I predict...

... in the future we'll all have relationships with music instead of each other. It will be easier, and that thing where music divides two people from each other will no longer happen.

Tomorrow's gig, 13th

I am playing tomorrow night in Hackney, at the Biddle Bros bar , 88 Lower Clapton Road, onstage 10.15, free to get in.

Good Morning, Blog

Oh it's early.
I woke thinking about S, my lovely art history tutor at Brighton Art College. He used to love my work, and at the end when my practical tutor, Brendan Neiland, was tellin me he'd marked me down to a Lower 2nd because I didn't turn into a painter as he'd instructed me (I was always an etcher and illustrator, but a Fine Art one), S was always coming out of the room where my drawings were because he liked them. I liked him, too. Eventually the External examiner graded me a little higher, but S's approval was what counted. He taught us all sorts of unusual things, like the fact that Victorian people would not be able to understand our conversation, as we talk and think so fast these days and our sentences are peppered with technological references that would be beyond their knowledge. He regularly went on shoplifting sprees in the bookshop his ex-boyfriend worked in, partly to wind him up but also because he loved books. His portakabin office was groaning with them and when there weren't enough chairs, you sat on a little tower of books instead. I learned not to moan about being skint, because I bumped into him in the street once and was wwrooying at him about having no money. we were stainding next to a cash machine. He got his card out. "I'm going to lend you sixty quid', he said.
His eyes used to dart about with intelligence. Later in London I used to just drop into his house at Crampton Street to see him; On one of those occasions he told me the warehuse where all his books were stored in Hastings had burned to the ground, roasting all his library to ashes.
You see, I did a search for his name on Google and I think he might have died. You can imagine how sad this maked me feel, because he was young.

My brain told me a crap joke, to compensate. I hear Joby's going to write his memoirs, all from being an anarchist and squatting activis, through being a thatcher, a deep sea fisherman, a local councillor, and now an art student. I thought it would be about as long as Samuel Pepy's diaries, and then I thought if Pepys had written his diaries in Morse Code, they would be clled Pepy's Bleeps.

Sorry about the spelling. It really is very early.

All at Sea

Well, you yachtsmen, how corny can you be, calling your jolly newspaper All At Sea? There was Jon, resplendent in his cowboy shirt, and his trusty bro Pete (which cowboy looked more swanky?), celebrating his birthday at Shoreham Yachting Club. Luckily there were no spooky tanned characters in blue denim yachting caps with curved tobacco-pipes, otherwise we would have scarpered back to London toot sweet. I talked myself hoarse, even though there's no point talking when you do a blog because everybody seems to know everything already. But it was so touching- a friend of Pete's told me she still sings Chefs songs almost every day, and she sang Sweetie to me. Aah!
And today, well I was last night's home-driver, fuelled by red and black wine gums (no other colours please) and although my carful was a little drunk, they were interesting rather than boring and kept me awake with their verbal ramblings, in the fog and drizzle as I drove home too fast. Today has been Housework, half a bottle of champagne, scrubbing the floor, cleaning out the fishtank (stings the hands but I will cry when the carrotfish dies, he who looks at me with his rogueish black beady eyes). Does the carpet manufacture one pence pieces? Why are they there? Could it not be the 2 quid ones next time, please God?
O the cruelty of roaring around with the brutal Dyson when a delicate little song is whispering itself into your ear!

Breakfast on Saturday: posting, not eating

Aha, to amuse myself, I am going to start putting tracks on Myspace for a week and then replacing them- all the rejected recordings from Suburban Pastoral (the ones the listeners decided should not be on there), then the ones that I decided should not be on there, then all the new songs I've done, a week each.
It's Jon's party tonight, Jon who used to manage the Chefs in London after we moved to seek fame and fortune (we had a different manager in Brighton, Stu). He's a gardener now and sometimes when suburban life gets me down I imagine him roaring across flat green lawns mowing stripes into them on a motor-mower in the sunshine. I had been tempted to do an HND in gardening so I could cure the blight of gigantic coloured mega-warehouse outlets with greenery, but then I looked down at my hands, already wrecked in my twenties by dabbling them in acid and white spirit when I was an etcher, and thought about short fingernails on the left hand and long fingernails on the right hand. The long fingernails on the right hand wouldn't last very long, would they? I do so love grubbing about in the earth and sniffing the outside air, but one has to Focus.
Irritating, but the song I was writing about Paris has finished itself and has not lingered; I can't immerse myself in it any longer.
To work, to work, sending out more CDs in the vain hope of reviews, trying to get gigs, etc etc. thank you Martin, Arnauld, Bobby and Kirsten. As much as you help me, I help other people too, which is the best way I can think of to show my gratitude.
And thank you Caroline, who is helping to organise a fantastic dinner party for all the women I interviewed for the book, all together under one roof: now that's going to be one helluva do!

