I'm no oil painting, and you're no Grecian statue baby
Published on Wed 24 Mar 2010
This is going to have to be a quick effort for two reasons, first that I didn't bring my laptop power supply home, so there's only an hour and a bit left on it and secondly that I need to go to sleep soon because I just got in from a Travis Waltons practice (I've discovered how to make my keyboard make massive squealing noises simply by twiddling a couple of the knobs - that'll be fun) and it's quarter to eleven. However, when I do have to get up I'll hopefully be extra energised due to the new sunrise simulating alarm clock I've been given as a bit of a thank you for website services above and beyond. It's meant to wake you up more naturally, and even though my phone alarm (which sounds a bit like someone's escaping from a high security prison, or Red Alert on the USS Enterprise) was what actually woke me up this morning I'm prepared to believe that I felt less awful than usual. Here's a picture of it glowing happily on my bedside table.
It's good fun. It has built in meditation tapes to help you sleep, which I've not listened to yet, but in a brilliant touch it also has them in German. Who on earth could sleep with someone talking German to them?
Anyway. I had a meeting in Soho last Thursday which finished fairly early so I had a mooch around the National Portrait Gallery (I don't recall going there before, though possibly I did as a child) which seems to be as much an exhibition about who is famous these days as an art gallery. A bit like Madame Tussauds for paintings. I particularly liked the sculpture of an artist's head made with several pints of his own frozen blood. I then walked to Liverpool Street to meet up with Andy for a drink and to watch a bit of football. He's off the booze for Lent so I expect I got pretty boring by the end. I was certainly more amused than I should've been by the miniature plastic goals they had in the urinals of the pub we were in (I had to wait for a long time for the toilet to be empty so I could take this picture)
I also suspect I was hungry because I took a picture of a train seat because I thought the pattern looked like pieces of KFC.
On Friday I went to the Folk Club, and had a nice time - lots of old faces were out. I played "Tomorrow Morning" by Chris T-T to see if I could do it justice (almost) and "Wasted on the Young" which I keep not being brave enough to sneak into sets. Seemed to go ok. Afterwards a few of us ended up having pizza and beer round Greg from Upstairs' flat (Upstairs is their band name he's not someone who lives above me). They were really good actually - I saw them at The Cornerhouse the other week and thought they were ok, but in an acoustic setting they were much better. Nice guys too. I can't find a website.
On Saturday I spent about 3 hours getting weirdly addicted to scrubbing the lino in my kitchen and by the back door, which is a bit of a worry. Even more of a worry is how happy it makes me when I see it all clean. What am I turning into? In the evening I went to the Portland in the rain to see Twelve Clay Feet, who used to be called Delphi, only to discover that someone had drilled through a power line and their set had been moved to The Cornerhouse, right by my house. Gah. I'm glad it all happened though because one of the other bands on (that I wouldn't have got to see) was National Snack and they were absolutely fucking brilliant. Crunching guitar, virtuoso bass (in a good way for once), spot on shouty 3 part harmonies, Stage Presence, a PVC apron and a morning suit. It's great seeing unexpectedly good things - makes all the mediocre/terrible stuff I see worthwhile.
Twelve Clay Feet were good too, though we'd got a bit distracted making nautically based crisp art (I maintained that salt and vinegar Walker's are the National Snack) by then:
I was back at The Cornerhouse on Sunday and saw Jacqui and Geoff do a really good set - more spot on harmonies and some really amusing songs. Check out "Too Particular" on their page. I can get behind that.
Other than that I've been doing tiny amounts of work on my next Thing. I'm trying to decide whether to drop "Magnetic or Rhetorical" and "Grateful Smile" because they're going to be too hard to get up to the standard of the others and just have a 6 track CD ready really soon or to persevere with them. I'm much more excited about the thing I'm going to make after it and want to get on with that really. Ho hum. Maybe Grateful Smile is best just being The Burning Shed Session's USP, and I'm not sure Magnetic or Rhetorical is worth the effort it'd be. Maybe I'll do some kind of stripped down version of it.
Oh my God, Marilyn is returning to Home and Away. I blame Matthew Le Tissier.