnesses with Martin Stephenson: beachwalk, Cafe of Tiny Kindnesses, Steal You Away, Mandy Rose, Mr and Mrs Songsmith, Gaudi's Garden, Samba Blue, All Systems Go!, Sunny and Blue; 2012 The Best of The Chefs, Damaged Goods; 2012)
(apart from The best of The Chefs which can be ordered from www.damagedgoods.co.uk)
Helen McCookerybook CDs
2006 Suburban Pastoral Label: Big Song
Tracks: Dreaming of You, Temptation, Heaven Avenue, Don't Know Why, Colour My Day, London, Hill of Fools, Songbird, Running Away, Swan, Hymn to Kent, Once in a Blue Moon, Britannia Great, The Word is, Goodbye
(guest musicians including The Horns, Lester Square, BJ Cole)
2008 Poetry and Rhyme Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: A New Day, January in Paris, Poetry and Rhyme, The Properties of Chalk and Sun, Butterfly, A New Day, I Feel It, Rock'n'Romance, Screaming, Sulkworm, Memento Mori, Dreaming of Narcissus
(guest musicians including Martin Stephenson, Gina Birch and Elle Osborne)
2010 Take One Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: Daisies, The House on the Hill, The Song of the Landsman's Soul, She Will Fly, Little England, Two Little Girls and Me, New Year's Eve, Gotta Have a Heart, Three Maple Men, The Song of the Unsung Heroine
2012: Voxpop Puella Label: Barbaraville
Tracks: One Cell Wonder, Sugarstuff, Hermit Crab, A Husband So Handsome, Brittletwist, Watching Myseif, Paradise, Saygudbye
(2008 Hamilton Square with Martin Stephenson: Hamilton Square, Black Eyed Rose, Glasgow Train, Making Love, Loverman, Stansted Ground, Love on the Wind, Sweet Saviour, Apple Tree Song, My Heart Beats a Song for You, Autumn Love, Can't Fool Love; 2012 Cafe of Tiny Kindnesses with Martin Stephenson: beachwalk, Cafe of Tiny Kindnesses, Steal You Away, Mandy Rose, Mr and Mrs Songsmith, Gaudi's Garden, Samba Blue, All Systems Go!, Sunny and Blue; 2012 The Best of The Chefs, Damaged Goods; 2012)
Martin Stephenson on Bob Harris
Just listening on iPlayer to last night's session http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ncgfv
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Watching Myself
Have finally managed to get the song to upload to Reverbnation- click on the player opposite to hear it or follow this link http://www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Nother Friday Post
There's nothing on telly. I have left Eastenders in the front room to shout to itself for a while. It doesn't need me: it can survive perfectly well on its own without anyone to watch or listen.
Here is a pic of the box of CDs- wahey! I'm numbering them and signing them. there will be no number 13 unless someone specifically asks for it.
A sample track is here http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=mccookerybook
And also.. Helen and the Horns support The Daintees at The Borderline in London on Friday 9th November. Reverbnation won't let me add the gig to the list for some reason.
Chocolate time. I'm off!
Here is a pic of the box of CDs- wahey! I'm numbering them and signing them. there will be no number 13 unless someone specifically asks for it.
A sample track is here http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=mccookerybook
Chocolate time. I'm off!
Someday All The Adults Will Die! at the Hayward Gallery
After work I treated myself to a wander along the South Bank and I dropped in to the Hayward Gallery to see this exhibition of punk art.
It seemed strange to see bits of my life on display in a museum and there were a few middle-aged guys taking a similar trip down memory lane.
I was actually struck first by the music being played; somehow I have managed to convince myself that apart from the 'good' bands (Buzzcocks, Pistols, Slits, Ruts, Raincoats, Damned, Adverts, Mo-Dettes) everyone else was rubbish. Not true! Something about the thudding basslines woke up my inner punk; there was something about that sound that was actually nothing to do with music, but more to do with making time and space our own: the world belonged to other people who were aliens with mullets, crimplene clothing, prawn cocktails and brown-on-brown patterned wallpaper, listening to mush and fluff. Punk music was like an abrasive blast that cleaned out your ears and all the cack you'd been fed by everyone up till then... all the stuff they said to comfort themselves while simultaneously shutting you out.
In the exhibition, lots of the feeling was there: the cheapness of the paper, the attempts by McLaren and Westwood to garner more of the credit than was due to them; work by Gee Vaucher that lived alongside Jamie Reid's better-known images; cheap cassettes that shunned commerciality. The Desperate Bicycles vinyl single that exhorted people to do it themselves- it can be cheap!
There was the single by Brighton's Louder Animal Group, aficionados of Scritti Politti and featuring Nick Dwyer, fresh from leaving Joby and the Hooligans (featuring yours truly on bass), and now a gardener supported by Stomp! royalites (yes, he was a founder member: told you punk was full of imaginative people!).
And there was a copy of PIN (the 'n' should be backwards) the fanzine produced by my Dutch friend Terri who also played a semi acoustic bass and who got in touch with me earlier this year (she is a rockabilly now). And there was a copy of Rapid Eye Movement, published by Nicks' brother Simon with.. ahem.. an interview with the Chefs in it.
