Bohemia Festival: pics (1); review to follow

Dancing Bohemians and Bohemian Audience

Bohemia Festival, Eridge Park

Today I'm pootling down to Tunbridge Wells, where I'm playing the Bohemia festival; I'm on at 3 p.m.
Seeya there!

More Sock Stuff

Who would have guessed that this cool wristband was once an odd sock?

Jazz Cafe Review: self aggrandisement and bigging up The Daintees

What a gig last night! I really enjoyed playing my set because the audience was listening and I seem to feel so much more confident these days. I loved it, I loved it! Thank you audience for listening to me and thank you to the people who came up later and said they liked it. Thank you to The Daintees for inviting me to support them, too! It more than made up for all the awful ones where people haven't paid any attention. And if anyone had told me a couple of years ago that I'd play the Jazz Cafe I don't think I would have believed them.
The crowd carried on in good spirits for the Daintees- they were really looking forward to seeing them and they weren't disappointed. The band wasn't the big festival band of last year- there was no Andrea Mackie and no John Steel, but they were much more focused and much rockier. Interesting to see how the songs work whatever way they are presented. The sound was great out front; Martin sang really well and they'd been rehearsing which really showed, because they were as tight as a ducks arse in a sandstorm! Like last year the audience sang along to loads of the songs- Little Red Bottle, Rain, more than that, and when the band left the stage after a two hour full-on set, they were still yelling for more twenty minutes later. What a brilliant night! Daisy Flowers was there doing the merchandise, a proper rock'n'roll girl, and Johnny Guitar went up and played harmonica on a couple of songs (earlier he told a wonderful story about being on Gardener's World with his band, having won a competition to write a song to celebrate the Year of the Potato- you have to have met him to see how funny that is- he is just like the missing member of the Rolling Stones!)
Rob from Voiceprint was there too, smiling away. Poetry and Rhyme will be out in September so I shall have to organise a launch party, won't I?
Today, knackered. But Sean's emailed to say he's put Loverman on Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji1jAOHh1eY with a bit from the interview I did with Shippy when I was in Newcastle.

The Consequences of Guilt

'Why-o-why', I wondered, 'Do I break an important guitar-pickin' fingernail every time I have a big gig?'
Because those at home make me feel so guilty that I have a day of frantic housework beforehand (or beforefinger, actually), using vicious products that leach all the calcium from my nails at the same time as scalding the limescale off the bath.
Rubber gloves render my hands flabby and juicy and make my fingernails soft and snappable. What to do? Get rid of the guilt or stop doing the housework?
I just don't know.
But I've lost the second finger right hand nail, the one that twangs the jangly bits of my songs, and I'll have to run through the songs for tonight and get used to having the digital equivalent of a limp!
Last night, one at home had a little barbecue, expecting ten people. Each of those people turned up with an unzippable secret compartment inside which two more people were hiding. I had to keep going downstairs in my pyjamas to make myself cups of tea in order to cramp the style of the party.
At eleven o'clock I was looking fearfully out of the window for more tipsy revellers when I saw a massive hedgehog charging up and down the pavement in the dark, blundering into the road and trying to get run over. We wrapped it in a jacket and took it into the back garden. Sorry hedgehog, if you were looking for a mate, but you were at risk of imminent flattening by a suburban car, and the safety and sanctity of the garden is probably a better place for you until your urges die down.

Jazz Cafe with The Daintees tonight- what a treat. Time to get my best dress out of the wardrobe, and hoover off the moths.
By the way, here is a household tip. You know those strongly-scented lilies with the bright orange pollen that sprinkles about and ruins everything? Hoover the stamens with the pollen on. Either the pollen will disappear into the vaccuum, or the stamens will actually snap off and vanish. Its exciting and fun, though not as much fun as dance-polishing the floor with dusters tied to each foot.

Secret Agent's Wedding

I went to another wedding this weekend, a music booking agent's wedding in Norfolk (what a fantastic place!).
Entertainment was provided by Farmer Jason, a genuine pig farmer from Tennessee and children's entertainer '(Where are you from?' asked Shippy later. 'Illinois' replied Farmer Jason,'but I live in Nashville now'. I daydreamed.. all those piggies being housed in down-time studio space and hastily moved before the country stars arrived for their sessions, and grunting sulkily at the indignity of being constantly shuffled about from studio to studio and never getting a good snuffle for the truffle).
Who else was there? The bass player from Slaughter and the Dogs, dressed in tails and making the wedding video.
The wedding happened in a windmill but I missed that bit, unforchly; the reception was pretty groovy anyway.
Tomorrow, I'm supporting The Daintees at the Jazz Cafe; will be wearing my best dress but clumping down there in the Doc Marten's for the soundcheck. I've just bought a flight case for the festival in France, and next Saturday I am playing at the Bohemia Festival in Kent (want to come along Father Tobias and family?)
It's all go in McCookerybook's kitchen, I tell you.

