♫ My Top 5 #lastfm artists: Simple Minds (236), LostBoy! AKA Jim Kerr (11), Phunk Investigation (6), White Spaces (5) & Liquid People (3) #spotify via @tweeklyfm
— Larelle – Priptona (@priptonaweird) May 21, 2019
Telly Tomorra
One last plug here. Well, it *is* my blog after all.
Fifteen To One, Channel 4 – starting tomorrow and on Thursday and Friday (May 22nd, 23rd, 24th) at 3pm BST – I’M ON THE TELLY quizzing, like. Check it oot, if you’re around.
As you can see from the pic on day one, I was bloody tired, hence the red eyes. Good make up job though. The make up artist who was making me look human knows Wendy Forbes.
It’s a small world…
Stick To What You Know
Little drummer girl…before you embarrass yourself further!
Why Does No One Get It?
The drumming thing and what happened yesterday. It has nothing to do with my ability to PLAY but my ability to LEARN!
Telling me “it’s early days”. I KNOW THIS! I am NOT expecting to be Cherisse after three fucking lessons!
But…what WOULD help immensely is a kit set up to my level of comfort. Being able to practice on kits is invaluable but also feels like folly right now, given where I am at financially. I am spending £16 a week having two hours of practice each week. I walk 6 miles each time too…walking to the local train station, and then walking to the rehearsal studio…and back again.
I am dedicating time, money and effort to this thing! I wish I could do more.
Every week there is some kind of set back…crappy uncomfortable drum set ups…cancelled trains that make me late and eat into my practice time…yet MORE crappy drum set ups!
How do I explain it? I dunno. You’ve been asked to run a marathon, but all you have is trainers that are both left feet. I dunno. That’s a crappy analogy.
I’ll watch videos so I can set the kit to how I want it…but no matter what…it’ll eat into valuable learning time. And it alters my mood and it just makes me feel instantly on the back foot.
Another is…CCTV. There’s a CCTV camera in every room. I can’t tell you how much that makes me self-conscious…to know there could be someone watching how crap I am going. I try to put it to the back of my mind…but the reality is is I am a 48 year old woman going into a rehearsal studio on my own and it makes me feel like an idiot.
On weekends the music complex is really busy and that also adds to the self-conscious idiotic feeling. Seeing young-uns come in and just…it’s deflating.
Nothing comes naturally to me. I feel DIRECTIONLESS. I don’t feel like I can “just experiment” and “bash away”. I feel daft! There’s a reason why people have lessons and tutors…FOR GUIDANCE AND STRUCTURE. If I thought I could teach myself?! Great. Not a problem! But at this age? That is highly unlikely. I cannot see it happening.
I’ve booked another two hour slot for Sunday. It’s too easy to give up, I guess. So let’s just keep on squandering money and deluding ourselves this will end up going somewhere, shall we?
Every great drummer started somewhere, right? But most of them started out VERY young. Perhaps one day I’ll hold some kind of ridiculous niche of knocking people out with my drumming prowess by them discovering that I didn’t start learning until I was 48. Pffft. Yeah, I’m not convinced either.
At the end of the day there is a distinction between WANTING to be great, and having the aptitude to BECOME great. I suppose I just have to give it time…time to convince myself that it’s too early to judge now. Is it? *shrugs*
I am so scared that two years down the line what I will see for my effort is, well, nothing. A badge that says “well, at least she wasn’t a quitter”.
The 70 Cities Curiosity….
I’ve posted this on SMO…but in case he misses it (as if he’s going to see it here! Pffft!)
***I’m currently playing catch up listening to last night’s Billy Sloan Show on BBC Radio Scotland and he just played 70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall.
And, seeing as I am meeting tight lips and closed (Simple) minds about Sons And Fascination and Semi-Monde, I might as well go out on a limb and see how far I get asking you about my other quizzical line that I just love hearing every time it plays.
“When the other side of midnight calls / remind me I’m glad to be here”. I always find that curiously downbeat for you, Jim. Because it’s not saying “I’m glad to be here” but “REMIND ME I’m glad to be here”. That’s a very different connotation. That portrays…I dunno…heaven forbid should I say it? … Cynicism!?
It always conjures up a post-gig scene for me. A quiet after show soiree and you not being particularly interested in being there.
I mean…most of the lyrics in the song are pretty left field anyway (I mean…who cries from the right eye first?…I’m not taking a shot, I adore your lyrics. I think you know that by now…if you don’t then…well…erm…🥴🥴🥴) but that line has always stuck out in particular for some reason for me.
Dunno why.
Anyway…just thinking out loud. As you were, Mr Kerr.***
(It’s a REALLY old one, that lyric piece. Made at mum’s. That’s her clock.)
Slow News Sunday Summary – May 19th
- Cherisse in rehearsals for Kelly Jones tour
- Sir talks writing songs and Govanhill library
“No news is good news” the old saying goes. In that case, Simple Minds HQ is positively drowning in good news! Lol
Just the one post this week from The Mister after last Sunday’s “I’ve woken up thinking about gigging” exciting little fluttering bit of info.
This week’s post had him talking about golden tickets and how luck sometimes falls your way. And how a knew piece of potential SM magic found its way to being formed.
Jim Kerr – do you EVER have a “bad day”? One where you’ve just…had enough? You feel a bit sorry for yourself? Stay in bed under the covers? No…of course you don’t.
*sigh*
Anyways…
Cherisse is currently in rehearsals with Kelly Jones. Oh, I could do with a lesson from her right about now! I am losing what little semblance of faith I had in myself.
Won’t bore you with the details…but let’s just say I am feeling disillusioned again and Aunt Fanny is shouting louder than ever. She’s a f***ing bitch, but I can’t help feeling she has a point!
I KNOW IT WILL TAKE TIME! I just wish I could have some faith in my ability to actually get somewhere with it. I want to believe that in two years time I’ll be drumming with some kind of competency. But…no. I’m not sure I believe it.
Anyway…I’ve ended up making this about me.
No news is good news! Convince me…
P.S. Book cover shared is the one he shared from my having asked him what the first book he borrowed from the library was. Was he taking liberties? I am never sure when it comes to Mr Kerr. He’s a cagey (and snarky!) bugger.
Lodger At 40
Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the Lodger album by David Bowie. A rather jumbled up travelogue of an album. The travel theme running heavily through side A of the album with: Fantastic Voyage, African Night Flight, Move On, Yassassin (Turkish for Long Live) and Red Sails.
Side B’s theme alters and shifts back to menial points of life, work, home, family…death, mental illness, domestic violence – the only slight thorn in the side is Boys Keep Swinging as it seems more tongue-in-cheek with its theme. Well, DJ is to a degree too. But there are darker themes explored in Look Back In Anger (mental illness/death) and Repetition (domestic violence).
It sadly ends with a rather inferior version of Iggy Pop’s sublime Sister Midnight in Red Money. Compared to Sister Midnight, Red Money feels derivative. I never used to mind it much. I wasn’t aware and got into Iggy until after I heavily got into David. As the years have passed, I am always far more appreciative of Iggy’s side of the Bowie/Pop collaborations, it somewhat pains me to say.
Although seen as being part of the “Berlin trilogy”, it was actually recorded in Montreux, Switzerland and mixed in New York. I always found it curious it was put in a trio with Low and Heroes. I have always felt the trio SHOULD be, at least more musically, Station To Station-Low-Heroes.
Here’s to Lodger! “The hinterland. The hinterland. We’re gonna sail to the hinterland!”
