From Drawing Club on Sunday

These Japanese TV ads are so dreamy to draw from; I can't stop!

Mixes Mixed

Up that hill again (I suppose I'll miss you, Gipsy Hill!) for the final day at One Cat Studios, a day of mixing, and by some miracle recording a Christmas song for the WIAIWYA Christmas compilation album. The mixing was fine-tuning really, and both me and Robert had made the same notes about what needed to be done to make the tracks sparkle. The day involved a lot of concentrated listening, but was really pleasurable nonetheless.

I've just managed to put a non-distorted bass line on a song in the kitchen today, which is a weight off my shoulders. I have been having bad dreams at night, which I think were associated with a seemingly unsolvable problem which has solved itself. Groovy, baby! Now I'm going to have a couple of days ears-rest before resuming the solo album: I think I'm going to try some vocals before the autumn bugs kick in that strangle my vocal chords and, in combination with 'teacher's voice', take all the bounce out of my singing.

Alas, I have had to decide not to take to the stage with the Loud Women crew to join a mass sing-in of Reclaim These Streets at the Loud Women Fest in September. I have three gigs the following weekend, the first ones for months, and just too many people have come down with Covid in the last week. Even the double-vaccinated people have been really ill, and the non-vaccinated even more so. I have had the jab but I can't risk singing in a group. It was such an exciting thought that I said 'yes' to straight away, but the virus is just getting too close to home. The Preston Pop Fest seems to have resulted in a lot of infections too- and that's on top of the other people that I know. I think it's back to being very, very cautious- so I want to teach online again this year. I have no idea whether that is going to happen.

Review for 'She's at the Controls' in The f-Word

Big thanks to Cazz Blase for this review. It was so hard to finish this book, which basically was completed in lockdown with all that weight of anxiety, confusion and everything else. Thank you to everyone who has read it closely and who understands what I'm talking about.

https://thefword.org.uk/2021/08/why-are-there-so-few-women-producers/

Suffragettes at Extinction Rebellion

 Before and during the march today.

Mixes Arrived

I almost forgot, because it was past my bedtime when the mixes turned up. Normally when you leave a studio you leave with listening mixes but that doesn't seem to be the practice at this one, so there's been a week's ears-rest before hearing them. An email turned up from Robert, who is on tour with Swansea Sound at the moment, and I downloaded them in between dreams.

I can't believe that we recorded six songs to such a degree of completion in only two days. I suppose that's what we did last year too, and of course that's the way you did John Peel sessions back in the day. But we are not a band who play gigs: we don't have that 'all playing together' gig rehearsal experience. Obviously because of the pandemic, we have done nil gigs ,so there's a looseness and spontaneity to the recordings that I really like. Mostly though, I feel really proud of the way we have collaborated. The song bits that I've sent to Robert: well, I would never have finished those. 

And I think he has sent me just such rambling snatches of music, too.  We have literally 'finished each other's song sentences'. There's a type of song that I sometimes write that is simply too complete for me to write lyrics to; something about the music becomes imprisoning. In those, Robert busts me out of jail and imagines sonic possibilities that are out of my personal stratosphere. In his, I feel that I am drawing curtains aside to reveal melodies and ideas that are hidden in his chord changes: you just need to know where to find them amongst the layers of sound. That's without my admiration for his ideas for lyrics, which seem so obvious once they land in the spaces of the song. Sometimes he is replacing lyrics of my own that didn't work with lyrics of his that do. In turn, I get the opportunity to imagine scenarios into soundscapes that I could never create myself.

So after a late night listen, I felt immeasurably proud of our songs above anything else. In the greater scheme of things, writing songs is a negligible activity, but I hope this music makes people happy and articulates things for them when they hear it. It has crystallised together out of the same experiences of the past three years that we have all been through, and it feels like it belongs to everyone and not just us.

