Nothing like a bit of Northern Soul to energise you to wash the kitchen floor! You can't sit down when this music is playing. One of my friends described the production on one of these tracks as 'tinny'. Yes it is, and the bishy bashy sound is part of the deal. Plus some WILD horn arrangements which are almost impossible to untangle if you're trying to work out how (and why) they wrote them.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Saturday, February 09, 2019
Friday, February 08, 2019
Threatening Threesome
So that's solo versions of:
Records and Tea by The Chefs for next Saturday (shhh! gig);
Thrush by The Chefs for The Tin in Coventry on 10th May
(once only and never again! https://www.wegottickets.com/event/462666);
and
Veteran's Day Poppy by Captain Beefheart for Liverpool in June (details soon).
Records and Tea by The Chefs for next Saturday (shhh! gig);
Thrush by The Chefs for The Tin in Coventry on 10th May
(once only and never again! https://www.wegottickets.com/event/462666);
and
Veteran's Day Poppy by Captain Beefheart for Liverpool in June (details soon).
More Glorious Procrastination
Solange, Frank Ocean, D'Angelo.... soft soul is rubbing the gritty edges off Friday afternoon.
Two more things to do!
Two more things to do!
Food For Thought
At the supermarket checkout, we were talking about the rain and I remembered that Monday's songs are going to be rain songs. We have a quiet session in the studio before the University has woken up, listening to songs on a theme: Bring a Bassline, Bring a Backing Vocal, Weird and Wonderful Songs.
The students choose songs, and we listen to each other's choices and slowly wake up, ourselves.
"Aha", said the man at the checkout, a child of the Sixties. "Rhythm of the Rain by the Cascades". Off we went, Rain Song tennis. He knew of a Beatles 'B' side, I knew Storm in a Teacup by The Fortunes. It was written by Lynsey De Paul; I told him about the man in Skibbereen from The Fortunes, who lives by the bus stop and pops out to tell the queue about his life, which he obviously misses from a social perspective.
Can't Stand the Rain, by Ann Peebles. I knew the song, he knew who it was by.
He's going to be thinking all day now.
On the way home, my scarf nearly blew off. Oddly, Offsprog One had been talking about the Aesop's Fable about the battle between the sun and the wind where they compete to make a man take his coat off. The sun won, by persuasion rather than force. I hope this was not an omen.
O the joy of procrastination! It's twenty to eleven and I still haven't started working!
The students choose songs, and we listen to each other's choices and slowly wake up, ourselves.
"Aha", said the man at the checkout, a child of the Sixties. "Rhythm of the Rain by the Cascades". Off we went, Rain Song tennis. He knew of a Beatles 'B' side, I knew Storm in a Teacup by The Fortunes. It was written by Lynsey De Paul; I told him about the man in Skibbereen from The Fortunes, who lives by the bus stop and pops out to tell the queue about his life, which he obviously misses from a social perspective.
Can't Stand the Rain, by Ann Peebles. I knew the song, he knew who it was by.
He's going to be thinking all day now.
On the way home, my scarf nearly blew off. Oddly, Offsprog One had been talking about the Aesop's Fable about the battle between the sun and the wind where they compete to make a man take his coat off. The sun won, by persuasion rather than force. I hope this was not an omen.
O the joy of procrastination! It's twenty to eleven and I still haven't started working!
Writing Songs
It seems a teensy bit churlish to complain about being woken up by streams of lyrics stampeding through my head, but that's what happened this morning. I wanted to oversleep. I am so tired that I avoid mirrors because of the reflection of a ghost that peers back.
It's because I have started recording an album, something that has given my imagination permission to let rip.
Blah, blah, blah, the words come flooding out! Blah, blah! Write us down! We are a Good Idea!!!!
At the moment, the lyrics are congregating in one room, buzzing and whirling, shaking hands with each other and deciding whether they should meet to make a verse or a chorus, or if the next phrase along would be a better fit.
In another room are the melodies and guitar riffs, fighting between mechanical and emotional territories: melodies land on riffs like bees on to flowers, then fly off again to land elsewhere to rest finally on a friendly guitar part, singing 'I live here!' at the tops of their voices.
All I have to do is to make a door between the rooms....
Alas today might not be the day; a mountain of emails and other small tasks have built up over the last two weeks, and there is no food in the house.
I am the opposite of a Brexit hoarder: I'm cupboard evacuator, a past-it's-sell-by-dater, a last soggy biscuit in the packeter, a poor sad carrot eater, a cut the green bits off the cheeser.
