Current level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 30 mins
Hair day: now sporting terrifying asymmetric-hardcore-indie-lesbian cut after visit to new fave proper local hairdresser
Have had a gill-stuffed week of gigs, running the full gamut from sedate chamber music to head-exploding jungle. Business as usual, then...
Treated Pop to a Father's Day coffee concert at Wigmore Hall, which had us chomping loudly on our Fishermen's Friends (it's a throat-clearing sweet, you know) amongst the frowning blue rinse brigade, letting the Szymanoski Quartet's surprisingly feisty Hadyn and overlong Schubert wash over us, before gulping down our free medium dry sherry. Then on Wednesday it was off to support Andy in Step 13's second round of the nationwide Battle of the Bands competition, in which they have to suffer the ignominious surroundings of O'Neill's on the Green Man roundabout in Leytonstone for three rounds in order to play the Carling Academy Islington in the final. Still, they did play Mass in Brixton on Saturday, which is a damn sight cooler. The whole thing was hilarious, although slightly less so than the first round, with the night seeming very Phoenix Nights/Spinal Tap. Step 13 of course won this round too, being far and away the most professional outfit, ie a band who didn't a) get twisted up in their own mic lead and b) not fall off the stage whilst wearing very tight PVC and lace and being a size 16. Classy.
Thursday was the other end of the spectrum, with buddy Cat and I artily lording it in the ludicrously over-arch ICA for their monthly Roots 'n' Shoots night. I remain slightly unconvinced as to the ethos of the series, which I had taken to be a celebration of all things traditionally British and alternatively folky, but which put out a silly Brazilian singer with lyrics like 'oh sea, make love to me' and a po-faced sub-Polly Harvey singer. We also had, though much more engagingly, the Pink Floyd/Nick Drake producer Joe Boyd plugging his new book and playing unique tracks like a recording of Nick Drake's mum singin beautifully. It all became clear when the headline act, Leafcutter John (who we'd come to see after meeting very sweet promoters Enrico and Eric on a roof terrace at a party), appeared, although he is such a fragile babyfaced moppet we took him to be a trainee roadie when he first came on. LJ was fab, the perfect modern new English alt-folkie, with his mixture of acoustic songs about honey bees and night-foxes plus glitchy experimental electronica. Added to that was the great duo of a Jarvis Cocker lookalike who played lung-beating melodica chords and incredibly contemporary stuff on a wicked-looking bass recorder. AND a clearwater-voiced girl who blew bubbles into her drink which were then sampled. Oh, and they also miked and sampled a slinky and some cutlery and as an encore improvised songs about badgers and quince jelly upon the audience's suggestion. Fab.
Today, I decided I must visit the Vortex Dalston for their World Cup Jazz Ball events, in which, in rather hilarious high-London-art fashion, two trios improvise to the live football; thought I should go before the stakes get too high for our boys. However, for an avant-garde musician/extreme footy lover, I was surprised at how much I hated the combo. It was partly the incredibly distracting volume (two drum kits in small room = extreme ear pain), and partly down to the players really not seeming to know their football and not reacting sensitively to events on screen, but mostly because I cared far too much about the result. We legged to a friend's house at half-time and took in the rest as you should, over cans of Carling and Doritos, with much impassioned shouting and guffaws over Motty/Lawro's amusing double act, jumping around the room when Becks scored. The moral of the story: cacophonous free jazz and serious football-watching doth not mix. Better a chav pub and 50 sweaty pissed-up geezers slurring their way through 'Three Lions', I say.....
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
a wapping good time
Level of conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 0.5
Hair day: Straighteners are hilariously brill, though fringe is so long now that I keep bumping into things (whilst looking very fashionable, of course)
Had an unexpectedly supercool time on what should have been an unassumingly quiet Wendesday night in. Andy and I took a post-dinner stroll past the satisfyingly pongy Stepping Stones City Farm and the villagey St. Dunstan's Green to Limehouse. Having previously viewed this area only as an out-of-the-way backwater for city lemmings, it's growing on me massively. The street names - Narrow Street, Ropemaker's Fields - seem to peel back the centuries, pubs creak invitingly, and joggers pass serenely down gleaming, non-Asbo-ed-up pavements n their way home to their converted docklands warehouses. It's sedate, sanitised even, but there's some history lurking in oily corners. We stopped at our favourite riverside pub, The Grapes (gloomy wood interior, proper smoke-riddled locals, posh fish restaurant, Dickens' old haunt), to gaze out onto an alien, steel-pink Thames, whilst birds were tiny black shards in the sunset.
We wandered to Wapping, with Canary Wharf a menacingly glittering Death Star to our left. Finding our target, the very ancient Prospect of Whitby, under refurbishment (probably into a gastro-tapas-tequila bar, but we can cross our fingers), we slipped down Pelican Stairs alley and onto the beach. We had the river and the night and the mud all to ourselves, with the football echoing over from a chav pub on the south side, and the odd booze cruise leaving a coda of waves. Most spookily, a hangman's noose is strung high on a mast at the back of the pub, and slapped a rather macabre silhouette on the night sky; maybe it's an alternative way to eject people after one too many Barcardi Breezers.
Leaving the beach, we stumbled on The Wapping Project, which I've been meaning to check out for a while. People, it is the most ludicrously edgy urban-swank hulk of cool I have ever entered. A converted hydraulic power station, the building is no glossy, clean-lined renovation a la Tate Modern. It's bravely kept its stark husk, with the industrial remnants right in your face: sitting on slim modernist chairs and glugging shiraz from almost square glasses, we were surrounded by rusting power generators, hulking old cubicles and thick trunks of pipes scaling the walls, all softened only slightly by dozens of fat candles dotting around the place. It was fall-about-on-the-floor hilarious hipness from concrete slabbed floor to crane-your-neck ceiling. Even better, the waiter covertly led us and our drinks to the artspace at the back of the building, and opened foot-thick metal doors into a dank, dark cavernous room, where we watched Angus Boulton's video-sound installations on run-down Russian Olympic gymnasiums before I got spooked when our shadow puppetry on the screen seemed to turn everything off with an echoey bang and we ran away back to the safety of the light and post-classical music. But what a space! Am desperate to stage my 1 and half year-old music-theatre piece sedna stories in there. Would be triple-cool.
That said, I'll already be double-cool next year if a proposed project in which I write for (gasp!) Antony from Antony and the Johnsons next year....
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 0.5
Hair day: Straighteners are hilariously brill, though fringe is so long now that I keep bumping into things (whilst looking very fashionable, of course)
Had an unexpectedly supercool time on what should have been an unassumingly quiet Wendesday night in. Andy and I took a post-dinner stroll past the satisfyingly pongy Stepping Stones City Farm and the villagey St. Dunstan's Green to Limehouse. Having previously viewed this area only as an out-of-the-way backwater for city lemmings, it's growing on me massively. The street names - Narrow Street, Ropemaker's Fields - seem to peel back the centuries, pubs creak invitingly, and joggers pass serenely down gleaming, non-Asbo-ed-up pavements n their way home to their converted docklands warehouses. It's sedate, sanitised even, but there's some history lurking in oily corners. We stopped at our favourite riverside pub, The Grapes (gloomy wood interior, proper smoke-riddled locals, posh fish restaurant, Dickens' old haunt), to gaze out onto an alien, steel-pink Thames, whilst birds were tiny black shards in the sunset.
We wandered to Wapping, with Canary Wharf a menacingly glittering Death Star to our left. Finding our target, the very ancient Prospect of Whitby, under refurbishment (probably into a gastro-tapas-tequila bar, but we can cross our fingers), we slipped down Pelican Stairs alley and onto the beach. We had the river and the night and the mud all to ourselves, with the football echoing over from a chav pub on the south side, and the odd booze cruise leaving a coda of waves. Most spookily, a hangman's noose is strung high on a mast at the back of the pub, and slapped a rather macabre silhouette on the night sky; maybe it's an alternative way to eject people after one too many Barcardi Breezers.
Leaving the beach, we stumbled on The Wapping Project, which I've been meaning to check out for a while. People, it is the most ludicrously edgy urban-swank hulk of cool I have ever entered. A converted hydraulic power station, the building is no glossy, clean-lined renovation a la Tate Modern. It's bravely kept its stark husk, with the industrial remnants right in your face: sitting on slim modernist chairs and glugging shiraz from almost square glasses, we were surrounded by rusting power generators, hulking old cubicles and thick trunks of pipes scaling the walls, all softened only slightly by dozens of fat candles dotting around the place. It was fall-about-on-the-floor hilarious hipness from concrete slabbed floor to crane-your-neck ceiling. Even better, the waiter covertly led us and our drinks to the artspace at the back of the building, and opened foot-thick metal doors into a dank, dark cavernous room, where we watched Angus Boulton's video-sound installations on run-down Russian Olympic gymnasiums before I got spooked when our shadow puppetry on the screen seemed to turn everything off with an echoey bang and we ran away back to the safety of the light and post-classical music. But what a space! Am desperate to stage my 1 and half year-old music-theatre piece sedna stories in there. Would be triple-cool.
That said, I'll already be double-cool next year if a proposed project in which I write for (gasp!) Antony from Antony and the Johnsons next year....
Monday, June 05, 2006
headlines of the day
Level of conviction in own genius: 10 (if you look at headlines 1 and 3) or 8 (if you look at headline 2)
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 9. Yes, NINE.
Hair day: Have silly 'punkpink' hair gunk in fringe, residue of yesterday's whack performance...
Phew. Not entirely sure where my half term disappeared to.Was far too busy being tossed in a whirlwind of creative shenanigans as usual. Headlines being:
1) KIDS FLING THEMSELVES ABOUT IN FRONT OF £37 MILLION-WORTH OF VAN GOGH SHOCKER
For a lot of the week I was tiptoe-ing on the sleek floors of the National Gallery before opening time, co-ordinating the music side of a dance/composition project with my Junior Trinity talented wonders. Very strange seeing the morning netherworld of foreign cleaners, terrifying butch German secrity ladies and paintings the size of houses being wheeled about. There even seemed to be someone ticking off the paintings in each room, as if checking none had been swiped during the night. The event itself went marvellously, with 17 year-olds performing insanely hard-hitting contemporary dance to fab music from my lot. I, ever the show-off, got to be the calling boy in front of Seurat's The Bathers, doing minor vocal gymnastics whilst sporting a particularly fetching red hat.
2) COMPOSER EXPERIENCES DRAMATIC DISAPPOINTMENT AT LOSS OF LUDICROUSLY CHILLY ART TRIP SCANDAL
This week I received a letter from the British Antarctica Survey peeps informing me that I had got to the shortlist of 4 from 40ish applicants for the Writers and Artists in Antarctica scheme, but that their first two choices had passed the rigorous medical exam. Alas, alack... Rather gutted at not being able to spend terrifying toe-numbing time being blinded by snow and ice and being inspired by seals and things, and am secretly hoping that one of the lucky twosome breaks several limbs or experiences sudden seizure of year-long artistic block, rather uncharitably.
3) JUICE IN FLESH-FLASHING CARGO TRIUMPH
After weeks of hardcore practice, managing visuals, madly advertising, juice pulled off a cracking performance at the fabulously groovy Cargo in Shoreditch. Had a great crowd of whooping fans, fat on posho BBQ, who were smacked in the face with post-classical/rock/electronica/jazz vocal insanity, complete with visuals providing everything from manga VJ-ing, kooky photos and film cut-ups. juice had a hilarious time slapping on dramatic make-up, wriggling into tiny dresses and then panicking about where the hell to put our cumbersome radio mic packs. Moreover, as well as singing our usual rumbly growling/harmonics/
stratospheric cluster-chords, we also finished the show with some very silly choreography which had us cavorting around the stage shaking our asses Beyonce-style and ridingg horses. Ohhhh yes. My knees are still trying to recover....
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 9. Yes, NINE.
Hair day: Have silly 'punkpink' hair gunk in fringe, residue of yesterday's whack performance...
