Wasbo Derek, Dog of Man and Me

What a lovely afternoon! We got there a bit early and chatted to Mark Asbo-bass and Joe Asbo-keyboards before soundcheck time. Everything ran a bit late, or rather everything was laid back, which is entirely as it should be for an afternoon gig. I didn't get to sound check until five minutes after I was due to be on stage for my set. I thought there'd be nobody there but as soon as the doors opened, about 40 people flowed in, including Pete, Lisa and Jonathan, Steve Clements and June Miles-Kingston of the Mo-Dettes and her husband. The atmosphere was so friendly you could scoop it up in handfuls, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing, with Steve the super-sound-engineer behind the mixing desk and everyone in the audience willing to sing At The Bathing Pond with me. This was supposed to be a gig shared with my brother James McCallum, who was still coughing after a bout of Covid, so our bro-and-sis spectacular with Chefs songs has been put off till the New Year, and our London date at The Bestey Trotwood on the 25th of January will now be our first together-gig.

Fortunately for me, the venue mis-spelled my name not only once but twice, and the smutty 'McCockerybook' poster was the inspiration for the ever so slightly smutty bathing pond song, which you can hear, here: https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/at-the-bathing-pond

I sort of wished I'd had time to work out Thrush (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRTSyKJUjQU) to play under the circumstances, or perhaps Three of Them (https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/three-of-them) but kept The Chefs covers to just Let's Make Up (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIIf0ihJRe8) on this occasion.

I finished with The Bad Apple song, and here's part of it:

So here come Wasbo Derek! But where was Jem? 

'Downstairs!', said the audience, knowledgeably. 

For a moment the band was Priceless (see what I did just there?), and Mark bravely began to sing a folk-song, solo. But Jem charged in, and the set began. They played 100% more tightly than last time I saw them, when they were just getting used to their new drummer Kaya Kendall, who I was happy to see plays without cymbals (oh so very Bow Wow Wow, and so very effective!). We clapped for Brian, who was very much there in spirit, even though the band has an entirely new set. Darcy guitarred for England, Joe boosted the sound perfectly with his keyboards, Mark underpinned the lot with his deftly-wielded bass, and Jem roared though the songs with such bonhomie that I can't imagine anyone who walked in feeling sad could possibly not have walked out happy. I love the Be Nimble song all the more for being free of Teams and it's horrible boosterish jargon now I'm no longer an academic, and the Nice song was remarkable. Jem commanded 'Sway' almost nonchalantly, and immediately the whole audience started swaying in perfect synchronisation. How that happen?

Kaya came out from behind the drums to sing a poignant song about trafficked (I mistyped that as 'traffucked', perhaps aptly) women working in nail bars, and their fellow-travellers perishing in containers on their journey to the UK as refugees. It was really effective: she has a great singing voice and it was all the more powerful for being embedded in the general silliness of some of the other songs. The new material is oh-so catchy and it was great to hear it all again. I do so love Asbo Derek, both as individual people and as a band. I couldn't imagine a better way to spend a chilly November afternoon.

Last band of the day was Dog of Man, a band bigged-up by Attila the Stockbroker today on his F*cebook page. They are a four-piece, led by an accordion player who looked as though he could have managed the whole set as a solo performer. But they also had guitar, bass and drums, really excellent players who put in a powerful set: I made mental notes along the lines of 'Prodigy meets Queen meets Black Sabbath', but I'm usually completely wrong, and will probably be corrected at some point.

The Prince Albert is a venue that, like the Lexington, in London feels like home to me. It's wonderful to be on that stage and in that company, including the little fly (probably more a midge than a fly) that always passes across the stage at head-level, every time I play there. 

I wonder if it's recording little midge bootlegs to sell to its mates?

McCockerybook Gains An Extra 'O'

How exciting! Come along tomorrow and I'll do my best to be McCookerybook! I'm on first, then (W)Asbo Derek, then Dog of Man.

It starts at 2 p.m. and you can be home for yer tea!