I am going shopping with a big bag and a big purse then coming home and eating Big Food.
After that, the email mountain will seem like a mere hillock and the fog of small tasks will sort themselves into neat piles.
After, after that... a song, perhaps?
It's because I have started recording an album, something that has given my imagination permission to let rip.
Blah, blah, blah, the words come flooding out! Blah, blah! Write us down! We are a Good Idea!!!!
At the moment, the lyrics are congregating in one room, buzzing and whirling, shaking hands with each other and deciding whether they should meet to make a verse or a chorus, or if the next phrase along would be a better fit.
In another room are the melodies and guitar riffs, fighting between mechanical and emotional territories: melodies land on riffs like bees on to flowers, then fly off again to land elsewhere to rest finally on a friendly guitar part, singing 'I live here!' at the tops of their voices.
All I have to do is to make a door between the rooms....
Alas today might not be the day; a mountain of emails and other small tasks have built up over the last two weeks, and there is no food in the house.
I am the opposite of a Brexit hoarder: I'm cupboard evacuator, a past-it's-sell-by-dater, a last soggy biscuit in the packeter, a poor sad carrot eater, a cut the green bits off the cheeser.
I am going shopping with a big bag and a big purse then coming home and eating Big Food.
After that, the email mountain will seem like a mere hillock and the fog of small tasks will sort themselves into neat piles.
After, after that... a song, perhaps?
Wednesday, February 06, 2019
Talking of CDs...
I have copies of this: £10 including postage and packing if you Paypal helen_mccookerybook@yahoo.co.uk (it's not on Bandcamp).
Sleeve notes by the wonderful Lucy O'Brien.
Track listing:
24 Hours: The Chefs
Femme Fatale: Skat
Freight Train Demo, featuring Lester Square on guitar and Mike Slocombe on drums (very rare!)
Helen and the Horns:
Lonesome Country Boy
Girl Versus Boy
My Black Rose
Oh Boy
Northbound Train
Two Strings to your Bow
Snakebite
Southern Belle
Pioneer Town
Freight Train
Helen McCookerybook:
Monday's Mood with Paul Davey on sax
I'm in Love for the First Time with Paul Davey on sax (this track was covered by The Daintees)
Helen McCookerybook and Plato Page:
Leaving' You Baby
Mad Mix 2
Truckdrivin' Girl
Riding High
Helen McCookerybook:
Temptation
Shelf Lives (film soundtrack)
Blue's son (with Gillian Wood on Cello)
Hermitcrab (from Voxpop Puella)
The Past is just a Dream (from Voxpop Puella)
24 Hours: The Chefs
Femme Fatale: Skat
Freight Train Demo, featuring Lester Square on guitar and Mike Slocombe on drums (very rare!)
Helen and the Horns:
Lonesome Country Boy
Girl Versus Boy
My Black Rose
Oh Boy
Northbound Train
Two Strings to your Bow
Snakebite
Southern Belle
Pioneer Town
Freight Train
Helen McCookerybook:
Monday's Mood with Paul Davey on sax
I'm in Love for the First Time with Paul Davey on sax (this track was covered by The Daintees)
Helen McCookerybook and Plato Page:
Leaving' You Baby
Mad Mix 2
Truckdrivin' Girl
Riding High
Helen McCookerybook:
Temptation
Shelf Lives (film soundtrack)
Blue's son (with Gillian Wood on Cello)
Hermitcrab (from Voxpop Puella)
The Past is just a Dream (from Voxpop Puella)
Helen and the Horns: Vinyl Japan Bootleg
This CD was deleted when I wrote and asked for my royalties (something that happens surprisingly regularly). It is a bootleg, and I've just bought it from Japan. It came beautifully wrapped, and was difficult to open. It was expensive, but for some reason I feel like archiving everything at the moment.
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
Heard At Waterloo Tube Station The Neet
'Good evening, Ladies and gentlemen, Boys and Girls and Train Enthusiasts. Happy Tuesday, and welcome to Waterloo Station this evening'.
Moth Wrangling
Probably I should keep a much more formal diary rather than spilling on to a blog.
I actually do: about feelings, which I don't want to share with people I don't know in Japan and the Ukraine.
Sometimes it's cathartic to just spill though, and because I'm going to spend the morning writing, clearing last night's stress out of my brain seems like a really good idea.
We had been talking about moths and how it's great to stick all your clothes out there in a bin bag when it's frosty for a few days to kill the grubs. Last year was too mild to do it, but this year I thought I was in with a chance, and was planning to stick McDad's rugs out there for a while, covered in plastic so the rats didn't nest in them. They have been rolled up under the bed for two years with regular sprays of moth killer and those little sticky papers to catch them.
