My Strictly Fantasy, AKA holy crap it's a blog post!

OK so I haven't written for a long time. My health has gotten in the way. I'm still ill, but occasionally I have an idea. Today is one of those days. HURRAH! 

Where to start. Firstly, Radiohead brought out A Moon Shaped Pool this May. I love it and it's up there with OK Computer and In Rainbows as one of my favourite of their albums.

Secondly, I enjoy watching Strictly Come Dancing. I took ballet and tap classes between the ages of three and 14 and I still love dancing. It's a bit tricky with chronic fatigue and a tibia fracture that's only 75% healed, but I do try. Endorphins and all that.

Some time last year I decided to make a list of tracks that I would dance to if I ever made it onto SCD. Today I was sitting in my yarden in the sunshine, thinking about the series of SCD that starts this week. I was listening to A Moon Shaped Pool and thinking how Burn The Witch would make a great ballroom tango song.

I take the fantasy further and it's Halloween week; in homage to the video I come up with the story for the dance. Tangos usually feature "a couple having some sort of argument" plot. So in this dance my partner would be a Witch Finder, possibly wearing a creepy plague mask. I'd be the witch he'd fallen in love with and he was torn about burning me at the stake. Pretty good argument fodder if ever there was any.

If you haven't heard the song or seen the video, here it is. Think The Wicker Man animated Trumpton -style.

As it's my SCD fantasy I'm dancing with Pasha Kovalev (pictured above). I like his choreography, OK?

Not every couple gets to do each type of dance, depending on which week they're eliminated. But it's my fantasy so Pasha and I at least get to the final so we can do all the styles. There are 14 dances, split between the disciplines of ballroom and Latin. To generalise, ballroom = man in a suit, lady in a ballgown, traditional hold; Latin = man in tight pants with his chest out, lady wearing not very much, and a lot of hip movement!

I've decided to add the rest of my list here (with accompanying videos) for your pleasure. Enjoy!

Waltz: Elbow - The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver

Viennese waltz: Air - Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping

Cha-cha-cha: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero

Quickstep: The Doors - LA Woman. If you don't know The Doors Alive, you need to check them out. They're as close as you're gonna get to hearing The Doors live without access to a TARDIS. The singer and drummer have changed from the lineup seen here, but I'm sure they're still great. This was filmed at a gig I was at and you can actually see the back of my head dancing!

Tango: Radiohead - Burn The Witch. As above. If you really want to know, my tango dance on the original list was Band of Skulls - Himalayan. Oh go on then...

Rumba: Chet Baker - My Funny Valentine. I thought this would tie in well with movie week, as it was featured in The Talented Mr Ripley.

Jive: Imelda May - Johnny Got A Boom Boom

Foxtrot: Everything But The Girl or Ella Fitzgerald  - Night And Day. It's a hard choice between the versions! Everything But The Girl would be less likely to make me cry, as the Ella version was my grandparents' song. Sadly both of them have died, and they played it at my grandad's funeral.

Paso doble: Rammstein - Mein Teil. This was going to be my Halloween week before Burn The Witch came along.

Sadly the Blogspot video widget doesn't like Rammstein. Find it here.

Samba: The Commodores - Brick House

Salsa: Paul Simon - Late Evening

American Smooth: Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me to the End of Love

Argentine tango: Gotan Project - Una Musica Brutal

Charleston: tUnE-yArDs - Water Fountain

Where I reminisce, talk a lot and name drop a celebrity

I came across The Charles Hazlewood Show on Radio 2 by accident. Somehow I found out about it and it sounded exactly up my street: popular songs being pulled apart to work out why they’re so good with other music being played as examples. The first show was going to put Elbow’s Lippy Kids under the microscope. After loving them for about 10 years I finally decided this year that Elbow are my favourite band (but shh don’t tell Radiohead).

Charles Hazlewood’s passion for music really comes across in each programme, though of course he can’t get too bogged down in musical theory as not all the listeners will have that sort of background. He therefore he comes up with some interesting turns of phrase such as “baked bean trombones”! Listening takes me back to sitting in my GCSE and A Level Music classes. Far from being dry, a lot of my classes were fun thanks to the teachers that I had. Jack Davies must’ve been around 10 years older than the GCSE class, which sometimes helped and sometimes hindered. He had quite a task ahead of him – a few of the pupils were really interested in the subject and some had simply taken it because they thought it would be a doss. He managed to keep the whole class’ attention mostly through the use of humour. He nurtured my passion for composition and introduced me to minimalist music; in fact it was through him that I first heard Electric Counterpoint without Ricky Lee Jones talking about what the skies were like when she was young.

Martin Ullyatt was a more experienced teacher, and whilst his lessons were dryer (I think the A Level syllabus has a lot to blame for this) he still had a great sense of humour. This was probably essential as there were only four of us in the class and had very different personalities. He mentioned Vaughn Williams a lot so we used to tease him that he had an “I ♥ Vaughan Williams” tattoo and even made him a 40^th birthday card to that effect. I’m not sure we thought he was up to knowing what our nickname for Dido & Aeneas was though.