Phew. Not entirely sure where my half term disappeared to.Was far too busy being tossed in a whirlwind of creative shenanigans as usual. Headlines being:
1) KIDS FLING THEMSELVES ABOUT IN FRONT OF £37 MILLION-WORTH OF VAN GOGH SHOCKER
For a lot of the week I was tiptoe-ing on the sleek floors of the National Gallery before opening time, co-ordinating the music side of a dance/composition project with my Junior Trinity talented wonders. Very strange seeing the morning netherworld of foreign cleaners, terrifying butch German secrity ladies and paintings the size of houses being wheeled about. There even seemed to be someone ticking off the paintings in each room, as if checking none had been swiped during the night. The event itself went marvellously, with 17 year-olds performing insanely hard-hitting contemporary dance to fab music from my lot. I, ever the show-off, got to be the calling boy in front of Seurat's The Bathers, doing minor vocal gymnastics whilst sporting a particularly fetching red hat.
2) COMPOSER EXPERIENCES DRAMATIC DISAPPOINTMENT AT LOSS OF LUDICROUSLY CHILLY ART TRIP SCANDAL
This week I received a letter from the British Antarctica Survey peeps informing me that I had got to the shortlist of 4 from 40ish applicants for the Writers and Artists in Antarctica scheme, but that their first two choices had passed the rigorous medical exam. Alas, alack... Rather gutted at not being able to spend terrifying toe-numbing time being blinded by snow and ice and being inspired by seals and things, and am secretly hoping that one of the lucky twosome breaks several limbs or experiences sudden seizure of year-long artistic block, rather uncharitably.
3) JUICE IN FLESH-FLASHING CARGO TRIUMPH
After weeks of hardcore practice, managing visuals, madly advertising, juice pulled off a cracking performance at the fabulously groovy Cargo in Shoreditch. Had a great crowd of whooping fans, fat on posho BBQ, who were smacked in the face with post-classical/rock/electronica/jazz vocal insanity, complete with visuals providing everything from manga VJ-ing, kooky photos and film cut-ups. juice had a hilarious time slapping on dramatic make-up, wriggling into tiny dresses and then panicking about where the hell to put our cumbersome radio mic packs. Moreover, as well as singing our usual rumbly growling/harmonics/
stratospheric cluster-chords, we also finished the show with some very silly choreography which had us cavorting around the stage shaking our asses Beyonce-style and ridingg horses. Ohhhh yes. My knees are still trying to recover....
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Wycombe come home
Current level of conviction in own genius: 6
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: if you count watching Soccer Aid as creative activity, 90 mins.
Hair day: Like trendy iron filings. Am besotted with new hair straighteners.
So, after a resplendent first half of season in which they lorded it over League Two and reigned over even Chelsea's moneyed himbos in the length of their unbeaten run, my beloved Wycombe sagged quietly down into the play-offs, just about holding onto 6th place. Having managed to see no football on telly this season due to a) working on Saturdays and b) rabid social life, it was only right and fair that I would completely miss what seems to have been an FA Cup match of gladatorially dramatic proportions in favour of persuading Andy's buddies Jessica and John up the road to let us hog their sofa and force them to watch WWFC play Cheltenham in the play-off first leg on Sky Sports 2. It was a damply dull game for the most part, we lost 2-1, and then sighed despondently out in the second leg in a 0-0 draw. When I first supported Wycombe, Martin O'Neill was our Lord and Master, I saw them play at Wembley three times in three years, we went up two divisions in two years and I was wrapped in a permanently joyous blue bliss. Alas, no more. Sob. Still, only a game and all that.
In composition news: I have two private commissions being premiered in the summer: one is a memorial to the commissionee's sculptor mother and is being performed by ace prof counter-tenor Nick Clapton; the other commemorates the victims of the July 7th bombings and should be heard on Radio 4. Actually providing people with pieces that perform a function, rather than being some piece for some orchestra for some competition, is really very professionally fulfilling.
In other groovy arts news: juice's Cargo gig looms ever nearer, with the girls doing very strange things to small toys (no, not that strange...) in aid of doing some visuals; fuseleeds06 festival gig went very nicely; we were in Music Teacher magazine (like Dazed and Confused, expect without the arch writing and high fashion, and more articles about using xylophones in Key Stage 1); we're hopefully playing the Spitz in July! And we're currently on Danish radio online!
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: if you count watching Soccer Aid as creative activity, 90 mins.
Hair day: Like trendy iron filings. Am besotted with new hair straighteners.
So, after a resplendent first half of season in which they lorded it over League Two and reigned over even Chelsea's moneyed himbos in the length of their unbeaten run, my beloved Wycombe sagged quietly down into the play-offs, just about holding onto 6th place. Having managed to see no football on telly this season due to a) working on Saturdays and b) rabid social life, it was only right and fair that I would completely miss what seems to have been an FA Cup match of gladatorially dramatic proportions in favour of persuading Andy's buddies Jessica and John up the road to let us hog their sofa and force them to watch WWFC play Cheltenham in the play-off first leg on Sky Sports 2. It was a damply dull game for the most part, we lost 2-1, and then sighed despondently out in the second leg in a 0-0 draw. When I first supported Wycombe, Martin O'Neill was our Lord and Master, I saw them play at Wembley three times in three years, we went up two divisions in two years and I was wrapped in a permanently joyous blue bliss. Alas, no more. Sob. Still, only a game and all that.
In composition news: I have two private commissions being premiered in the summer: one is a memorial to the commissionee's sculptor mother and is being performed by ace prof counter-tenor Nick Clapton; the other commemorates the victims of the July 7th bombings and should be heard on Radio 4. Actually providing people with pieces that perform a function, rather than being some piece for some orchestra for some competition, is really very professionally fulfilling.
In other groovy arts news: juice's Cargo gig looms ever nearer, with the girls doing very strange things to small toys (no, not that strange...) in aid of doing some visuals; fuseleeds06 festival gig went very nicely; we were in Music Teacher magazine (like Dazed and Confused, expect without the arch writing and high fashion, and more articles about using xylophones in Key Stage 1); we're hopefully playing the Spitz in July! And we're currently on Danish radio online!
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
something clement in the state of Denmark
Current level of conviction in own genius: 6
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: zero
Hair day: Asymmetrical. Braved a visit to local Bethnal Green coiffery, got given a single look by the elaborately boybanded hairdresser who said he could do something 'very interesting' with me. When I asked what, he said he didn't know and would 'just have to go with it, you know?'. Gulped and consented. Emerged with crazy one-short-sided-getting-longer-round-the-other Shohoboho cut. And hilariously for such a cropped lass, have bought straighteners! Ahem.
Have had busy few days. The last bank holiday weekend was a packed one, starting with the registry wedding and henna night of one of my best buddies and am now sporting slightly faded but very groovy henna tattoo on right hand. I made my debut at one of Oxford's legendary Aston Street parties (friends of Andy's), where the attention to detail is ludicrously impressive: a Western theme, they'd removed the lounge door and replaced it with bullet-riddled saloon doors, slung haystacks outside and strategically placed inflatable cacti, and best of all, down at the bottom of their winding secret garden could be found a roaring campfire and shed masquerading as frontier wagon. I made a half-decent attempt at Native American slut (breasts falling out of tassled top, arse hanging out of suede skirt, war paint etc) and boogied to silly house and, much more appealingly, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. Rockin'. The next day I supported the Step 13ers at the rough'n'ready 491 Gallery-cum-squat in Leytonstone, where they delivered their usual tight set of friendly drum'n'bass.
This weekend was a fab one, with juice and boys (soon to be labelled 'the juicettes' if they're not careful) taking off to Arhus (key to pronunciation: think Scottish pirate with extreme facial tick) to perform in Roger Marsh's music-theatre loveliness, Pierrot Lunaire at the Spor Festival. The gig went off very successfully, with our intrepid trio doing everything from French cabaret to Eurovision pop, skipping to Monty Python-esque heckling in the audience. In our free time, we hopped on free bikes (you put 2o kroner in a slot and get your bike! like a shopping trolley!) and rode to the beach, enjoyed park walks through banks of wild garlic, saw lots of public art and had a great night in surely the most louche bar in town, Cafe RisRas, which would be THE place to be if bang in the middle of Brick Lane, with its rainbows of beers and 20-strong list of single malts, table football and Scandinavian hip hop on the decks. It's soooo great to be doing, albeit far too occasionally, the kind of well-paid work which allows you to sun yourself in the middle of the cathedral square cramming your face full of Danish ice cream.
Apart from that it's just been the usual mix of improvising percussive weirdness in the studio, quaffing free wine at book launches and trying to forget I still have to be teacher for a living. And also trying to find a pub in East London which will show Wycombe Wanderers' first leg play-off with Cheltenham Town on Saturday evening.... Get in the Wyc!!!!!!!
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: zero
Hair day: Asymmetrical. Braved a visit to local Bethnal Green coiffery, got given a single look by the elaborately boybanded hairdresser who said he could do something 'very interesting' with me. When I asked what, he said he didn't know and would 'just have to go with it, you know?'. Gulped and consented. Emerged with crazy one-short-sided-getting-longer-round-the-other Shohoboho cut. And hilariously for such a cropped lass, have bought straighteners! Ahem.
Have had busy few days. The last bank holiday weekend was a packed one, starting with the registry wedding and henna night of one of my best buddies and am now sporting slightly faded but very groovy henna tattoo on right hand. I made my debut at one of Oxford's legendary Aston Street parties (friends of Andy's), where the attention to detail is ludicrously impressive: a Western theme, they'd removed the lounge door and replaced it with bullet-riddled saloon doors, slung haystacks outside and strategically placed inflatable cacti, and best of all, down at the bottom of their winding secret garden could be found a roaring campfire and shed masquerading as frontier wagon. I made a half-decent attempt at Native American slut (breasts falling out of tassled top, arse hanging out of suede skirt, war paint etc) and boogied to silly house and, much more appealingly, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. Rockin'. The next day I supported the Step 13ers at the rough'n'ready 491 Gallery-cum-squat in Leytonstone, where they delivered their usual tight set of friendly drum'n'bass.
This weekend was a fab one, with juice and boys (soon to be labelled 'the juicettes' if they're not careful) taking off to Arhus (key to pronunciation: think Scottish pirate with extreme facial tick) to perform in Roger Marsh's music-theatre loveliness, Pierrot Lunaire at the Spor Festival. The gig went off very successfully, with our intrepid trio doing everything from French cabaret to Eurovision pop, skipping to Monty Python-esque heckling in the audience. In our free time, we hopped on free bikes (you put 2o kroner in a slot and get your bike! like a shopping trolley!) and rode to the beach, enjoyed park walks through banks of wild garlic, saw lots of public art and had a great night in surely the most louche bar in town, Cafe RisRas, which would be THE place to be if bang in the middle of Brick Lane, with its rainbows of beers and 20-strong list of single malts, table football and Scandinavian hip hop on the decks. It's soooo great to be doing, albeit far too occasionally, the kind of well-paid work which allows you to sun yourself in the middle of the cathedral square cramming your face full of Danish ice cream.
Apart from that it's just been the usual mix of improvising percussive weirdness in the studio, quaffing free wine at book launches and trying to forget I still have to be teacher for a living. And also trying to find a pub in East London which will show Wycombe Wanderers' first leg play-off with Cheltenham Town on Saturday evening.... Get in the Wyc!!!!!!!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Strange things I have seen this week
1) George Galloway and entourage strolling through Globetown on the Respect prowl; I, star-thwacked by anything remotely famous that moves, smiled at him and got a louche wink and a burred 'how're you doing?' back. Tee hee. He is an opportunistic buffoon, of course, but when it comes to oratory skills there are few better. He'd make a fine stage actor, belting out heather-burnished polemic on the stage of the Globe, or maybe on tv. The new Trisha! He'd sort those whey-faced ratlovecheats out.
2) A mad old woman pushing one of those creepy toy dogs (the cretinous black-faced fur balls, like the one who cast his satanic spell over - I mean won - Crufts the other year) along in a pushchair down Bethnal Green Road. The woman was struggling. The dog looked very relaxed.
3) A very odd support act to the fair-to-middling avant-rockers Battles at Dingwall's in Camden last night. Battles, with their line-up of 3 guitars and drummer (with one cymbal propelled high into the air reminiscent of a Christian Marclay installation), had just a too-sonically-limited palate, though I'm always forgiving of anyone who plays in 9/4 or 6/8 and 3/4 alternately. They were preceeded by the peculiar Hot Club De Paris, a jerky angualr trio who lashed out 1-minute long post-punk numbers, whooped maniacally at the end of each one and only impressed me when they sang in perfect three-part folk harmony, with hilarious lyrics like 'i'll love your teeth in/i'll love your limbs off/ i love your crutches/you painted them pink yourself'....