Catalysed by reading an article about a stately home that was completely infested, I started to bring the rugs down into the kitchen to vacuum them (forbidden by McDad when he was alive).
Alas, two of them have been completely eaten. There are just threads left, and a horrible brown gritty sludge, which must be moth excrement. That's all that is left. The rest have holes and moth cobwebs, and I spent two hours frantically vacuuming them to try to get rid of any eggs that might be in them.
I won't roll them up again: they will have to be piled up on top of the ones in the living room and cleaned twice a week to protect them.
Moths have crept into everything to escape: the bed, crevices in the wall, the washing bag. I haven't got any more energy to pursue them. The daddy moths are so huge and resistant to being thwarted that I've christened them 'bull-moths'.
On reflection, I've concluded that we share our world with a lot of living things: out there in the yard there are sizeable rats, an occasional fox that presumably gobbles up the sizeable rats, little birds, Magpies that eat the baby birds, squirrels, a cat that catches and kills the squirrels. There were two toads that something has killed (one of them bounced into the toilet when Offsprog Two's friend was sitting having a wee, and gave her the fright of her life). There were wasps living in a hole in next-door's wall, and there are bees in summer visiting the flower that looks like Viper's Bugloss and isn't. A Wren has been visiting the annoying bush that grows too fast and there are Coal-tits that eat the peanuts before I get up in the morning and start crashing about in the kitchen. There are those two robins that came to watch me playing guitar once when I was standing at the kitchen window playing the electric guitar to get used to its neck (different from the Spanish), and that old blackbird that came and sang along when I was sitting out there playing the acoustic guitar one evening. There are Wagtails out in the street (wtf!) that run away from the cars on their spindly little legs.
Then there are us, the humans, clearing a space amongst all this, and carving out territories with fruitless cleanliness, and marking boundaries with walls and fences that mean nothing to nature's creatures.
There. That feels better. See you tomorrow.
I actually do: about feelings, which I don't want to share with people I don't know in Japan and the Ukraine.
Sometimes it's cathartic to just spill though, and because I'm going to spend the morning writing, clearing last night's stress out of my brain seems like a really good idea.
We had been talking about moths and how it's great to stick all your clothes out there in a bin bag when it's frosty for a few days to kill the grubs. Last year was too mild to do it, but this year I thought I was in with a chance, and was planning to stick McDad's rugs out there for a while, covered in plastic so the rats didn't nest in them. They have been rolled up under the bed for two years with regular sprays of moth killer and those little sticky papers to catch them.
Catalysed by reading an article about a stately home that was completely infested, I started to bring the rugs down into the kitchen to vacuum them (forbidden by McDad when he was alive).
Alas, two of them have been completely eaten. There are just threads left, and a horrible brown gritty sludge, which must be moth excrement. That's all that is left. The rest have holes and moth cobwebs, and I spent two hours frantically vacuuming them to try to get rid of any eggs that might be in them.
I won't roll them up again: they will have to be piled up on top of the ones in the living room and cleaned twice a week to protect them.
Moths have crept into everything to escape: the bed, crevices in the wall, the washing bag. I haven't got any more energy to pursue them. The daddy moths are so huge and resistant to being thwarted that I've christened them 'bull-moths'.
On reflection, I've concluded that we share our world with a lot of living things: out there in the yard there are sizeable rats, an occasional fox that presumably gobbles up the sizeable rats, little birds, Magpies that eat the baby birds, squirrels, a cat that catches and kills the squirrels. There were two toads that something has killed (one of them bounced into the toilet when Offsprog Two's friend was sitting having a wee, and gave her the fright of her life). There were wasps living in a hole in next-door's wall, and there are bees in summer visiting the flower that looks like Viper's Bugloss and isn't. A Wren has been visiting the annoying bush that grows too fast and there are Coal-tits that eat the peanuts before I get up in the morning and start crashing about in the kitchen. There are those two robins that came to watch me playing guitar once when I was standing at the kitchen window playing the electric guitar to get used to its neck (different from the Spanish), and that old blackbird that came and sang along when I was sitting out there playing the acoustic guitar one evening. There are Wagtails out in the street (wtf!) that run away from the cars on their spindly little legs.
Then there are us, the humans, clearing a space amongst all this, and carving out territories with fruitless cleanliness, and marking boundaries with walls and fences that mean nothing to nature's creatures.
There. That feels better. See you tomorrow.
