We were going to do a Christmas riff, something to blow out the stale air of traffic jams and angry shoppers and looming deadlines and too much food and dysfunction ahead. The suspension of normal activity for enforced idleness. Fuck that. We were going to make a Christmas riff, THE Christmas riff. It would rock. It would quake. It would go on for hours.

Then Mr Nite got stuck in traffic and the thought of getting stuck in more traffic was too much and he called me to say that the riff was off. I could see out of my window that the cars were inching down the road like slugs, and I saw his point. Besides, he said, Old Man Gloom already did a Christmas riff. We can do a New Year riff.

But we had a practice room booked where we could make noise. I don’t know, there was a time when I quite liked having an excuse to get out of doing music, or anything creative for that matter. Oh you can’t make it? Oh well, never mind, I would say, and slope off, relieved, to do something a bit safer, like…I dunno now. What did I do? Read, probably. Hassle whichever boyfriend was handy. There’s such satisfaction sometimes in confirming your own suspicions that you’re a lazy loser, a drifter who never gets stuff done. There was, at any rate. But today, I weighed up the options and I thought, OK, it’s either stay in, clear up, drink port and wrap presents, like you’re supposed to. Or it’s get in that damn studio and make your own Christmas riff.

Obviously there was no question. Although I felt bereft without my partner in noise, I also felt intrepid and inspired. Shouldered the backpack that my synth lives in, wrapped in its William Morris print pillowcase; picked up the guitar.

The practice rooms were deserted and quiet, as if Christmas wasn’t the best time to play music ever. As if it wouldn’t be more fun to be in here. People are weird. I shut the door and plugged stuff in, and there I was, three hours on my own with only my own voice and noises for company. I realised I’d never done this before: you do solo stuff at home, in the bedroom, or in the front room when your wife goes out. You use headphones and stuff. You have little breaks to make tea. Now I felt like I was in an exam, and that someone would come and collect what I’d done afterwards. It was too weird.

But soon, all that was forgotten. Nothing special happened, just noises, some lyrics, some ideas. Not even a riff, more like a drift: a Christmas drift. Nothing that musicians don’t do all the time. All you need to know, though, is how very wonderful it felt, that strangely contradictory tiredness you get from playing and singing alone for a while: as if you ‘ve been unaware of your body for hours, while using it to its fullest. It beats me, how all this works, and the only reason I keep doing it is to find out.

Our ace photographer Cat Stevens sent us this card, which is really funny and really adorable both. It’s still Christmas, and the streets are still sluggish and filled with frantic people and I just went to Sainsbury’s and it was like a bright coloured, gorged to the hilt, gluttonous hell. And really, I don’t like Christmas. I’m listening to The Arcade Fire’s lovely bells and passion and exuberance and lyrics about living out in the snow to get me in the mood; I went to hear the Dufay Collective play medieval Christmas songs in a Hawksmoor church; I drank hot port and danced round the living room with my friends to the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and I made mix CDs and bought nice gifts from Stoke Newington. Lord help me, I tried. But god, this city, crawling towards its proscribed day of rest, is no place to be.

The bright sound of 2005 - it zings and rings like 2004 didn’t, and I only mean that aurally, by the way, 2004 was pretty ace in many ways - sounds good from where I’m sitting, watching more cars, more buses, and more cars again, inching and inching along. One year I said to a friend as we looked over Hackney marshes on a Christmas eve at the lights in people’s houses and flats strectching off into the distance, oh I do hope those all people are having a lovely Christmas. He laughed and told me off for being naive and twee. There was an edge to his voice; he was almost angry that I could be so dumb. He was so right, of course. But I can’t help still thinking that, dropping a blessing on all the cars – hoping that they’re going, well, at least somewhere OK.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Friday, December 24th, 2004
(3 Comments)

I’m still here. Just too busy to blog lately.
I’ve been experimenting with new printing techniques for non magazine related projects which WILL properly happen sometime after squeezing Christmas, the next issue, and a trip to Hong Kong all in a month.
To make room for these mahooosive prints, and a big tray line, I’m dumping a very old Durst Colour Enlarger. If anyone wants it it’s there’s? I’ve got two others to enjoy.