Happy birthday to my newly-specced love by the way!!!
2) A mad old woman pushing one of those creepy toy dogs (the cretinous black-faced fur balls, like the one who cast his satanic spell over - I mean won - Crufts the other year) along in a pushchair down Bethnal Green Road. The woman was struggling. The dog looked very relaxed.
3) A very odd support act to the fair-to-middling avant-rockers Battles at Dingwall's in Camden last night. Battles, with their line-up of 3 guitars and drummer (with one cymbal propelled high into the air reminiscent of a Christian Marclay installation), had just a too-sonically-limited palate, though I'm always forgiving of anyone who plays in 9/4 or 6/8 and 3/4 alternately. They were preceeded by the peculiar Hot Club De Paris, a jerky angualr trio who lashed out 1-minute long post-punk numbers, whooped maniacally at the end of each one and only impressed me when they sang in perfect three-part folk harmony, with hilarious lyrics like 'i'll love your teeth in/i'll love your limbs off/ i love your crutches/you painted them pink yourself'....
Happy birthday to my newly-specced love by the way!!!
Monday, April 17, 2006
the long good friday to monday
april 17th
Level of conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity achieved today: 1 hour
Hair day: adequate though am contemplating flash of shocking flamepink to make primary school collectively gasp in horror
This long Easter weekend has shaped up marvellously, stretching gracefully over four days and packed to the gills with vibrant activity...
Friday was indeed Good, with a quick visit to Victoria Park's lush secret garden, complete with balletic squirrels and birds in four-part harmony. In the evening my visual wiz partner-in-artcrime Harry took me to the Lyric, Hammersmith to see an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean graphic novel 'The Wolves are in the Walls', which proved to be a zippy musical with audacious set design and puppetry. Brill.
On Saturday, I reminded myself why I used to love Soho, drinking mid-morning Earl Grey, eating brioche and reading the New Statesman (ok, pretending to the read the New Statesman whilst admiring my glamorously intellectual reflection) in Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street alongside the old Italians and cutely-coiffed gay men. Andy and I then fought our way into the V&A's 'Modernism' exhibition, where I learnt that the bad things to come out of it were Nazism's and Facism's twisted adaptation of the aesthetic and the good things were the later rejection of straight lines in favour of responding to organic forms found in nature and some kick-ass tea sets.
We topped off Saturday with a mosey down to the coolest joint in town (so says Time Out and they are the gospel in all things London): the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. Oh yes. Just off the beaten track enough to lose the city types and Shoho ponces, we were there for Viva Cake, a hilariously off-the-wall night of 50s music, Lindy hop class and free tea and cake served by roller-skating waitresses, and mingled with the old-school locals from the still-very-working-men's-club bit downstairs. A fun, unprentious night, complete with bizarre (and not terribly good, admittedly) dance troupe of ladies dressed as stewardesses.
Having demanded one trip to the beach before my hol was up (my recent afernoon in Scarborough with ma not really counting seeing as we cowered in the car whilst a snowstorm tried to force the windows open), we hopped on the train to Whitstable for a quick fix of salt air. We ticked all the boxes, eating fish and chips on our laps whilst the grease soaked through our jeans, traipsing over the breakers and pebbles to the weathered huts down at the far end, having tea and organic cake, proving artistic worth by spotting founder of Stuckism and previous squeeze of Tracy Emin, Billy Childish, inventing games involving the re-creation of film scnees using beach debris (I got very wet during my Jaws effort), jotting some poetry and writing some on stones for people to pick up later. And all this while the sky, a cloud canvas, practically screamed 'WATERCOLOUR ME! WATERCOLOUR ME!' and the sea was silvering milk.
Switching from quaint coastal towns to knife-edgy East London in one fell swoop, we danced away Sunday at the slightly-perturbing Favela Chic (done up, apparently, like a shanty town - yeah, we're like, poor and Brazilian! and blowing our last thousand centavos on beer!) at Batamacumba's night, decent if ending with some tropical funk with, strangely, the bassline from Grease's 'Summer Nights'. Hhm.
Phew. Feeling like we were somewhere into Thursday afternoon, having lost track of the days completely, we took it easier today, lunching at the utterly wondrous Grapes pub in Limehouse, an ancient, dark-wooded pub that reminds me of my fabulous York local the Blue Bell with its perfect mix of old crazies and relaxed Indie-reading new Londoner types. Plus a fab view of the iron-glittering river. Then went to the Docklands museum, chiefly to see the lovely 'Unquiet Thames' photographic exhibition but also to soak up the history of the area. Whilst I acknowledge that this city thrives on change, it seemed sad when walking back through Westferry to see the streets named so evocatively after the trades that buzzed there (Ropemaker's Walk, Butcher's Row) now labelling blocks after blocks of city-boy flats, and the river so unpopulated by boats. Things move on, but you wonder what happened to the older 'islanders' who got quietly pushed aside in favour of the towers of Mordor now gleaming blindingly into the sky.
Now, duck, lentils, wine, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and hopefully a six-week sleep which thus allows me to bypass school summer term part one and arise refreshed for half-term high jinks. Well, a girl can dream....
Level of conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity achieved today: 1 hour
Hair day: adequate though am contemplating flash of shocking flamepink to make primary school collectively gasp in horror
This long Easter weekend has shaped up marvellously, stretching gracefully over four days and packed to the gills with vibrant activity...
Friday was indeed Good, with a quick visit to Victoria Park's lush secret garden, complete with balletic squirrels and birds in four-part harmony. In the evening my visual wiz partner-in-artcrime Harry took me to the Lyric, Hammersmith to see an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean graphic novel 'The Wolves are in the Walls', which proved to be a zippy musical with audacious set design and puppetry. Brill.
On Saturday, I reminded myself why I used to love Soho, drinking mid-morning Earl Grey, eating brioche and reading the New Statesman (ok, pretending to the read the New Statesman whilst admiring my glamorously intellectual reflection) in Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street alongside the old Italians and cutely-coiffed gay men. Andy and I then fought our way into the V&A's 'Modernism' exhibition, where I learnt that the bad things to come out of it were Nazism's and Facism's twisted adaptation of the aesthetic and the good things were the later rejection of straight lines in favour of responding to organic forms found in nature and some kick-ass tea sets.
We topped off Saturday with a mosey down to the coolest joint in town (so says Time Out and they are the gospel in all things London): the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. Oh yes. Just off the beaten track enough to lose the city types and Shoho ponces, we were there for Viva Cake, a hilariously off-the-wall night of 50s music, Lindy hop class and free tea and cake served by roller-skating waitresses, and mingled with the old-school locals from the still-very-working-men's-club bit downstairs. A fun, unprentious night, complete with bizarre (and not terribly good, admittedly) dance troupe of ladies dressed as stewardesses.
Having demanded one trip to the beach before my hol was up (my recent afernoon in Scarborough with ma not really counting seeing as we cowered in the car whilst a snowstorm tried to force the windows open), we hopped on the train to Whitstable for a quick fix of salt air. We ticked all the boxes, eating fish and chips on our laps whilst the grease soaked through our jeans, traipsing over the breakers and pebbles to the weathered huts down at the far end, having tea and organic cake, proving artistic worth by spotting founder of Stuckism and previous squeeze of Tracy Emin, Billy Childish, inventing games involving the re-creation of film scnees using beach debris (I got very wet during my Jaws effort), jotting some poetry and writing some on stones for people to pick up later. And all this while the sky, a cloud canvas, practically screamed 'WATERCOLOUR ME! WATERCOLOUR ME!' and the sea was silvering milk.
Switching from quaint coastal towns to knife-edgy East London in one fell swoop, we danced away Sunday at the slightly-perturbing Favela Chic (done up, apparently, like a shanty town - yeah, we're like, poor and Brazilian! and blowing our last thousand centavos on beer!) at Batamacumba's night, decent if ending with some tropical funk with, strangely, the bassline from Grease's 'Summer Nights'. Hhm.
Phew. Feeling like we were somewhere into Thursday afternoon, having lost track of the days completely, we took it easier today, lunching at the utterly wondrous Grapes pub in Limehouse, an ancient, dark-wooded pub that reminds me of my fabulous York local the Blue Bell with its perfect mix of old crazies and relaxed Indie-reading new Londoner types. Plus a fab view of the iron-glittering river. Then went to the Docklands museum, chiefly to see the lovely 'Unquiet Thames' photographic exhibition but also to soak up the history of the area. Whilst I acknowledge that this city thrives on change, it seemed sad when walking back through Westferry to see the streets named so evocatively after the trades that buzzed there (Ropemaker's Walk, Butcher's Row) now labelling blocks after blocks of city-boy flats, and the river so unpopulated by boats. Things move on, but you wonder what happened to the older 'islanders' who got quietly pushed aside in favour of the towers of Mordor now gleaming blindingly into the sky.
Now, duck, lentils, wine, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and hopefully a six-week sleep which thus allows me to bypass school summer term part one and arise refreshed for half-term high jinks. Well, a girl can dream....
Monday, April 03, 2006
avant-hard
april 3rd, 2006
Current level of conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1
Hair day: not looking as snappy as it should for a £40 chop in an organic hairdresser’s in Shoreditch
Have upped the live music stakes this week, having been to four gigs so wildly varying they might well have taken place in opposing corners of the globe – well, not everyone can say that in 6 days they’ve taken in a Canadian post-artrock outfit, a harpsichord in a club, a beatboxer who can perform entire Daft Punk songs and a MOR sub-Radio 2 country singer in Driffield.
1) Bell Orchestre at the ULU was a wondrous, ear-glowing experience. Comprising octopus-like drummer, double bass, violin, horn and trumpet, the brass started by disorientating us completely by playing acoustically amidst the audience, and the band swiftly followed with a set of innovative, jazz/folk/rock-inflected genius. The use of melodeon through a hosepipe, bass knocks on the wood and almost entirely col legno bowing, percussive typewriter and whooping horn harmonics lent a quirkily avant-garde edge, and the build-up of Reich-esque riffs, angular time signatures, the blurred virtuosity of the players and some kick-ass rocking out sent me to heaven and back. Euphoric. I am viciously anti-illegal drugs at the best of times, but seriously people, the best music does it all for you…
2) Jane Chapman at Cargo. In the second of the Sound Source series, which aims to bring contemporary music into funkier venues, we were greeted with the bizarrely innocuous sight of seeing a harpsichord perched primly on the stage of Cargo in Shoreditch. It was a mildly odd night, with some very cute and funky pieces in there; however, some of them seemed very slight and the audience was a mixture of subdued harpsichord enthusiasts (glaring at me for laughing very loudly at a genuinely funny number) and your usual 20-somethings. Still, it gives juice a few more ideas as to how to make ours work for yes! We are the next in the series on May 30th!!!
3) Mr Mouth and 7 Seconds of Love at Cargo. Again. We were there to see friend Ed do his dancing-drummer thing in previously-blogged about comedy ska-punk band 7 Seconds, but were wowed by the 3-mouths-in-one beatboxer, a self-consciously styled geek who could sing Michael Jackson songs whilst chewing over the beats, used a loopstation and then upped the stakes by accompanying his jazzy keyboard riffs with a mouthy beat. Gift of the gab indeed.
4) Up in York for juice’s second recording session for Roger Marsh’s Pierrot Lunaire on NMC, I put up only mild resistance to go see Mum’s favourite singer, John Wright, with her in Driffield. It was Phoenix Nights, East Riding style, all the way here – crammed into the back room of the Blue Bell pub, last decorated in 1959, I was surrounded by septuagenarians sipping half-pints of Tetley’s, all swooning at the boxy-suited, mullet-haired sleazemeister up front. Wright, delivering trite covers of country, folk and soul numbers, makes my old student Katie Melua look on the teetering edge of avant-garde. Granted, he had a lovely fiddle player, I quite enjoyed the bagpipe-wielding support act who sang comedy songs about women golfers with large breasts, and appreciated the light buffet of cheese-and-onion sandwiches and sausage rolls handed round in the interval by buxom lasses. Still, I think I prefer the capital’s offerings to gigs accompanied by the sound of the fly-zapper on the ceiling snapping and crackling at regular intervals….
