Friday 1 August 2008

MONKEY LOVES HIS PIGEON


So....recording. We went to a meeting at Beggar's (Banquet, the record label who partly funds Rough Trade, not some Doherty-sidekick-esque shadily employed friend. Guess I could've cleared that up by just writing 'Banquet' in the first place, but I've run out of the erasing typewriter ribbon. Excuses excuses. Hi all. It's Soph again. The anecdote this is so massively interrupting will maybe explain a bit about the interruption so maybe I should just get on with it.) the other day, about you know, the things you have meetings about when you're about to record and release an album, namely, what the website should look like....On the other hand it was probably the most fruitful and least excruciatingly awkward label meeting I've been to (despite THIS stunning evidence to the contrary, we're not, surprise surprise, the most articulate bunch, at times) and we came away from it (or, Finn and I did, since we were the ones who went) having agreed to take part in a Nick Cave doco that a woman called Jane and her friend Iain are making. I hope that's not giving away a big secret or anything. I also heard this week that someone else is making a SEPARATE doco about Cave, and his battle to have a large bronze statue of himself, naked, riding a horse, erected somewhere in Australia. Maybe it's the same doco. Who knows. 

ANY.WAY. In the course of this meeting my now oddly oft-mentioned American tour blog from last year came up and they sort of sideways glanced at me and asked whether I'd want to 'get into doing it again, maybe, you know, a bit.' Don't spook the horses, like. And of course I said, yes, yes, sure, give me a keyboard and I'll just tappity tappity away, much like the infinitychimps - given the volume, I'm bound to produce something decent in the end..

On the other hand, Finn set up this blog ages ago and despite asking for me to take a hand in it repeatedly it's taken me til now to get round to it. But now that I've STARTED....I clearly have quite a lot of mixed up and inconsequential rambling to get out of the way. So you might have to bear with me a bit. I'll get to the concisely worded nuggets of pure gold at some stage, hopefully round about the time we head out on our NEXT American tour in a month or so. 

Besides, the opportunities for glamorous hi-jinks in a small studio in Acton are limited. Don't expect Dan to be jumping into any criminals Porsches round here, and if he DOES, don't expect him to be coming BACK to tell the hilarious story. Also, the scenery is hardly stunning. So photographic opportunities are limited, unless you're interested in what Henning looks like with cake all over his face, or the blackberries we picked this morning in the carpark. Yes! In the carpark! Where I come from, if there were blackberries growing in a carpark, there wouldn't be, because someone's enterprising mum would've gone out and picked them. Maybe in England people prefer to pay £3.99 a punnet at Waitrose. Who knows. It seems I'm now someone's enterprising Mum though, which is a plus. I picked a load at rehearsal the other day and made pastries (Dan: 'Soph, these are a TRIUMPH. Could be saltier though') and Henning and Dan discovered today that the carpark at Westpoint is a veritable paradise of the plump little bastards. So the pastries, it seems, will be a constant. 

Oh right. The album. Well, we've recorded some songs. We like how they sound. We haven't fallen out with Graham. We've made a new friend - Ian our engineer. His girlfriend makes him delicious Japanese lunches and we get jealous, and we introduced him to red velvet cake and liquorice Rizlas. 

It's all laptops and snacks, really, making an album. So there's plenty of time to read about the man who murdered the guy on the Greyhound Bus (that was this morning. It's now 7.30pm and Dan just walked into the room and said slightly smugly 'he et him a little bit') and browse the internet for cheap laughs and horror stories. Because I'm by nature the sharing, caring type, I suggest you have a browse of these:

Passive Agressive Notes.  I've been on here ALL DAY.
The Montauk Monster I was gonna put this under 'horror stories' to go with 'cheap laughs' but a decision CAN'T be reached on whether it's real or not and the fear of it turning out to be part of an ad campaign for Audi gives it a bit of a depressing edge. 

An ANECDOTE:

Finn is idly tinkering with the piano in the room Henning and I are set up in. Graham would like us to play a song. 

Me, in a pretty unfunny impression of an 8yr old to her younger brother: 'GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! ITS MY ROOM! GET OUT!'
Henning, trying to get in on the joke: 'YEAH! Get out!'
Finn: 'Allright, allright.'
Henning: 'GET OUT, KIMBERLY!'
Finn: 'What?'
Henning: 'That's your name, isn't it? Kimberly? Your middle name?'
Me: 'Kimberly?'
Finn: 'Kimberly?'
Henning: 'Is it not Kimberly?'

Finn's middle name is not Kimberly. Just in case you were wondering. 




3 comments:

DieSwartSlak said...

What is Finn's middle name? For that matter - what is Finn's real name?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KSG said...

dudes....Kimberly does not work. "yea right, dudes" works. Finn is too cool to have a "k" name as the middle...ya got that?
I would give my right anything to be hanging in and listening to the process of recording right this minute. Love you dudes!!! xxxx miss ya in Devonport, for sure.
Mwah! KSG