Posted by Sarah Bowles on Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
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Samara Lubelski, Taurpis Tula and the MV and EE Medicine Show played a show beneath a loud pub in central London. We came to see Taurpis Tula, mostly. Because of who is in Taurpis Tula, you see, and what they’ve done in the past. And I was fascinated, too, by the relationship between the two musicians, one small and dark, the other long and blonde. This isn’t prurient, or at least I don’t think it is: the bond between them is so out in the open, so spoken, so integral to their work, that I feel justified in my interest. Having sworn myself never to start a band with my lover - or indeed any lover, ever again, I squeeze his hand tightly as David Keenan’s guitar, with a sound like fool’s gold crunching underfoot, perhaps, or the sparks flying from rubbed together flints, cuts shapes around Heather Leigh Murray’s vague, desperately serious, channelled-sounding vocal and lap steel drifts. Instead of synergy, a meeting of hearts and sounds, I hear them more as two opposing forces moving in very different directions. Two distinct musical colours that are seeking some kind of alchemical fusion, almost willing it to happen. But afterwards you say they were like two different bands - or did I say that? I can’t remember.

I feel all aswim in the tunings that pull my head this way and that, and the opposing tensions from the different actions I can hear: the scratch and the slide, the rough and the infinitely, cruelly smooth. Sometimes I’m irritated: I want to take Heather’s mouth and hands and guide them to the ‘right’ note, or away from that one she’s about to do. Then I am irritated at myself for wanting to. Then I am lost again.

I remember the gig I played before I went to Berlin and could only listen to micro-house and electronic noise for a week. It was all slides and singing, drones and scrapes. I wonder if my misgivings anything to do with that: too close for comfort, perhaps, although completely different.

I like to think so, because I do so want to love Taurpis Tula. I think I will love them on record, on my own, in the dark. Moments of beauty ripple out of their music, and you follow the ripple until it’s out of sight and then you hope so hard for the next one. I can wait. I’m learning to be patient.

My friends and I agree that we need an American journalist to come over here and ‘discover’ New Weird London, the way that Keenan seems to have done in the US. Suddenly our living-room droneouts and back-room psych-folk and all day improv will have people hanging on our every note and we might even get to go on tour and on the cover of Arthur or something.

But on the way to the bus stop we forget all about music for at least five minutes on discovering the beauty that is Royal Institute of British Architects building, late at night, purple-lit.

Wow.

If anyone has a link to a better picture of this building, please let me know.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004
(2 Comments)

Have yourselves a merry little Christmas: ET’s joint favourite Christmas song alongside The Blue Minkies

Posted by Everett True on Saturday, December 18th, 2004
(No Comments)

Top 10 Artists Played On iTunes
(although it should be noted that The Diskettes occupy 10 of the Top 12 places)

The Diskettes: Art
The Legend! Vs The Shady Ladies: U Stole R Song
The Blue Minkies: Christmas Means Nothing Without Presents
The Legend!: Olympia Pt 2
Bettye Swann: Sweet Dreams
The Dresden Dolls: Coin-Operated Boy
Little Anthony & The Imperials: When You Wish Upon A Star
The Long Blondes: Darts
Ramones: Please Don’t Leave
Fabienne Delsol: I’m Gonna Haunt You

Posted by Everett True on Tuesday, December 14th, 2004
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Conversation with the 10-year-old and 12-year-old sister duo that make up Smoosh, in a coffee shop just round the corner from the Showbox, 1st Ave, Seattle:

ET: “I was speaking to Jason Finn (drummer, Presidents Of The United States Of America) during your set just now, and he said that next year you’re going to be bigger than Led Zeppelin.”
Pause…
Chloe: “Is that big?”

Asya: “Our dad was telling us you introduced Kurt to Courtney. is that true?”
[Interviewer looks embarassed and mumbles something that could be a ‘yes’.]
Asya: “Do you reget it?…Our dad also told us that you were the first person to write about grunge. Is that true?”
[Interviewer looks even more embarassed.]
Asya: “Do you think Courtney killed Kurt? That would be neat if it’s true, because it would mean you started it and you finished it.”
[Interviewer crawls up into a corner and wishes city would swallow him alive.]

——————
Last night, Bob Whittaker’s girlfriend teases him and me that we should make out. Five minutes later, the entire bar is begging us to stop. Very drunk kids form a disorderly line to sit down next to ‘Everett True’ and buy him drinks, unasked. Kathleen Wilson’s companion stands up and gives me a full-on eulogy, something about how I’m more American than the Americans (er, is that a compliment?) and how embarassed he was to be kitted out in full English gear (Jam T-shirt) in my presence. Come 8am and Debbi Shane is giving the cab driver the full vent of her invective for switching the meter off; and thus misses the extraordinary light shining round the Olympics and Mount Rainer. Tonight was spent in the company of a very sweet Canadian lesbian couple who’d driven all the way down from Vancouver to 1) see Iron & Wine, and 2) interview Everett True so they could write him a love letter, and 3) join in our Cooking Party. Nice.