Have been whipped up in a whirlwind of creative activity, what with working on our websites, succumbing to the Murdoch-lorded myspace.com (cue sound of bandwagon screeching to a halt to let juice and I clamber on), embarking on a new career using a covert identity that shall maybe revealed later, and being creative consultant and assistant model for the new art/fashion venture UP YOUR ART taking place under our E1 roof. I am currently sporting an apple-green t-shirt emblazoned with ‘AVANT-HARD’. Oh yes. Well, in these East London parts, you have to create new identity as fashion-designing/DJ-ing/artzine Shoho type to avoid getting trampled underfoot by pairs of Victoriana-heeled poetry punks whilst being beaten to bits with piles of obscure 1960s underground-country-disco records.
Current level of conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1
Hair day: not looking as snappy as it should for a £40 chop in an organic hairdresser’s in Shoreditch
Have upped the live music stakes this week, having been to four gigs so wildly varying they might well have taken place in opposing corners of the globe – well, not everyone can say that in 6 days they’ve taken in a Canadian post-artrock outfit, a harpsichord in a club, a beatboxer who can perform entire Daft Punk songs and a MOR sub-Radio 2 country singer in Driffield.
1) Bell Orchestre at the ULU was a wondrous, ear-glowing experience. Comprising octopus-like drummer, double bass, violin, horn and trumpet, the brass started by disorientating us completely by playing acoustically amidst the audience, and the band swiftly followed with a set of innovative, jazz/folk/rock-inflected genius. The use of melodeon through a hosepipe, bass knocks on the wood and almost entirely col legno bowing, percussive typewriter and whooping horn harmonics lent a quirkily avant-garde edge, and the build-up of Reich-esque riffs, angular time signatures, the blurred virtuosity of the players and some kick-ass rocking out sent me to heaven and back. Euphoric. I am viciously anti-illegal drugs at the best of times, but seriously people, the best music does it all for you…
2) Jane Chapman at Cargo. In the second of the Sound Source series, which aims to bring contemporary music into funkier venues, we were greeted with the bizarrely innocuous sight of seeing a harpsichord perched primly on the stage of Cargo in Shoreditch. It was a mildly odd night, with some very cute and funky pieces in there; however, some of them seemed very slight and the audience was a mixture of subdued harpsichord enthusiasts (glaring at me for laughing very loudly at a genuinely funny number) and your usual 20-somethings. Still, it gives juice a few more ideas as to how to make ours work for yes! We are the next in the series on May 30th!!!
3) Mr Mouth and 7 Seconds of Love at Cargo. Again. We were there to see friend Ed do his dancing-drummer thing in previously-blogged about comedy ska-punk band 7 Seconds, but were wowed by the 3-mouths-in-one beatboxer, a self-consciously styled geek who could sing Michael Jackson songs whilst chewing over the beats, used a loopstation and then upped the stakes by accompanying his jazzy keyboard riffs with a mouthy beat. Gift of the gab indeed.
4) Up in York for juice’s second recording session for Roger Marsh’s Pierrot Lunaire on NMC, I put up only mild resistance to go see Mum’s favourite singer, John Wright, with her in Driffield. It was Phoenix Nights, East Riding style, all the way here – crammed into the back room of the Blue Bell pub, last decorated in 1959, I was surrounded by septuagenarians sipping half-pints of Tetley’s, all swooning at the boxy-suited, mullet-haired sleazemeister up front. Wright, delivering trite covers of country, folk and soul numbers, makes my old student Katie Melua look on the teetering edge of avant-garde. Granted, he had a lovely fiddle player, I quite enjoyed the bagpipe-wielding support act who sang comedy songs about women golfers with large breasts, and appreciated the light buffet of cheese-and-onion sandwiches and sausage rolls handed round in the interval by buxom lasses. Still, I think I prefer the capital’s offerings to gigs accompanied by the sound of the fly-zapper on the ceiling snapping and crackling at regular intervals….
Have been whipped up in a whirlwind of creative activity, what with working on our websites, succumbing to the Murdoch-lorded myspace.com (cue sound of bandwagon screeching to a halt to let juice and I clamber on), embarking on a new career using a covert identity that shall maybe revealed later, and being creative consultant and assistant model for the new art/fashion venture UP YOUR ART taking place under our E1 roof. I am currently sporting an apple-green t-shirt emblazoned with ‘AVANT-HARD’. Oh yes. Well, in these East London parts, you have to create new identity as fashion-designing/DJ-ing/artzine Shoho type to avoid getting trampled underfoot by pairs of Victoriana-heeled poetry punks whilst being beaten to bits with piles of obscure 1960s underground-country-disco records.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Mis-create
march 17th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 9 (creative admin genius)
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 6 (creative admin that is)
Hair day: bit short and un-style-able. Went to Green's in Hoxton, not massively impressed with my 'lesbian/prisoner of war in strange '60s hippie camp' look.
Waargghhagahgh.
Have had manically busy few days of being Miss Creative Administrator 2006, fired up to the eyeballs with artistic ideas and soundtracked by feverish note-scribbling. If I ignore the trifles of primary school crowd control, the week has been a very positive one: I've been sorting juice's vocals/electronics/visuals extravanganza at Cargo in May (cue mad hand-waving in the face of slightly bemused spnm lass at talk of Bjork covers and throat-singing), plus setting up a funky little gig at the cutesome Redgate Gallery in Brixtonia (a space so naturally echoey you could half-whisper the phonetic 'sk' and half the railway arch would fall down). Yesterday juice did some Meredith Monk-esque improv and recording in the Royal Academy of Music studios plus throwing about of ideas encompassing live vocals and film juxtaposition. Today I charted the National Gallery's horribly tourist-polluted waters in search of paintings with which to get my Junior Trinity kids to compose dance pieces, leading to animated talk of contorted dynamics and pointillist forms. This was swiftly followed by a creative meeting with my visual artist of choice, Harriet Poole, to discuss pinhole photography and Uta Berth-inspired images for Cargo. Creative meetings also include tea, cake and in-depth discourse over boys and shoes, obviously…
All these lunch meetings has entailed a dedicated survey of new places to eat, drink and be creatively merry. This week I have made the acquaintance of MTR Studio 23 on Charlotte Road in Shoreditch, a hilarious couldn't-be-more-Nathan-Barley-if-it-tried café/film/space, where I sat in a booth on an old cinema seat, watching a Japanese movie on silent and grimacing into an extremely bad latte. Much cooler was the Photographer's Gallery, an oasis of contemporary coolness amidst the grimy stewpot of Leicester Square. Wholesome rainbows of food and green tea from rolled-up jasmine leaves that uncurled coyly in the cup. We have also now appointed The Camel on Globe Road, E2, as our local (well, Charlie's Bar is our actual local in distance terms, but I'm opting out of bleeding cheeks and being forced to sing Foreigner on karaoke night for the moment). It’s a sedate, baroquely-wallpapered and dark-wooded haven with an ole joanna in the corner and a menu consisting only of pies. Beats your conventional youth-pub with its noise and smoke and new-fangled jukeinthebox or whatever you call it…. London rocks!
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 9 (creative admin genius)
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 6 (creative admin that is)
Hair day: bit short and un-style-able. Went to Green's in Hoxton, not massively impressed with my 'lesbian/prisoner of war in strange '60s hippie camp' look.
Waargghhagahgh.
Have had manically busy few days of being Miss Creative Administrator 2006, fired up to the eyeballs with artistic ideas and soundtracked by feverish note-scribbling. If I ignore the trifles of primary school crowd control, the week has been a very positive one: I've been sorting juice's vocals/electronics/visuals extravanganza at Cargo in May (cue mad hand-waving in the face of slightly bemused spnm lass at talk of Bjork covers and throat-singing), plus setting up a funky little gig at the cutesome Redgate Gallery in Brixtonia (a space so naturally echoey you could half-whisper the phonetic 'sk' and half the railway arch would fall down). Yesterday juice did some Meredith Monk-esque improv and recording in the Royal Academy of Music studios plus throwing about of ideas encompassing live vocals and film juxtaposition. Today I charted the National Gallery's horribly tourist-polluted waters in search of paintings with which to get my Junior Trinity kids to compose dance pieces, leading to animated talk of contorted dynamics and pointillist forms. This was swiftly followed by a creative meeting with my visual artist of choice, Harriet Poole, to discuss pinhole photography and Uta Berth-inspired images for Cargo. Creative meetings also include tea, cake and in-depth discourse over boys and shoes, obviously…
All these lunch meetings has entailed a dedicated survey of new places to eat, drink and be creatively merry. This week I have made the acquaintance of MTR Studio 23 on Charlotte Road in Shoreditch, a hilarious couldn't-be-more-Nathan-Barley-if-it-tried café/film/space, where I sat in a booth on an old cinema seat, watching a Japanese movie on silent and grimacing into an extremely bad latte. Much cooler was the Photographer's Gallery, an oasis of contemporary coolness amidst the grimy stewpot of Leicester Square. Wholesome rainbows of food and green tea from rolled-up jasmine leaves that uncurled coyly in the cup. We have also now appointed The Camel on Globe Road, E2, as our local (well, Charlie's Bar is our actual local in distance terms, but I'm opting out of bleeding cheeks and being forced to sing Foreigner on karaoke night for the moment). It’s a sedate, baroquely-wallpapered and dark-wooded haven with an ole joanna in the corner and a menu consisting only of pies. Beats your conventional youth-pub with its noise and smoke and new-fangled jukeinthebox or whatever you call it…. London rocks!
Friday, March 10, 2006
brits and twigs (hhmm...)
march 10th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: a bit
Hair day: if I spike it up at the front it is a foot and a half long. think it needs cutting.
Of course, in my last blog I completely forgot to mention my appearance at the BRIT Awards (such is my celeb-wheeling whirlwind of a life, all these things blend into one after a while...), in blagging a ticket from my old chums at the BRIT School and standing with da kidz in the pit (alas, not merrily guzzling champagne at one of the tables behind us, swearing blind I'd always been the biggest Prince fan to his royal smallness). I've been twice before, and it was a little underwhelming: not quite the swift glitzy musicfest you see on tv, what with the interminable gaps inbetween acts for set changes, and the sound firing blanks over your head. Lowlights were the deathly dull Jack Johnson and James Blunt, whose girlish yelpings could give a Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier* a run for its money. Ugh. More fun were Gorillaz' stageful of grooving kids, the funk-whippet* Prince (a bit indulgent, but hell, he played Purple Rain) and - I can't believe I'm saying this - Paul Weller, who although looking coked-up to the ends of his daftly-flicked sideburns, played proper songs on proper instruments. Give me a down 'n' dirty weed-seeped live drum 'n' bass night in the middle of the week any day. See www.nrftw.com for details!
* Sorry, Crufts is all over the tv this week....
Life is settling down in Bethnal Green, and I am now endeavouring to reflect my 'hood's moniker by being as environmentally-friendly as I can. I am finally doing all those small things espoused by the Guardo et al: turning things off at the mains and the thermostat down and the taps off when brushing my teeth, frenziedly composting everything to pour on our slightly petrified herb garden, and continuing my obsession with refusing plastic bags in favour of carrying everything, spilling bits on the way, in my arms. We are hopping with anticipation at the impending arrival of our first organic veg and fruit box so are clearly true green-tinted boho-eco-warriors now. But there is so much more I can do! Time Out, to which I now subscribe for it is my guide in all things, is full of suggestion this week, and I am next going to investigate being a green woman and source Ecover nail varnish and washable make-up remover pads and tampons made out of hay and things. Oh yes.
PS This all-new green Kerry doesn't extend to welcoming wildlife into our home, though... Came home yesterday to find a little black mouse (or mini-Satan, if you will) legging it out of my bedroom. I, proving myself to be utter wimpoid, screamed like a maiden aunt and Andy found me quivering on the dining room table 15 minutes later. We have now stuffed up the hole under the boiler and it is probably suffocating amongst our Fresh 'n' Wild plastic bags as we squeak. I mean speak.
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: a bit
Hair day: if I spike it up at the front it is a foot and a half long. think it needs cutting.