Recording Backing Vocals for Robert Rotifer

Robert's written a new album and the songs are positively lovely, with some very wry observational lyrics. He asked me to sing some backing vocals, alongside Fay Hallam and Amelia Fletcher, and today he came round so we could record them on my computer. Three hours of solid work later, we finished and he sat and bounced them on to a USB stick to take back to Canterbury with him. 

I've almost lost my voice, but it was good to work so hard at getting them right. Here he is at the kitchen table, cooking up a musical storm. I think he's had a text come in on his phone.

Made it on to Tom Robinson's Freshnet Mixtape!

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/introducing/entries/11298d4c-bc8d-40dd-8055-fb51577d1d20

Bone Music and Rib Robbers

Different forms of storing and sharing music are intriguing. Ultimately, sound is just movements in the air picked up by our bones and our eardrums, yet we have used our ingenuity as humans to capture organised sounds and communicate them to each other, sometimes against the odds, for centuries.

I saw this event advertised online, and because Heavenly Films events are always worth going to, and at the moment evenings need a change of gear after spending all day poring over a hot illustration or two, I decided to take a punt and go along.

The event was happening on the top floor of Foyles, which has become noticeably swankier in recent years. I wonder if they still treat their workers really badly like they did back in the day?

Anyway, the evening was introduced by the author Travis Elborough, who was accompanied onstage by a little lamp with a high-end lampshade that made it a clarsy kinduva night before it even started. The film, Roentgenizdat: The Strange Story of Soviet Music On the Bone (by Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield) was neat, concise, packed with content, and was told by the protagonists in the peculiar activity of cutting songs on to specially-shaped discarded hospital x-rays for illicit distribution in the USSR. When a cutting machine (DIY and based on a template) was confiscated, another was put together immediately. As many as 50 of the discs themselves could be packed into the sleeves of overcoats to be sold on the street; one chap adapted a tennis-racket cover to hold his stash of rock'n'roll or jazz bootlegs. Each disc boasted the ghostly trace of someone's hand, perhaps, or a broken leg. The guys called the discs 'ribs', and told stories of bandits stealing their merchandise and/or their money: "Give us your Ribs, or you'll get a knife in your ribs". Forbidden Russian music also featured, and the whole phenomenon disappeared after the Soviet authorities gave permission for households to have reel-to-reel tap recorders. Apparently there is now a thriving trade in fake Ribs on eBay.

It was utterly fascinating, and the writer Stephen Coates fleshed out the ribs of the story in the interview with Travis afterwards. He has written two books on the subject, X-Ray Audio and Bone Music, and also presents a show on Soho Radio called The Bureau of Lost Culture.

I was so glad I went. Dorothy Max Prior had been sitting in front of me and we had a really nice chat. So many years ago, The Chefs guitarist Carl Evans used to drive her band the El Trains around town. Then I saw Daniel Rachel and had chat to him, rather a motormouth one due to my days of solitary illustration, and Paul Kelly came up to say hello, he of Birdie. It transpired that he and his mate had bought my original Hofner violin bass off me many years ago. Fancy that!

Pat

As a child I was given a plastic doll.

Mum asked me what I was going to call it. 'Her name is on her back', I said. 'It's Pat Pending'. I could not understand why Mum found that funny.

Helen McCockerybook

Rumour has it that we will be auctioning a copy of this wonderfully-typoed poster (sent by Jem Price) on Saturday afternoon at the Prince Albert, Brighton.

Remix of 'Wake Up' by Xqui

Thank you to Xqui for this lovely remix:

https://xqui.bandcamp.com/track/wake-up-xqui-remix

Legacy Chart

So here is Beachwalk at number 34 in the Legacy Chart at 365 Radio. Big luv to Amanda Austin for suggesting that I send it to them, and to Dawn Parry and Steve Lillywhite for liking it and putting it on the playlist!

https://365radio.co/

Condensed Socialising

After a couple of hours drawing, I was really for a rest from the week, so for the rest of the day (aha!) I took time off to socialise. 