Radio Joy

The Band of Holy Joy have their own station that broadcasts on Sunday evenings at 8 p.m. on www.bandofholyjoy.co.uk
Johny has just emailed to say they are playing one of my tracks tonight. If you can't listen tonight the shows are archived so you can listen later if you wish.

Two nights out and an afternoon's recording

I've had two nights out on the trot- unheard of for me!
First one was Wednesday, a real gem of a Songbird. I can't remember the names of the performers so I'll review that later or tomorrow as I've got a couple of nice photos. (now I can- Alexander Robinson, sound layerer and processor with cello and acoustic guitar and billions of pedals in chains on the carpet in front of him; Petronella the belly-dancer; and Country Dad, a band that can only be described as a trad jazz experimental band with songs!)
Then last night I went to see Shimmy Rivers and and Canal at a pub down Rosebery Avenue called the Wilmington Arms. They were brilliant- as close to seeing a proper punk band in the seventies as you could get, but also genuinely manic. The funny little guy who turned up late on his bike wearing a tie the last time had a lime green sort of Teddy-mouse suit on and was bouncing around like a toddler on a trampoline thrashing his guitar like nobody's business. Other side of the stage, Mu had a white teddy hat on with ears; Jane was concentrating on her clarinet playing (she plays like a proper player now, albeit a punk one), Ben stood belting his drums like a demented Test Departmento and Rod opened his mouth to huger cavernous extremes to yell than I'd ever seem before. Although it was mad, they have a sort of poise which is difficult to describe. I suppose it's when a band has gelled or something; they just seem to know what they're doing even when they don't. Go and see them, they are brilliant and often when bands get this good they break up!

Jane is going to bring her harmonium round on Bank Holiday Monday and we are going to play Bank Holiday music, which we will make up specially. I like that idea.

Oh yes- I went and played guitar for Rowen Bridler earlier in the day, over to White City. Her songs are very beautiful and mysterious and it took me ages to get into the groove as the song I was playing on has a fantastic drummer on it. I hope I did OK- I did enjoy it, and I am sure that playing guitar for two hours solid is a really good thing to do. By coincidence we had identical hairstyles. And just as I met her at Notting Hill tube, Tessa Pollitt walked up, with her shopping.
Things are going well for the Slits at the moment, but she was concerned as she's looking after a friend's hamster and its cage was broken so she had to glue it together again. Bless.

Above: Teddy-mouse gets laid back after his own fashion, and Petronella spins through the darkness

Hot Slug

On the way to the shops there was a slug on the pavement, looking rather hot and dry. I don't like slugs at all so I just left it there to shrivel in the sun on the hot concrete.
But it was still there on my way back, neck erect, peering about hopelessly with its eyes on stalks for somewhere cool and damp to crawl to. It had drawn a star-shape on the pavement in slime, as it had tried to head in every direction looking for respite.
I couldn't bear it. I got a leaf from someone's garden and wrapped it up and put it on the soil in the shade.
What a hypocrite: I kill them with horrid poisons when they destroy the garden but I feel for the buggers when they are not in a marauding pack.
Bit like teenagers, I suppose.

The Hardest Sock To Throw Away

... is the one I spent days and days knitting on teensy skinny little knitting needles, out of thread-thin wool, and just could not even contemplate knitting its twin; the labour-intensity beat me, and the poor solo sock has moved house with me about eleven times. It's resting next to me now, unaware that it's gonna be binned tomorrow.
I've fed it a last supper of fish'n'chips and strawberries and cream, washed down with dandelion and burdock, followed by a coffee and an After-Eight.
Excuse me while I shed a tear!

Biological Washing Powder and the Search for a Suitable Guitar Case.

