Lounge On The Farm with Glam Chops and punk

It's a long way to Lounge on The Farm. Well actually it isn't but on a Friday afternoon the roads are full like some kinda apocalypse film where everyone's legging it from aliens or end-of-the-world floods or something. I am travelling down with 3 of Glam Chops, 2 of them are already there, 2 more are somewhere behind us in traffic and singer Eddie Argos has only just landed at heathrow (in true jet-setting style).
We arrive at the festival exactly at on-stage time. Clock ticking i help various Chops get their make-up on and align their flares. Cagily the members of Glam Chops available take to the stage to give a nervy sans-lead-singer take of their classic Don't Be Glum Be Glam...like a 1980s we'll do the show right here cheesy school hero type story Eddie Argos leaps on stage for the last chorus tasselled jump suit flapping in the wind. he knocks paul missile right across the stage but Paul still loves him cos he's shown up. phew! Most importantly i put his glitter make-up on him before he launches into his next song. it's all fun and chaos in the world of indie-glam.

more on Glam Chops at http:myspace.com/paranoiddogbark

Other bands at the festival include
The Mike Strutter Band. This is a badly dressed comedian and his band of very competent backing musicians playing punk songs with lots of swearing and posing in between. it's kinda okay i suppose. but after 4 songs i quit the tent following the example of 3 pre-teens who get bored of asking their mum what a blow-job is and exit fingers in ears.
Armitage Shanks follow the Mike Strutter Band with some heartfelt punk originals and covers but unfortunately have to fight it out with the headlining bands on all the other stages. there amps are not as big, the bands musicians haven't had as many guitar lessons but they, at least, mean it.
New York Dolls - oh please let them be good, oh please let them be good, oh please let them be good! we think we've missed them cos as we go into the tent a massive crowd are leaving. no we haven't missed them they're just not so good. I am sad. I think it's the choice of songs more than anything....kinda cheesy power-soul ballads. i'll say no more.
Kitty Daisy & Lewis - it's a hoe-down causing worried frowns on the security chaps little brows. Will the audience dance the tent down? No, but they tried.

part two later

too hot, too lazy, too much not enough ice-cream

hurray for pop gigs! well yes. but it's so hot the heat has para-struck my veins and my blood has boiled into hard lumps so I cannot move. So even a FREE show by Danananananancroyd cannot tempt me. yah boo. So into the garden again. even tho last time i was in the garden suddenly my friends were hitting me. ouch! why ? why you ask were they hitting me? cos i'd set my head on fire. how? cos i had candles in the garden (for seeing cos in the outside there are no lights at night). i was energetically emphasizing some point or another and the wee candle struck it's deadly heat at my bramble bush of hair.
thanks for putting me out chums!
if anyone wants to buy me an ice-cream i'm very up for it.
i just checked the weather forecast and it says 'heavy showers'
hurray!
bring it on.
my hair is mostly okay by the way thanks though a bit of a mullet at the back.

music and gardens and robins and crap venues and promoters and stuff....

I've been to some gigs lately where the topness of the popness has been nastily discoloured by the shenanigans of the promoters and venues. I went to see Piney (country-pop!) Gir at a venue where they threatened to pull the gig 3 days before the show cos they hadn't sold enough advance tickets. Needless to say plenty of people turned up on the door despite the fact that the venue had done nothing to promote the show. What does a promoter do mummy? A promoter promotes the show - ideally....And then another gig a couple of days ago I went to see the Paper Dolls - an American 2 girl/2 boy punker band - they'd booked themselves a show at a venue where there were 8 bands on in an evening - all given half hour slots and speedy turn-a-rounds. They got no guest list and if they didn't get at least 4 paying customers then they wouldn't be allowed to play! Phew! they got five....but they were 10 minutes late back from getting dinner and almost had their show pulled anyway. Again a show that wasn't promoted anywhere. Secret shows are meant to be for big famous bands not baby venues in the middle of nowhere....Anyway. Music should be about bands and not crap promoters.
anyway - across the road from the Piney gig on the way home i met Betty and the Werewolves, well I met the three lady Werewolves (werewolvettes?). Betty (drummer-boy) was elsewhere. The Werewolves are lovely ladies who always seem to be happy as though they're on pop-ecstasy permanently, they travel in a gang and chirrup like the fairies in Pogles Wood. Live they're very cutie-pop/c-86ish...but without so much lo-fi ness....sort of Shop Assistants without the fuzz and Vaselines without the bloke singing. It's like a mathematic equation between glittery and perkiness and guitars. it's good.
Yesterday was Sunday. A day of rest but no...My garden has been neglected for about 2 years. It has two years build-up of leaves and fallen twigs and general nature grot. So I start clipping and raking and brushing and bagging. As I garden two little Robins follow me around beady eyed - I think I'm inadvertently exposing gloom-bathing slugs and worms - HURRAY! say mr and mrs robin. It's lunch-time! I feel like Mary Poppins or Snow White but maybe not so neat and tidy. Especially I don't feel so neat and tidy when I kneel in a lump of cat-poo when I'm bagging up leaves....thanks Maggie the plopsie-cat....
End result - EIGHT bin bags stuffed with stuff. I think now i've feng-shuied (um - tidied..) my garden the pop will flow easier.
xx Delia xx