Gina has been working very hard and very successfully over the last few months, and as usual the traditional 'going out for lunch to celebrate her birthday' was a little later than her actual birthday. We went to Mildred's in Soho, the original vegetarian restaurant which now appears to be vegan. Quite a lot of the bits of the different dishes on the menu weren't available (I presume because of supply-chain issues, because we were very early and they couldn't have run out of them at that time), and having been scared by the waiter that what I'd chosen was extremely spicy, instead I chose fennel sausages and mash. I have hated sausages for a long time, and basically ordered them because the dish looked simple. Much to my surprise they were absolutely gorgeous and I scoffed the lot.

Gina suggested that we went to Third Man Records, who she's now signed with. They are Jack Whites' company, and having missed her single launch on Friday last week, she wanted to give me a copy of her latest single, Wish I Was You/No Love. What a snazzy shop it is- all yellow and black, very wasp! Everything in the shop is in identical shades of those colours, even the turntables and the very stylish clothing. We chatted in the basement about her forthcoming interviews and releases; things are going to be really exciting for her in the next few months, and not before time. She has grafted hard on her music and art for a long time, and I've seen how both have flourished and consolidated into really interesting and vibrant work.

We went for cake in the pinkest cake shop in the world. The pink was lovely but the cake wasn't, really. It was all designed for Instagram, except you couldn't take photographs because there was some sort of light filter that made photographs come out a dull green colour. Oh dear, such meanness! No name-check for you, swanky cake shop!

I rushed back home to have a Zoom meeting with the author of the children's book that I'm illustrating, which is the first time we've spoken in-almost-real-life. It was a lovely conversation and I'm glad we did it, because I now feel I've got more insight into the book and how it should be. I ought to be working on it now even though it's Saturday, because I'm re-drawing whole pages sometimes. But Come Dine With Me is on. If the people aren't nice to each other, it's back to the drawing board.

Next bit of yesterday's social day was going to Scaledown. I haven't been for ages, and there were lots of people I knew on the bill. I was keen to see at least some of them before the later errand of the day, and I managed to catch the mini-concert on toy piano, which was fabulous, and Felix Mackintosh's experimental dub disco with vocals by Leoncia Flynn. I had a nice chat with Kevin and Mark, and almost ended up filling a space in the bill, but didn't have my guitar to do it. I missed Bettina Schroeder and James, Lucy Sieger, and Lee, Cos and Marina but I know there are more gigs for all of them that I can catch soon. Bettina gave us all a link to her latest musical collaboration with Xqui, who coincidentally has just done a dub mix of one of my own tracks, which I'll post soon. Nice to see Peter Tainsh out too.

Thanks to the Elizabeth Line, I was in Farringdon in the twinkling of an eye. I roared up the street to The Betsey Trotwood, did my drop-off, and went upstairs to the Papernut Cambridge album launch. It was very full up there, and I was nervous about the crowd, but eventually I opened my eyes and sat next to Kieron Phelan, where I noticed Judith, Oscar, two Kentish Roberts (Rotifer and Halcrow) playing with Ian, and Pete Astor and various other familiar faces. Ian was playing two sets of Toni Tubna songs mixed with his latest album songs; originally he'd asked me to sing backing vocals from the audience but I think it would only have been me (the Roberts did the stage BVs), and it was almost a relief just to be able to sit and listen. Ian is a really good song writer; all of the set was enjoyable but there were a couple of songs that took my breath away. Oddly, they had simple structures, but the melody of each of them was so divine that there was no necessity for over-decoration or any sort of complexity. After the first, Kieron leaned towards me and whispered 'Now that is a lovely song!'. I also particularly connected with the song about the American train ride. I've chatted about it before with Ian, because although his American train went in a different direction to the one that I took, we both had the same feelings of awe and excitement about what we saw of that enthralling continent outside the train window. Ian's going to send me a CD so I'll be able to share at least one of them in due course.

Rarely have I engaged in so much socialising in one day. I woke at six this morning but managed to persuade my body that six is too early for chilly autumn mornings. Hence I'm running late today: the morning I'd planned as an illustration session didn't materialise. Instead, I read The Guardian cover to cover. However, Come Dine With Me has rather nasty participants in this episode, and I feel an afternoon's drawing is in order.