Grr

Well, that's annoying. I don't seem to be able to upload images at the moment- maybe it's just the ones from my phone. The policewoman wouldn't upload yesterday and my false Grayson Perry won't upload today. So just words, words, words...
I went to visit a place today where I'm going to play a daytime gig, a centre where people who have had brain injuries meet and create artwork, listen to music and talk. Their stories were really interesting and touching, and I know I will enjoy playing there in March.
Jamie wasn't well; we were supposed to meet for tea, and although it was sad not to see him, I've had a song nagging away at me, a song about Paris, and I came home to finish it. It's delicious to have an almost-finished song! Some of the words still aren't right, but it's on it's way. I haven't written a song like this before; Diana told me she'd like to hear me sing a ballad and I'm still not sure I know what one is, but this song is about feeling as much as melody, and is totally illogical; I think perhaps it might be a ballad!l. There is no chorus, but there is a middle bit that only happens once. When I sing it, I get transported back there, and time stands still, but it only lasts two and a half minutes. It's about something I saw in freezing France last winter at a cafe near that huge graveyard.
Yesterday, a young man and a young woman were pushing a massive snowball down the street. Mr Effoff (mentioned him a couple of days ago) was out helping the woman two doors down to move her car back into her driveway. He stopped for a while to help them roll their snowball, which was getting more and more difficult for them to push. I reckon when they got to the top of the hill, they could just let it go and roll up a mass of snow before it got to the bottom.
The snow made children out of everybody, I think.

Police Raid Songbird

The police raided Songbird last night; we'd seen Ambrosia Rasputin, a sort of more verbally aggressive Ivor Cutler who did a lot of spitting into his beard as he barked out his nonsense poems, but he was actually very funny and had a spontanaiety about him that kept everyone's attention. We'd seen Lindsey Woolsey, Elle Osborne on vocals and friend on laptop- excellent songs- and we were just deciding to go home (Mike and Emerald came along), when a rozzer walked in.
I think everybody there thought he was a fancy-dress policeman- it wouldn't be surprising- but he strode over to Diana and said 'We agreed there would be sixty people here and there should be no loud music and there are more than sixty people here and the music is loud so I must ask you all to go home!'. At that point, more police arrived and this woman policeman started taking pictures of everybody (diabolical liberty!)
The picture won't upload! Have the police done magic awful things to render them unuploadable?

Suburban life and a busy day

'GET INTO THE EFFING CAR YOU STUPID BUNCH OF THICK IDIOTS', screamed the man over the road to his children on the school run.
Today... sociable day! I went for coffee with Dan, there was something I meant to tell him but didn't, then I bought a ball of wool, then for coffee with Ian from Nude magazine so he could scan the Chefs photos to go with the little thing I wrote for the mag, then tonight out for dinner with Mike and Emerald, then to Songbird to see Elle play. She is brilliant, and she'll play on Memento Mori, which is very good news. I think I've drunk about 6 cups of coffee so far today and I'm typing very fast. I have started knitting a big cardigan with a logo on the back that has a greenish guitar, with an eye and an f-hole. I'm knitting it freehand, so it will look a bit strange but I don't care.
Once, when Helen and the Horns were in Amsterdam, I was knitting a jumper with a skull-and-crossbones on it. 'Whatever you do, don't let me knit when we get back and I'm drunk' I told the others. They didn't stop me, and in the semi-dark of our room we sat up talking half the night as the alchohol faded out of our systems, with my knitting needles clicking away furiously. I tried to go to bed, but they were talking such funny talk I laughed myself awake and threw up in the sink. The next day, my knitting was a complete mess, holes, tangles, mistakes, lumps, a complete porridge of black and white wool. I had to unravel it all and start again.

Orange and Green

I can't for the life of me remember whether I've already written about this... but I suppose it doesn't matter: if I have, you can always ignore it.
I borrowed a colour TV off Yvonne and Ghassam downstairs (they had a naughty dog called Toby; Yvonne used to ask it 'Do you want a smack?'. And what do you think it replied?).
It was orange and green, no other colours, but I got used to it and used to watch the football mostly, which always looked good in those colours. The problem was that it gave off large electric shocks if you touched it, and I took to turning it on and off with a broom pole. Imagine my joy when I discovered that I could lie in bed and just stretch over to change channels with the pole without crossing the room! When we are all much greener (if not orange too), just remember this useful tip. You will no longer need to use a battery-guzzling remote control for your TV.
Another thing is that Joby fixed an old-fashioned black telephone receiver to his TV to listen to the sound on, didn't you, Joby?

Foreign

There we are, complaining about immigration while simultaneously flooding Spain with our elders...
An Egyptian doctor, visiting my dad, asked to look at my Geography homework. He roared with laughter: 'Fifteen years out of date', he explained.
Meanwhile, in Geography, we had been learning about how backward other countries were in comparison to clever old England. See what I mean?


Don't know if anyone's interested but I uploaded a couple of Chefs photos on to Myspace for the editor of Nude magazine to look at- they are posed ones, not live ones. I might start up a Chefs myspace soon but I haven't got time at the moment.

