“Everyone else is doing it - so why can’t we..?”

Back in the opening overs of the Great Unpleasantness, we were just about gearing up for Helstock (see blogs passim.) which in a different universe would have* taken place about a week after we were all finally told off and sent to our rooms to think about what we’d done. 

A year later, it was looking as if we were going to have to postpone or cancel again, before someone in Posh North Essex suggested we (or rather, ‘they’) host one of those online virtual festival thingies that we’d been hearing so much about recently - that way we could get more players in, there wouldn’t be a venue capacity on attendees, the queues for the toilets were definitely going to be a lot shorter, and no-one would have to get nailed to anything.

Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs had a couple of remotely recorded and edited audio-visual submissions accepted, and having been invited to submit something of my own for consideration, I went back to the neglected corner of the bookcase where I keep my big book of things I’ve made up out of my own head, blew the dust off the spine and pored through the contents with a rheumy old eye until I came across this old thing, originally written on the back of a boat** somewhere up an Irish river, probably in Cork, and originally committed to hard drive some years later on the first Songs from The Blue House album, on which Olly from Crouch Vale played spoons.

Originally a quasi-comedy interlude in gods kitchen gigs (how dare you mock my suffering!) we ended up playing it at a lock-in back in Ireland some years later which was quite the blast but, as befits my advanced maturity and attendant gravitas, I decided to rework it in a more reflective manner hoping to reach out to those many fellow travellers on the road to love’s redemption I’ve shared asphalt burns with over the years.

I believe Clapton tried the same thing with ‘Layla’.

https://youtu.be/00X0QEoT6rA

*And indeed still might have done, depending on your philosophical bent and/or outstanding view on String Theory.

**Whilst travelling upon, not literally marked up in anti-foul paint on the stern.

“He’s thrown a kettle over a pub - what have you done..?”

You would be surprised - although not unduly, I feel -  at how little I make from this Blog. I know you like to think of me descending from my Dubai apartment in order to do a little light dictation between mocktail shoots, but it’s not all like sourdough and circuses in my career. That’s why I work in a car park, and you don’t*. 

Looking back - as I frequently do - over past chapters (mainly for throwback posts originally published on the same date as whenever I find myself in a contemplative mood - which is most of the time, these days) I sometimes wonder why certain entries have caught, if not the Zeitgeist, then occasionally eine vorübergehende Stimmung. As it turns out, this is usually when someone with more friends than me has reposted something on Facebook. I remember looking at the visitor count when it got to twenty thousand and thinking that was pretty impressive. I could visualise it as a well-attended Cropredy Festival, which was pretty special for me. Most individual entries get forty or fifty passing views, which if translated into a pub gig, would keep me more than happy and entertained for an evening (as, hopefully, I would them) so I’m quite happy essentially scribbling in the margins, occasionally making a grab for attention when I get involved with one of my celebrity friends.

It’s a very similar take on what I do with what I occasionally refer to as my music ‘career’. A few folk gathered together - every so often a festival crowd, and/or some perfect strangers taking the time out to let you know how they enjoyed the show. This is obviously a lot trickier than simply sitting down with a hot cup of tea and - very much in the manner and spirit of Led Zeppelin, simply rambling on. We have to get into a room, make things up out of our own heads, play them all at the same time - one of the issues with the great unpleasantness over the last year or so has been that even in times of reduced lockdown, allowing six people to meet in a socially-distanced scenario doesn’t really help if you’re in a seven piece band. You can’t always leave out the banjo player... 

As part of our prep for this year’s What the Helstock we have written, individually prepared, recorded, videoed and remotely submitted our parts for a brand new song, Fiddly has lovingly assembled, cut and pasted, re-worked, mixed and sent out rough mixes (that’s six other opinions to wrangle, remember) as well as revamping the band favourite (we usually close the first set with it) that we’ve been working on and tweaking via electronic mail and dead letter boxes for about a year now, and we won’t even be able to hear the applause when it goes out. A fellow traveller colleague spent hours on his multi-tracked, loving synchronised, cross-cultural, split-screen recording and was encouraged that it had clocked up a couple of hundred views on YouTube in under a week. One of our workmates whipped out her phone and navigated quickly to her sister’s TikTok. “She’s had one point one million views” she explained. We looked on, impressed. “What did she do?!” we breathed in wonder.