artrocker.

I've not been here for quite a while. I used to write for Artrocker magazine but got the boot. Not enough written about Babyshambles I think. I used to have various thoughts about Artrocker and didn't agree with everything they did but thought there was definitely some good stuff going on. I stayed at Artrocker despite being given other options because of loyalty. Durrr to me - that'll teach me...The way I got the sharp elbow and the fudged mumbly excuses about it all made my opinion of Artrocker way (way) lower. I'm talking about the magazine here and not the website or the mail-out. These are edited 'controlled' (if you like) by different people. Anyway. I was sad and bitter and angry and twisted and rather than beat anyone up or harangue people in public (or private) I sulked and sulked and sulked and didn't/couldn't write anything for anybody. But. I'm gonna try again cos I would look pretty stupid with no nose.
xxx Delia xxx

January Is Pants - My Very First (proper) Gig (of the year) - piney gir

Well it is. There are about 2 hours of sunlight per day and it is the 2 hours when you are probably definitely at work. where's the point in that?

*in between these 2 stars was about 10 million paragraphs of moaning but i have deleted it cos it was boring. bye bye moaning*

I went to my first gig where I wasn't working on the door (club 8/Would-Be-Goods/School rainbow shower of xylophones and kitten's drawings of flowers) or playing guitar (with The Nuns at the Macbeth for the rather smashing and indeed sartorially pleasing Heidi Heelz) or playing guitar (again for the Nuns at the Bull & Gate with a baby grunge band and a posh rapper).
And thus...




We enter the Battersea Arts Centre and a rather bizzarro posh gent lets us in. i think he is an Actor! Either that or an alien who has been watching The Good Life and based it's role-play on Margo poshbird. We are at some sort of themed party thingy to do with the Masque Of The Red Death. how lovely! But rather than people with plague like rashes or mangled limbs or doomly creeping lergies or whatever the red death is there are bunch of masked nutters in ballgowns and tailcoats. um! if only i had known i could have out-top-hatted them all. After a jazzy swing band finished their set of 1920s charleston tunes and (rather unfortunately) Sting covers ms Piney gir takes to the stage.

The audience sway back on their drunken heels to Que Sera Sera swayed out by big-voxed lilting toned piney and her Age Of Reason chappies - before she lurches them into some darker electro-rocking verses of her own. poor little audience don't know what to think. but they think they like it. they roll on their french heels and swish their petticoats as an oddly countrified pop on electrics set unfolds before their very shell-likes.

a work of genius lost forever.

i think. something to do with having a button pressed that meant whatever i wrote could be read in Hindi. but maybe not in English. No fears though - from what I remember it was an extended rant about snot and cat-hair and the unfortunate collision between the two.
Maybe at some point soon i will stop coughing like i'm going to puke bogies and will go to a gig without doing mini-dying at every tube-stop.

माय फर्स्ट गिग (ऑफ़ थे एअर)

ओवर थे होलिदय्स - इ हवे - हुर्रे! बीन इल (बू?!)। नॉट रेअल्ली इल -= जुस्त बोरिंग इल विथ सौर ऎंड आचे थिस ऎंड ठाट ऎंड लोटस ऑफ़ कोउघिंग ऎंड फ्लुइड्स लाकिंग फ्रॉम वरिऔस् ओरिफिसस (इ'म तल्ग घनोइय नस...
अच्तुअल्ली - माय नोसे

