Scary Dream

I was in a big club, or theatre- similar to Leeds Royal Variety Theatre, except there was a sloping floor. There was lots of cosy red velvet, and gilt decorations swagged and swooping all around the walls and across the balcony.

We were all sitting at tables with drinks in front of us, listening to a DJ play music. A ska record came on, and suddenly all the young women in the audience got up and formed a conga, dancing around the tables in a jolly, laughing line and being joined by more dancers as they passed their tables. It was wonderful.

As the music carried on, the conga line gradually started to fade. Soon there was nothing and nobody left to be seen.

'Don't worry', said my friend at the table, 'they'll fade back in again soon. They always do'.

But they didn't. We waited and waited, but they didn't.

I was so frightened, I woke up and had to calm myself down.

Cotton Field

Still drawing, every weekday. 

Making music, every weekend.

I Wish I Was You/No Love

I'm honoured to have contributed guest guitar/vocals to the b-side of Gina Birch's latest single, Wish I Was You/No Love!

More great things to come from Gina very soon.

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!