I knew I was going to enjoy Charles Hazlewood’s show but something I wasn’t expecting happened. My brain woke up. It has atrophied a bit due to not being used plus it’s suffering from the unfortunate effects of depression. Most of the time I find following a train of thought as difficult as navigating through Marmite. Which is also why I don’t blog very much anymore – it can take me days to produce the one post. Twitter is perfect because you can put ideas out there quickly and succinctly without having to worry too much about the way it’s written apart from fitting it into 140 characters. For instance it has taken me about two weeks to write this post in little dribs and drabs.

My brain is like a faulty switch – it will be off and you can jiggle it and poke it and it might come on. Or it’ll be on and as hard as you try you can’t get it to switch off. I once made the mistake of listening to the radio show before bed and I was awake for hours pondering what songs I would have played as examples and wanting to reply to comments Charles had made during the show. When I’d listened to the first episode I was super excited; it was like discovering a new band or great album, or getting to the end of a really good book. So I tweeted about it a lot, and lo and behold I get a notification that I am now being followed by none other than Charles Hazlewood. At first I was a bit dubious as to whether it was actually him, I have been followed by someone claiming to be Simon Pegg in the past. We have a little chat every now and again and he seems as lovely as he comes across on the radio and TV.

So imagine my excitement when I find out that one of his bands, The Charles Hazlewood All Stars, are performing Tubular Bells live. It has only ever been played live in its entirety in the 1970s. This band also includes Adrian Utley from Portishead and Will Gregory from Goldfrapp, two bands which I am very fond of indeed. For a lot of people hearing the opening of Tubular Bells gives them the shivers as it reminds them of The Exorcist. The first time I heard it was sitting in the back of the car doing a treasure hunt quiz as part of a fete at my primary school. My mum had just bought the cassette for my dad on a bric-a-brac stall. Now when I sit in the back of my dad’s car it is entirely possible that he will be playing a Goldfrapp or Portishead CD (if it's not wall-to-wall Rammstein). The concert is like he had been cosmic ordering!

The concert is in London, but my mum and I had been talking about going down there for a bit of shopping, going round some museums and galleries and perhaps catching up with some family that live in that area. “What more perfect excuse is there to go?” I think. I go to the venue’s website to see if there are any tickets left and I see my dad’s been “at work” again! Not only are they performing Tubular Bells but also A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley. My dad grew up when the first synthesisers were emerging so he has a few LPs of what I consider to be fairly obscure stuff. My mum and I tease him for liking that album because it sounds like lots of mobile phones going off at once (listen for at least 1min to get the full effect). But the genius is that it was composed in the 1960s, long before mobiles were invented.

I quickly sent my mum the email equivalent of holding her at gunpoint telling her that we HAVE to go to this concert. Mum passed the news on to dad and she told me that he actually looked quite excited for him! Hotels can be expensive in London, but I found that there are two Travelodges nearby, they have room and are affordable. We decided it would be easier to get the train so we don’t have the problem of where to put the car once we get to London. I thought about seven weeks was booking quite a bit in advance, but it was still going to cost us £300 return. Altogether a one night stay, the concert and the train was going to cost nearly £500 for the three of us! Mum told me the terrible news that we can’t afford it. Of course I knew this as soon as I saw how much the train cost, but the fact that the concert programme even exists is like some sort of miracle and I am absolutely desperate to go. The thought of going had really improved my mood. I haven’t been to London for about 10 years and I do love going out to cultural stuff such as concerts or the theatre, and living in Cumbria there isn’t the greatest opportunity to do that. My hopes were dashed and I was plunged into the depths of despair.

I sent a tweet to Charles begging that the band came up to the Sage Gateshead and did the same concert. About 10 minutes later I got a reply saying “well... actually we are doing it there the following night”. Elation and joy! I ran around, jumped for joy and made high pitched squeals, so enthusiastic was my happiness. It's probably a good thing he wasn't in the same room as I probably would've embarrassed myself further by hugging him! I was annoyed that I couldn’t tell my mum the good news straight away because she is only about half way home from my house. Trying to sit on that news was like trying to sit on top of a geyser.

My only regret is that the effect of being "woken up" doesn't last longer than a few hours. To end this long and rambling post I want to say thank you to my two music teachers Jack Davies and Martin Ullyatt. I also want to say thank you to Charles Hazlewood for helping to reignite that spark of passion that I feel about music (also apologies that it’s made me go on a bit). So cheers Charlie, the song above is for you. See you in December.

Action packed weekend - Friday

It was Phil's birthday on Friday so I met up with him, Hazel, Zoe and Iqbal for a night out. Hazel was meant to meet me at my house around "8-ish" which in the end turned out to be 9!

Fortunately when Phil, Hazel and I got to the pub the band hadn't started yet and Zoe and Iqbal had managed to get a good table near the front. The band in question were the Olly Allcock Band, who I had never heard of but are apparently quite famous in Cumbria. Olly is meant to be the blues guitarist in Cumbria.

The band consist of Olly on lead guitar and main vocals, Roz on sax and backing vocals, Ed on bass and backing vocals, and "Harry" on drums. They are all excellend musicians and the pub was packed. Harry is fairly new to the band so he had to pass the audience test, which he did with ease by performing a stonking drum solo which lasted a good three minutes at least.