“She got bored one day and dyed our pond blue”.

*Big up to the Park and Ride Massive. Whaddup, Beaches?

 

What the Helstock!?

Casting a rheumy eye back over blogs past in an effort to keep up the flow of
content – albeit reduced, reused, recycled or remixed content that makes little sense beyond the universal themes of getting, playing or regretting having played gigs – it seems that the overarching theme at this time of year is always “What are we going to do about Helstock*?”

Last year this was quite a simple task in that a suitable venue had been secured, folk were already eyeing up the cheese stall at their local farmer’s market** (entry is traditionally by interesting cheese) and I think we’d even put out a set list so that we could ignore it on the night at our leisure. Then of course came the first wave of the great unpleasantness, and even before you could say “Black Bob’s your uncle” folk were politely declining the opportunity to drive across county or even country lines in order to sit in an enclosed space with thirty or forty other people, some of whom would be projecting across the room as boisterously as possible, and even with your own microphone that’s a hell of an aerosol storm to get caught up in.

Fast forward to 2021*** and ruminant minds were already considering how best to go about marking the passing of another orbit around the daystar on Helen’s behalf. Virtual events seem to be in vogue this year, and so rather than gather the clans around a fixed point in the universe Blue House Music impressario and shed magnate James Partridge agreed that he might curate an online festival of the arts, combining live performances with pre-recorded inserts, and juggling the whole thing from the security of his own bunker (if nothing else, the backstage area is likely to have slightly better laundry facilities than he’s used to).

This obviously opened up a whole new world of opportunities for us in Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs in that we could contribute from the safety and security of our own bubbles AND none of us would have to appoint a designated driver to get us home afterwards.**** All those livestreamed events though? All a sham. Those bands aren’t playing live from their respective bedrooms, bathrooms or libraries (and I’ve lived in flats where that’s all one room, by the way), they’re carefully syncing up to a pre-recorded track, contributed ad hoc and carefully pieced together by a skilled engineer in his home studio – or workshop, since we’re getting Fiddly to do ours. It’s a bit like being on Top of the Pops in the olden days. 

Fortunately, Helen and I had a co-write all ready to go, so all we needed to do was to sync the parts, add a count in, make sure everyone had access to appropriate recording facilities and - I won’t lie to you – cross our fingers. I mean, if nothing else, it’s taken a shorter time to get through the process than our last effort, which I see from my notes involved Tony doing a squeezebox part on March 13^th last year and hasn’t seen the light of day since. It’s not like we’ve been holed up in Rockfield drinking cider and harassing the local dope dealers for the good shit, either.

I myself have contributed a pre-recorded solo performance which I’m rather hoping doesn’t get excluded for reasons of time, or insufficient global appeal, as it’s also my birthday around this time of year, and it means I get to piggyback on the celebrations (and occasionally the celebrants) without having to organise my own party. At least there’s a fair chance that I’ll make the cut in that I won’t have to fill in several pages of application form and contribute a short missive on what Helstock means to me before being considered (and ultimately ignored) by a committee of the righteous*****. Ironically, given the bits and bytes I’ve devoted to Helstock over the years, I am ideally situated to contribute just such a prize-winning essay, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

If it does, I might send this one.

Helstock will be broadcast live on YouTube on March 20th 

https://youtu.be/fC9yBmSrtAo

*Every year we get together around the time of The Fragrant and Charming Helen Mulley’s birthday for a shindig involving friends, relatives and, usually, one special guest whose actual job it is. Search the blogger tags for ‘Helstock’ and you’ll get the idea. There are so many on here that I once gave her a small book compiled of the entries as a birthday card.

