Ramblings from the Everglades of the East

Welcome to my world - a blog of sorts, where I can ramble on about life,
music, books, films, happenings, my loves, my hates, and anything else that comes to mind.

YOUNG FILM MAKER BOB STARLING

Friday, 12 March 2010

And there I was talking about my love of film last musing, and here's a young film maker's interpretation of my song 'Everyone's Lonely'. Well done Bob:-)

 

MAD MEN & CRAZY WOMEN

Monday, 8 March 2010

So - it's the Oscars tonight and time to enjoy my other obsession in life (to music that is) - film. It's funny, film is one of the few things I can still feel child-like and dreamy about. Sometimes I wonder, am I kidding myself? Is this really art, or am I just being seduced by the big screen? Is film comparable to, I don't know, Orwell? Wolfe? Keats?! I'm inclined to think, nowadays, yes because some of the best writers are writing for screen now. Take 'Mad Men' for example. I've just finished watching Season 1. Clever writing, great characters, stylish too (the opening titles are very Hitchcock), and just bang on the mark when it comes to the era. When men were men, and women were, ehm, house wives. And it's all done with such irony really, because you just think my god, we've come a long way. Well, women have, that's for sure...

So from Mad Men to Crazy Women. Has anyone read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids' yet? I haven't, as it's still on order..grr....BUT I have heard her read from it on Radio 4, last week. What a woman. God it was good to hear a musician like that talk of poetry and art and Greenwich Village and Hendrix and Morrison and Robert Mapplethorpe and the Chelsea Hotel and ALL those things that made me pledge allegiance to the service of the muse..amen! Listening to it reminded me of why I do what I do. It's hard as a musician nowadays to even remember a time when people valued music enough to buy your record (rather than just download it for free off the internet). When Patti started you got a record deal because you were good, because you sounded good, and because you played good. Nowadays people get music awards for songs they don't write, they don't play on, and probably don't even sing on - well not without the aid of auto tune. It always made me laugh how James Blunt got an Ivor Novello for 'co-writing' 'You're Beautiful'. Roughly translated that means "artist who's management/record company finds songs written by songwriting teams, with the proviso that the artist gets a writing credit'. I mean, an Ivor Novello...please. At least the Oscars doesn't run like that.

So, Patti - you crazy, kookie woman...thank you for running away to New York and showing us all how it's done.

 

LIFE BEGINS

Monday, 23 November 2009

It's a cliche saying, especially since we all live longer nowadays, that 'life begins at 40'. Now I've reached that heady height, and as I look down upon the various plateaus beneath me, I can genuinley say it feels surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because lately it's been just that, a surprise. Like for example why is it that having put down my pencil nearly 15 years ago my drawings are better? Why can I see and reproduce things I couldn't see and reproduce when I was 20? Why is it I hear some new music and I know why it's good, but I couldn't put my finger on it 15 years ago. Why is it I know what I like and want with my own music now, but 10 years ago couldn't see I was doing it already.

Last night kind of confirmed that for me. You see I saw Lisa Hannigan and band. Now I love Lisa's music, but it was funny to see her doing so many similar things we did in the early days. Using glocks, mandolins, all sorts of things, decorating the stage with fairy lights, getting the drummer to use hot rods instead of drumsticks, using double bass, burning joss sticks. I'm not saying we invented these things, but god we got ribbed for them. The amount of sound men (and I say men here as they were all male except maybe two times) who used to complain about our drummers. Me, I just wanted to not have my head blown off every time they did a ruddy rimshot...so hotrods were perfect for our type of music. If only I'd been the age I am now, oh how I'd loved to have laughed off all those hairy a***ed soundmen. One of the classic comments I got was at Colchester's Oliver Twist when I was commenting on the sound of the monitors (which sounded like a crappy cheap car stereo). 'Has she ever actually sung into a mic before?' - not even said to me, but to my (male) bassist. Ho hum.

So age brings clarity, confidence and maybe even a sense of not giving a shit. Also a feeling of whoever's still in your life will probably always be there now, cos I guess those relationships and friendships have stood the test of time. And time, well it can be very testing. And finally creativity, because for once now I don't feel I have anything to prove, I can just get on with playing, writing, drawing and painting...

