Monday, April 29, 2019
Monday
I'm having a Cristina lunchtime. A rare lunch break at work. Weekend was great; work keeps feet on ground very firmly!
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Catching Up With Trash
Thank you for coming along and giving us such a warm reception last night at at the Cameo in Edinburgh. The film sold out and we had a really interesting panel afterwards, chaired by the documentary film maker Paul Sng, with Hilary from Fast Records giving the Scottish perspective on punk music making. Shouts to Anne Woods' Mum and to Neil Cooper, and also to Morven who did such a brilliant job of organising it.
Today, we caught up with Trash before heading back to London. You wouldn't believe she's a grandmother, would you? Baby Punk Grandmother, I think!
Today, we caught up with Trash before heading back to London. You wouldn't believe she's a grandmother, would you? Baby Punk Grandmother, I think!
Friday, April 26, 2019
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Bass Playing Poem
Occasionally, like this morning, I think it would be nice to be in a band again...
Sometimes I think it would be nice to play bass,
Just standing there with my hairallovermyface.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to play bass,
Just standing there with my hairallovermyface.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
100 Steps
A song thrush started carolling at six this morning; it sounded so beautiful. There was no question of trying to go back to sleep.
I got up and wrote a lecture.
Afterwards, I remembered this game. Anyone can play it. It's a drawing game, but it's not about art: it's about noticing things.
You can play it on your own, or in a pair, or even 1000 people could play it.
You need a sketch pad and a pencil.
You walk 100 steps, stop, look around, and draw what you see.
You have 60 seconds to draw, then you move on, another 100 steps, and repeat until exhausted.
It's amazing what you see when you look. So much of the time, we have to blank things out in order to function.
Also, here is the new design for a badge (and more), drawn by yours truly, and designed by Ian Button. The album is almost ready to send off. I am so excited (and pleased with it!).
I got up and wrote a lecture.
Afterwards, I remembered this game. Anyone can play it. It's a drawing game, but it's not about art: it's about noticing things.
You can play it on your own, or in a pair, or even 1000 people could play it.
You need a sketch pad and a pencil.
You walk 100 steps, stop, look around, and draw what you see.
You have 60 seconds to draw, then you move on, another 100 steps, and repeat until exhausted.
It's amazing what you see when you look. So much of the time, we have to blank things out in order to function.
Also, here is the new design for a badge (and more), drawn by yours truly, and designed by Ian Button. The album is almost ready to send off. I am so excited (and pleased with it!).
Monday, April 22, 2019
Next Gig, Bristol Next Sunday
Last night was spent tour managing- booking trains, hotels and so on, and wondering how much of it I can manage by car.
The next gig is in Bristol, one of a series of Pop! Not Hate gigs arranged by Tim Rippington, who has put his heart and soul into organising these. Hats off to him, because it has to all fit around his life and there's a whole week of music in Bristol, then the Pop! Not Hate gig in London at the Lexington on May 26th.
I will be in Bristol on Sunday afternoon https://www.reverbnation.com/show/24237225?utm_campaign=HTML5_ShowSchedule_Widget_Details&utm_content=show_details_link&utm_medium=widget which is a free gig although you'll be able to support the event by buying badges and t-shirts (that originally came out as t-shorts, which is quite a good abbreviation for a summer outfit!)
Meanwhile the album has been mastered and needs the next things to be done- sleeve design and so on.
Looking at the last album now, I can see how empty and blank I felt at the time. All the drawings in the lyrics book look like skeletons waiting to be brought to life. I don't feel like that about the music: the music was a rescue package for a shipwrecked person, as well as a call out for compassion for other human beings. I wish I could write better protest songs. I will be singing this one next Sunday, for sure.
The next gig is in Bristol, one of a series of Pop! Not Hate gigs arranged by Tim Rippington, who has put his heart and soul into organising these. Hats off to him, because it has to all fit around his life and there's a whole week of music in Bristol, then the Pop! Not Hate gig in London at the Lexington on May 26th.