Brighton

Ah Brighton, Brighton, you stale seedy old secondhand woman! Every corner I turned, memories hit me over the head, some too horrid to mention.
The flat above a restaurant where a cockroach ran across Tracey's face when she was resting her head on the arm of a chair...
The street where Charlotte marched up the road whacking men's bums one after the other in broad daylight to get her revenge...
The road where the police stopped us because I was singing the theme from 'Robin Hood' at maximum volume on the back of a moped at 2 A.M...
The night-time trees packed with squawking starlings at migration time, splatting their poo on the pavement, Brighton being the end of mainland England. 'What are they saying?', I asked Big Bruv. 'Each of them is shouting, 'SHUT UP! I'M TRYING TO GET TO SLEEP!', he replied.
The first party I went to at the Resource Centre, where a tall transvestite stood at a trestle table, her long blonde hair swaying from side to side as she mixed something sloppy in a bowl. I was fascinated by her thick makeup, her gingham dress, her frilly waist pinafore and her Alice Band. Eddie asked her what she was making. 'Peeaaancakes', she drawled theatrically...
The Fortune of War pub on the beach, where we saw a Frank Sinatra lookalike sing an entire set to his reflection in the massive mirror at the back of the stage, accompanied by Bill Oldie on piano, an ancient gentleman with grey fur sprouting from the neck of his shirt, who had to be helped up by two people from the piano stool when his lunch was ready...

Sara's party was lovely, she looked stunning, and there were people there that I'd thought I would never see again; we all survived the same strange happenings in the late 1970s, squatting, sharing food and experiences and danger (stabbings, smackheads slumped obliquely on the stairs, collapsing ceilings, electrically charged toilet handles that zapped you when you flushed, you know the sort of thing). Sara liked her song, and danced to it, and I was glad I'd written her some pop instead of a mawkish ballad.

Little Review

I had an email this morning on Myspace from Michael Gold Lion and he's done a little review of Heaven Avenue on his site,
http://www.freshoutmedia.com/culture/the-best-unheard-songs-of-2006/
Thank you. thank you, Michael Gold Lion. I will even find the envelope with html on it so I can make the link work properly, and do that programming tomorrow when I get back from Sara's party in Brighton.
I'm also going to scan some Chefs photos for the article in Nude magazine: I keep remembering more things and I'll have to edit down the verbal garbage a bit to get it all in! And the first Chefs manager, Stu, has been in touch because they are making a music site in Brighton and he wants some old Chefs trakcs to put on it; I will have to get in touch with Carl about that too.
It's all exciting! It makes me remember who I was before life happened and took it's toll. I have even changed my hair and when I went to work yesterday my boss did not recognise me. Whizz whizz energy!

A warning?

When The Chefs signed to Graduate, they had a big party in their mega-offices in Dudley; everyone got very drunk and partied in their mega-roofgarden. I went to the ladies, and found the catering company waitresses in their white pinnies guiltily decanting cheap fizzy white wine into empty champagne bottles. Maybe I was supposed to be too drunk to notice, but I wasn't, and I did.

Man-boob Mountain

Oh dear... I've just been watching it on TV, more ops to remove man-boobs. Where do they put them all?
A big slithery hill of them, somewhere where nobody goes?
Redcar?
Oh, bad dreams, bad dreams...
Think I might put Sara's song on myspace this weekend, just for a change- it's a bit rough'n'ready because I had only a couple of hours to do it before work yesterday but Tom's polished it up nicely. Time for Songbird to go, I think.

Dan at the Betsey Trotwood

I went to see Dan play at the Betsey Trotwood. He's moving to Wolverhampton, destination town, and won't be doing the Song Club any more, which is a pity because the children love him. It was his last London gig before he moves.
Do you know, he really shows up that silly James Blunt with his voice like wet tissue paper. Dan has got a proper Voice that could blast the cork out of a a champagne bottle, with real emotions in it, and not pretend ones. He is also a really good songwriter and I spent the duration of the set doing a nerdy songwritery thing, sitting with my eyes closed trying to work out the chords of the songs. I was also trying to work out why he's not famous yet, and I think it might be that his style is too mature for what disgusting business people call 'the market'. I think people will grow into him.
On the way home on the tube, I saw that hypocritical 'Harrods Rocks' ad. When it sniffs a marketing opportunity it does, yes; but how can a massive department store, with a room full of effigies of Mohammed Al Fayed wearing a pharoah's head-dress, rock? Nadya told me they threw her out once for having holes in her tights. It couldn't rock if you threw a mountain at it!
Anyway, busy day today, recording this morning and at work with the fastest rapper in the Universe, JC001, and a bunch of aspiring songwriters this afternoon. It's all go, in the busy world of McCookerybook.
(I have shouldered a couple of professional disasters in January: fingers crossed that February is more generous with her luck)