Of course, in my last blog I completely forgot to mention my appearance at the BRIT Awards (such is my celeb-wheeling whirlwind of a life, all these things blend into one after a while...), in blagging a ticket from my old chums at the BRIT School and standing with da kidz in the pit (alas, not merrily guzzling champagne at one of the tables behind us, swearing blind I'd always been the biggest Prince fan to his royal smallness). I've been twice before, and it was a little underwhelming: not quite the swift glitzy musicfest you see on tv, what with the interminable gaps inbetween acts for set changes, and the sound firing blanks over your head. Lowlights were the deathly dull Jack Johnson and James Blunt, whose girlish yelpings could give a Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier* a run for its money. Ugh. More fun were Gorillaz' stageful of grooving kids, the funk-whippet* Prince (a bit indulgent, but hell, he played Purple Rain) and - I can't believe I'm saying this - Paul Weller, who although looking coked-up to the ends of his daftly-flicked sideburns, played proper songs on proper instruments. Give me a down 'n' dirty weed-seeped live drum 'n' bass night in the middle of the week any day. See www.nrftw.com for details!
* Sorry, Crufts is all over the tv this week....
Life is settling down in Bethnal Green, and I am now endeavouring to reflect my 'hood's moniker by being as environmentally-friendly as I can. I am finally doing all those small things espoused by the Guardo et al: turning things off at the mains and the thermostat down and the taps off when brushing my teeth, frenziedly composting everything to pour on our slightly petrified herb garden, and continuing my obsession with refusing plastic bags in favour of carrying everything, spilling bits on the way, in my arms. We are hopping with anticipation at the impending arrival of our first organic veg and fruit box so are clearly true green-tinted boho-eco-warriors now. But there is so much more I can do! Time Out, to which I now subscribe for it is my guide in all things, is full of suggestion this week, and I am next going to investigate being a green woman and source Ecover nail varnish and washable make-up remover pads and tampons made out of hay and things. Oh yes.
PS This all-new green Kerry doesn't extend to welcoming wildlife into our home, though... Came home yesterday to find a little black mouse (or mini-Satan, if you will) legging it out of my bedroom. I, proving myself to be utter wimpoid, screamed like a maiden aunt and Andy found me quivering on the dining room table 15 minutes later. We have now stuffed up the hole under the boiler and it is probably suffocating amongst our Fresh 'n' Wild plastic bags as we squeak. I mean speak.
Monday, February 20, 2006
shits and gigs
february 21st, 2006
Current conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 0, but have going admin-crazy in pursuit of creativity
Hair day: listless and uninterested in the world
Since esconsed in new tres bijou apartement en Sud Bethnal Green (which, proving how comfortably settled I am, I'm already casually nicknaming 'Bethers' or, in my trademark customizing of Shoho, SoBoGo), having been getting back on the gigging track after a spectacularly scant previous year of live music.
Over the past couple of weeks I have bounced and nodded and wept etc to:
1) The wondrous, spellbinding Folk Brittania: Daughters of Albion gig at the Barbican. The good witches of the north, mother-daughter combo of Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy lorded over the ceremonies, both strumpets endowed with Piaf-esque vibrato. Kathryn Williams and Lou Rhodes from Lamb were lovely, ashen wisps, but paled next to the historically dramatic June Tabor, who introduced her songs with a dark grandeur worthy of Laurence Olivier. It was hold-your-breath exciting for me to see the English/Pakistani singer Sheila Chandra there, too, performing her delicately-inflected version of 'Scarborough Fair' with Martin Carthy. I know folk can seem hardy, horrible nonsense sometimes - I'm no fan of the matter-of-fact singing-style of a lot of the trad male vocalists - but really, when it's just stripped down to the stark bones of a song, an ear-tugging melody and killer lyrics, there's nothing more raw and more intimate.
2) The launch of the No Rest For The Wicked night for live drum 'n' bass night at On the Rocks in Shoho, starring the organiser's band Step 13 - funky, positive, eclectic set and a particularly sexy bass player - and Dead Silence Syndicate, a much colder, jaw-jutting lot who were great but turned the crowd from smiley boogiers into aggressive layabouts boo.
3) The launch of another night, Gonzo, at Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington, with the Matt Dibble Band racing through a crazy set of jazz/funk/pop and funky lo-fi dance Brighton band Speedway5.
4) Eschewing any sign of typical Valentine's night fodder such as candlelit dinners and red roses, Andy and I schlepped down to the Barfly in Camden for a rock gig - we saw the pretty good, atmospheric post-rock trio The Early Years and the very dull Calla (surely the worst name in the world - why have that when you can be called Tits of Death, Meerkat Population Explosion or Control Z! Control Z! ?**) .
5) The very silly but very enjoyable Seven Seconds of Love at the Metro - there are probably not many current bands out there play comedy-ska-punk with lyrics like 'I'm going to flip out/Like a ninja/'Cos that's what ninja's do' and 'Your mum's your dad/Your mum's your dad/Your mum's your dad/Your dad's your mum OI!' whilst attracting adulation from derangedly devout fans who attend their gigs wearing soup cans on their heads (still not sure about that bit).
** NB These are all real bands, oh yes....
Am currently in a whirlwind of self-promotional activity, from helping our new juice manager Rachel to dashing off more solo CDs to unsuspecting-but-about-to-be-amazed records labels to fashioning a proposal for the Arts Council/British Antarctica Survey-sponsored Writers and Artists Programme in Antarctica phew. Am getting hoppingly excited about this, with my lofty plans for the suggested two months sojourn including music-theatre works, choral pieces and text-based work and escalating by the hour grrrr. Of course, the notion of two months at the other end of the globe (and the lengthy plane rides, more to the point) fill me with abject terror; moreover, the idea of me, a girl who wears bedsocks and jimjams even in the heights of a balmy summer, larking about in the coldest place on earth is massively hysterical. But by god! How cool would it be???!!!
Current conviction in own genius: 8
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 0, but have going admin-crazy in pursuit of creativity
Hair day: listless and uninterested in the world
Since esconsed in new tres bijou apartement en Sud Bethnal Green (which, proving how comfortably settled I am, I'm already casually nicknaming 'Bethers' or, in my trademark customizing of Shoho, SoBoGo), having been getting back on the gigging track after a spectacularly scant previous year of live music.
Over the past couple of weeks I have bounced and nodded and wept etc to:
1) The wondrous, spellbinding Folk Brittania: Daughters of Albion gig at the Barbican. The good witches of the north, mother-daughter combo of Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy lorded over the ceremonies, both strumpets endowed with Piaf-esque vibrato. Kathryn Williams and Lou Rhodes from Lamb were lovely, ashen wisps, but paled next to the historically dramatic June Tabor, who introduced her songs with a dark grandeur worthy of Laurence Olivier. It was hold-your-breath exciting for me to see the English/Pakistani singer Sheila Chandra there, too, performing her delicately-inflected version of 'Scarborough Fair' with Martin Carthy. I know folk can seem hardy, horrible nonsense sometimes - I'm no fan of the matter-of-fact singing-style of a lot of the trad male vocalists - but really, when it's just stripped down to the stark bones of a song, an ear-tugging melody and killer lyrics, there's nothing more raw and more intimate.
2) The launch of the No Rest For The Wicked night for live drum 'n' bass night at On the Rocks in Shoho, starring the organiser's band Step 13 - funky, positive, eclectic set and a particularly sexy bass player - and Dead Silence Syndicate, a much colder, jaw-jutting lot who were great but turned the crowd from smiley boogiers into aggressive layabouts boo.
3) The launch of another night, Gonzo, at Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington, with the Matt Dibble Band racing through a crazy set of jazz/funk/pop and funky lo-fi dance Brighton band Speedway5.
4) Eschewing any sign of typical Valentine's night fodder such as candlelit dinners and red roses, Andy and I schlepped down to the Barfly in Camden for a rock gig - we saw the pretty good, atmospheric post-rock trio The Early Years and the very dull Calla (surely the worst name in the world - why have that when you can be called Tits of Death, Meerkat Population Explosion or Control Z! Control Z! ?**) .
5) The very silly but very enjoyable Seven Seconds of Love at the Metro - there are probably not many current bands out there play comedy-ska-punk with lyrics like 'I'm going to flip out/Like a ninja/'Cos that's what ninja's do' and 'Your mum's your dad/Your mum's your dad/Your mum's your dad/Your dad's your mum OI!' whilst attracting adulation from derangedly devout fans who attend their gigs wearing soup cans on their heads (still not sure about that bit).
** NB These are all real bands, oh yes....
Am currently in a whirlwind of self-promotional activity, from helping our new juice manager Rachel to dashing off more solo CDs to unsuspecting-but-about-to-be-amazed records labels to fashioning a proposal for the Arts Council/British Antarctica Survey-sponsored Writers and Artists Programme in Antarctica phew. Am getting hoppingly excited about this, with my lofty plans for the suggested two months sojourn including music-theatre works, choral pieces and text-based work and escalating by the hour grrrr. Of course, the notion of two months at the other end of the globe (and the lengthy plane rides, more to the point) fill me with abject terror; moreover, the idea of me, a girl who wears bedsocks and jimjams even in the heights of a balmy summer, larking about in the coldest place on earth is massively hysterical. But by god! How cool would it be???!!!
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
i am ... the doctor (ooo wee ooooo...)
11th january 2006
Current levels of conviction in own genius: 10. Hurrah!
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: None, apart from small poem entitled 'PhD Motherfucker'.
Hair day: Fabulous!
After five and a half years of full-time teaching, lounging, contemplating, schlepping, and occasionally having wild spurts of abandoned creativity and going at a Murder She Wrote pace on Sibelius, I've cracked it and got the PhD. (Small cheers from the back.) I was, after a run-up of extreme aloofness, unaccountably terrified this morning, particularly after beginning to read through my write-up and spotting three typos almost immediately. I'm probably the only Composition PhD-er in a while who has carefully considered which top (emerald green with black tree print and pink ribbon) and which eyeshadow (aquamarine green, naturally) would really help my cause during the viva. But once I was in, and Gavin Bryars and Bill Brooks (my external and internal examiners respectively, which is less racy than it sounds, more's the pity. Arf.) began their avuncular and extremely informal chat, I knew I was on the home stretch and remembered that I am in fact an utter genius. Well, when you're complimented on how artistically coherent your portfolio is and how your notation is better than Faber's and how if you pursued your dream of becoming avant-pop singersongwriter starlet you'd probably be a very rich woman, you can be allowed a leeettle gigantic-headedness for just one evening. Gavin is clearly a man to know: after I name-checked my two pop gurus - Bjork and Tom Waits - the immensely successful composer who looks and sounds like a Yorkshire sheep farmer casually mentioned that he'd spoken to both of them just yesterday. No, really. He also tossed us anecdotes of his encounters with Le Waits all those years ago when he recorded Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet in Tom's old shed containing all his bone machine percussion. Sehr kool. Of course, I have to make a couple of minor cosmetic adjustments to my CDs and pay for the posho boxes to be embossed and go to graduation wearing the most shamingly floppy-assed hat ever in July, but from today I am offically allowed to call myself Doctor Andrew, or just Doc Kerry if you're really lucky. Of course, there will be no shameful flaunting of my title for any purposes whatsoever apart from on credit cards and hotel bookings and passports in order that I get the chance to be upgraded to first class on planes, as the medically-qualified are, apparently. Of course, that does pose the danger of being dragged to chaotic on-flight scene of man with heart attack surrounded by flapping stewardesses and having to try and cure him by applying a range of extra-vocal techniques including Mongolian-style throat-singing and tongue-clicks and mouth-pops before being booed into standard class, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.
dr kerryx
Current levels of conviction in own genius: 10. Hurrah!
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: None, apart from small poem entitled 'PhD Motherfucker'.
Hair day: Fabulous!