I will be in Bristol on Sunday afternoon https://www.reverbnation.com/show/24237225?utm_campaign=HTML5_ShowSchedule_Widget_Details&utm_content=show_details_link&utm_medium=widget which is a free gig although you'll be able to support the event by buying badges and t-shirts (that originally came out as t-shorts, which is quite a good abbreviation for a summer outfit!)
Meanwhile the album has been mastered and needs the next things to be done- sleeve design and so on.
Looking at the last album now, I can see how empty and blank I felt at the time. All the drawings in the lyrics book look like skeletons waiting to be brought to life. I don't feel like that about the music: the music was a rescue package for a shipwrecked person, as well as a call out for compassion for other human beings. I wish I could write better protest songs. I will be singing this one next Sunday, for sure.
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Club Integral Last Night
It was such a balmy evening that it was impossible to stay at home, so I headed down to Iklectik in Waterloo bursting with curiosity. I never knew Simon King, the guitarist who passed away last year, but has heard great things about his band, the Kenny Process Team. After great sets by The Happy Couple and Howie Reeves, the audience became visibly excited as the band (with Rhodri Marsden playing Simon's parts) plugged in and got started.
What exciting music! It sounds as though surf guitar music has been snipped up and put back together again in a different order, almost Beefheartish but a bit too slick for that. Two guitars- a Stratocaster and a Jaguar, twanging and zinging, a bass and a jazz kit with a sideways baby drum. Short tracks (hooray!). They had false starts (hooray!). How the hell did they manage to play like this?
Blimey, this has been a musical weekend. And this afternoon a jazz band suddenly started playing in the pub in Shoreditch where I went for lunch!
I have been hoping to go out tonight too, but instead I've stayed in and tour managed the next few weeks, hotels, trains all that lark. Someone had to do it, and that someone is me.
What exciting music! It sounds as though surf guitar music has been snipped up and put back together again in a different order, almost Beefheartish but a bit too slick for that. Two guitars- a Stratocaster and a Jaguar, twanging and zinging, a bass and a jazz kit with a sideways baby drum. Short tracks (hooray!). They had false starts (hooray!). How the hell did they manage to play like this?
Blimey, this has been a musical weekend. And this afternoon a jazz band suddenly started playing in the pub in Shoreditch where I went for lunch!
I have been hoping to go out tonight too, but instead I've stayed in and tour managed the next few weeks, hotels, trains all that lark. Someone had to do it, and that someone is me.
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Flaneuse
Wandering around on the South Bank was always going to be a better bet than staying at home and inhaling swathes of pollen from the yellow cough-fields.
It would have been good to have been able to join the Extinction Rebellion protest on Waterloo Bridge but the police were instructed to arrest anyone who walked past them so that wasn't possible today.
I understand that The Trojans are playing at Marble Arch this afternoon! That's going to be a great event.
So I wandered along the the Royal Festival Hall and saw this wonderful brass band playing. It's so tempting to do more Helen and the Horns writing and playing, after seeing these. I'll try to upload a bit tomorrow. Little children were having a field day, running, dancing, lying on their backs with their hands behind their heads watching in fascination. Nobody was dancing though... whyever not?
Then outside, this chap sold me a CD. He was determined not to smile for the photo, but he owed me a smile in exchange. It's hip-hop and says 'Parental Advisory', so I hope I haven't bought anything that's going to be offensive. Probably have.
London has been full of music this afternoon: the drummer on the Embankment footbridge, two fiddle payers outside the tube station, and a roaring choir of school kids singing in unison in the distance on another platform. Today, it feels joyous to live in this city full of music, with its multicultural population defiant, protesting, attending events and simply existing in harmony!
It would have been good to have been able to join the Extinction Rebellion protest on Waterloo Bridge but the police were instructed to arrest anyone who walked past them so that wasn't possible today.