Toredom

What is Toredom? Boredom with the dreary Conservative liars expecting our attention yet again for another 'reinvention'. They aren't able to fix the things they broke, are they?

Dry Cleaners, Leicester

An unfinished drawing from Sunday Drawing Club on Wednesday. Great craic as always!

The Joy Of The Unexpected

When I left my lecturing job I imagined it being a real struggle to leave behind the work routine, with several months of floundering around trying to establish something different in life. But I responded spontaneously to a request posted on F*cebook for an illustrator for a primary school children's book on sustainable clothing, and started working on that almost straight away. It's still got a way to go: I'm doing a lot of re-drawing partly in response to comments from the author, and also partly because I want to feel proud of the collaboration myself. It's due to be finished in December, and the project has taught me a lot about pacing my work as an illustrator, and when to start again when a drawing isn't working (amongst other things). It's so similar to making music: I've rejected whole tracks, and even whole songs, when they are travelling in the wrong direction.

I enrolled on a life-drawing class to feed my observation skills, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of that. I'd like to do more, because I've become a real fan of adult education. Before Covid I spent three years of learning to play the drum kit not because I wanted to drum in a band, but because I wanted to hang out with Shanne Bradley, who suggested it. I carried on because I realised the drummer's secret: drumming makes you feel great. It's therapeutic both physically and mentally. 

People think that's because you're whacking the shit out of the drums, but actually if you're a good drummer you get the sound and the beat out of the skins because you control the 'bounce' and co-ordinate what your four limbs are doing. This leaves no room in your brain for worrying thoughts. Even two hours of drumming clears your head, and takes all the tension out of your upper body.

Miraculously, even though I can't read normal music, I can read drum scores. We were taught from the beginning to link the sound to the dots, and this is probably how it happened. I'm not sure if I could do it without the score, and that's the conun-drum (!).

Pupils came and went in the classes; one of the best terms was the one where the whole class was female. Being an evening class, there were lots of different standards, cultures and ages. The teacher suggested that we should work towards a concert, and we started to think about repertoire. Almost as a joke, I suggested Paranoid by Black Sabbath, and the teacher found it on Youtube. Instantly the whole class perked up, and even the beginnerest drummer (a young Spanish woman), started playing along with the 'pah-pah-PAH' part of the rhythm. The joy of it! You don't have to be a 1970s Brummie metal fan to know that Paranoid's a good song. At the show, a line of four female drummers joyously thrashed their way through it, to appreciative applause from our friends and family.

Life throws up moments when you think things like 'I could never in a million years have imagined that I'd be sitting drumming to a Black Sabbath song with four other women!'. Three unbelievables in one sentence.

This digression into unexpected drum moments isn't too much of a digression: yesterday I was accepted for an artist-in-residence post. Again it came from F*cebook, that often deservedly-maligned social media site. As soon as I saw the advertisement, I knew exactly what I would do if I was given the opportunity, and now that I have (starting in January), it's made me so excited that my creative brain has gone into overdrive. I'll be posting what I've done, but yet again it's an unbelievable moment.

So I have switched track from being and educator and musician to being a musician and artist. There is still an animation project-in-waiting, too. 

I could spend a lot of thought dwelling on some terrible things that have happened to me, and some terrible people I've known. But this is the thing: if you fill your life with as much curiosity and creativity as possible, those dark things ebb away into insignificance and can't torture you any more. If you can fill your life with invention whether art, music or writing, you stand a chance of changing your mental environment from a threat to a celebration. I'm not naive enough to think that if we were at war or under threat from life-changing natural disasters, this approach would have any power. I know we don't live in The Sound of Music where we can sing My Favourite Things and suddenly the sun will shine every day and there will be world peace; we can't just Turn That Frown Upside Down. But I have seen what being creative can do for people, and how empowering it can be. This is not just for me personally, but also from the experience of 30 years of teaching, running workshops and listening to people speak about their own expressions of themselves through what they do in the wonderful worlds of art and music.

