Went in the studio yesterday to record a song for NARDWUAR, we recorded a canadian punk song called 'My Chinchilla' by Cub. It was so fun! I also realised that I haven't been in the studio for 2 whole years!! crazy. I loved it, it was so fun being able to record something just for fun with no added pressure of thinking that you have to do a whole campaign and plan a release afterwards. Thanks to my chinchilla's below and underneath that I've posted my interview with Nardwuar from a couple of years ago incase you haven't seen him in action before, he's pretty great, doot doot! P.S help, insomnia. oh and i friggin loved scream 4 or should I say scre4m.
2 things, one I met one of my heroes, Steve Diggle, he gave me a plectrum (superfan!!) and we hung out and watched the cribs together. The Buzzcocks were the band that turned me onto punk and that turned me onto writing the songs I started writing when I was 17, the songs I wrote for Made of Bricks, My Best Friend Is You, all the b-sides and everything really. Understanding that I didn't have to be a "Shakespeare" of songwriting to be smart and considerate, that I didn't have to pretend to be something that I'm not. I could be myself and write about what I knew, my friends, my town, my opinion, my experience of love and life no matter how big or small, interesting or glamorous it may or not be, it's still important and there's actually a lot of beauty in the mundane. It turns out the ordinary is quite extraordinary. I love kitchen sink drama. So thanks for that Diggle, it's just as relevant a message, if not more and certainly more important to me now that I'm going around schools doing workshops and classes with kids, trying to encourage them to be themselves and helping them realise that they are interesting people no matter how much the media tries to tell them they're not followed up by a marketing company trying to sell them something quick to make them feel better about not being interesting/cool/pretty/thin/rich/sexy/exciting enough.
The Second thing is that my boyfriend is cool. The Cribs were amazing in Coventry and at Friends of Mine Festival. I am continuously blown away by their live show, their guts and bravery and passion. They're such an exciting band and an extremely important one. Not only is their music totally fucking awesome but they actually stand for something, which so few artists do these days. They have dignity and they speak out against discrimination or for a worthy cause. Most bands are too busy trying to sell themselves as a product, either literally in an advert or as some kind of model of "cool", which is funny because it's so try hard that it instantly has the opposite affect on me personally, I'm completely turned off by that kind of sell. The Cribs are effortlessly cool because all their hard work goes into making great music, giving everything they've got in a guaranteed raw & explosive live performance, considering every artistic element of anything they ever put out and having an opinion. The best live act I've ever seen. I don't care if you think I'm biased I'm just happy and proud.
School never changes. And when you grow up people don't change either. The way that I deal with the media and internet and hearing the opinions of thousands of people on me personally and the music and art I create is by seeing it like school. Some people don't like you, some people give you shit, some people are your friends, some people support you, some people smile at you in a corridor even if you don't know them. Life is just like school but on a much bigger scale. I know if you go to school and you hate it then that sounds like a scary thing and like a bit of a drag. I mean obviously you have more freedom, you don't have to call someone miss or ask if you can go to the loo, but people don't really change do they? I see it in my mum's life, my sisters and friends, with the people they know and meet. The way people interact with each other is the same.
It's different and more fun if you're open minded and can surround yourself with open minded people. Life will be pretty interesting, if you're not open minded and can't surround yourself with people that are you'll be afraid and probably horrible to people that are different to you. It's OK to be scared of things, I am, everyday, but I try to learn from new things and let them intrigue or excite me. I'm aware that you can't just have tunnel vision and we all have something different to offer. I want to challenge myself even when I feel like curling into a ball. I'm glad my parents brought me up to treat people equally and that bullying was bad and something to be ashamed of, to be open minded and to read and travel and that they challenged all my opinions. It's really helped, thanks mum and dad.
Jeez I'm so thoughtful at the moment.
To lighten the mood, I've been looking at some pretty hats by Piers Atkinson. Excuse the poor quality photo, my computers not well. But how dreamy??!...
I'm on my 4th day of doing the after school clubs & I can't quite find the right word to describe how I'm feeling. Inspired, emotional, like this is really important, love for these girls, happy that we're able to work together & create a safe environment for each other where no-one is judging anybody. They applaud each other after sharing their personal private thoughts & feelings. Missing dogs, being bullied, being annoyed with over protective brothers, loving parents, hating them. So many different important lives. All they need is encouragement & support. One girl spoke to me about the band she's in, she's super cool, plays bass in a screamo band & drums on the side, super talented. She tries to share her lyrics & sing in her band but gets laughed at! Makes me mad/sad. She's bringing her lyric book to the next club. All she needs is someone to say 'yeah you should' 'you can' 'you're cool'. Because she is cool & she can express herself however she wants. She's just sharing it with the wrong people at the moment. I can't wait to hear her songs. Another girl told me how she was being bullied & called a lesbian for having short hair, I told her how ridiculous it was to be made fun of and bullied for being a lesbian anyway, you can't make fun of someone's sexuality, people can be whoever they want & love whoever they fall in love with, or have sex with who you feel attracted to, and secondly you can't stereotype someone, being gay doesn't mean you look a certain way or have a certain haircut or dress sense.
They're all so strong yet soft. Girls are so amazing, I don't get sexism, I just don't understand.