Bass Strings

Well, the horse refused a jump yesterday. Some of my songs need a bass groove to thread them together, and the strings on my bass are prehistoric. So I went to the music shop and bought some strings.

When I got back home I realised that it's been (ahem) 40 years since I changed the strings on a bass guitar.  In my head they turned into vicious metal snakes, writhing and scraping their shiny silver roundwound wire ridges against each other, and hitting out aggressively at my vulnerable fingers.

'Leave that till tomorrow', I thought. And now, of course, it's tomorrow.

The Song of the Unsung Heroine

This video was made by Gina Birch in 2010. We filmed it in a second-hand guitar shop in Denmark Street in London; they were very casual about us filming there. Apparently the shop was a bit of a star. The song appears on this album, too: https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/album/take-one-download-only

Herons, Earrings and a Fantastic Film

I went on a fruitless search for a shop that would sell a single gold hoop earring. 

Two weeks ago I went to see Summer of Soul, which has to be one of the best films ever. Not only is it an excellent music documentary, it is also a film about political action and possibility that speaks to the nature of racism and the ghosting of its even existence, let alone an entire New York community who set up and attended a concert in Harlem that now, it seems, was intended to be forgotten.

Nina Simone's blazing anger, Steve Wonder's positive and uplifting songs, Hugh Masakela, Jesse Jackson, Mahalia Jackson: all ages were represented and celebrated in front of a delighted audience, some of whom climbed up trees for a better view. The neighbourhood's kids were there, having their own experience at elbow level. It is a fine and moving film which I would love to show to my students if I get the chance. Do go to see it if you can; you will feel moved, angered, energised and most importantly, educated in the best way possible- through musical experience.

The earring was a mask casualty. I put on my best dress and posh earrings for the occasion even though I went on my own, and at some point I must have taken off the mask in the street and also unhitched the earring. I guess eventually I'll have to just buy another pair. Sometime.

The earring search was yesterday, on the way to visit my pal who has had a broken leg, ironically while feeding a goose with a bad leg in Wanstead. She sped through the low traffic area in her wheelchair, decked out in camouflage finery with large matching umbrella tucked behind her and a backpack full of duck biscuits. Once we were at Wanstead Flats, we fed Egyptian Geese, Canada Geese and a very friendly and greedy white duck from the flats of our hands, getting the occasional nip in the process. In the distance a woman appeared and scattered a huge amount of wildfowl food on the ground and massive flock of mixed birds appeared, including a heron who stood in the shape of an imperious number seven and overlooked the proceedings. A cormorant relaxed on a small island, at one point inspected by a curious swan.

Wanstead Flats could not be more different than Barnet. For a start, it's flat! The grass is beaten down by footfall and there's a visiting Fairground set up across the way. Yet all around the pond there are masses of colourful wild flowers in tufts and tussocks where little chicks can hide from the marauding seagulls. It looks like a children's painting of the ideal pond. 

So that was yesterday, and today will be back to recording. I've had a week off from listening to my own stuff and I'm going to re-record some songs with different guitars. They need grooves, and I will have to re-string the bass and get grooving. 

Here is the heron flying away to find rats.

Drawing Club: 1980s Japanese TV Ads

 

Shades and Complications

Over the last two years it seems a lot of people I knew have been 'taken before their time'- that is, in their fifties as opposed to even their sixties. Partly, this is to do with Coronavirus, but partly also due to other causes. This is profoundly sad, because every human being contributes to the colours of the gigantic painting of humanity. But we can't all love one another, because we are too different from each other, and some people's burdens make them difficult to get along with. And what's the point of psychopaths? That's one thing I'll never understand. Tolerance takes a lot of work, but we have to learn how to do it because hatred is so destructive and fills people with unhappiness.

Yes, bereavement makes you brake suddenly: time stops for a moment and you take stock of yourself, your friendships and your family. The bag is shaken up, new alliances form, and old ones fall away. Shaky relationships collapse because truth hurts. Dishonesty is outed and surprising kindness emerges from the shadows. Layers of artifice crumble away, or armour is reinforced.