The bottom line is: any opportunity you have to try something new in these worlds of creative expression is always worth the challenge, whether as a producer or as an audience. More often than not it's worth doing just for the process, and just for the adventure. The sense of agency is quite astonishing.

End of early morning ramble!

Life Drawing

I have been attending life drawing classes, which have been really enjoyable.

Leicester and Middlewich

There could not have been two more different gigs, but both equally fun and both equally adventurous.

We had a wander around Leicester before the gig, and I bought almost the last two-bowls-for-one-fifty satsumas and apples at the market.

Meanwhile, at the Soundhouse, multiple band members were arriving. Ruth Miller was there already, and there was an air of excitement about the venue. The sound engineer had an apprentice (first time I've seen that for a long time), which reflected the whole vibe of the night: open, friendly and enabling. 

The first band on was Velvet Crisis, who swapped vocalists and instrumentalists throughout their set. Their songs were great, and contrary to what might be expected from a band so new, extremely well played. Their drummer, who I think was maybe the least experienced, had only been playing since January this year, but you couldn't tell. The between-songs talk was very funny, and the joyful energy emanating from the stage was palpable. All of the singers could sing extremely well, and the deliberate throwing out of standardised song formats served the band well too. I watched with Katie and Kevin from The Lovely Basement: I couldn't believe it when they walked in, but Katie was in Leicester for a conference and they came along and had  great time.

From the stage I could see that the audience ratio was more than 50% women, which is really unusual for a gig that I play these days. I think older single women are reluctant to go out to gigs under normal circumstances, and the experience of playing to women who I knew would understand where my lyrics come from was an unusual pleasure. I had tweaked my set to include a sing-along version of Women of the World, and also The Song of the Unsung Heroine, which both seemed really appropriate. It can be challenging to play a solo set after a lively band, but the audience seemed happy, so I was too.

The Verinos were the headliners, and they burst into song with the same exciting energy as Velvet Crisis. Whereas Velvet Crisis almost had a Cramps vibe to some of their songs, The Verinos, despite their almost punky sound, definitely had a nod in the direction of the 1960s girl groups in their songs, probably due to the twin lead vocals. Again, this was a really fun set, especially when all the women in the audience were invited on to the set to sing the song 'Don't You Wish You Were In The Band Tonight'. What catchy songs and what a great sound! Real garage band keyboards, strong vocals and memorable melodies. 

It was a superlative night- and to crown it all, the next morning a bunch of us had breakfast at the Holiday Inn. All you can eat! Yum! Thank you, Ruth, for inviting me to join you all for such a warm-hearted evening. The craic was as good as the gig! If the other eight older-female bands you've encouraged to get together for the Unglamorous Music project are as good as Velvet Crisis, you'll have revived the entire Leicester music scene in one fell swoop. Read more about it all here: https://theverinos.uk

And then it was off round the Leicester ring road and on to Middlewich. This was an entirely different set up: the musician Gareth Williams has started putting music on at the King's Lock pub, just next to the canal. It's a lovely location, and would be quite spooky if it wasn't for the jolly excellent chip shop across the road. Gareth played a gently witty set of songs, culminating in The Wine O'Clock Willy Waver, a person that we all recognise unless it's us! Chris Tavener followed with a set of hilariously comedic songs, my favourite of which was the one about Generation Z-ers criticism of old (er) people, which I rather wanted the Offsprogs to hear. I was last on, and it's the first time for ages that I've played to a dog, who seemed to quite enjoy it, especially Beachwalk. Kevin and Linda came along and it was lovely to see them again- first time since lockdown, and a proper fan with records to sign. Gareth seemed delighted with the evening, and there was a definite warm and happy vibe in the pub by the time we'd all finished.

Ah Travelodge! Expect nothing and get less! At least the bed was comfortable and the room was warm.

Back at home now, looking through photographs and being bloody glad that live music is back on the agenda, and indeed thriving. We have music and we have audiences: for a weekend I was able to forget the horrors of the moment and exist in music-world, which is surely a million times better than real life, yes it is!