**Mine was principally Italian in origin, which gives you some idea that the market was local, and the farmer was not.

***Or [Needle scratch] “You’re probably wondering how I ended up here..?”

****Although I did walk Helen home through town on a Friday night after we’d decamped to The Steamboat one year and I didn’t see a look that simultaneously appalled and bewildered until years later, when we put on The Chemical Brothers at Glastonbury while she was napping.

*****Obviously one way around this process is to be of a level of talent which means that you are invited to participate instead of having to submit a recent photograph and a YouTube video via email, but fortune has not smiled sufficiently on my endeavours thus far, The Star Club and Picturehouse aside. So, yeah, it has actually.

Print The Legend...

I've, ahem, dropped a new compilation of the blog (to buy, click in the links section) - I believe that's what the modern media folk say. this is the introduction, written by m'learned colleague Shev, who appears in the book almost as much as I do.

 I first met Shane Kirk in 1997 when I auditioned for his Beatles specialist band The Star Club. I was feeling very pleased with myself until he dryly informed me that I was the only applicant.

In the intervening years we have shared many stages together. When I have a harebrained musical idea, he is most often the first person I call. “Do you want to help me start a songwriters' night?” “Shall we start a band where we pretend to be an American family playing Country songs?” The answer is always yes.

There have been many books written about the goings on and antics of rock stars. This is not one of them. However, this is one in a series of books that you may enjoy if you want to know both the struggle of writing, recording and performing your own songs with very little prospect of retiring on the proceeds of these endeavours, as well as spending your weekends working in a covers band, playing songs you wished you'd written, in pubs you wished you weren't in.
Someone had to write this book; I'm glad it's Shane Kirk.

My name crops up in a few of these stories. I look forward to more musical mayhem with the author. And then reading about them...

He also very kindly supplied me some notes. In the immortal and probably entirely fictional words of Salieri...

  

The Loneliness of The Long-Distance Drummer

 The Picturehouse Big Band are engaged in one of our infrequent forays and soirees, and are headed to darkest Posh North Essex, where we are to appear at the Brigadoonian Bacchanal that is Helstock. A new venue has been sourced, this time in a three hundred and fifty year-old barn which has been decorated with flags, fairy lights, vintage posters, artfully-distressed sofas and - crucially - a mirror ball. there is also a bar, a pool table, table football and a stage, upon which The Drummer has already set up by the time The Bass Player and I arrive, reverse straight up to the stage door, and unload the backline. We have taken the executive decision to go all-guitar tonight, the better in order to avoid trailing leads, overly-complicated set ups & changeovers, and us having to drive all five cars in order to get the gear in. The Singer rolls up shortly after us, relieved to be relieved from his flu-inspired confinement of the week, but still inhaling deeply from a menthol-infused nosegay as a result. It is half past five in the afternoon.

 As there is a full PA for this show, we enter the time-honoured routine of line checking everything in order to ensure that our front of house sound engineer has all the tools he needs to curate the best possible sonic experience at his disposal. In practise, of course, this means The Drummer stolidly thumping a kick drum until the correct sine wave of appropriate resonation has been achieved. That is to say, when he makes the low thumpy noise, it doesn't sound like the room has been transformed into a massive oil tank which everyone is sat inside while a baboon hits the outside with a crudely-crafted hand tool. We also do that with the vocal microphones, which is the point at which everyone makes those roadie jokes about not being able to count up to three. There's a lighting engineer one which is much better, but that's like The Aristocrats of crew banter, so I won't share it here.

 The barn, splendid as it is, is nontheless intrinsically barn-y, and so as the evening draws in and the mercury drops, the relevance of the blankets strewn faux-casually across the arms of the sofas becomes clear. The Singer is wrapped in a comfort blanket and huddled against the cold. He is informed in no uncertain terms that he resembles, in the vernacular of the times, "A Homeless". Fan heaters purr into action, a firepit outside springs into life, the bar opens. We are faced with the classic conundrum - it's now teatime, there's a hearty buffet of cheese, rough farmhouse bread and Minstrels to sustain us, but we've now got around five hours to fill before showtime. The Drummer and I enter into consultative negotiations around the appropriate level of drinking to pursue. Too little and peak party is missed. Too much, and you get into the sort of scrapes where you can't quite remember which fret your capo goes on, whether you've tuned down for this one in the first place, or if simply falling off the stage might be a good way to distract the audience from the concurrent incidence of the first two examples. I'm not necessarily saying I speak from experience here.