Tomorrow is the first official rock n roll for girls after school music club.
So excited! And nervous, but I passionately believe in this project. Up until this point I have only done presentations in the schools and introduced the idea so tomorrow is an important day. I know that there are girls out there that aren't doing what they want to be doing because they don't feel entitled and they are insecure about how they look! I've spoken to them. This sucks, they are cool and should be having fun and feeling good and making music.
Tomorrow that's what we're gonna do! Yeahhhhhhhhh.
I hate when you lose a favourite t-shirt and have no idea where it went. My homer simpson t-shirt and nirvana one?? where did you go? in an airing cupboard squished right at the back on the floor under some towels along with all my other odd sock pairs probably.
To make up for the long lost tees, I am currently enjoying wearing my new buffy and angel necklace that i got froma nice shop on etsy. so so good. Buffy you were my actual best friend and feminist hero in school, I will love you now and forever.
When I was in year 6 Stephen Raywood spat on my shoe. It was a dr.martin which at the time sucked for me because I wanted to wear pretty shiny shoes like the other girls but my feet were too big (big boat feet as they became known to my friends/bullies) The good news is now I like dr. martins. :) !!
This is pretty much the best song I've heard so far.
There's an early episode of friends where Chandler is dating a girl "online". They've never met and it turns out that she's married and he decides he doesn't want to meet her anymore. At the time the episode was made I guess the internet wasn't the lifestyle choice it is today and he was teased a lot by the other 'friends' for attempting to date online.
Last night I watched a documentary called catfish.
Some friends decide to make a documentary about a unique relationship that is formed between a photographer Nev and a young girl called abby who paints his photos. They form a friendship online and swap photos and paintings back and forth. Nev speaks to abby's mother and sister and forms facebook relationships with various members of her family and friends. Chemistry builds between Nev and Megan abby's older sister and Nev decides he wants to meet her. When he goes to meet her he discovers something quite unexpected.
I really liked the documentary, it really takes you with the film makers on this crazy journey. It's like a trip towards something that you've probably already realised isn't true but because you fell in love with the fantasy you keep searching for it. At first Nev's naivety surprised me, he was like a teenage boy, their relationship existed purely via the phone or on the internet and he was really getting involved with and craving after a girl he'd never met and lived thousands of miles away from.
It reminded me of my first "boyfriend" someone I agreed to "go out with" via someone else's text message after meeting at the North Harrow Megabowl with a bunch of friends. He'd picked me and another girl but because I was the introducers friend I got first dibs. We never even kissed. He would send me texts about wanting to hang out when his parents were out and I would freak out and call my friends and have girly giggly fits. He was my boyfriend and when he called me a bitch and we "split up" and hung out with my frenemies instead I was pissed, but why? we had no relationship. We didn't know each other, I never went to his house, we didn't hold hands, kiss, or go on dates because we never actually met up. The first time we met was our only date and then a few months later after texting religiously every night he dumped me. The excitement of the relationship was that it was all in my head. I could create whatever I wanted in my mind and live it out via a daydream without actually having to deal with my nerves of actually seeing the guy or the reality that he wasn't all that interesting.
I put it down to being a kid and being bored, searching for something and being inventive. And without ruining the documentary what Nev discovers is quite shocking as a viewer, and I guess what she's invented is put down to this woman's sadness and mental health. But nowadays is this dreamworld becoming more of a normal reality that's not just for bored kids or people with problems but for real life adults and sane grown ups? Meeting people and dating online is no longer for the weirdos and loners, everyone does it and hey if it makes it easier for people to find each other and in turn some happiness then I'm all for it. There's something about the intensity of the way people live through facebook or twitter though that doesn't sit quite right with me, I guess I'm old fashioned, everything in moderation etc. So much time is spent updating profiles to show everyone how cool and wonderful our life is. We share tit-bits of information about what we've been doing constantly and get comfort from being able to communicate with everyone at all hours of the day or night. You never feel like you're alone in the world. But sometimes it gets a little too cyberspace for me, for example I stopped following a friend on twitter recently because even though I hadn't seen her for months I was bored every time we spoke on the phone because there wasn't anything I didn't know about what had been going on in her life from her twitter feed. That's the other thing, phrases like "Twitter Feed" make sense to us ????? You even hear it on the news!
When I was at college a friend signed me up to 'Friendstar' one of the original social networking sites. He made my profile and put up pictures and told me to talk to people I didn't know on there and make friends. I was so confused, "What is the point?" I asked, "It's just fun, just talk to people" "Yeah but what is the actual point?" I was genuinely baffled by the concept. About 2 years ago I remember a friend telling me how his "ex girlfriend" had finally updated her Facebook status to single. It was a real blow. At the time I wasn't on facebook and didn't really understand what he meant, but what I did understand was that this was a serious thing in people's lives now. I guess it's a lot easier to live out your life and organise it on a computer, you can make it look pretty. I wonder how obvious the different skills that younger generations develop will seem. Kids will be genius's I guess. Is running around in a garden playing imaginary games any different to creating an imaginary life on facebook or a blog? Apart from the obvious exercise, I wonder if it stimulates your brain any differently?
On that note better put down the laptop, get in the shower and unlock the front door (16.42) Or at least open a window.