Your smallness in the greater scheme of things becomes overwhelming, and the perspective alters each time. You can't tell people you love them all the time, because love has too many shades and complications. At the funeral you see people whose past is intertwined with yours forever, but you probably will never see them again, because the last link has snapped with the death of the person who held you in that chain of friendship.

Breathe in, breathe out....

It's Monday and the world has turned again bringing a new landscape of questions; it's probably time I got my guitar out to interrupt these dark thoughts.

Derelict Church, Wigan

 

Recording Session 2

Gypsy Hill is very very steep, and I was dreading climbing it with the increasingly heavy Green Goddess on a day when global misogyny was dragging my spirits down. The combination of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan (what hopeless 'help' we Westerners were, if democracy was so fragile after all those years!), and the incel shooting in Plymouth that revealed a huge iceberg of hatred for women that feels completely undermining and destabilising, all the more so for the fact that it has always been there. 

And the fact that maybe it always will.

Somehow, for my mood, the recording day was transformational. I'm not sure how and when it happened: big things like Jon putting bass on to the tracks, smaller things like Ian double tracking a harmony vocal, and that texture really adding to the track. Replacing some of my own tired-sounding vocals with stronger and clearer ones; Robert, who is left-handed, playing bass upside down on part of a track, and icing the cake beautifully. A tiny detail, two musical moments of a bell tree sparkling at the end of musical phrases. The songs stand proud, and call on our respective musical influences. Even the steep hill at Barnet station at the end of my journey felt scalable after such an energising day.

Little Egret from Sunday Drawing Club

I drew this in memory of Nick Page. The only time I've ever see one was just a couple of days after he died. It was floating shyly about in the shadows of the trees that line the brook, and I thought I was imagining things at first; it was a lovely creature, and I've never seen it since, although I search for it every time I walk there.

Flaketube

A few months ago, Youtube started tinkering with 'views' on the Fatberg video posted there by Gare du Nord on mine and Willie Gibson's behalf. The 'views' had gone up to well over two thousand, then suddenly dipped to much less. Gradually they rose again, fell, and have finally consolidated at just over two thousand. This has also happened with one that I posted myself, with a lot fewer views; every time I look, it's lost ten more views. Soon it will have a minus number!

To add insult to injury, they have started putting ads on personal video uploads without passing on the income, and without uploaders being consulted about what is advertised on their videos. I had no idea this was going to happen, because of course I didn't read the small print of the last thing I consented to. The video is question is the one for A Good Life With A Bad Apple, which like Fatberg (which so far has avoided being targeted for an ad), has more than 2000 views. It's tempting to just take it down and re-upload it, to be honest. I will consider that; my 'views' are so small anyway that it makes sense to delete and re-upload at regular intervals to avoid getting spammed by unwanted ads from a greedy service provider!

Studio Report

We had concentratedly busy day yesterday: we started with Ian putting drums on the three tracks we recorded at the last session. Ian has a huge repertoire of colours in his palette, more than a non-drummer can possibly imagine, and has an ability to speak to the music that is already there with what he plays. This could be because he writes songs himself, or it could simply be because he is an exceptional musician.

We then recorded the guitars and vocals for the next three songs, and believe it or not, the drums too. It was intense work, but such a pleasure. It's almost like there is no wastage. Yes we chat in tea breaks, but once we are in there we graft like there's no tomorrow. This is so different to working at home alone as I have been; it took a couple of hours this time before I felt socialised, but between us we have a working groove that feels really natural once it gets going. On Monday, Jon will record his bass guitar and we will listen for backing vocals spaces, record better vocal takes if necessary, and maybe even do some rough mixes.

On the way back, I just missed every train ,which would have been irritating if I hadn't been so tired. On my journeys I have been reading a book on recording: there's dedication for you.

Lovely to hear from my friend Daniel Coston in North Carolina!