 In the end we decide to alternate foaming pints of ale with warming hot drinks. This works well in some instances, in that they are, by their very definition, warming, but the cumulative effect will be felt later when we engage in a rendition of The Jags' Back of my Hand which usurps the original's fairly frantic tempo by several degrees. I am also aided in temperance's pursuit by our sound wrangler, who cheerily lets me know that he has been drinking my delicious Coggeshall Gold since it was (a) nearby and (b) he didn't know whose it was. "No offence" he adds solicitously. By some series of infractions of the laws of thermodynamics it actually appears to be warmer outside by the brazier than it is in the bar. "I should get one of these....what do you call them..?" says The Bass Player. "Flames?" suggest someone helpfully. A small person in a hi-vis jacket takes time out from his parking attendant and glass-collecting duties to throw another log on the fire for me. I make a cheese sandwich and coffee.
 
 At twenty past eleven we hit the stage running, or at least stamping from foot to foot, and launch into some full-tilt boogie. The audience is thinning quicker than my hair, the demands of childcare and the lure of getting home in time to put the clocks forward lending an irresistable pull to some. We play the hits and even manage to conjure an encore, during which the signature intro from Neil Young's Like a Hurricane is surreptitiously drafted into the solo in You Really Got Me. "I'm just having fun!" I say. From the stygian corner over by the cheese, someone counters. "It's not your birthday any more". 

 


    

"I've marked you down two points for doing some Coldplay..."

A return to where it* all began this week, as a temporarily reconstituted Picturehouse Big Band conduct what we refer to (several times) as a Sunday afternoon ‘live rehearsal’ prior to one of our occasional forays back into the world of birthday-parties-by-request. The Singer, The Bass Player, The Drummer and The Other Guitarist are all present and correct, as is a cheerily receptive audience, thanks in no small part to our two televised support acts – The Old Farm Derby and an England rugby international, which we try very hard not to disrupt by sound checking the drums midway through.

Having originally set up an acoustic strum through a few appropriate covers, we have remembered an exponentially increasing number of things that we like to play, and so the set will eventually come in at a hefty couple of hours’ worth – and although that’s including the traditional onstage conversation and instrument swapping, it's still probably about an hour and a quarter more than we’re actually going to need on the night. Still, it’s nice to stretch out a bit, both figuratively and literally, as the big green tent at The Dove provides ample stage swagger room for all of us – not always the case in our heyday, when we would frequently be shoehorned into the last available space in the bar, whether that be by the dartboard, under the telly or – as on one occasion – tucked in next to the condiments station in the restaurant. The Other Guitarist had to stop between songs to hand out forks and mayonnaise.

After an understandably hesitant start (by our standards) – after all, some of this equipment hasn’t been out from under the stairs in half a decade – we get into our stride and as well as a few old favourite songs, some of their bespoke introductions are getting an airing too. “This is a rehearsal, after all” says The Drummer “So if there’s anything you need to practise, do feel free to join in. I’m brushing up on my drinking”. In the midst of the audience, my KS1 firstborn Lord Barchester is practising his joined up writing by noting down the song titles and marking our performance out of ten like a diminutive Len Goodman or a slightly less acerbic Craig Revel-Horwood**. He is also (naturellement!) wearing a cape, which adds dramatically to the effect of his whirling dervishness during a couple of consecutive Clash numbers in the second set. This is a set I am running behind for, and arrive onstage only just in time to hear the announcement that as well as performing at today's salon, we will also be part of a Summer free festival at Portman Road to celebrate our hosts’ twenty years in the booze and muse trade. “I’m so sorry I’m late” I explain “I was taking my son for a poo”. I consider it unlikely that Joe Strummer had occasion to present this as an excuse for not turning up on time to fight the law. It wasn’t always like this, I reflect.