After five and a half years of full-time teaching, lounging, contemplating, schlepping, and occasionally having wild spurts of abandoned creativity and going at a Murder She Wrote pace on Sibelius, I've cracked it and got the PhD. (Small cheers from the back.) I was, after a run-up of extreme aloofness, unaccountably terrified this morning, particularly after beginning to read through my write-up and spotting three typos almost immediately. I'm probably the only Composition PhD-er in a while who has carefully considered which top (emerald green with black tree print and pink ribbon) and which eyeshadow (aquamarine green, naturally) would really help my cause during the viva. But once I was in, and Gavin Bryars and Bill Brooks (my external and internal examiners respectively, which is less racy than it sounds, more's the pity. Arf.) began their avuncular and extremely informal chat, I knew I was on the home stretch and remembered that I am in fact an utter genius. Well, when you're complimented on how artistically coherent your portfolio is and how your notation is better than Faber's and how if you pursued your dream of becoming avant-pop singersongwriter starlet you'd probably be a very rich woman, you can be allowed a leeettle gigantic-headedness for just one evening. Gavin is clearly a man to know: after I name-checked my two pop gurus - Bjork and Tom Waits - the immensely successful composer who looks and sounds like a Yorkshire sheep farmer casually mentioned that he'd spoken to both of them just yesterday. No, really. He also tossed us anecdotes of his encounters with Le Waits all those years ago when he recorded Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet in Tom's old shed containing all his bone machine percussion. Sehr kool. Of course, I have to make a couple of minor cosmetic adjustments to my CDs and pay for the posho boxes to be embossed and go to graduation wearing the most shamingly floppy-assed hat ever in July, but from today I am offically allowed to call myself Doctor Andrew, or just Doc Kerry if you're really lucky. Of course, there will be no shameful flaunting of my title for any purposes whatsoever apart from on credit cards and hotel bookings and passports in order that I get the chance to be upgraded to first class on planes, as the medically-qualified are, apparently. Of course, that does pose the danger of being dragged to chaotic on-flight scene of man with heart attack surrounded by flapping stewardesses and having to try and cure him by applying a range of extra-vocal techniques including Mongolian-style throat-singing and tongue-clicks and mouth-pops before being booed into standard class, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.
dr kerryx
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
snow joke
jan 3rd 2006 (crumbs!)
Current level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: nul points
Hair day: risked all and got snipped in High Wycombe near dad's, emerging with el chav blonde-side-stripe which am just getting used to
Phew. Well, here we are, spat out blinking into 2006, wondering why the streets of Brixton look as scummy as ever and not chockablock with shiny dealer-robots that can craft any drug of choice with a couple of deft button-pressings whilst boom-boxed spacecars thump by overhead and everyone shouts into the transglobalaudiovisualmobilechip in ther heads (as long as it has Radio 4, I'm in). Still, the back door to 2005 was slammed shut with an almighty kerWALLOP as I threw a bangin' party chez Baytree Court, where we grooved to Zen cuts and FF and S Club (yes, well, all in the past) and Prince's 1999 (New Year will always be musically on the cusp of the millenium unless Robbie Williams or the Arctic Monkeys can come up with a catchy 'Bring On 2007' number) whilst stuffing our faces and spilling so much booze on the floor that I was standing ankle-deep in a champagne swamp come Big Ben's dolorous chimes.. Marvellous.
Of course, nothing has actually changed at all, and I'm still perpetually grumbling about my lack of creative opportunity whilst not doing quite as much as I could about it despite protestations about schoolwork (which am obviously dreading onslaught of come...when is it...tomorrow! AGGHH!) and dreaming of the great things to come. Not one but two chums of mine currently make their sole living from composition and also Have Bought Their Own Houses. How, pray, is this possible???? Perhaps I shall adopt February as my real new year, when the boyfriend-gem-that-is-Andy and I shall squeeze ourselves into our new basement flat, the jewel in the could-do-with-a-polish-crown of E1. Then I shall revolutionise myself into all-singing-
all-composing East London artistic whirlwind that I really should be by now.
Getting away from the city grime from Christmas was well worth it, particularly to venture even further north than mother's in Driffield to majestic Northumberland, where we made like Scott of the Antarctic, watching our fingers turn blue, black and then drop off as we braved -7 temperatures and slipslid our way through the snow. We covered Druridge Bay, a menacing blade of beach with waves as high as houses on the horizon, and trudged through England's most northernly town, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, where locals couldn't seem to decide whether they should be Geordies or Scots. We checked out Alnwick's phenomenally fab second-hand-bookshop, Barter Books, which fills a vast Victorian railway station, nestled into a gorgeous old Inn in Alnmouth for mussles and whisky as cheap as chips, and shivered in the spooky bay the next morning, with its alien-moon landscape of snow and sand, the village behind us huddled into the icy mist like the setting to a Steven King novel. Brrrrrrr.
Current level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: nul points
Hair day: risked all and got snipped in High Wycombe near dad's, emerging with el chav blonde-side-stripe which am just getting used to
Phew. Well, here we are, spat out blinking into 2006, wondering why the streets of Brixton look as scummy as ever and not chockablock with shiny dealer-robots that can craft any drug of choice with a couple of deft button-pressings whilst boom-boxed spacecars thump by overhead and everyone shouts into the transglobalaudiovisualmobilechip in ther heads (as long as it has Radio 4, I'm in). Still, the back door to 2005 was slammed shut with an almighty kerWALLOP as I threw a bangin' party chez Baytree Court, where we grooved to Zen cuts and FF and S Club (yes, well, all in the past) and Prince's 1999 (New Year will always be musically on the cusp of the millenium unless Robbie Williams or the Arctic Monkeys can come up with a catchy 'Bring On 2007' number) whilst stuffing our faces and spilling so much booze on the floor that I was standing ankle-deep in a champagne swamp come Big Ben's dolorous chimes.. Marvellous.
Of course, nothing has actually changed at all, and I'm still perpetually grumbling about my lack of creative opportunity whilst not doing quite as much as I could about it despite protestations about schoolwork (which am obviously dreading onslaught of come...when is it...tomorrow! AGGHH!) and dreaming of the great things to come. Not one but two chums of mine currently make their sole living from composition and also Have Bought Their Own Houses. How, pray, is this possible???? Perhaps I shall adopt February as my real new year, when the boyfriend-gem-that-is-Andy and I shall squeeze ourselves into our new basement flat, the jewel in the could-do-with-a-polish-crown of E1. Then I shall revolutionise myself into all-singing-
all-composing East London artistic whirlwind that I really should be by now.
Getting away from the city grime from Christmas was well worth it, particularly to venture even further north than mother's in Driffield to majestic Northumberland, where we made like Scott of the Antarctic, watching our fingers turn blue, black and then drop off as we braved -7 temperatures and slipslid our way through the snow. We covered Druridge Bay, a menacing blade of beach with waves as high as houses on the horizon, and trudged through England's most northernly town, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, where locals couldn't seem to decide whether they should be Geordies or Scots. We checked out Alnwick's phenomenally fab second-hand-bookshop, Barter Books, which fills a vast Victorian railway station, nestled into a gorgeous old Inn in Alnmouth for mussles and whisky as cheap as chips, and shivered in the spooky bay the next morning, with its alien-moon landscape of snow and sand, the village behind us huddled into the icy mist like the setting to a Steven King novel. Brrrrrrr.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
house-hunting high and low
december 6th
Current level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 30 mins
Hair day: rather weighty and lacking in zest. am considering adventurous colour like a few slices of fuschia pink (am sure that'll go down a scream at school)
Phew. Currently counting down the resolutely-crawling hours until end of term, which is still several light years away, and stuffed to the gizzards with nativity plays and carol-singing to accompany, parties and assembly performances, all complete with fawning parents cooing over their babies' crowning moments in the spotlight. Amidst that am starting hefty flatsearch, what with Andy and I moving up east. We are curently mulling over two wildly different properties, an a) super-cute bijou basement flat in Stepney which'll allow us to enjoy cosy posho living and b) a preposterously large, drafty, tatty-round-the-edges 2-bed with not one but TWO utterly soundproof cellars which we could transform into a studio-cum-rehearsal
-cum-pottery-installation-room and still have room for the extensive poetry library upstairs. Argh. Either way, shall be leaving the beery, shouty, weed-reeking bosom of Brixton and the deep south for a while, with its handily near venues such as the Academy, the Telegraph (where we boogied to great rock-rap live act Shorty at the Campaign Against Arms Trade party on Sat)and the Dogstar (where we sighed to acousticy guitar-soothes on Sun) a mere skip and jump away. There is, however, compensation in the form of the mulleted Shoho and its countless pubs/bars/clubs/coffee-houses/boho art lounge galleriesjust a casual, over-swaggering stroll down the road...
In creative news, have had a couple of very positive rejections (ah, I'm a regular Pollyanna) from publishers giving me other names to send genius football book proposal to. I have been helping kids' co. theatre rites audition for singers, involving hilarious role plays which has revealed me to be comic master of the stage. juice had a kick-ass gig in Dartington and have now, most hopping-excitedly, bagged a gig at the lovely Cargo in Shoreditch next May. Ultra-cool fame breathily beckons once more...
peace out x
Current level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 30 mins
Hair day: rather weighty and lacking in zest. am considering adventurous colour like a few slices of fuschia pink (am sure that'll go down a scream at school)
Phew. Currently counting down the resolutely-crawling hours until end of term, which is still several light years away, and stuffed to the gizzards with nativity plays and carol-singing to accompany, parties and assembly performances, all complete with fawning parents cooing over their babies' crowning moments in the spotlight. Amidst that am starting hefty flatsearch, what with Andy and I moving up east. We are curently mulling over two wildly different properties, an a) super-cute bijou basement flat in Stepney which'll allow us to enjoy cosy posho living and b) a preposterously large, drafty, tatty-round-the-edges 2-bed with not one but TWO utterly soundproof cellars which we could transform into a studio-cum-rehearsal
-cum-pottery-installation-room and still have room for the extensive poetry library upstairs. Argh. Either way, shall be leaving the beery, shouty, weed-reeking bosom of Brixton and the deep south for a while, with its handily near venues such as the Academy, the Telegraph (where we boogied to great rock-rap live act Shorty at the Campaign Against Arms Trade party on Sat)and the Dogstar (where we sighed to acousticy guitar-soothes on Sun) a mere skip and jump away. There is, however, compensation in the form of the mulleted Shoho and its countless pubs/bars/clubs/coffee-houses/boho art lounge galleriesjust a casual, over-swaggering stroll down the road...
In creative news, have had a couple of very positive rejections (ah, I'm a regular Pollyanna) from publishers giving me other names to send genius football book proposal to. I have been helping kids' co. theatre rites audition for singers, involving hilarious role plays which has revealed me to be comic master of the stage. juice had a kick-ass gig in Dartington and have now, most hopping-excitedly, bagged a gig at the lovely Cargo in Shoreditch next May. Ultra-cool fame breathily beckons once more...
peace out x
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Kerry's Student Card Is Finally Out Of Date, Aged 27
november 8th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: None, too busy teaching small annoying squirming things
Hair day: Currently brown with few remains of goldish highlights... quite au naturel pour moi. But shall prob not be too long before I can resist the urge to murder with cheapo blonde hair dye.
The good news is that the PhD is IN, baby. Trained it up to the land of cobbles to hand it in, with some light feelings of frazzlement at 5 years of occasional hard work suddenly being boxed up and deposited in impatient hands of stern lady in half-moon specs. So that's over with, at least until I am viva-ed up by cool composer Gavin Bryars and (hopefully) bowed down before as new doctor-of-music-type. Which'll be nice. No more cheapo student tickets to footy matches and things though, alas.
Not much other news to report, really. Too busy/financially-underendowed to launch into crazy world of gigging and theatre-going etc. School is hard work, occasionally rewarding but mostly would much rather be wafting about at home with mugs of tea and an aura of extreme artiness than toiling away to make lessons cool and groovy fun by storyboarding The Simpsons' theme tune or studying Arrested Development lyrics and writing our own raps before simply being reduced to Person Who Stands At Front of Room And Tries To Shut Children Up. There are occasional moments of hilarity, like the news of my hair colour change spreading like wildfire among the amazed 6-year olds, or a boy asking me quietly, during rehearsals for his nativity musical, whether this story was real or not. This being a C of E school (albeit one with plenty of Muslim kids), I had to say yes very quickly and pop him back in his place. Elsewhere, I am trying to encourage myself to oil wheels for Kerry Self-Promotion Bandwagon (choral music, poppier demos, football book, juice, oh, anything really) and doing very occasional juice stuff, like performing a lunchtime concert today to 7 (count 'em!) people. Ah, fame beckons, I can smell it...
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: None, too busy teaching small annoying squirming things
Hair day: Currently brown with few remains of goldish highlights... quite au naturel pour moi. But shall prob not be too long before I can resist the urge to murder with cheapo blonde hair dye.
The good news is that the PhD is IN, baby. Trained it up to the land of cobbles to hand it in, with some light feelings of frazzlement at 5 years of occasional hard work suddenly being boxed up and deposited in impatient hands of stern lady in half-moon specs. So that's over with, at least until I am viva-ed up by cool composer Gavin Bryars and (hopefully) bowed down before as new doctor-of-music-type. Which'll be nice. No more cheapo student tickets to footy matches and things though, alas.
