The tea is brewing.
Will I go home fat from eating too much or thin from walking too much?
Or stupid, from wondering too much about silly things?
I've just finished a re-worked song and will be able to sing it with confidence. Instead of a broken romance, it's about toxic politicians.
The crows in the graveyard outside my window are yarping backing vocals in the chorus.
They've got the vibe.
No cooing pigeons in this one.
Tea done. Back to work.
Not only is it overcast today, but I decided to do a shorter walk on the dark side of the hill. There's nothing there, apart from a snotty café whose staff are shredding the personalities of mutual acquaintances, and roads with thundering lorries looking for easy prey on the faint-hearted road crossings.
However, on the way back I was guided by a sequence of robins who plopped down on the path in front of me and eyed me as though trying to divine the secrets of human life. Some robin somewhere is writing an academic paper on us, you mark my words. I followed the trail of robins up the path; on this side of the hill, fellow walkers don't say hello. They dip their heads into their scarves and look at their boots.
Suddenly, a large flock of goldfinches appeared and led the way. Whirling around between branches and ground, they accomplished their mission and spiralled off into the shrubs by the side of the path.
I walked through a beautiful worn graveyard, and have spent the last half hour writing sleeve notes for the Chefs compilation album. They've gone off to James for a second opinion, and now I'm going to get my guitar out.
The place where I'm staying has filled up. Next door is a barrister with a very loud, strident voice whose phone pings every time he's not on it discussing his cases in great detail. He talks to his wife in the same tone of voice.
The couple on the other side talk quietly but bang the doors a lot.
I've been lucky having the solitude for a day and a half. This is a different kettle of fish.
Maybe I should write a very loud rock song to push back against the noise.
There's something very The Prisoner about this place. A tiny bit of 'Thou shalt do things our way'. It's definitely a faux pas to be wearing a duffel coat; women are clad in Joules and Brora, and wear stout boots. My feet are quite annoyed this morning. Seven miles was a bit extreme. Shorter walk today, I think.
I have re-worked two parts of a song called Toytown that I started late last year. It had a sticky middle 8 that sounded awful; I approached it from a different perspective this afternoon, and think I've fixed it.
That means I've fixed two songs and started a new one today, which has got stuck and which I may be able to fix tomorrow.
I have a problem- I'm a three minute song writer. I remember in the Chefs struggling to write a song that lasted longer than a minute, so I suppose over all these years things have got a little bit better. Being concise has been the bane of my life. I remember my geography teacher at school being furious because I wrote an essay on a side and a half of school paper that had everything in it. I don't think the stain from the bottom of a coffee cup helped.
Speaking of which, in this cell-sized room, there's no bedside table. I've spilled the greater part of a cup of tea on the white duvet cover, tried to wash it clean in the tiny sink, and it's now draped on the radiator. The room is decorated by damp things, because I bought a nice tartan hoody in a posh charity shop and washed that in the sink with shampoo (detergent, innit) just before the tea incident, and that's currently dripping in the shower.
I've watched no TV for 24 hours and feel all the better for it. I wonder how long I can keep that up?
On the plus side- I've made a new intro for a song that was sounding too similar to one I've already recorded. I've also decided to revive a song that I've never released because it was too bitter and twisted in its previous format. It was true, but it was bitter and twisted, and it felt undignified to release it. It's getting a new set of lyrics, and so is another song from the 'archive'.
I've walked seven miles, not intentionally, but I had to leave my room temporarily because the shower looked as though it was going to flood and I asked them to fix it. The thing is, it's beautifully sunny out there and I couldn't resist the frost and the hills. I took my notebook and rather than writing lyrics, I unintentionally gave myself a therapy session. I suppose that's the same thing, just dressed in different garb.
I think the frost is here all day in some places. I watched a couple of swans fixing their feathers on the banks of the river and took out my phone to photograph them. They wouldn't pose (they never do), and a robin showed up and perched right in front of me, wanting to have its own portrait taken.
Yes, yes, OK!
Then an unleashed dog called Ziggy charged around the corner in a flurry of leaves and dribble and barked at the swans just as they were ready for their shoot. They flustered off into the water and floated away nervously.
'Naughty Ziggy', cooed its owner nonchalantly. 'Naughty owner', snarled my brain.
The robin laughed.
Well, that's no songs written so far. I walked into town because my room wasn't ready yet, and bought an Icelandic Noir detective novel to read.
When I got into my room it was so warm and lovely I just lazed about and read the whole thing, and then I went to sleep. An owl was outside, hooting gently in the cold night air. It's very nature here.