Mrs K, having taken a temporary leave of absence from audience member duties is privy to a gentleman displeased with our current direction. “I told ‘em – if they play another Radiohead song I’m off!” he mutters as he takes his leave – this delivered in broadest Gyppeswyckian, which adds incalculably to the gaiety of the scene. Back inside, thankfully not everyone is as disapproving by our choice of material and at the conclusion of set two we are invited to continue our performance by an appreciative crowd, albeit one thinned slightly by childcare responsibilities and the realisation that some of them haven't had their tea yet. We use this opportunity to invite friend and former co-Picturehouser Andy Trill up to properly shred his way through My Sharona in his inimitable fleet-fingered fashion. He looks at the disappointing dearth of rack effects and flashing lights at his feet “Give me more gain than I could possibly ever need” he politely requests, before quietly and efficiently going on to tear the roof off the sucker while I look on with a cheese-eating grin of satisfaction. We attend to packing up, grateful that it’s eight o’clock in the evening as we call to carriages, rather than two in the morning - we're not as young as we used to be, you know, however much we might look it.

Back when I started writing about Picturehouse it was to capture and treasure these times for posterity – to keep alive the feel of the moment ere I forget in the fog of the morning after.

By the time I get home there are four live clips from the gig on Facebook.            

*This blog

**We scored an impressive 148 points out of a possible 150, I am told.

 

(The picture at the top of this entry is poster we used for our first gig together. The Other Guitarist got his kids to design it when they were around the age that Barch is now. The eldest of them is now a paramedic who you occasionally see tearing around town under blue lights and sirens. Time is round, and it rolls quickly). 

Carry On Up The Helstock

 
A pleasure and a privilege to be able to stage manage/MC the annual Helstock, wherein folk of all stripes gather in order to celebrate another year in La Mulley's impressive ongoing accumulation of uninterrupted years of existence. This year she also claimed credit for a quarter century's worth of sole bragging rights on our erstwhile Glorious Leader's attentions, and so Yakima Gold had been procured, a venue booked and donations of cheese encouraged. There was also the small matter of half a dozen turns to get on and off the stage in good order but, hardened by a triumvirate of succesful stage wrangling weekends at Maverick*, I felt that this was the least of my concerns.  Indeed it was. Thanks to the provision of a late Easter Cracker I was able to both read a suitably awful joke for my first onstage announcement and to have the opportunity to sport a paper hat in order to establish whether I were appearing as compere (wearing) or, when bereft of headgear, as an artiste - Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs also making a brief but perfectly performed intrusion as part of the evening's proceedings. I thought I'd made a suitably positive statement by taking off my hat to perform, whereas Helen upped the stakes considerably by removing her entire skirt.  

"That hat" someone asked "Is it crepe?" "It does the job perfectly well for what it is" I replied.

After many hugely talented turns, including debut performances by Joe and Tev Partridge**, who have been listening to their mother perform since they were in utero, it was time for putative headliners The Black Feathers, who were in turn mesmerising, beguiling, extraordinary moving, and funny. Having pretty much exhausted my stock of amusing off-the-cuff intros I suggested that I should just do a "Ladies and Gentlemen..." then run up to the top and back of the multi-tiered stage and bang the massive gong which resides there for the use of the Ipswich Hospital Band. I would then announce them in a vaguely hysterical Hugh Dennis The Now Show fashion. That seemed to work quite well. I made my way out of the performance area and sat down next to Becky, innamorata of our own, dear Turny Winn. She turned, measuredly toward me and addressed me with perfect Gerald Thomas-inspired timing. "Rank stupidity".  


*I'll say. We once got a thank you letter from Mary Gaulthier. "All festivals should be run this way" she wrote.  

