Sea

Last lecture of the academic year today; some of the students have been offered paid work as a result of doing placements and I am delighted for them. In a week's time, the sea of marking will start crashing in from two Universities and I'll be burning the dawn oil (I start at 7 and work through till early afternoon) to get it all done by the deadlines. I have also been examining a PhD which I read on the way to and from Brighton to take the Offsprogs out for dinner last night. I will have to read it a few times more to work out the way I will word the questions at the oral examination, or Viva.

Meanwhile, we are going to form a residents association in the little street I live in, which is about to be swamped by a huge housing development directly opposite where I live. One of the neighbours is selling up and leaving but I'm not in a position to do that. There will be two years of noise and damage. I can not believe that Barnet Council has OK'd a new housing estate right in the middle of a conservation area. Several of us who live in this street work at home a lot (I spent the whole of January marking 65 two thousand word essays and 12 eight thousand word theses) so these orange ear-protectors will come in very handy!

Thanks to Jonathan at the Gonzo Blog http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/ for name-checking my track The Song of the Unsung Heroine on Youtube. This was filmed at the gig in Gateshead that Martin organised where Gina Birch, Viv Albertine and Pauline Murray played. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoGALCk4Nrk For some reason Voiceprint lists the album Poetry and Rhyme as Poems and Rhymes. A much more down to earth title, perhaps?

Next Premises Songwriting Course with Ed Harcourt

The Art of Record Production Online Conference

I am taking part in a panel in an online conference tomorrow here http://artofrecordproduction.com/
I'm hoping to talk about the work that I do recording songwriters and the real life issues that come into play when you work with people who are not savvy about the recording process. I am on the Vocals panel; perhaps I should have been on the Authenticity panel but I've subscribed to that one too.
It's going to be an interesting day.

Grainger Market, Newcastle

What a gem!

Guitar Talk

Jim Hornsby and Martin Stephenson talk guitars at Thekla, Bristol. Joby posted this on Facebook: Thekla is a boss venue, not pretty (you can make up for that) but fit for purpose, convert the hold into a club. Glad to know she is still there after many years & problems. My friends Dutch barge MV Peter lay alongside for quite a time until she got me & a few cronies to take her down to PZ, later we took her to moorings near Tower Bridge. GR8 fun, bit of a handful (both vessel & owner), armed River Cops boarded us to CHK we were Halal/Kosher & were not full of Semtex (just after 9/11) but cool. Did some work on her & took her to Rochester for hull inspection (Thames Barrage is awesome) & she sold for 90 grand. Made some manoeuvres for new owners, bit scary with bloody tourists on Tower Bridge, no FU tho. Thekla was brought down from Scotland, must have been some voyage.
Have a good gig & POI she is a ship not a boat & has ‘freeing ports’, the windows in her hull are known as scuttles

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Chinnery's, Southend

Three cheers for one of the nicest live sound engineers in the business! Chinnery's, you have a gem there.
Pre-gig smoke almost steals the show....

Monday's Gig at The Boogaloo

It was a fantastic evening of music and good-natured support! We put names in a hat to decide the running order but Amy and myself kicked off the evening, taking turns to do songs (two each of our own and two Jeffersongs). First guest act was The Home Office, and extraordinary duo who sing songs of workaday angst on this occasion accompanied by a Nintendo Gameboy. Dressed in army and navy hats, they sang the poppiest of songs in unison over nervy, skittery beats, moving mechanically in a parody of Kraftwerk and taking the slumbering rock'n'roll Boogaloo rather by surprise. Peter and Nadya are a striking duo, he tall and severe-looking and Nadya with enviable cheekbones and a look of mischief in her eyes.
Next were Trees and the Slipway, who play music that in their own words 'sounds like we spent the 1990s taking acid in Liverpool'. They also favour unison singing; the three chaps stand in a line, with a large Casio synth in the middle that takes them on an odd journey to an even odder destination. Steve plays a red Hofner guitar that fuzzes through a tiny Roland practice amp; insouciant, the bass-player gazed out of the window at the traffic heading down to Archway as he plays; somehow this is apt, especially as a large roaring vehicle with flashing lights snarled past during a quieter moment in one of the songs.
Great sound guys- unique!
I think I am probably getting everything in the wrong order....
The Magnetic Mind turned up just in time to play; with the lead singer Paul on guitar and the drummer on bass (was that right?) they treated us in the audience to the most lush of harmonies and they played two Jeffersongs and one of their own. Their own song was better than the cover versions, I thought; they have a knack with harmonies that soar and swoop and are deliciously layered like a gorgeous cake from Patisserie Valerie. This music is neo-psychedelia of the first order, and afterwards I told them they should hook up with Lester Square from the Monochrome Set- he would just love their songs and their set-up.
One of the pleasures of the evening was watching the artists watch each other- the line-up was unusual and it was great to see everyone playing up to and beyond their potential.
Guy Harries played next, and treated the audience to an emotional electronic experience, augmenting his powerful vocals with flute-playing and exploring Alan Turing's death with such intensity that later, and audience-member came up and told me that she had been moved to tears.
Our final guest artist was Martin Stephenson, who is mid-tour, and who very kindly agreed to take some time out to play for us. As soon as the little Yiari was plugged in, a charge of energy went round the venue and he played a stormin' mini-set that rounded the guest slots off perfectly.
Amy and myself finished the evening with a song each, and then it was home-time.
I was really happy that it went so well- thank you to the artists who all performed so well, to Nat who asked us to host it, to Nat's dad for doing the door, to Dylan for filming it, to Jamie for doing the sound, to Amy for her sharp and fresh new songs, and to the audience for being warm and supportive!