Lots of drunk people did embarrassing dad dancing and we had a bit of a boogie round our table but there wasn't much room as the pub was so packed. When the band finished we were all up for more of a boogie. Therefore we went to a bar called the Gilded Lily as you can get your hand stamped to get into a club called Concrete for free. Friday nights are best in there as they play lots of indie tunes rather than the banging dance stuff they play on a Saturday.

Iqbal and Phil wanted to go at about 2am and as I wanted a lift from Iqbal I sadly had to go too. I don't think I could've danced much longer anyway!

Estimated time in bed: 2.30am.

Wild Weekend

It was a horribly wet weekend in Windermere but our tent, Matilda (so called because it looks like that robot from Robot Wars), kept us dry. Unfortunately I forgot my earplugs so I couldn't stand the sound of the raindrops on the roof. It was like Chinese water torture and I thought I would go mad if I had to listen to it all night. So I crept into the house and slept on the floor of the room where my mum and dad were sleeping. Vince was able to sleep through the noise the git!

Before that though we had a grand party, ate lots of food, drank lots, had some musical enertainment on guitar, bazouki and fiddle (as long as no one was watching) and several people read some poems. I wore a dress that was much admired, bought from Monsoon sale two years ago. I'd just had my hair cut too so I was looking rather hot even if I do say so myself!

The highlight of the evening for me was my dad read a poem. It was the first poem he had ever written. He was inspired by his love of cars, his purchase of a Mini and the band Rammstein. This was an absolutely amazing thing because he kept it a total secret. My dad is a very quiet man, all friends meeting him for the first time are warned not to take it personally if he doesn't speak to them, conversation with him can be difficult. So that he wrote a poem AND then read it out in front of a room full of people was absolutely amazing. Go dad!

Vince also challenged us to write a poem one word at a time going round the room in a circle. This is the resulting poem, suggestions for a title please:

Twas angst words said despaired foresight man
but upside-down frogspawn blow job please
heron standing slithering shit arsehole rogered
salubrious kalapidgeonist* Voldemort Vince


*no idea if that's the right spelling but apparently means you like bums

The next morning we all appeared bleary eyed and ate breakfast on the terrace - croissants, veggie sausages, beans, mushrooms, scrambled egg, and for the meat eaters Ruth (Journal of a Wise Woman) did a hot trade in bacon butties from the back of her camper van Florence, who sadly died shortly afterwards requiring vehicle rescue.

I am still recovering from the lack of sleep, I'm half asleep at work today, but it was a bloody good weekend!

Saturday Sun

James and Rebecca

Peter in the foreground with mug

Stuart singing





By 9am it was HOT in the tent. Vince and James both felt really rough with wisky heads. The gash on Vince's shin looked nasty. The nice people whose paddock we were camping in let us use a little toilet and sink that was in a little utility room and they even brought us some bread, houmous, fruit, tea, coffee, rooibos tea and some orange juice. I thought this was incredibly nice.





Vince and I sat about chatting to folk in the morning while James and Rebecca snuck off to the hotel where aunt was staying to have showers. Cheaters! We went for lunch in a nearby Harvester pub, our first proper food since lunch at KFC at Oxford services the day before.



Then we headed back for soundcheck in the church. I had my book with me to stave off boredom and also got up and wandered around frequently as my bum went numb from sitting down so long last year. Pews are not comfortable.



One set of performers from the Friday night were joined by the rest of their band Eve and the Garden. I had wondered why I recognised the drummer and realised it was the parish priest! The band were really good and hadn't really heard of Nick Drake until the vicar got involved last year (he had been in the job 10 days!) They do sort of folksy celtic rock stuff and the Paul the vicar seems to have a large array of different congas, bongos and djembes.

Vince and James performed Three Hours for the second time as it went down so well last year. Next year they're hoping to play it with Paul the vicar on drums. James played a song of his own, Closed, which went down brilliantly and he sold quite a few of the CDs he took with him. You should be able to check out James and Vince's performance on You Tube so please check it out.

Back to the campfire again but a slightly more restrained affair this evening. I think people didn't want to pack up their tents with a hangover.

The Perfect Me

Evil, evil song!!

I have had the guitar intro to the song The Perfect Me by Deerhoof (taken from their latest album Friend Opportunity) going round and round in my head since Wednesday!!

Billy Collins, the American poet wrote a poem about such a phenomenon about having More Than A Woman by the Bee Gees stuck in his head. "A mad fan belt of a tune" he called it. I wanted to quote the poem here in its entirety but would you believe it I couldn't find it on the whole of the bloody internet!! So you'll just have to go out and buy the book it's in - Nine Horses (or you could wait for me to bring my copy of the book and blog it next week if I remember).

If you also want to be so inflicted by a plague of Deerhoof then you can listen to it on my My Space page.

Also if anyone can tell me what time signature(s) its in I'd be very grateful. It's been a few years since I did my Music A Level and I'm a bit out of practice.

I thoroughly recommend Deerhoof though, especially live. I saw them supporting Beck and Radiohead at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year. They're totally bonkers but very energetic performers.