I've retreated somewhere solitary for a week to write songs, and got so worn out getting here that it will probably take the whole week to recover!
I realised something when I was playing lead guitar in Beefheart: the musical.
Because I'm normally a finger-picker, my left and right hands communicate with each other without me even realising- one hand tells the other hand what to do, and the other hand tells the one hand what to do.
When I change the configuration of one of the hands (like by playing with a pick), the other hand gets confused because the pick-plucking hand isn't doing what it *should* be doing.
It's like that long piece of elastic that mothers used to string through coat sleeves in winter to link two gloves or mittens, so you couldn't lose one of the pair.
That's what it's like.
Some time later this year there's going to be a double vinyl album of The Chefs music, minus the songs we recorded as Skat, but plus an unreleased album we recorded (which is going to be sonically rescued by an expert engineer in Hull) and also an unspecified mystery track. That one, I've got to get off a vinyl album and I'm in the process of organising that. Next week, I'll do sleeve notes with James McCallum. I found loads of photos, posters and other artwork to send to Alison, who will be designing the sleeve. It's going to be released on coloured vinyl by Damaged Goods. Exciting!
I reckon we'll do a duo gig around about the release date in summer, just for fun. I'll have finished recording and mixing our four track EP of Chefs covers by then and I hope to find someone to release that too in some format or other. Because James does covers of You Get Everywhere and Stuck on You, and I play Northbound Train, we probably have a half-hour set between us, especially if we did Femme Fatale or even (gasp!) Thrush. Let's see how the cookie crumbles. I say that because I'm making bread!
I want to write a little bit about yesterday evening but the laptop's running out of charge: I might get there...
I was invited to speak to a group of students from Stuttgart by their lecturer, Geoff, who has added a module on punk to their English and History course. I agreed wholeheartedly to do it, based on the idea that really January is best spent re-setting everything, and if that involves other people all the better.
In the freezing back bar of their hostel near Tavistock Square (and completely unprepared), I talked a bit about my book and about what it felt like to start up a punk band in the 1970s, and to do that from the perspective of being female, a female who didn't feel like an woman and who couldn't relate to the second wave of feminism at the time (while appreciating it's campaigning), because I didn't see myself as a woman-body.
The students asked really interesting questions, and the talk drifted into all sorts of other areas, covering fear, abuse, the importance of creativity and the imagination, and the use of hope as a pushback against control and oppression. And of course, communities and intersectionality.
There was something really cathartic about being in the room with a bunch of young learners and their curiosity. Bundled up in thick jackets they sat at long tables, and I stood in front of them. But it felt as though we were exploring something together, rather than me talking and them listening. They asked so many great questions! The best one was at the end: 'Where did you get those shoes?'.
I know they are at Reading University meeting the punk scholar Matthew Worley today, and I hope they have the same effect on him. I felt gratitude to Geoff for inviting me to meet his students, and I wish them all the best for the rest of their studies and the exciting lives they are going to lead with all that knowledge and curiosity!
We had travelled up the night before, which took a layer of stress out of the equation. Avanti trains are in nothing less than turmoil at the moment, disguising the fact that their train staff are refusing to work the overtime that the understaffed company depends on, with various explanations that have ceased to be plausible. Now, they just cancel trains seemingly at random; luckily, we were guests at the Premier Inn in Bury for the night. Clean, big beds and hot bath water: just what we needed. Gina has been really ill and we actually made this event by the skin of our teeth.
I went out for a walk on Saturday morning. It was sunny and cold, and I saw the town at it's best. The people of Bury are friendly and relaxed it seems, and I admired the big Victorian buildings that are remnants of an earlier, more confident and perhaps brutal era. I bought a paper, a slice of cake and a coffee before scoping out the gallery which is literally five minutes away from the hotel.
Once we got there for a run-through at twelve, I knew it was all going to happen. Kat, the gallery manager, plied us with coffee and food and found a quiet office for Gina to rest in. The staff seemed really excited, one and all, and Derek Tyman, the driving force behind the project Rooms To Live 11, was waiting for us to arrive. In conjunction with fellow artist Andy Webster, he'd constructed Trout House Replica, an installation that exactly matched the dimensions of Captain Beefheart's house in LA where Trout Mask Replica was devised. Throughout November and December, there have been musical events in 'the house' that have included band rehearsals, concerts and workshops. We had chosen to perform in January, and we'd needed the time because Gina has a very busy and successful year last year. There are events going through until February- check out here if you're in the area: https://buryartmuseum.co.uk/Exhibitions
It had really been my decision to write something especially for this, rather than just each playing a few songs. I think you have to keep your imagination alive, and hats off to Gina, she went with it straight away. I suppose I felt that it would be good to put the time in, since this project has taken such a lot of tenacity to get off the ground and has managed to rise from the ashes of the pandemic into fruition, as only true art can!