Sunday, February 03, 2019
Saturday, February 02, 2019
Friday, February 01, 2019
Gulp
I don't know why this feel like a gamble: it's probably because it's February.
I am writing about Oh Bondage! Up Yours (yes, blah, blah, I know I've said that already), and I'm going to go to Liverpool to look at Falcon Stewart's Archive at the University Library some time in the next couple of weeks. But that's not it.
Part of the deal is to go to New York in June, and present the completed paper at a venue at the Lincoln Center, which will be paid for. So I've just bought my flights, just inside the budget; they have gone up £200 in the last week! I have decided to go a couple of days early and might try to play a small gig. Getting any sense out of the travel agent about whether I can take a guitar or not on the flight was impossible; they only seem to be able to deal with machine-generated questions.
So I may have to borrow one... And I have to find somewhere to stay as well. I am getting a flight back that loses a day and gets me into Manchester on the day of Kevin's all-dayer. F*ck sleep when you're a rock and roller! To make up for the lack of sleep I'm going to have in June, I've been sleeping most of today. It just seemed like the most sensible thing to do, somehow.
I can't believe that I went by myself to New York last year, because I am so unbrave.
I have to do scary things to stop myself from just sitting in my house with the curtains closed reading detective novels, and in fact the reason that I haven't got a cat is that if I did, I would only go out to buy it cat food and that would be that. Instead, I rampage around the country doing gigs far and wide, in a dangerous vehicle that plots my demise from the pavement outside. It's mechanical brain is sizzling as we speak. What a b*stard car!
Somehow though, songs keep crystallising out in my head and they drive me out of the front door, leaving the latest poor sad detective novel face down on the floor, weeping that it's next chapter hasn't managed to be exciting enough to avoid being deserted.
Yet more flimsy plans, but all plans are mere ideas until you push them into reality, aren't they?
In between, I've been playing the Green Goddess, because tomorrow is another recording day, lots of songs from ages ago which I've never considered for an album before, but which need to be heard objectively in the cold light of now.
Rolling along in the background are film screenings- in Leamington Spa on 11th May before the Hull house concert, and in Nottingham the following weekend. I'll publish details of the whole lot soon; there are one or two gigs still to be confirmed as well.
It all chunters along, and having been spoiled by Michael's sandwiches in Belfast all wrapped up in foil, I want sandwiches all the time now. Yes plz!
I am writing about Oh Bondage! Up Yours (yes, blah, blah, I know I've said that already), and I'm going to go to Liverpool to look at Falcon Stewart's Archive at the University Library some time in the next couple of weeks. But that's not it.
Part of the deal is to go to New York in June, and present the completed paper at a venue at the Lincoln Center, which will be paid for. So I've just bought my flights, just inside the budget; they have gone up £200 in the last week! I have decided to go a couple of days early and might try to play a small gig. Getting any sense out of the travel agent about whether I can take a guitar or not on the flight was impossible; they only seem to be able to deal with machine-generated questions.
So I may have to borrow one... And I have to find somewhere to stay as well. I am getting a flight back that loses a day and gets me into Manchester on the day of Kevin's all-dayer. F*ck sleep when you're a rock and roller! To make up for the lack of sleep I'm going to have in June, I've been sleeping most of today. It just seemed like the most sensible thing to do, somehow.
I can't believe that I went by myself to New York last year, because I am so unbrave.
I have to do scary things to stop myself from just sitting in my house with the curtains closed reading detective novels, and in fact the reason that I haven't got a cat is that if I did, I would only go out to buy it cat food and that would be that. Instead, I rampage around the country doing gigs far and wide, in a dangerous vehicle that plots my demise from the pavement outside. It's mechanical brain is sizzling as we speak. What a b*stard car!
Somehow though, songs keep crystallising out in my head and they drive me out of the front door, leaving the latest poor sad detective novel face down on the floor, weeping that it's next chapter hasn't managed to be exciting enough to avoid being deserted.
Yet more flimsy plans, but all plans are mere ideas until you push them into reality, aren't they?
In between, I've been playing the Green Goddess, because tomorrow is another recording day, lots of songs from ages ago which I've never considered for an album before, but which need to be heard objectively in the cold light of now.
Rolling along in the background are film screenings- in Leamington Spa on 11th May before the Hull house concert, and in Nottingham the following weekend. I'll publish details of the whole lot soon; there are one or two gigs still to be confirmed as well.
It all chunters along, and having been spoiled by Michael's sandwiches in Belfast all wrapped up in foil, I want sandwiches all the time now. Yes plz!
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