**Also an opportunity to use the old Mike and Bernie Winters story - "Oh god, there's two of 'em". 

The Return of Picturehouse

We’ve had a couple of cosy sit down affairs at Mr Wendell’s house (at one point I was going to take a souvenir photograph of our collective increasingly comfortable footwear, which contained at least one pair of slippers) but last night was the first full electric blow-out of the set for what we’re calling The Return of Picturehouse – a nod in part to Mike Scott’s epic The Return of Pan, in which he revisits the same chord sequence he employed for The Pan Within, but adds some bells and whistles over the top. This is effectively pretty much what our efforts at a reunion amount to. With age though has come, not necessarily wisdom, but certainly a degree of disposable income which has allowed some investment in labour-saving devices like combined multi-effects boards, tone controls that actually make a difference to the sound of your guitar and amplifiers which don’t require an application of what Drummer Reado refers euphemistically to as ‘impact rectification’ in order to make them start working. His other patented solution to amplifier-related issues is to “leave it in the car overnight” which he swears works in 83% of all applicable cases. Wendell has a proper Gibson acoustic. Turns out this is the first time it has been out of the house since he bought it.

With our new and improved battery of sounds and processing devices to hand we are not overly worried when Kilbey informs us that he has forgotten to bring his bass, since he has an octave divider contained within his FX box and will simply play the part on guitar, relying on the good auspices of Mr Boss (Roland rather than Hugo) to make the necessary tonal adjustments electronically on his behalf. I am also reluctant to pass comment since I had to phone him from the car on the A12 at the weekend when Mr Wendell tactfully pointed out to me that although we were on our way home from Helstock - at which I had once again had the pleasure and privilege of performing - my acoustic guitar was not. I think it might be an age thing. Certainly that was a contributing factor in our selection of rehearsal room, since the other one available to us was on the first floor and we’re all getting on a bit to be carrying large, heavy objects like amplifiers up two flights of stairs before we even get started.

So it was doubly galling when after we’d completed the first set and had briefly stepped out to enjoy the brisk, refreshing night air that we realised that the in-house PA had started emitting a low but pervasive hum, seemingly of its own accord - a low hum slightly sharp of ‘G’, as it happens. After unplugging everything, turning it off and then back on again, having swapped all the power leads and (without the luxury of being able to leave it in the car overnight) having called the studio owner to check if it was still under warranty we were faced with the prospect of either decamping to the upstairs room after all or calling it a night.

Fortunately at this point Gibbon, who had earlier confessed that he’d driven to the rehearsal not quite knowing what was in the back of his car other than that it was all probably going to be needed for something or another, remembered that he had a spare power amplifier which we could simply hook into the circuit and which would enable us to complete our practise without having to indulge in any further heavy lifting. We ran through the rest of the set, congratulated ourselves on a job well done, packed up and went home. The set sounds good, everyone can remember where all the bits go and in the interim between our retirement from active service and now the only real debate now turns out to be whether we need to start early so we can ensure everything fits in or whether we should just start early so we can be home and in bed before our knees give in. 
 

In the meantime Mr Wendell tells us that he had taken one of the flyers we're using to publicize the gig in to work last week. We've used an old photo of us, from when we all had hair as we figure that might remind people of who we were. "They spent the weekend trying to guess which one was me" he relates, sadly. "And only three of them got it right".  

The Picturehouse Big Band will be appearing at The Steamboat, New Cut West, Ipswich on Friday April the 11th. Do come, won't you?

Danny Whitten's Legacy

A quick rehearsal last night in preparation for my forthcoming appearance at this year’s Helstock (see blogs passim) wherein I shall be performing as part of revolving-door be-lineupped family ensemble The Arctic Mulleys, having run out of bands of my own to reform over the past decades’ soirées and not having had time to form a new one since the appearance of the Theotrio at last year’s event, after which co-conspirator Mr Wendell stopped returning my calls. I will be performing on the acoustic guitar in support of The Birthday Girl in our customary opening slot – a bit like The Levellers do to herald the start of Beautiful Days, but indoors and with a sight fewer camper vans - after which I shall to retire gracefully to the buffet in order to investigate fully the results of the evening’s entry-by-possession-of-an-interesting-cheese-only admissions policy.