The gallery started to fill up, which we were quite surprised about. Lots of people I'd invited along couldn't come because of illness or other reasons. When Paula Chambers started her performance, a fascinating memoir/installation about her life on a barge in the 1980s, the gallery was pretty full. She had a rapturous reception, and we were ready to go straight afterwards.
It was all a bit of an intense blur; we made a few mistakes but I think it was OK. I'm glad we had rehearsed it a lot because when one of us got lost the other managed to cover. By halfway through, I was really enjoying it, and could scan the audience to see what they thought. They didn't look nearly as baffled as I'd expected, and some of them were even smiling and... nodding their heads along in time with the... yes we had made MUSIC! Ha! We finished with everyone in the audience joining us in spelling out B-E-E-F-H-E-A-R-T at the tops of their voices.
Maybe this was a pantomime and not a musical?
So we did it despite Gina's illness (she was a trouper throughout) and although the train back was cancelled, we managed to get on to an earlier one which was a Result.
What a great start to 2024! January can be a dump of a month, so to spend the first proper weekend in a lovely gallery surrounded by welcoming people and a warm-hearted audience (someone even photographed the embroidered pockets of our lab coats)- well what could be better than that?
Big thanks to Derek and Andy for organising it, to Kat for being such a brilliant facilitator, to the museum staff including Steve the technician for lighting up our lives, to Paula for a fab performance, to Dave for being a dude... and to Darren and Becky, and Ian and Dave, for coming along on a cold Saturday afternoon. And to Chardine Taylor-Stone formerly of Big Joanie, who had been part of an event in the gallery late last year and who came along to watch.
That's two more rehearsals under our belts. We are both ill and have half-brains, which is a shame because we'd got really synchronised before Christmas. There's another rehearsal tomorrow and then we travel to Bury on Friday, ready for the real thing on Saturday afternoon.
I realised that we might have spent months on this and still ended up with the same result- just under half an hour of quite challenging music that is completely thought through from beginning to end. The songs have taken on lives of their own and have a logic that belongs to December 2023, multiple sheets of paper, a computer and Gina's kitchen.
After Saturday a different sort of year begins: I will start to sort out the Chefs album, finish the recordings with James (they are waiting for my vocals, mostly) and then start writing songs. I have a few gigs floating around, notably this one in central London at the end of January that includes a film screening of the She-Punks film. It's daytime for all you hibernators, so come along and sit in the warm, and I'll serenade you afterwards!
It's amazing how long you can live in London and never go to the things that visitors to London think are really important. I suppose I'd always thought that the Royal Opera House was Not For the Likes Of Me, but curiosity got the better of me and after a jolly lunch party at Big Bruv's, me and the Offsprogs +2 sat on a soggy 172 bus and went through the glamorous portals of the enormous building that hides between streets in Covent Garden. Of course, you walk past a shop first, which isn't very impressive, and then through a bar area which also isn't very impressive, but the deeper into the building you get, and the higher you find yourself, the more twinkly and ornate it becomes. We were up in the gods, which being goddesses was completely appropriate, so found our way up to the 5th floor where we had a spectacular view over the original entrance. Some opera-goers were dressed up proper posh, but others like us made do with Best Clothes and felt just as important.
The vertigo-inducing height was daunting at first but we managed to plaster ourselves against the seats and had a very good view, if rather reminiscent of seeing the Abba show where the 'band' were absolutely tiny. What the production lacked in swanky staging (that has to be the world's most disappointing gingerbread house!), it more than made up for in musical prowess and accessibility. The orchestra was exquisitely rehearsed- you could see the bows of the string instruments in perfect synch with not only each other but also the conductor's baton. As far as I know, there was no amplification: those voices had to carry across the orchestra and way up to us in the gods. Most of the songs were recognisably songs, and I particularly liked the gingerbread children who came on and sang their parts in normal street voices, thus showing up the greater artifice of admittedly beautiful operatic singing. As an opera it's very much skewed towards soprano singing, and the male voices were very welcome when they appeared.
What an interesting evening! Offsprog Two gets tickets for a tenner that are held back until the last minute. I'm going to go again, definitely. There was so much to be inspired by- even the two singers singing against each other, which is what me and Gina will be doing on Saturday at our Beefheart Musical not-a-musical!