A sea of boys in school uniforms flowed in with spiral-bound notebooks and pencils to try to capture the moment in 2012. No way, boys! The whole time was too weird and it's continually surprising how important it seems to have been; at the time it seemed like trying to stay alive when the whole tide of everything was crashing in the other direction.
This is a nice little exhibition, small and perfectly formed with a little of that air of bafflement about it.
On till 4th November and worth a visit: free.
It seemed strange to see bits of my life on display in a museum and there were a few middle-aged guys taking a similar trip down memory lane.
I was actually struck first by the music being played; somehow I have managed to convince myself that apart from the 'good' bands (Buzzcocks, Pistols, Slits, Ruts, Raincoats, Damned, Adverts, Mo-Dettes) everyone else was rubbish. Not true! Something about the thudding basslines woke up my inner punk; there was something about that sound that was actually nothing to do with music, but more to do with making time and space our own: the world belonged to other people who were aliens with mullets, crimplene clothing, prawn cocktails and brown-on-brown patterned wallpaper, listening to mush and fluff. Punk music was like an abrasive blast that cleaned out your ears and all the cack you'd been fed by everyone up till then... all the stuff they said to comfort themselves while simultaneously shutting you out.
In the exhibition, lots of the feeling was there: the cheapness of the paper, the attempts by McLaren and Westwood to garner more of the credit than was due to them; work by Gee Vaucher that lived alongside Jamie Reid's better-known images; cheap cassettes that shunned commerciality. The Desperate Bicycles vinyl single that exhorted people to do it themselves- it can be cheap!
There was the single by Brighton's Louder Animal Group, aficionados of Scritti Politti and featuring Nick Dwyer, fresh from leaving Joby and the Hooligans (featuring yours truly on bass), and now a gardener supported by Stomp! royalites (yes, he was a founder member: told you punk was full of imaginative people!).
And there was a copy of PIN (the 'n' should be backwards) the fanzine produced by my Dutch friend Terri who also played a semi acoustic bass and who got in touch with me earlier this year (she is a rockabilly now). And there was a copy of Rapid Eye Movement, published by Nicks' brother Simon with.. ahem.. an interview with the Chefs in it.
A sea of boys in school uniforms flowed in with spiral-bound notebooks and pencils to try to capture the moment in 2012. No way, boys! The whole time was too weird and it's continually surprising how important it seems to have been; at the time it seemed like trying to stay alive when the whole tide of everything was crashing in the other direction.
This is a nice little exhibition, small and perfectly formed with a little of that air of bafflement about it.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Voxpop Puella is Here!
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Trawling
As a distraction from contemplating Thursday's inevitable and awful strike, I have been trawling the local charity shop for crime novels. There seem to be rather a large number of lurking men around the shelves at the moment looking as much at the women looking for books as at the titles themselves!
Is this the new supermarket pick-up etiquette?
I picked up a Peter James novel (on the recommendation of Andy Cairns) and a thumpingly-heavy Ruth Rendell. They will both return whence they came in a day or two.
I find these books a welcome sandwich between the dense academic texts that I read, books that are much more interesting really but which take a long time to digest.
Sometimes you feel like a slice of thick, squidgy, unhealthy pre-sliced white bread, and sometimes there's a case for brown wholemeal bricks that you have to saw through for half an hour to get a frail and crumbling slice that collapses before you can get it to the toaster!
Is this the new supermarket pick-up etiquette?
I picked up a Peter James novel (on the recommendation of Andy Cairns) and a thumpingly-heavy Ruth Rendell. They will both return whence they came in a day or two.
I find these books a welcome sandwich between the dense academic texts that I read, books that are much more interesting really but which take a long time to digest.
Sometimes you feel like a slice of thick, squidgy, unhealthy pre-sliced white bread, and sometimes there's a case for brown wholemeal bricks that you have to saw through for half an hour to get a frail and crumbling slice that collapses before you can get it to the toaster!
Monday, October 15, 2012
Storm
That big storm that Michael Fish said wasn't going to happen...
I woke up and the cat was running around, frightened by the whooshing of the wind outside. The bedroom was a ground floor extension with three outside walls and a flat roof, so it was very noisy and frightening. We put the radio on and sat it out.
Next morning, all was devastation; but on the back wall next to the window, three little empty plastic plant pots stood in a neat row, just where they had been the day before.
Huge trees had crashed to the ground; I had to walk three miles to work and climb over them because they blocked the roads and no buses or cars could pass; there were smashed things all over the place. The world had been rearranged in an extraordinary manner. The normal chaos of noisy, busy, dirty roads was replaced with silence, calm after the storm: grim surprise.
Three little plant pots: quaint survivors!
I woke up and the cat was running around, frightened by the whooshing of the wind outside. The bedroom was a ground floor extension with three outside walls and a flat roof, so it was very noisy and frightening. We put the radio on and sat it out.
Next morning, all was devastation; but on the back wall next to the window, three little empty plastic plant pots stood in a neat row, just where they had been the day before.