My original suggestion for my appearance was to revive and perform the three song demo which first brought me into the orbit of La Mulley’s main squeeze and paramour Lord Tilkey some years ago. This now ancient and revered artefact consisted of two original songs recorded to cassette tape along with a cover version of Danny Whitten’s “I Don’t Want to Talk About It” which we knocked out at the end of the session on the basis that he didn’t have a copy of the song, he wanted one, he didn’t know anybody he could tape it off, and I knew how to play it. It seemed a pretty sensible quid pro quo in return for securing his services behind the Tascam four track, on an overdubbed guitar solo, and then on some suitably Eighties synth* - this is exactly the sort of creative endeavour and home recording solution solving that Spotify has put a stop to, I should add.**

When it came to recording IDWTTAI James generously added a plaintive harmony on the chorus which very much enhanced the whole melancholia of the thing and topped the session off nicely. We were in a bit of a rush and so it wasn’t until later that we noticed that in my reverie I had sung (inaccurately as it turns out) “If you wait here just a little bit longer/If you will won’t you listen/to my heart?” and James, not unreasonably, had echoed in a perfect fifth “…if you wait, won’t you listen…” the cumulative effect of which was, when listening back to the beautifully blended vocals in the finished version that we appeared to be singing “If you widdle…”. We should have toured as Charles Hawtrey and Crazy Horse.

 
*Although to be fair this was in the eighties.

**shakes walking stick at the internet.

  

“I don’t know who you are but you’re a real dead ringer for a post-feminist dialectic critique on the traditional gender-based mores of the patriarchy...”

Humming a happy tune in my head the other day as I do sometimes (it helps block out the voices) I found myself segueing effortlessly betwixt SftBH’s Not That Kind of Girl (originally from the album Too) and a tune by my old chum Tony James Shevlin entitled Would I Lie? What they have in common, beyond the key of E, a shuffly boogie back beat and an extraordinarily catchy hook each is that they deal with the thorny subject of embarking upon intrapersonal relationships. In short, they’re both about trying to pull.

My input on the former was that I made up the words and music out of my own head and then sent a version of it to The Fragrant and Charming Helen Mulley for approval and re-drafting as she was clearly going to have to take responsibility for delivering the polemic in song and since the phrase check your privilege hadn’t been invented at the time I thought it best to cede final edit on the lyric. She responded to by adding a whole extra verse just in case there remained any misunderstanding regarding the intent and also took out the line about being given “a damned good thrashing” which seemed fair enough, Portman Road seemingly being enough in the media spotlight at the time.

The revisions clarified our point, and we proceeded to rehearse, record and gig our new song whereupon it became one of our most popular numbers (a recent review of the live album mentioned it glowingly) to the point where when we were raising money through Kickstarter in order to cover the costs of pressing, dressing and posting the CD someone had requested that we video a unique version of it dedicated to them, which is why I’d ended up back in a studio with Shev in the first place, he being the director entrusted with recording the event for post-editry.

“Well” I thought to myself “There’s no point just wondering about it” and so I asked both Helen and Shev whether they’d consider getting together in order to see whether we could make a call-and-response combined version of the two songs and maybe go out and sing it at people if it went well, a suggestion which they both regarded with commendable equanimity, which is how we found ourselves working through an acoustic mash-up in Tony’s music room trying to ensure that no-one got the definitive last word and attempting to keep a lid on the raw smouldering intertextuality steaming up the windows.

Then, of course, we had to run through another couple of songs (that thing where a musician rocks up at the venue, bounds on stage, rips through one number to the enthusiastic screams of the audience and then disappears into the night with an inappropriately dressed girl on the back of his motorcycle happens remarkably rarely outside of the movie Purple Rain and besides there were three if us, so we’d need a sidecar at least if we were going to try to pull it off) so we chose Elephant, which Helen and I had played at last year’s Helstock (with Mr Wendell) and which I fondly like to imagine is the sort of thing The Indigo Girls might have released if they’d been produced by Clive Gregson. I also picked out one of my Shevlin favourites from the olden days of Suffolk Songwriters’ (he used to play to me, I used to play to him…) to complete the small-but-perfectly-formed set.