I understand that The Trojans are playing at Marble Arch this afternoon! That's going to be a great event.
So I wandered along the the Royal Festival Hall and saw this wonderful brass band playing. It's so tempting to do more Helen and the Horns writing and playing, after seeing these. I'll try to upload a bit tomorrow. Little children were having a field day, running, dancing, lying on their backs with their hands behind their heads watching in fascination. Nobody was dancing though... whyever not?
Then outside, this chap sold me a CD. He was determined not to smile for the photo, but he owed me a smile in exchange. It's hip-hop and says 'Parental Advisory', so I hope I haven't bought anything that's going to be offensive. Probably have.
London has been full of music this afternoon: the drummer on the Embankment footbridge, two fiddle payers outside the tube station, and a roaring choir of school kids singing in unison in the distance on another platform. Today, it feels joyous to live in this city full of music, with its multicultural population defiant, protesting, attending events and simply existing in harmony!
She-Punks, Edinburgh, Friday
Do come and join us! Both Gina and me will be at the Q and A for this one:
https://www.facebook.com/events/549412588901018/
https://www.facebook.com/events/549412588901018/
Friday, April 19, 2019
Early Morning Writing
There're lots of ways of being creative, and often it's a therapeutic act. I can never work out when I'm writing songs how much of it is therapy, and how much of it is communication.
The unfamiliar territory that I walk through is academic writing, and it's only now that I am realising just how important it has been to have an imaginary reader. Because Dave Laing supervised my thesis and edited my book, in my mind's eye he has always been there as a person to communicate to, and to understand what the hell I'm going on about. He was such a good writer; he could mix jokes and heavy duty philosophy with statistics, all contextualised in a world that could be imagined perfectly easily, and all delivered in steady academic prose.
Oh dear, I do miss him so. He was like an older brainy cousin who you could turn to for advice.
There's a pile of books and articles here on the table and I'm revisiting the Poly Styrene Oh Bondage! article. It feels really good to be writing this and yes, I'm procrastinating; but today I have to put in a couple of hours because the visit to New York to talk about it is really going to happen, so it has to be conjured into existence and completion.
I nearly went to see Ut playing last night but I have still got terrible hay fever, and in a week's time I'm going to be singing in Bristol. I have to do this today, at least a couple of hours, then listen to the mastered album again to make sure it's OK.
Outside, the birds are singing their hearts out, blended with the occasional siren as ambulances deliver the spring heart attacks to Barnet Hospital.
Sorry to be so dark: three funerals of significant people this year, and a fairly dramatic personal health scare a month ago, make the signs of spring all the more heartfelt.
The unfamiliar territory that I walk through is academic writing, and it's only now that I am realising just how important it has been to have an imaginary reader. Because Dave Laing supervised my thesis and edited my book, in my mind's eye he has always been there as a person to communicate to, and to understand what the hell I'm going on about. He was such a good writer; he could mix jokes and heavy duty philosophy with statistics, all contextualised in a world that could be imagined perfectly easily, and all delivered in steady academic prose.
Oh dear, I do miss him so. He was like an older brainy cousin who you could turn to for advice.
There's a pile of books and articles here on the table and I'm revisiting the Poly Styrene Oh Bondage! article. It feels really good to be writing this and yes, I'm procrastinating; but today I have to put in a couple of hours because the visit to New York to talk about it is really going to happen, so it has to be conjured into existence and completion.
I nearly went to see Ut playing last night but I have still got terrible hay fever, and in a week's time I'm going to be singing in Bristol. I have to do this today, at least a couple of hours, then listen to the mastered album again to make sure it's OK.
Outside, the birds are singing their hearts out, blended with the occasional siren as ambulances deliver the spring heart attacks to Barnet Hospital.
Sorry to be so dark: three funerals of significant people this year, and a fairly dramatic personal health scare a month ago, make the signs of spring all the more heartfelt.
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