Huge trees had crashed to the ground; I had to walk three miles to work and climb over them because they blocked the roads and no buses or cars could pass; there were smashed things all over the place. The world had been rearranged in an extraordinary manner. The normal chaos of noisy, busy, dirty roads was replaced with silence, calm after the storm: grim surprise.
Three little plant pots: quaint survivors!
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Two Books at a Time
In the small hoose there is little room for books so some of them live at work. I buy most of them second hand from eBay and recently I've developed a bad habit, fuelled partly from enthusiasm for ideas and new perspectives; I buy books twice because I forget that I bought one three or our months ago because it's either at home or a work (delete that which doesn't apply). These are not the sort of books that anyone else might want as they are usually to do with some sort of lateral thinking process, yet I can't really throw them away or give them away because I don't think anyone else would want them.
I'm contemplating bringing all my books home and literally lining the walls with them to insulate the small hoose from the winter cold and provide reading matter at the same time. Then I could take the duplicate books to the free book shop just around the corner from Waterstones (must be a thorn in the side!) for lateral-thinking yummy mummies and their Offsprogs-in-a-pushchair to peruse in Starbucks on a weekday afternoon. As I pass by on the way to the music shop, I'll glance through the window at a Boden-clad beauty with her nose in Christopher Small's 'Music, Society, Education' while her Offsproglet wails in vain for attention, its muffin toppling soggily on the floor beside mummy's designer satchel. Or perhaps the Offsproglet will be lolling there riveted by the copy of 'The Audience and it's Landscape' that mummy has wedged into its pushchair, poor teddy weeping inconsolably in a rejected heap under a mountain-bike style buggy wheel.
Such joy could be brought to Barnet if I rectify my double bookings....
That sounds like a plan!
I'm contemplating bringing all my books home and literally lining the walls with them to insulate the small hoose from the winter cold and provide reading matter at the same time. Then I could take the duplicate books to the free book shop just around the corner from Waterstones (must be a thorn in the side!) for lateral-thinking yummy mummies and their Offsprogs-in-a-pushchair to peruse in Starbucks on a weekday afternoon. As I pass by on the way to the music shop, I'll glance through the window at a Boden-clad beauty with her nose in Christopher Small's 'Music, Society, Education' while her Offsproglet wails in vain for attention, its muffin toppling soggily on the floor beside mummy's designer satchel. Or perhaps the Offsproglet will be lolling there riveted by the copy of 'The Audience and it's Landscape' that mummy has wedged into its pushchair, poor teddy weeping inconsolably in a rejected heap under a mountain-bike style buggy wheel.
Such joy could be brought to Barnet if I rectify my double bookings....
That sounds like a plan!
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Roadying
I'm roadying for Martin today; he is playing a solo gig at Appleton and Thorne village hall near Warrington. I've been telecastering away in the room finding chords for my latest song, and taking advice from Offsprog One about next week's strike. When she was a student at Leeds College of Art there was a strike by the lecturers there and she gave me the perspective of a student.
It's all to do with bullying, in the end. Trying to please bullies is pointless.
It's all to do with bullying, in the end. Trying to please bullies is pointless.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Tea with Dubulah
Dubulah has been in town to play some Dub Colossus gigs which have gone very well; I missed them unforchly due to working hell-for-leather but we decided to take tea together at Foyle's Cafe.
Wedged between laptop-wielding trendies and a couple of formally suited businessmen who shone out like lightbulbs with their incongruity, we talked politics and Protools, fretboards and foreign climes, until it was time to go home and beat the rush hour.
When Martin is in town, when Dubulah is in town... what wonderful guitar adventures might happen!
January, perhaps.
This evening I did an interview with Jonathan for his blog, which focuses on Voiceprint artists- here's his blog http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk . We talked about blogging and I told him about the blogs that I read- Frayed-at-the-edge, Circles of Rain, lots of them. When I got to Leaf-pile Jonathan was even more interested, because he collects children's books leaf-pile.blogspot.com
6 a.m. start tomorrow; time for the land of nod!
Wedged between laptop-wielding trendies and a couple of formally suited businessmen who shone out like lightbulbs with their incongruity, we talked politics and Protools, fretboards and foreign climes, until it was time to go home and beat the rush hour.
When Martin is in town, when Dubulah is in town... what wonderful guitar adventures might happen!
January, perhaps.
This evening I did an interview with Jonathan for his blog, which focuses on Voiceprint artists- here's his blog http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk . We talked about blogging and I told him about the blogs that I read- Frayed-at-the-edge, Circles of Rain, lots of them. When I got to Leaf-pile Jonathan was even more interested, because he collects children's books leaf-pile.blogspot.com
6 a.m. start tomorrow; time for the land of nod!
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Song
I have been writing a particular song for about a year and tonight I finally put the finishing touches on it; every word as just right, and I could play it perfectly and sing over the music which it sometimes takes me a while to work out.
Only one problem... When I'd done all that I realised that the song was a load of rubbish
Ho hum..
Only one problem... When I'd done all that I realised that the song was a load of rubbish
Ho hum..
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