Not much other news to report, really. Too busy/financially-underendowed to launch into crazy world of gigging and theatre-going etc. School is hard work, occasionally rewarding but mostly would much rather be wafting about at home with mugs of tea and an aura of extreme artiness than toiling away to make lessons cool and groovy fun by storyboarding The Simpsons' theme tune or studying Arrested Development lyrics and writing our own raps before simply being reduced to Person Who Stands At Front of Room And Tries To Shut Children Up. There are occasional moments of hilarity, like the news of my hair colour change spreading like wildfire among the amazed 6-year olds, or a boy asking me quietly, during rehearsals for his nativity musical, whether this story was real or not. This being a C of E school (albeit one with plenty of Muslim kids), I had to say yes very quickly and pop him back in his place. Elsewhere, I am trying to encourage myself to oil wheels for Kerry Self-Promotion Bandwagon (choral music, poppier demos, football book, juice, oh, anything really) and doing very occasional juice stuff, like performing a lunchtime concert today to 7 (count 'em!) people. Ah, fame beckons, I can smell it...
Saturday, October 08, 2005
get in
november 8th
Current levels of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achiveived in last 24 hours: 0
Hair Day: Greasy unwashed hair befitting sickly pale invalid
Gagh. Bit ill with fatigue-making bug most probably caught from pesky germ-riddled kids at school. Have been using time stapled under sweaty duvet to do half-hearted PhD work and, more excitingly, complete proposal for girl-who-loves-football book, with the 'hilarious' provisional title of Fever Bitch. Oh yes. It's meant that I've been sinking slowly back into the unglamorous world of Coca-Cola Championship League 2 (oh, it's soooo silly, Division 3 sounds so much more salt-of-the-earth and much less ITV), and following the fortunes of my blue-beloveds, Wycombe Wanderers. And by jove, if the sagging form of recent years hasn't gone and taken an upturn: yesterday we wrestled the top spot from Grimsby's slippery grasp and are currently, along with Chelsea, the only unbeaten team in professional football. Get in!!!
Have been very gig-less of late, though did take a chance on seeing The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (the self-proclaimed 'only indie-vaudeville cult Americana conceptual rock-slideshow act in town') at Bloomsbury UCL the other week. They're an intruiging trio, comprising skinny stylistically over-stuttering, wordy dad, plumper Daphne-in-Scooby-Doo-a-like mom and punky, hair-bunched 11-year old daughter on drums. They go round car boot sales collecting boxes of family slides which seem to capture middle America just so (it's amazing how many pictures were of huge plates of meat), and then create daft, squeaky rock songs around various sequences. Whilst it was completely unique and often very very witty, it somehow lacked a little substance for me; maybe I just wanted more slides of 1960s barbecues...
Current levels of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achiveived in last 24 hours: 0
Hair Day: Greasy unwashed hair befitting sickly pale invalid
Gagh. Bit ill with fatigue-making bug most probably caught from pesky germ-riddled kids at school. Have been using time stapled under sweaty duvet to do half-hearted PhD work and, more excitingly, complete proposal for girl-who-loves-football book, with the 'hilarious' provisional title of Fever Bitch. Oh yes. It's meant that I've been sinking slowly back into the unglamorous world of Coca-Cola Championship League 2 (oh, it's soooo silly, Division 3 sounds so much more salt-of-the-earth and much less ITV), and following the fortunes of my blue-beloveds, Wycombe Wanderers. And by jove, if the sagging form of recent years hasn't gone and taken an upturn: yesterday we wrestled the top spot from Grimsby's slippery grasp and are currently, along with Chelsea, the only unbeaten team in professional football. Get in!!!
Have been very gig-less of late, though did take a chance on seeing The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (the self-proclaimed 'only indie-vaudeville cult Americana conceptual rock-slideshow act in town') at Bloomsbury UCL the other week. They're an intruiging trio, comprising skinny stylistically over-stuttering, wordy dad, plumper Daphne-in-Scooby-Doo-a-like mom and punky, hair-bunched 11-year old daughter on drums. They go round car boot sales collecting boxes of family slides which seem to capture middle America just so (it's amazing how many pictures were of huge plates of meat), and then create daft, squeaky rock songs around various sequences. Whilst it was completely unique and often very very witty, it somehow lacked a little substance for me; maybe I just wanted more slides of 1960s barbecues...
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
primary colours
sept 13th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Hair day: Captain of Team Lacklustre
Things I have been doing:
1) Getting to grips with new full-time employment....primary school is ok: grappling with dribbling three-year olds who tell me they've forgotten their make-up today and start some serious bottom-lip trembling if I raise my voice above a whisper, to the boisterous, 6ft tall top year who will be a handful; weirder are the Stepford Wives-esque staff, who are very keen to talk about Weight Watchers and Supernanny on Channel 4 and who are all a bit tense and scary. They make me - a happily-bounding soul in the right company - rather meek and bowed of head. Shall just get on with it I guess. At the other end of the scale is Junior Trinity, where I've now got a full day (shall miss Final Score EVERY SATURDAY CURSES!!!) of teaching 10-17 year-old clever clogs, including one lad who's got 10 times as many compositional accolades to his name as I have. Eeek. So, with BRIT School piano teaching about to be added into the mix, I am truly Loud-Voiced-Folded-Arms-Teacher-Kerry by day...
2) Which is why instead of completeing PhD work as I really should be doing if I had a scrap of sense, I am getting stuck into the idea of becoming the female Nick Hornby and writing a book about football, my love of Wycombe Wanderers mingled with autobiographical details and social comments on girls and footy. Have been inspired by boyfriend's publishing know-how and general encouragement...
3) Got mildly interested in the cricket rather too late... Andy has been attempting to explain to me the riddles of the game, from LBWs (which I keep getting confused with the rather more girly acronyms LBDs and VPLs) and bales to the pseudo-religious 'offering the batsmen the light' and I was just starting to feel involved. It helps that this is a sport which stops for tea, a sentiment I can't fail to admire, as well as one played with a gentlemanly tip of the hat and shake of hand rather than my preferred sport's face-spitting and torrents of potty-mouthed abuse, but dang! Couldn't they have gone on any longer?!
4) Making plum jam - our Brixton garden has sprouted forth with fruit, our plum tree raining merrily down after months of me squinting up at small hard green fruits and wondering what they were. Have been so inundated I've been giving them away to all and sundry in order to avoid breaking my record of 10 in a day - but now the jam experiment is bubbling darkly on the stove...
5) Oxford University Press are publishing another choral piece of mine in January - hurrah! That'll be another 60p in royalties a year then...
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Hair day: Captain of Team Lacklustre
Things I have been doing:
1) Getting to grips with new full-time employment....primary school is ok: grappling with dribbling three-year olds who tell me they've forgotten their make-up today and start some serious bottom-lip trembling if I raise my voice above a whisper, to the boisterous, 6ft tall top year who will be a handful; weirder are the Stepford Wives-esque staff, who are very keen to talk about Weight Watchers and Supernanny on Channel 4 and who are all a bit tense and scary. They make me - a happily-bounding soul in the right company - rather meek and bowed of head. Shall just get on with it I guess. At the other end of the scale is Junior Trinity, where I've now got a full day (shall miss Final Score EVERY SATURDAY CURSES!!!) of teaching 10-17 year-old clever clogs, including one lad who's got 10 times as many compositional accolades to his name as I have. Eeek. So, with BRIT School piano teaching about to be added into the mix, I am truly Loud-Voiced-Folded-Arms-Teacher-Kerry by day...
2) Which is why instead of completeing PhD work as I really should be doing if I had a scrap of sense, I am getting stuck into the idea of becoming the female Nick Hornby and writing a book about football, my love of Wycombe Wanderers mingled with autobiographical details and social comments on girls and footy. Have been inspired by boyfriend's publishing know-how and general encouragement...
3) Got mildly interested in the cricket rather too late... Andy has been attempting to explain to me the riddles of the game, from LBWs (which I keep getting confused with the rather more girly acronyms LBDs and VPLs) and bales to the pseudo-religious 'offering the batsmen the light' and I was just starting to feel involved. It helps that this is a sport which stops for tea, a sentiment I can't fail to admire, as well as one played with a gentlemanly tip of the hat and shake of hand rather than my preferred sport's face-spitting and torrents of potty-mouthed abuse, but dang! Couldn't they have gone on any longer?!
4) Making plum jam - our Brixton garden has sprouted forth with fruit, our plum tree raining merrily down after months of me squinting up at small hard green fruits and wondering what they were. Have been so inundated I've been giving them away to all and sundry in order to avoid breaking my record of 10 in a day - but now the jam experiment is bubbling darkly on the stove...
5) Oxford University Press are publishing another choral piece of mine in January - hurrah! That'll be another 60p in royalties a year then...
Thursday, September 01, 2005
scot free
Had a few days' escapade up in my favourite part of the world, the West Highlands, last week with my happy-camping partner-in-crime Andy. I benefited from a clean sharp shot of Scottish air, a good bit of muddy tramping around and a ridiculous amount of food. High(land)lights included:
1) The sleeper train: almost the most exciting prospect of them all, Andy and I couldn't stop breathlessly telling people that we were going from London on a TRAIN! On which you SLEEP! And wake up in INVERNESS! In reality, we had a hilariously spartan and tartan micro-booth and the unevenly lurching/rattling/shuddering motion of the train gave us about 2 hours' sleep each. Still, we lorded it up in first class with a full dinner and woke up in another dimension, rolling past glitteringly glamorous lochs and vast mountains up the spine of Scotland to doughty Inverness.
2) The Great Glen and Glens Garry and Shiel, which offered up view after preposterously grandiose view of hills as poetically craggy as Ted Hughes, sliced through with bright silver diamonds of water. I couldn't help humming the Lord of the Rings theme tune a few times - I swear I saw a few dwarves/preening elves/swarthy kings racing over the slopes...
3) Skye. Oh, just Skye. It was super-lovely, even if the weather did have severe multiple personality disorder and opened the heavens on us before soothing us with sun and then unceremoniously firing rounds of rain at us again before we'd had time to recover. Its name means the 'Cloud Island' but I'll think of it as the 'Rainbow Island', for we were blessed with singing arcs almost every hour: from glossy double rainbows to lagoon-coloured ones to single rainbows painted twice over.
4) Gastronomical Skye: we stayed near the capital, Portree, for two nights, and managed to ingest haggis, local mussels and venison and steak and fish, washed down with pricey Scotches which led to us developing our whiskyish terminology, faux-critiques involving the words 'peaty' and 'oily' and 'hints of lemongrass'. Ho ho.
5) Arty Skye: Whilst obviously naturally stunning, it was nice to fall upon a few galleries showing varying qualities of contemporary art. This ranged from the slightly rubbish (nice photos sadly bedecked with titles like 'heavenly splendour' and 'haunted boughs') to the cool and cutting-edge (lovely abstract exhibitions by An Tuirrean, prompting fusty comments in visitor book like 'If they can't paint properly, they should get a REAL job!!') to the all-out crazy and audacious (the NVA's 6-week installation, The Storr: a 2-mile midnight trek to the jutting stone of the Old Man of Storr, complete with light installations, live Gaelic wailings and recorded poetry - which so sadly we couldn't afford). Good to see that even in the remotest backwaters, there are very groovy artistic happenings!
Oh, I could go on.... and on.... the seal boat tour was BRILL, buttering and re-buttering Loch Dunvegan and inching up to lazily-lolling, mottled-brown seals; camping under Ben Nevis and amidst Glen Coe; shuddering at the chavvy horridness of Fort William and Glasgow.... all wonderful, if very cold indeed!
And back to the real world.... after 2 years of blissfully free, cleansingly invigorating creativity, I'm back to practically full-time teaching, which started today at the primary school and will pick up at Junior Trinity and the BRIT School in the next two weeks. And my PhD is sooooooo behind it's just silly! We may bid a softly weeping farewell to crazily creative, dreaming and sparky Kerry whilst we greet LOUD-TEACHER-VOICED, preparation-hounded Miss Andrew. Sob!
1) The sleeper train: almost the most exciting prospect of them all, Andy and I couldn't stop breathlessly telling people that we were going from London on a TRAIN! On which you SLEEP! And wake up in INVERNESS! In reality, we had a hilariously spartan and tartan micro-booth and the unevenly lurching/rattling/shuddering motion of the train gave us about 2 hours' sleep each. Still, we lorded it up in first class with a full dinner and woke up in another dimension, rolling past glitteringly glamorous lochs and vast mountains up the spine of Scotland to doughty Inverness.
