Lucky Soul » CMJ

Baby, I’m Broke

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:40:00 +0000

With a band name like ours, it’s fair to say that we have a volatile relationship with old Lady Luck, and making our all-important US debut in New York, we had an ‘eventful’ week that left us throwing our heads back and howling at the glitter ball moon. Having been forced to cancel a London warm up show due to illness (poor Paul contracted some God-awful vomiting bug just before we flew over) little did we know that our luck was about to be seriously stretched when I caught a stinking cold a couple of hours before our CMJ showcase, which grabbed me by the vocal chords with such sudden, ill-timed ferocity that would make anyone question their fortune. With hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate with the boys earlier when I came out of the bathroom, pretending I’d caught Paul’s bug. We’d made sure he was kept in strict quarantine for fear of the rest of us going down. We followed his every move with antibacterial spray, labelling his cup the DEATH CUP and we even got him a seat as far away from us as possible on the plane (apologies other innocent Virgin Atlantic passengers, but this was an important trip!) ‘Ha ha only joking’ I shrieked. They fell for it, but apparently serendipity didn’t find it funny.

And so, armed with my double Jack Daniels and cough mixture (nice!), I hacked my way through our (thankfully) short set having culled Baby, I’m Broke at the last minute. Backstage I’d attempted to warm up, and sounding more Scooby-Doo than Doo-Wop, I realised that the entire top half of my voice had gone. Eek! We ended up having a good gig despite the new husky vocal direction, with Andrew and Ivor stepping up to their respective mics for the high bits, and the rest of the band rocking out, high on the excitement of finally being on stage in New York City, baby. Hell yeah!

CMJ week is mental. The whole of the music industry lands in the Big Apple and it’s hard to get a hotel room, let alone get noticed, but we rented a charming house in Brooklyn with dusty chandeliers and enormous four poster beds, and apart from freaking out about losing my voice, I did spend the entire trip feeling like a shrinking Alice in Wonderland surrounded by big things. Never before had I seen such enormous pizza boxes/tins of ravioli/cars… I could even stand up in the enormo-fridge. And of course, there’s nothing like being in a beautiful city to take away your woes. We had a great time jumping in and out of yellow cabs, drinking bottomless cwoiffees and getting shouted at by over-enthusiastic pizza waiters for being indecisive bumbling English fools. WHAT D’YA WANT? WHAT D’YA WANT? Brilliant! What I wanted was for my voice to come back, and as our big 80-minute-no support band-fans flying in from Canada- headline show at Joe’s Pub loomed closer, my throat got tighter and tighter and all I could think about was throwing myself off Brooklyn Bridge…

Having scoured Manhattan for every last Vocalzone (CMJ week – they’d all sold out!) Andrew, Paul, Malc and I made our way back to the house for a well deserved kip. Short of the miracle I actually needed, I figured the only thing I could do was to try and sleep it off for a couple of hours and hope that I’d wake up better. Good idea, except we’d locked ourselves out. Did I mention we’d passed a plaque on the way home quoting Voltaire; “God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”? It was Paul’s birthday and so I sang him Happy Birthday sat on the stairs in my desperate, cracked voice and all we could do was laugh.

Something magical happened in New York, despite everything. Of course the gig started disastrously. My voice was wrecked and as if to top it all off, Rusty’s bass lead decided to pack up in the first song. I felt like we’d blown it in America, big time, and so, in the spirit of ‘sod it, there’s nothing to lose’ I sang the rest of the set like the broken woman I was, and somehow, I still don’t know how, but somehow, we managed to storm it! Rusty had reassured me it’s amazing what the human body can do when it needs to, and sure enough my voice didn’t fail me, and I even got through the high bits in Baby I’m Broke, the irony not lost on my truly wonderful band, who carried me, willing me on with every strum, every hit… I BLOODY LOVE THOSE BOYS! The audience were great and Joe’s Pub is a beautiful venue – like an old 60’s jazz club, and I think it’ll be one of those strange magical gigs that we’ll talk about for years to come. I don’t know, maybe it’s too much brandy and Lemsip talking, either that or my usual London cynicism has been overtaken with American schmaltz, but I feel so humbled by that gig, and truly lucky to have such an amazing band, and I’m now very, very excited about the future…

And as for you New York, I ain’t finished with you yet.
Xx Ali

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i don’t drink coffee i drink tea my dear…

admin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:03:00 +0000

..anyone who knows me knows that’s a lie.