Sweep - Singing his Greatest Hits

1999

Without vanity plays my Reverbnation counter has got to 1999. You have no idea how tempting it is for me to press 'play' to play a song and get it to 2000!
Please put me out of my misery, someone!
reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook

The Boogaloo

Tonight at the Boogaloo, nanosteps away from Highgate Tube, Acton Bell and myself present a night of Jeffersongs- Airplane, Starship and Slick, with Trees and the Slipway, Martin Stephenson, The Magnetic Mind, Guy Harries, the Home Office and Portia Winters.
I feel hugely proud of our line-up- what a variety of guitar pop, electronica, psychedelia, folkwhatsit and more!
We are putting names in a hat for performance times so come early- it starts at 8 on the dot and Acton Bell and myself will be kicking the evening off.
£3 to get in.
Wear your flares!
I haven't got any any more, but I'll be wearing both my flares (half mast) and my stars'n'stripes clogs (which I bought form a small ad in the back of Sounds), in my head.
Peace and love, man!

Not At Columbia Road

Its so sunny and lovely. I had hoped to go to Columbia Road where they sell the plants and flowers, and return bearing bags of multi-coloured semperviva to plant in the voids of birch Christmas tree stands, now that the lopped trunks have gone to the municipal refuse tip.
Alas, I have work to catch up on, the nine-tenths of the iceberg left below water after the symposium et al last week.
A pigeon perches on the tree next door hooting mournfully: 'Poor you! Poor you!'. Sarcastic b*gger!
Students from the University of the East have been out on work placements and I have been overseeing their CVs, advising them, visiting them, and managing a certain degree of panic.
Having a work-age daughter who is also setting off on a journey into this horrific unemployment situation gives me a certain empathy- I have to fight against the feeling that I have 42 offspring (or 150 if you count the Theatre and Dance students that I have ultimate responsibility for) to support.
Some of the students have been incredibly resourceful, even at the moment of panic.
My mantra for myself in the same situation in the 1980s (yes, Thatcher!) was to live by my wits.
One of the guest speakers who came to talk to the students cited 'resilience' as his most useful attribute; I couldn't agree with him more.

Photo from Record Store Day, David's Music, Letchworth

Thanks for the pic, Foolish Girl!

Time

I will be playing at 1 p.m. today

The Week

The plane bumped and lurched into Shannon Airport on Monday narrowly missing the tornado that had been forecast (it didn't arrive, thankfully); I was rustling with papers ready for the Riot Grrrl Symposium at the University of Limerick.
Tuesday broke with glorious sunshine, and the room filled with a very interesting-looking bunch of people. The first speaker was Claire Sedgwick, and she talked about the importance of Zines to feminist discourse from a historical perspective; Tiffany Naiman presented a paper on Courtney Love's Somebody Kill Me and its ethical repercussions; and Gretchen Larsen presented a paper on groupies (one of the most under-researched subjects in the universe of academia: it will be interesting to see what she has concluded when her research is finished). My paper was on the influence of reggae on the sounds of female punk bands, and the Julia Downes presented research into 'all-girl' radicalism.
After the papers had been presented I was struck by just how different things had been for girls and women in punk bands. Riot Grrrl was bristling with manifestoes and a network of communication through letters, zines and music, all centred on how young women felt about themselves in relation to family, society, the media and politics.
Our experience was infinitely more raw and clumsy; I simply can't imagine how it must have felt to be part of something that women did internationally rather than to reside in a corner of punk. There were women's music groups all over the UK (and Europe, and the USA) back in the 1970s but I was put off by the cliqueyness, which simply doesn't raise it's head in the rosy histories of the moment. I recall a deeply upset older woman musician being told at a Women's Meeting that one of the group was physically repulsed by her because of her age. Some support network that was!
I'm sure it wasn't the same everywhere, and the women's bands in Brighton played alongside everyone else. But there seemed to be an awful lot of rules and that was what I thought I was escaping from by playing music in the first place.
So this was all very interesting.
Afterwards, the all-female group Girl in a Coma did a live set, interspersed with a Q&A session run by Eoin Devereux, the academic who had very kindly invited me to speak. It was interesting and a relaxing way to spend the afternoon before Michael whisked me off the the airport with much political discussion and I hopped on a plane back to Heathrow.
I'm hoping to get some photos and I will post them when I do.
Oh and on the plane, I met an old chap who talked all the way back to England. Having had hypnotherapy to deal with my fear of flying, I normally go into a trance. This was awkward, especially the bit when we got back to Heathrow early and circled about. The chap was sitting in the window seat and I had to look past his face as he talked, and see beyond him through the porthole the ground and houses directly below, as the plane tipped sideways. It makes my feet burn even just to think of it. Talk about inner screaming!
So the next day, after a morning of tutorials and trying to help an old lady on the bus by making a phone call for her to ask for someone to meet her off the bus ('NO! That's NOT WHAT I WANTED YOU TO DO!!!' she yelled aggressively when I'd finished) I headed down to trendy Hoxton for Songlab, our student songwriters night.
When I got there, the owner of the venue said he had double-booked us with a screening of a documentary about gypsy jazz.
The day started to feel surreal.
In the end, it all blended together in a casual and relaxed way; I sat in the corner with one of the students listening to his stuff, while the screening went ahead, and then the film-makers hung about and listened to the music. If you're interested in what we do, take a look at our Facebook page, Songlab UEL.
The week continued to be busy... but I'm going to take a break now.
Tomorrow at 1 p.m. I am playing at David's record store in Letchworth, a free event for Record Store Day and will probably be playing the first political song I've written for ages, Big Brother Is Watching You which is here, on Reverbnation: www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook

y

Limerick

Fantastic Riot Grrrl symposium at Limerick yesterday, with lots of food for thought. I'll write about it properly later; tutorials this morning and Songlab at The Troy Bar tonight. I needed soup in the garden with the bees!