2) The Great Glen and Glens Garry and Shiel, which offered up view after preposterously grandiose view of hills as poetically craggy as Ted Hughes, sliced through with bright silver diamonds of water. I couldn't help humming the Lord of the Rings theme tune a few times - I swear I saw a few dwarves/preening elves/swarthy kings racing over the slopes...
3) Skye. Oh, just Skye. It was super-lovely, even if the weather did have severe multiple personality disorder and opened the heavens on us before soothing us with sun and then unceremoniously firing rounds of rain at us again before we'd had time to recover. Its name means the 'Cloud Island' but I'll think of it as the 'Rainbow Island', for we were blessed with singing arcs almost every hour: from glossy double rainbows to lagoon-coloured ones to single rainbows painted twice over.
4) Gastronomical Skye: we stayed near the capital, Portree, for two nights, and managed to ingest haggis, local mussels and venison and steak and fish, washed down with pricey Scotches which led to us developing our whiskyish terminology, faux-critiques involving the words 'peaty' and 'oily' and 'hints of lemongrass'. Ho ho.
5) Arty Skye: Whilst obviously naturally stunning, it was nice to fall upon a few galleries showing varying qualities of contemporary art. This ranged from the slightly rubbish (nice photos sadly bedecked with titles like 'heavenly splendour' and 'haunted boughs') to the cool and cutting-edge (lovely abstract exhibitions by An Tuirrean, prompting fusty comments in visitor book like 'If they can't paint properly, they should get a REAL job!!') to the all-out crazy and audacious (the NVA's 6-week installation, The Storr: a 2-mile midnight trek to the jutting stone of the Old Man of Storr, complete with light installations, live Gaelic wailings and recorded poetry - which so sadly we couldn't afford). Good to see that even in the remotest backwaters, there are very groovy artistic happenings!
Oh, I could go on.... and on.... the seal boat tour was BRILL, buttering and re-buttering Loch Dunvegan and inching up to lazily-lolling, mottled-brown seals; camping under Ben Nevis and amidst Glen Coe; shuddering at the chavvy horridness of Fort William and Glasgow.... all wonderful, if very cold indeed!
And back to the real world.... after 2 years of blissfully free, cleansingly invigorating creativity, I'm back to practically full-time teaching, which started today at the primary school and will pick up at Junior Trinity and the BRIT School in the next two weeks. And my PhD is sooooooo behind it's just silly! We may bid a softly weeping farewell to crazily creative, dreaming and sparky Kerry whilst we greet LOUD-TEACHER-VOICED, preparation-hounded Miss Andrew. Sob!
Friday, August 19, 2005
rock on, contemporary music
august 19th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: imparting much creative knowledge, complete with madly-enthused hand-waving
Hair day: bit sweaty
Coming to the end of my sojourn in Epsom, which has felt like its own little micro-planet – am going to have to get out of the cycle of three cooked meals on the dot (just as well - cooked breakfasts, obscure vegetable/bread bakes, soapy mousse and highly-sugared coffee are turning me into a right bloater) and a strict timetable of work and play amongst the coiffured lawns and creaky pipes…have had to log on to the Guardian website for my daily injection of current events (very sad about Mo Mowlam, lots of crazy plane crashings making me never want to set foot in an air terminal, need to absorb more about Gaza etc).
But it’s been great here, with intense tutoring sessions balanced by hard-drinking evenings shouting at the table football men for being so regimentally undisciplined whilst yelling lustily to the Kaiser Chiefs. My students have really been most impressive in creative output: tomorrow is recording day, and there will be 20 substantial compositions to perform, including quirky tangos, slightly pastoral cheese, a superb WW2-themed battle piece that keeps threatening to lapse into the ‘Casualty’ theme, a nod to Glass-y minimalism and some extremely nuanced avant-garde works. No surprise that our oldest students have breezed through their A-Levels and are off to York and Cambridge. Clever and charming kids.
Elsewhere, the younger kids have been writing shorter pieces but having much fun with improvisation sessions, as demonstrated in their concert tonight. We had abstract pieces based on Kandinksy involving Bee Gees discos and war dances, others earnestly depicting nuclear war’s effects on forests, and most impressively, a group’s response to a few scenes from Metropolis!!! Not only that, but it was more effective and affecting than the hammer dulcimer/Murnau South Bank gig of a weeks back. Really inspiring and inspired stuff!!!! It makes me enthused about the idea of getting 30 10-year-olds to improvise handheld percussion soundtracks to surrealist silent movies and making my Junior Trinity students write music for juice in response to abstract expressionist paintings etc!!! Am rather dreading the heavy teaching schedule, but must just remember weeks like this and how much these kids have got out of it.
At the other end of the scale, the most fun I had today was co-ordinating the 3-part vocals (and hula-hula swaying) to our version of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, complete with 6 guitarists and samba drumming. Proper music, I say… ho ho.
xx
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: imparting much creative knowledge, complete with madly-enthused hand-waving
Hair day: bit sweaty
Coming to the end of my sojourn in Epsom, which has felt like its own little micro-planet – am going to have to get out of the cycle of three cooked meals on the dot (just as well - cooked breakfasts, obscure vegetable/bread bakes, soapy mousse and highly-sugared coffee are turning me into a right bloater) and a strict timetable of work and play amongst the coiffured lawns and creaky pipes…have had to log on to the Guardian website for my daily injection of current events (very sad about Mo Mowlam, lots of crazy plane crashings making me never want to set foot in an air terminal, need to absorb more about Gaza etc).
But it’s been great here, with intense tutoring sessions balanced by hard-drinking evenings shouting at the table football men for being so regimentally undisciplined whilst yelling lustily to the Kaiser Chiefs. My students have really been most impressive in creative output: tomorrow is recording day, and there will be 20 substantial compositions to perform, including quirky tangos, slightly pastoral cheese, a superb WW2-themed battle piece that keeps threatening to lapse into the ‘Casualty’ theme, a nod to Glass-y minimalism and some extremely nuanced avant-garde works. No surprise that our oldest students have breezed through their A-Levels and are off to York and Cambridge. Clever and charming kids.
Elsewhere, the younger kids have been writing shorter pieces but having much fun with improvisation sessions, as demonstrated in their concert tonight. We had abstract pieces based on Kandinksy involving Bee Gees discos and war dances, others earnestly depicting nuclear war’s effects on forests, and most impressively, a group’s response to a few scenes from Metropolis!!! Not only that, but it was more effective and affecting than the hammer dulcimer/Murnau South Bank gig of a weeks back. Really inspiring and inspired stuff!!!! It makes me enthused about the idea of getting 30 10-year-olds to improvise handheld percussion soundtracks to surrealist silent movies and making my Junior Trinity students write music for juice in response to abstract expressionist paintings etc!!! Am rather dreading the heavy teaching schedule, but must just remember weeks like this and how much these kids have got out of it.
At the other end of the scale, the most fun I had today was co-ordinating the 3-part vocals (and hula-hula swaying) to our version of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, complete with 6 guitarists and samba drumming. Proper music, I say… ho ho.
xx
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
the invention of sound, kerry style
august 17th
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: ooo! Quite a lot!
Hair day: bit woo, bit waaay
Am amidst a week’s work as an assistant composer on spnm’s Sound Inventors residency, whilst working deep into the night waxing lyrical about my last 5 years work for my PhD write-up…
Whilst we’re based at Epsom College, a undulatingly-lawned mecca of posho education (cricket pavilion? colt field? 3 farms? indoor rifle range? I ask you!) in deepest Surrey, the kids have come from far and wide, all in the name of spending a week working with professional players and coming up with a finished opus to take away on CD. I’m working with the head honcho and droll genius-teacher/composer Alisdair Nicholson with the top group, a motley selection of teenagers; these include several wan, flaxen-haired boys who look like they’d capsize if you as much as breathed on them, some über-confident choral scholar types who like to invent composite words such as ‘chordality’ in order to sound brainy and super-eyelinered girls who like to flirt with any male within firing range. But to a fault they’re all studious, musically literate and rather lovely to tutor.
It initially felt all very 1st-year-at-uni, what with being deposited in our spartan single-bedded rooms, attempting to make friends in that slightly panicked way, and being fed shedloads of stodge every meal time. There are about some very hardened professional musicians here, all indefatigable players but they all make me feel very studenty and idiotically young ... still, have been happy to paint the town red (ok, a mild shade of dusky pink) with the younger, funkier types, experiencing the chavvy delights of Epsom pubs, which included an al fresco blow job in the adjacent garden (cheered on by punters) and a lady drunkenly toasting her upcomnig divorce and showed off her arm-long tattoo: a phoenix rising from the ashes of her wedding bouquet with the name of her dog*, lost in the separation, inscripted at the bottom. Tasty.
Had a trial by fire yesterday having pluckily agreed to deliver a 5-10-minute vocal exercise in the whole school’s singing session – after hurriedly making something up the day before, I had to get up in front of 100 kids and 20 professional players and get them to improvise a vocal soundworld based on the phonetic breakdown of their first names. Agh! Heck, guess it went ok, and I’m proud that I was able to bounce about with confidence with all these faces looking rather quizzically at me, but the actual product was a slightly turgid mess and I’m left feeling that I either semi-pulled off an inventive vocal coup or made a complete arse of myself. Who knows….
However, also had a very good play of my hastily-composed piece for the awkward, potentially dirgy ensemble of oboe, bassoon, horn, viola and double bass; had a slightly frosty rehearsal two weeks ago but a much more successful reading today, revealing me not only to be (as we all know) a vocal composer of some genius but also a nifty orchestrator with a line in well-controlled, richly-timbred chamber music. Hurrah! (exit stage left, blowing own trumpet...)
* the dog's name was Spud. Touch of class.
Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: ooo! Quite a lot!
Hair day: bit woo, bit waaay
Am amidst a week’s work as an assistant composer on spnm’s Sound Inventors residency, whilst working deep into the night waxing lyrical about my last 5 years work for my PhD write-up…
Whilst we’re based at Epsom College, a undulatingly-lawned mecca of posho education (cricket pavilion? colt field? 3 farms? indoor rifle range? I ask you!) in deepest Surrey, the kids have come from far and wide, all in the name of spending a week working with professional players and coming up with a finished opus to take away on CD. I’m working with the head honcho and droll genius-teacher/composer Alisdair Nicholson with the top group, a motley selection of teenagers; these include several wan, flaxen-haired boys who look like they’d capsize if you as much as breathed on them, some über-confident choral scholar types who like to invent composite words such as ‘chordality’ in order to sound brainy and super-eyelinered girls who like to flirt with any male within firing range. But to a fault they’re all studious, musically literate and rather lovely to tutor.
It initially felt all very 1st-year-at-uni, what with being deposited in our spartan single-bedded rooms, attempting to make friends in that slightly panicked way, and being fed shedloads of stodge every meal time. There are about some very hardened professional musicians here, all indefatigable players but they all make me feel very studenty and idiotically young ... still, have been happy to paint the town red (ok, a mild shade of dusky pink) with the younger, funkier types, experiencing the chavvy delights of Epsom pubs, which included an al fresco blow job in the adjacent garden (cheered on by punters) and a lady drunkenly toasting her upcomnig divorce and showed off her arm-long tattoo: a phoenix rising from the ashes of her wedding bouquet with the name of her dog*, lost in the separation, inscripted at the bottom. Tasty.
Had a trial by fire yesterday having pluckily agreed to deliver a 5-10-minute vocal exercise in the whole school’s singing session – after hurriedly making something up the day before, I had to get up in front of 100 kids and 20 professional players and get them to improvise a vocal soundworld based on the phonetic breakdown of their first names. Agh! Heck, guess it went ok, and I’m proud that I was able to bounce about with confidence with all these faces looking rather quizzically at me, but the actual product was a slightly turgid mess and I’m left feeling that I either semi-pulled off an inventive vocal coup or made a complete arse of myself. Who knows….
However, also had a very good play of my hastily-composed piece for the awkward, potentially dirgy ensemble of oboe, bassoon, horn, viola and double bass; had a slightly frosty rehearsal two weeks ago but a much more successful reading today, revealing me not only to be (as we all know) a vocal composer of some genius but also a nifty orchestrator with a line in well-controlled, richly-timbred chamber music. Hurrah! (exit stage left, blowing own trumpet...)
* the dog's name was Spud. Touch of class.
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