it's been a long time since the last blog. I feel it would be good to make an effort to update more regularly, it would also be easier. The longer it's left, the harder it is to remember what you wanted to say.
A few things to mention -
this Tuesday is the Handsome Family show at Ruby Lounge, and some tickets are still available. This is the first time I've played in Manchester for quite a while, with the exception of Winter Journey gigs. In fact, the last one was a strange show organised by Channel 4 Radio at (what used to be) Discotheque Royale on Peter Street, in (I think) November 2006... it's an odd thing, me & manchester. I hope this one works out well. After that there's a few shows in unusual places - Fell Foot Wood by the shores of Lake Windermere in June, a silent film night in Heaton Park, Newcastle in August. But mostly this summer I want to start recording again, recording The Winter Journey album #2, the Suzy Mangion solo album #2. I really hope the dog in next door's garden which my music room overlooks stays quiet occasionally, or there may be a kind of dog-bark-rap theme over all the new material.
A couple of Winter Journey matters:
The Winter Journey were asked by Rebellious Jukebox (
www.myspace.com/rebelliousjukeboxmcr - home of the incomparable Shirokuma) to contribute a (reverent) cover of I'll Be Your Mirror to the label's covers album of The Velvet Underground and Nico. The whole album is available as a free download from
www.rebelliousjukebox.org. We approached the recording process with trepidation, as it's lovely to be asked, but TVU&N is an album that I feel to be ground-breaking and unsurpassable in all ways, and we tried very hard not to ruin this classic!
And all the way back in February, after our tremendously fun gig with Woodpigeon & The Miserable Rich at the Deaf Institute in Manchester, Pulp Magazine in Manchester filmed The Winter Journey doing a small acoustic presentation in an office in the student union building. Fun was had by all, bad drumming was done by me, and the video clip of Malachi My Messenger is available to see on
http://pulpmagazine.co.uk/2009/04/08/pulp-presents-the-winter-journey/ Things about the songs on the music player:
Taking advantage of the new music player's larger capacity, I've put on a few new old songs recently. "Come In By Stealth" is taken from The Other Side of the Mountain, and features Anthony on classical guitar, and James Green on harmonium & harp. The pub recording is from a BBC sound effects record, fortuitously found in Kingbee Records, in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. An awful lot of records I like come from their £1 and under boxes. The sound effects record turns up a few times on the album, in fact it was while I was trying to find a suitable clockwork-wind-up sound to start the Incredible Friend, and failing to replicate it, that I went out on a frustrated walk, ended up in Kingbee, browsing through saw this record with a recording of "wind-up clock". It was meant to be. The pub sound reminds me of all too many gigs in the past where I'd be struggling over the sound of the audience. This used to happen alot in Manchester, it was one of the reasons I stopped performing here. "Come In By Stealth" is a very defiant song, even though it sounds slight. I'm defiant, though losing, against people who won't listen, and the song was one of those situations of turning a bad experience into a song, making something bad that happens to me into something good that I can control. A feeling of, you may do this to me, but I can make it into a song and then you have no power over me. And no, it's not about George, but about another situation around that time. But it's sometimes very hard to make big changes in your life.
"Song of Degrees" is from "A Week of Kindness". Many of the psalms in the Old Testament are called songs of degrees, i don't really know why, but I took the idea. It's not about academic qualifications, more about stages and turns, always thinking of someone, even if you're far away. It's a very personal song, although they always are, and very, very guarded. I don't like open confessional songs, I like coding things and hiding them in words.
"The Track Through The Woods" is from "The Magic Lantern". It's very old now. It's a song I keep re-working and performing, still enjoy it even though I've been playing it over a decade. I remember writing it in Cambridge, overlooking Webbs Court in King's College, in the early months of 1998. I'd been listening to Tim Buckley a lot, I think. I remember writing the first lines down earlier though, in November 1997, while watching Stars of the Lid and Labradford play an astonishing, inspiring set upstairs at The Briton's Protection in Manchester, crammed into a tiny room. Labradford had a song with a haunting sleigh bells sound, Stars of the Lid had wonderful film projections, including a haunting looped image of woods. The "sounds like Easter" relates to the clanging of bells and similar sounds that accompanies the suddenness of the lights coming on at the midnight Easter Vigil Mass. That year I'd been clanging away at the percussion from the balcony, ringing in the light. At the time of writing this song I was working out what sort of music I wanted to make and how to make it.
"Fantastique" is just a bit of fun recorded in 2005, that was intended for a semi-imaginary record George never released titled "5 Sleazy Pieces". It's a song about tap-dancing, which I'd only just started to do. I'm trying to be a bit Jane Birkin.
I'm going to make a song available for download from the page each month, for the duration of that month only. For the rest of May it's going to be "Song of Degrees". Please remember, if you like it, you can not only order the album from Pickled Egg or many other outlets, but also download it on all the major download sites, including itunes.