हस बीन सो सौर फ्रॉम ब्लोविंग आईटी ठाट इ'वे बीन गोनिग तो बेद विथ वसेलिने ओं आईटी। व्हिच मांस व्हें माय काट मग्गिए कोमेस तो विसित इन थे डार्क गी वी म्ल्फ्य ताचे ओंनोनिस। न। तनु एब्ल्लाद फिर्स्त्वान-=ओत आय फीस!माय फल-ओ दिजिन्फकोत। फॉर एस.तय्ल्कुई रना - कुए एथेरेस वर्ष प्स्व्स व्हो क्नोव्स हाउ मन्य्हीं अ फेव गिग्स
मिद्दले ओं इस्र्व्प्रेपोस अ टी एस तेंते र्त्रोव्हित्व.सोरिहुर्र!
ठुन्द्कोह बन्जोअय्रेइएप्ल्नौर्रि.रिप डी!!
थिस ब्लोग थिन्ग्य इस पंट्स! एवेर्य्थिंग इ टाइप कोमेस उप अस कुएस्शन मार्क्स! अर्घ!
इ विल काम ऎंड सोर्ट आईटी आउट लेटर..xeli

a review of xmas and the new year

London is all hazy. After new year there's a thick fireworky smog hanging over the city battling it out with the damp of the inevitable celebratory rainy stuff. Global fucking warming sod my pooey carbon footprint massive there was fireworks innit? fair enough making everyone sit in the dark every third sunday to save lightbulbs and scrape the yoghurt off every lid to send to compost heaps in dunklesdirk but we're not doing without smelly old banger fireworks are we? and how else would we make all the poor little critters get their yearly heart attacks? Jump foxy jump! Cring kitty cringe!.
I didn't go anywhere noisy (yah boo to pop). I watched 100 most irritating people programme. The most annoying were the people presenting it who thought they were good. Nothing worse than a knob who thinks they're good. Usual tiresome parade of Pete docherty and Wotsit Geldorfs and Beckhams and Women Who've Had Their Breasts Enlarged. plus some rather odd choices including Stephen Hawking who seemed to be deemed irritating cos he's in a wheelchair and is clever. This seems to be not allowed. Hmmm....Arse to that i say. Deemed most irritating was Amy Winehouse cos she could be good if she'd stop fanny-arsing around. But as Brighton Bard Danny Belton say - that is the way of genius - fucked up goes with it on the whole. wwhoopee doo i will stay a simpleton.
Xmas = food. Lots and lots and lots and going round different peoples houses 'no we haven't eaten yet!' and stuff stuff stuff til going home involves taking it in turn to push each other up and down hills. I got a drum kit (ooh!!!) it is red and glittery and goes bosh. I got a bay city rollers outfit which is fantastic but i am waiting for my post-xmas tummy to quell a bit before i can jam my fat arse into it. My dad gave me shoes with cats faces on. My mum gave me a red velvet cloak so i can play medieval ladies better. I think they both think i am 5 years old but i guess maybe i should acting like it then Grow Up young lady! etc.
i think will stay down here til i die. oh well!
jolly everything for ever to you all especially if you got this far.
ps last year at new year i watched momento mori which is v. complicated about japanese schoolgirls being cursed and stuff with flashbacks and ghotsst and visions and fuck knows wot going on eh? swizz!!!

The Nuns play Wanc - slightly later December

Tonight The Nuns play a Women only anarchist Cafe. I do keep meaning to invite people but then I remember they're a smelly MAN and no smelly MEN are allowed. Hah.
Chaps: This is what you missed (secrets revealium except for not telling you about the gold and the life eternal): Some of the nicest food ever. This is the best food rider I've had in my whole life ever. And wine is only £1 a glass. Uh-oh. and it's free to get in (but only if you're a woman - a man couldn't get in if he paid a million pounds).
And there is burlesque. Burlesque is when people dance or sing or tell jokes but they don't have very many clothes on. At least that's what I think it must be. Unless that's just coincidence.
It's good being a Nun. I wish i'd done this holy order stuff a while back.

The Nuns play Buffalo Bar - early December

It's good to be festive. The Nuns are santa-sancti-fied tonight in red and white right down to our freshly made wimples. Maybe we've offended someone. Or maybe I have. During soundcheck I fall off the stage. Okay the stage at the Buffalo Bar is only about 2 inches high but it's still yellow/purple bruisey painful. ouch.
Then I'm happily/noisily playing along and the amp that was about 2 metres behind me suddenly lands on my leg. Is it the poltergeist crosspatch ghost of some interfering anti-garage-punk nun? Maybe so. Luckily my side of the stage is next to the bar so during a lengthy banjo/keyboard solo I can have a restorative glass of wine. hurrah. But maybe this glass of wine is what me makes me fall over the step on the way out of the building.
the Nuns have made a mighty pop row but as penance I have legs of blue, purple and yellow. Ouch.