SCHOPENHAUER HOUR

Friday, 30 October 2009

Schopenhauer sums up why we crazy starving artists struggle away in our basements and garretts creating. He has a Buddhist take on life, believing that most of our suffering is created by wanting and desiring stuff, people, a different face, a different place...you get my drift. But unlike Buddhism where you try to destroy that unrealistic view of life by meditating on the real, on the moment (and on the breath...which apparently helps to get 'in the moment')...unlike Buddhism Schopenhauer reckons we can do this by absorbing ourselves in art. In fact music most particularly (that was his biggest escape apparently). Me too I hear you cry! So see - we're not mad or work shy. We just need art and music and creativity to feel alive. And in fact I don't do it because I'm looking for an escape from desiring material things, I just desire more from the world because I know it's out there. Those songs, those paintings, all those creations that start off as invisible ideas. It's nice to know the Schopenhauers of the world can see and hear them too.

the great escape

Wednesday, 07 October 2009

So there I was, sitting on the wrong side of the car heading for the wrong side of the road...gulp. I'm talking about my first continental driving adventure. Until then I'd been driven all around Spain and trained it all around Europe and Scandinavia, but never done the dreaded 'driving abroad' myself.

"Look at those cool roadside grottos" we cooed as we drove round another hairpin bend "wow, are they like mini St Christopher traveller shrines or something?". How wrong we were. Those 'grottos' we'd passed so many, many times up and down those olive grove bespeckled mountains of Corfu were actually road deaths. And there were A LOT of them. Nice.

Well I'm relieved to say I made it back, and apart from the fact I missed my guitar so much it hurt (...everytime I've gone abroad it's been to gig, so I've never been without one)..apart from that I had a very cool time. In fact it was just like the movies...'Jason & The Argonuats, Clash of the Titans... met Odysseus on the beach down near Kalami, got very drunk with Dionysus, snorkeled with a Siren, all the usual kind of stuff. And it's true, the seas really are turqouise blue.

AND I even dreamt some songs. I love it when that happens. Usually it's when I'm in a strange place doing something out of the ordinary. So I'm in a place now where I seem to have quite a few songs, and I'm toying with whether or not to release them gradually digitally on Laundry, or go the whole hog, re-record them all and release it properly. As an album. I even have an offer from someone to put it out for me. What to do?

I think it's time for another road trip...

Yassas x

dc gothic comics from the 70's

Tuesday, 01 September 2009

So lets start with a love: comic art and graphic novels. I've loved drawing ever since I can remember. And because of that, I suppose, I've always loved the art in American comics. I think deep down there's a tiny part of me that's a wannabe comic artist - but mostly I just admire. My favourite favourites are still the vintage gothic ones: 1970's DC classics like 'The Witching Hour', 'Ghosts' and 'Unexpected'. They were always full of swamps, Spanish Moss, hoodoo voodoo and big bell bottom flares, and they were just the best. Totally kitsch and totally cool. In fact that's why I called my first label Mangrove Recordings, what with Norfolk having the watery wetlands of the Fens and the Broads, it just reminded me of my old comics full of swampy Southern tales. I'd wax lyrical about Southern Gothic, William Faulkner, Poppy Z. Brite and (most recently) True Blood, but that's a whole other ramble. For now here's a sample of my comic heaven. I found this and a big box of others in a secondhand bookshop a few years back. I bought the lot and read them cover to cover... and they were so good...

But one the best things about them... the ads...

DESPERATE REVOLUTIONARIES

And finally, I'd just like to say hail the 'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood'. If you caught the recent BBC2 series 'Desperate Romantics' you'll know what I'm talking about. In a sense they were the original punks...rebelling against the mediocrity they saw around them. But the thing I love most about them - aside from their beautiful paintings (which just seem to have this ethereal glow) is that they were trying to do something meaningful. I like to believe I do that with my own stuff, otherwise, what's the point? There needs to be some higher reason, you know? It makes me think of the state of music now really. There's so much meaningless pop music getting churned out by the music industry for the masses. Not that I'm dissing pop music, there's nothing wrong with popular music except that as soon as one exceptional thing becomes popular, a million other people try and replicate it. And really, calling something an industry anyway. You don't hear people talking about paintings like that do you? Even just the fact that all record companies have 'Product Managers' tells us something about how they see music: a product. But of course music nowadays is a mass consumer product, so what can you do? Thankfully there are still some people within the industry kicking against it. And there will always be artists on the outside doing the same.

So, on that note, all that's left to say is HAIL the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood, and all the 'hoods trying to do something original, meaningful and just more than the mundane in life. We salute you!

Drawn & designed by Holly, cat by Ruby © Copyright 2009 Holly Lerski