In response he started playing something that I was sure I recognised and that my hands seemed to be able to form the chords to through some sort of auto-folk memory. I even managed some harmonies on the chorus. “Where do I know that from?” I wondered aloud at its conclusion. “You remember” he replied “We played it once…at a party…in 1998”.       

“Always pick the best bandana…”

As the dog days of winter shake the dew off their skirts and turn into bright spring mornings, a young man’s fancy turns to the Festival Season – a moveable feast traditionally bookended for us in Songs from The Blue House by Helstock at the start of the term and Acorn Fayre at the end. Betwixt and between we have a few shows already lined up, we’ve already declined at least one, one and we shall wait and see what providence and provenance comes up with regarding the rest. 

We are enormously pleased and privileged to be invited back to Acorn Fayre again (for details, see blogs passim), but our immediate thoughts turn to this weekend’s Helstock, where we return once more to The Steamboat in sunny downtown Ipswich for an evening of fun, frolics, light-hearted jollity, good company, fine dining and excessive consumption of good strong ale. This year we have a line up to appeal to the Fifty Quid Guy within all of us, with a slew of covers turns, a couple of surprises and, unusually for us, a weekend date for the Moot. 

In explaining to one of the people we’ve corralled into playing for us what the evening is about I usually embark on a lengthy explanation of how we initially started by having a birthday party one year for the Fragrant and Charming Helen Mulley at which a few people got up and played and then decided to do it again the next year, and the next, before Gibbon adroitly steps in and confirms that the whole thing is basically an excuse for me to spend as much time on stage during the course of the evening as possible, and with my participation in three of the five scheduled turns, I do have to say that he has a point.

The slightly off-kilter nature of the evening means that this year I will be taking the opportunity to experiment slightly and will be going electric with the previously all-acoustic SftBH and hoping to provoke catcalls of “Judas!” from stunned audience members before Our Glorious Leader goes off to find an axe somewhere with which to cut the power cables. To be fair, that’s pretty much his standard response when he sees me wielding an electric guitar anyway, and so there’s no real sea-change in attitudes there. Later on he himself will be taking to the boards as part of The Rainy Day Women and continuing the Dylan theme by covering some of the Bard of Duluth’s finest moments, which are not expected to contain renditions of either ‘Mozambique’ or ‘Wiggle Wiggle’, although as the old folks are apparently prone to say, c’est la vie; you never can tell.

I myself have been tangled up in Bruce, attempting to garner support and sympathy toward an idea I had to start a loose collective of musicians willing to go out and perform a classic album in its entirety a couple of times before dusting ourselves down and moving on to the next one. The first project to be undertaken has been Springsteen’s seminal Born to Run (or “That’s pretty much ‘Bat Out of Hell’ isn’t it?” as winsome young keyboard player Adam would have it as he patiently works his way through ‘Thunder Road’ on piano). Chief co-conspirator Tony ‘Shev’ Shevlin (there are no prizes for commenting on the exegesis of his moniker, by the way) and I managed to pretty much nail down three songs as a trial run, roping in Frisky Pat from the now-sadly defunct Picturehouse on drums, Adam, and stalwart bass player Gibbon before spending last week trying to track down a saxophone player with the necessary gravitas to fill the role of The Big Man.

After a few wrong turns and blind alleys we managed to persuade a very kind man called Steve to dep for us, who turned up with a sheaf of dots and squiggles on paper and a mildly concerned attitude which, certainly for me, brought to mind the early Songs from The Blue House days of persuading Fiddly that what he really needed in his life were a couple of non-reading guitar players whose idea of writing an arrangement was to hum things, play a couple of chords on the guitar and then go to the bar. Steve ran through the set a few times, crossed out and scribbled a few dots and pronounced himself willing to take on the challenge. “This Springsteen bloke” he enquired affably “…much of a following has he?” Having learned most of the horn parts off a bewildering selection of thirty five years-worth of clips of versions available on YouTube he had only one major concern. 

“You’re not going to run across the stage and kiss me, are you?” he asked.