Posted by Everett True on Monday, December 13th, 2004
(7 Comments)

Stayed up all night with the Farfisa and Vermona cross filter making big sounds in an old East German newspaper building. Who said holidays were relaxing? Trying to drift through some days in a city that’s as urgent as London isn’t easy. You feel out of the loop, out of your work ethic. And the y is where the z is on the computer keyboard. A language that uses more z’s than y’s is cool with me, but it confuses.

I arrived here Tuesday morning, after running from the Lightning Bolt show straight home to pack; chasing down to the chaos that is the night coach to Stansted; boarding a plane full of Christmas shoppers. We flew right at a sunrise that seared like a strip of red neon - I dozed, Sunroof on my headphones, the sun waking me every five minutes.Took a train to Ostbahnhof, listening to Losoul as the Alexanderplatz TV tower came into view. Smiled at it like it was an old friend. It is, you know. Even though they’ve changed the crockery in the revolving cafe so I no longer want to steal it. Sure I went up there. It’s heaven, if heaven was a big concrete spike with a giant revolving golf ball stuck two-thirds of the way up it.

This city’s got so much going on and so much going for it, a displaced musician and writer feels simultaneously part of things and guiltily alone, unable to surrender to tourist activities, always aware that there are Things To Do. Sleeping in the studio and laying the foundations for a new piece of music feels right, as does calling on record labels and saying hello. Navigating the tube system and getting submerged in the art of Sophie Calle. Treating myself to an architecture journal (and not a pair of Trippen shoes). Meeting one of my favourite Berlin musicians who, coincidentally, is working with an old London friend who settled over here a few years ago.

We first came over here together, me and this friend. I fell in love with the city. It was the most playfully serious place I ever set foot in. Now the serious seems at the forefront; there’s a sharper focus, more ambition perhaps. Or maybe that’s just us.

But enough musing. I’m on a mission to get dinner, call friends, buy a Zap notebook and find the home of Staubgold records.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, December 9th, 2004
(1 Comment)

Jennifer revealed that she doesn’t punch as hard as Kat Bjelland, and kept threatening to phone Courtney throughout the evening. I dissuaded her. I like having fun. Courtney hasn’t known how to have fun for too long now, and sorry - but we drop people like that from our lifestyles until they wise up.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, December 9th, 2004
(2 Comments)

OK, so Shit & Shine.

SHIT AND FUCKING SHINE.

My new favourite band.

Four drummers. Surf motorik beats from the bowels of the earth. Casio VL-tone. Holy fucking crap. Got a plane to catch. Can’t hear a thing.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Monday, December 6th, 2004
(10 Comments)

Been trying to put together a wish list of interviews for my Nirvana book: much merriment occasioned when Mary Lou Lord’s name was mentioned - and consternation among my interns when it was suggested that one of them had to track down Courtney Love. Handful of people who could help are out of town; Gillian, we need you! Feel uncomfortable cold calling people I haven’t spoken to in a decade, let alone those I never knew. Jason Everman is serving in Iraq: Tad Doyle has just moved to San Diego. Meet Krist Novoselic twice - once in the ritziest hotel in town where his companions eat oysters on the half-shell - and he reveals himself to be a Plan B fan. Should we use that somewhere, Chris?

Couple of evenings ago, out with my cartoonist buddies in Ballard: Eric Reynolds has grown a beard that makes him look like a distant cousin of Will Oldham; Peter Bagge rags on me for not liking his old band (still? dude, you were only in them for about three days), claiming that I only like bands with female drummers, a bold statement that stuns our table into silence. “Maybe I should grow MAN BOOBS,” he roars, not to be dissauded. He then takes me to task for censoring my intro to his new comics collection: “To save your sorry ass credibility,” I point out aggrieved. (Peter had talked of how no musicians live in downtown Detroit any longer.) He won’t be stopped, however. “TO SAVE YOUR SORRY ASS!” he roars back.

The Beakers and Blackouts both made great New Wave Pacific Northwest 80s albums, just reissued on K and reviewed by The Stranger’s music editor Jennifer Maerz in the new issue of Plan B; the first is like full-on early Talking Heads dementia mixed in with The Laughing Clowns’ squalling horn section; Jennifer was last seen rocking out at the Chop Suey’s New Wave Vs Buttrock karaoke night, singing Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tush’, handcuffed to her co-performer.

Shared a Dick’s Burger with Mark Arm; drank Bud Light with a just retired Kim Warnick; shopped for Electrelane records with Anna Oxygen. I’m sure other stuff’s happened, but I need to work.

Posted by Everett True on Monday, December 6th, 2004
(8 Comments)