Mr Atkins seems to be on the road to recovery so we’re off to storm new york. we’ve booked a rehearsal room over there on Thursday to make sure we’re extra sharp. I’m, as ever with these things, still late night ironing and have forgotten to buy important things like camera film and razorblades. Ah well, i’ll just get some….in Brooklyn…woohooo. See you on t’other side.

Lots of love Andrew xx

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=doYNBHE8Yes

P.S. Are there any Lemurs in New York?

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One in a million (well, 1 in 1210)

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:24:00 +0000

The Americans have given us our visas, so we can definitely, definitely join the insanely long list of bands playing at the CMJ Music Marathon next week. Now it’s all official, we can start to get excited.

It’s hard to know whether we’ll get many people turning up – it all seems a million miles away, and without an American record label there’s no real way of getting feedback. There have been a few people saying nice comments on our forum and this blog, and some nice bloggers like Music Snobbery and Chromewaves have been putting the word around, so hopefully we’ll get a few people through the doors. The new songs seemed to go down quite well at the warm-up gig last night, so we’re all set to go. Just one more warm-up (at King’s College, supporting Those Dancing Days on Tuesday night) and then get on the plane. Never mind that we still haven’t sorted out the equipment, we’ll figure something out.

Only a few more days to go before we go. Pancakes and maple syrup. Coffee and donuts. Pizza pie (whatever that actually means). Mom’s apple pie. Bagels and coffee from street vendors. Signs that say Walk Don’t Walk (although I heard that NYC has got rid of them now). Bring it on…

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I like to be in America

admin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:46:00 +0000

I’m not sure that we’ve made enough of a big deal yet about the fact
that we’re going to New York.

The Big Apple. New York, New York, the city that never sleeps, The
United States of Kiss My Ass. America, fuck yeah!

all that sort of nonsense.

I went there as a tourist once, and I couldn’t stop myself from feeling
like I was walking around a film set, seeing so many places that were
familiar to me.

This will be our first trip to the States as a band, and it should be good.

We’re doing two shows, one is a showcase as part of the CMJ Music
Marathon at the Studio, Webster Hall. We’ll only be doing about half an
hour there, but we’re doing a much longer set (longer than we normally
play – everything is bigger in America) at
Joe’s pub in Brooklyn

The details are still being sorted out, but it will be good to get away
from the day jobs and out of the studio, and get in front of people
again. And I expect someone will be looking for a cheap new pair of
Converse All-Stars…

Malcolm

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Guilty, Geeky Pleasures

admin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Alright Scamps?

Having had a rather heavy week involving a gig on Monday, which confused me greatly, and having been out to dinner three times in a week – actually one was technically lunch but it was dinnertime by the time we’d gone from the Ivy to the Dog and Duck, to the sparkly gay bar next door for buy-one-get-one-free Cosmopolitans (ouch!) I’m having a weekend of doing NOTHING, except watching X Factor (yes, yes it’s my guilty pleasure), making chocolate cake (like that’s not a guilty pleasure!) and compiling a playlist on the old iPod entitled ‘Second Album Inspiration’. It’s really random stuff, but it kind of makes sense to me in that kind of Country/Soul/Gospel/Bacharach/Scott Walker/60’s pop/Rock ‘n’ Roll kind of a way that the new record seems to be heading.

It goes like this;

The First Cut Is The Deepest – PP Arnold, Jolene – Dolly Parton, Perfect – Fairground Attraction, These Arms Of Mine – Bettye Swann, Thousand -Dollar Wedding – Gram Parsons, No One – Alicia Keys, I Will Always Love You – Dolly , Way Over Yonder – Carole King, The Age Of The Understatement – Last Shadow Puppets, Walk On By – Dionne Warwick, Wild Horses – Rolling Stones, Warwick Avenue – Duffy, Love Hurts – Gram & Emmylou, Fire & Rain – James Taylor, Run – Sandie Shaw, Distant Dreamer – Duffy

I’ve been listening to Dolly quite a lot lately, and of course Gram and Emmylou (sigh!) Rusty says ‘Don’t Fear the Country’, and we’re taking heed. Alicia Keys always sounds so desperately sad. I love Eddi Reader too – what an amazing voice. (I’m hoping all this will go in the ears and come out the mouth…somehow…) I’ve got Fire and Rain in there for pure sentimentality. It was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, sitting at the bottom of my stairs singing and attempting to strum along for my mate Faisal. We were 15 and I wanted to join his band. He said forget about the guitar you can sing instead. Ho hum…

I’m so very super excited about New York

Loves ya,

Ali x x

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