boogaloo, euphoric gay house & drum'n'bass

august 2nd

Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6.5
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Hair day: short and sweet after barginous Saks Academy cut last week - bought unimpressive hair clay unfortunately

Had, for 27-occasionally-going-on-63-what-with-my-cream-tea-fetish-and-all moi, a highly active dancetastic weekend. It started by joining galpals at the Lady Luck Club (after fighting past the hellish zoo which is Piccadilly Circus on a Friday night), where we found ourselves woefully underdressed amidst the '30s-'50s-attired throng. Reflecting the ace mixture of blues, boogaloo, swing, mambo and rock'n'roll, we were surrounded by spats-sporting gangsters, girls with glam little-black-backless-numbers with pillbox hats jauntily perched, teddy boys and busty ladies with 50s-style tattoos threatening to take over their limbs etc etc. There was also a sweet old man making a hopeless attempt at red-leathered transvestitism, a beatnik, and, adversely, a punk. Channel 4 were there filming a show on burlesque, and so we tried to show some retro shapes in front of the camera (all very high school dance in Grease) whilst they recorded the floor show danced perkily to Tom Waits' Rain Dogs album. Class! Only downside was having my bag nicked and my idiocy at having left it unattended being ironically rubbed in by Ella Fitzgerald singing 'A-tisket, a-tasket, I lost my yellow basket' at that exact moment. Still, much-recommended night - shimmy over to www.ladyluckclub.co.uk for details.

Saturday saw a 30th birthday party in a hired-out pub in Kings Cross and a valiant attempt at enjoying house music with some mild box-stacking, chicken-feeding etc etc, followed by an all-dayer at Guilford's mini-festival, the Ambient Picnic. It being an eco-friendly affair, we tucked into our spicy vegan burgers, ambled around the stalls selling slightly rubbish handmade necklaces made by long lost Amazonian tribes, bongs a-plenty, exotic herbs such as peppered lemon verbena, chocolate basil and peanut butter parsley (or something) and cakes probably made out of tofu, hay and water in an effort to avoid the evils of flour, eggs, milk and sugar. I was there as groupie to Step 13, a recently-revived live drum 'n' bass act starring my beloved on bass. This meant I enjoyed the full tour experience of loading up at 9am in Ilford, rumbling down the M25 in our Tour Bus of Rock guzzling all manner of illegal substances (ok, it was a mini-bus called Amber Coaches, we all ate fruit and we stopped at a National Trust site for tea). STILL, the Step 13ers and other East London band and crew Electricity Comes From Other Planets were a world away from the juice trio gig experience of hiring an EasyCar, feeding each other double chocolate chip cookies whilst listening to India Arie and talking about pants...

Before Step 13 (www.step13.co.uk) crashed onto the main stage, we were subjected to some fairly terrible amateurish attempts at rock including nods to Blink 182 and Dire Straits (hhhmmm) before other East London pals, Lazy Habits (www.lazyhabits.co.uk), saved the day with their bouncy, jazz-inflected hip hop, including their beatboxing genius WanDan, who frankly knocks spots off any extra-vocal technique that juice can muster. Step 13 were on later, delivering a way-too-short set of eclectic, kick-ass drum'n'bass, to which I boogied around at the front with much admiration and a little envy cause damn! my boyfriend was playing big fat hefty bass in a great live band to thousands of people whilst I can only dream of playing to a couple of hundred chin-strokers...

But on that note, have finally almost finished tinkering away at a demo of wispy groovy songs and edits of my coolest old pieces. Am currently contemplating whether to call myself Kerry Andrew or come with a more ambigious, band-esque title like SpangleChild of Katmandu or The Sulphur-Dried Apricots or something. Suggestions on a postcard....