This blog was supposed to be about my gigs but I waver and digress, because to me it's become more like a diary: a cross between an appointments diary and a journal.
Every so often, the biological washing powder thing pops into my head, so I will share it with you.
I was at a funeral a few years ago and I met a violinist whose dad had worked with McDad. Her dad had been a scientist and was employed at Port Sunlight by a big washing-powder manufacturer to reassure the public that there was nothing harmful about biological washing powder, and he ran a series of experiments to prove just that.
Unfortunately, he found that the tiny particles of powder that became airborne when the powder was put into the washing machine began to digest the lining of the lungs when they were inhaled; it was impossible to use the powder without particles entering the respiratory system, and probably, even when the clothes had been washed and dried, enzymes could find their way into the lungs of the wearer. He told the manufacturer that their powders were not safe and he was dismissed and his research shelved as it was too inconvenient financially for the company to withdraw its products.
McDad never wanted biological powder in the house and that must have been why.
Meanwhile, after diverting towards science, back to practicality. I have to find a fliight case to take the Green Goddess to France for a little festival of collaboration. I've been looking on the net and they all look gigantic and very ostentatious. It reminds me of going to Berlin in their year of culture with Paul sax player, and getting on a plane with Clock DVA and their computers. We shuffled up with our battered instrument cases and shabby clothes, and they strode up with aluminium computer cases and equipment boxes, dressed head to toe in black and wearing shades, even though it was night-time. They may have looked at us, but you couldn't tell; they certainly didn't smile or anything uncool like that.
At the gig, we played the Loft, the little upstairs venue, and they played the Big Downstairs (can't remember what it was called), with TV cameras on swooping cranes and mega-banks of lights. When we'd finished, we went downstairs to see the Big Goings On, and up trotted Clock DVA, all friendly and sweet. "Our equipment crashed as soon as we got on stage and we couldn't play', they told us.
I think they needed to talk to some prats to make themselves feel comfortable. So we were nice to them for the rest of the evening, and didn't even comment when one of them squeaked in fear when the plane landed at Gatwick with a mighty thump the next day.
What a pity! I have a video of that gig, and in every song we play, either me or Paul makes a cringeingly awful musical mistake. We actually went down quite well, but you wouldn't think so from the tape.

Coats

Dammit, I've just got back from the shops and discovered raspberry juice all down my cream coloured coat, my favourite one.
What about the black coat? I brushed past some newly-painted white emulsion in that one.

Yes, it's time to throw that one sock away!

I don't know about you, but I have had a tendency to hang on to single socks for years, in the vain hope that the other one is going to turn up, tucked into a duvet cover or under a jumper in the wrong drawer.
Well, it's not!
Liberate yourself!
Throw away al those miserable solo socks and celebrate the pairs, even if there are less of them and they are full of holes!
Alternatively, twin them with similar socks and enjoy odd-sock delight; just don't let them creep around the chest of drawers pretending their sibling is creeping around too, only in a different direction. They are liars, the lot of them, and should be punished by a journey to Oxfam, where they will be usefully recycled into insulating materials and chair-stuffing, a much better place for them than your bedroom storage furniture.

Love

Yesterday I went to a perfect wedding. One of my cousins got married to a lovely woman, in a Quaker Meeting House in Oxford. It was packed, and looked like one of those paintings of Dutch interiors; there was a lot of light oak panelling and the sun shone in beams through the windows and through leafy trees in the garden. I had never been to a Quaker meeting before and was intrigued to see what happened. The Quakers I know include my gay foster cousin's partner and Shima from NIgeria who used to board at our house when I was little. He was a Tiv and went to the Meeting House in Jesmond in full tribal gear. We dropped him off and then went to Jesmond Presbyterian Church, McDad wearing his kilt, before picking him up and going home for Sunday lunch.
Anyway, this was the quietest wedding I have ever been to; every so often friends got up and spoke, before we all signed a huge certificate. Nobody was ordering anyone around; a vicar didn't tell the couple what to say- they just said it without being controlled by a Religion and without Pomp and Ceremony. Rather nice, I thought, for a second time around marriage with two people so utterly in love with each other.
Later, we went and scoffed very nice food and caught up with family talk; I sang them Autumn Love (much scarier than a gig, somehow), and then drove home feeling very happy that true love had been celebrated that afternoon.

Seed Cake

Up with the lark this morning (the Magpie, actually, scruffy old thing). I took the car to the MOT centre and it passed with flying colours; when I got home I made a seed cake with caraway seeds in it because I'm going to Joan's for tea. She has made some cakes and we are going to wear dresses and sip tea daintily with our leathery artist's hands clumsily grasping the china.
I wrecked my hands by being a printer- I had ingrained black ink for years round my nails, and the turps and swarfega that I used to try to clean it off with dried my skin to the texture of toilet paper.
McMum and McDad gave me a food blender for my 21st birthday. I was very disappointed because I had wanted a scooter but that's a very expensive thing to want (I have a motorbike now but I'll tell you about that another time!). I used the blender to make paper at art college for printing my etchings on to. When I tried to clean the blender with white spirit, it melted into a very interesting shape that was interesting to look at, but no good for blending in.
I also am living testament to the acid-proof tendencies of Doctor Marten's boots, because I had the same pair for three years and used to splash nitric acid on them regularly (that's what you use to etch on zinc plates) and they never wore out. Eventually, my big toes poked through the front, but I have Scottish feet and any Scotsman will tell you our feet are made of steel, strengthened by a diet of Irn Bru, deep-fried Mars bars and Haggis.