Muso Mondays - Feeling Gloomy

This week this is a bit different as i'm not talking about a band i love, this time it's a club i love.
Despite being incredibly shy and awkward i absolutely love to dance. I'm no good at it, but i am passionate and over-the-top and have good stamina, i can dance for several hours non-stop, sometimes even through a broken foot (which actually happened at the club i'm about to discuss, but i was too drunk to realise until the next morning. Good fun.). Generally people either make fun of me or i form a 'circle of fear' around me where folks fear to tread. But i don't ever care because i'm having far too much fun.

I do however have a bit of a problem finding clubs that cater to my musical tastes, i generally hang around 80s or 90s clubs or other 'indie' clubs but stay well away from anything with house music or modern pop (not that i don't like any modern pop, i just dislike the majority). There are a few i frequent but probably my all-time  favourite is Feeling Gloomy.

Feeling Gloomy is a club that will basically play any genre of music, from any era, as long as it has sad, miserable or pessimistic lyrics but a beat you can dance to. So they'll play anything from Rolf Harris to Leonard Cohen to Bonnie Tyler to McFly, though generally it stays more around a modernish indie sort of sound. It's the only club i've been to that plays both the Arcade Fire and George Michael within a few songs of one another and i love it. On a good night it can be the most fun ever. Though sadly there is one DJ who i dislike more than others as he is fond of Dizzee Rascal and once called security on a friend of mine because apparently he has no sense of humour and the club did, in my opinion, go downhill a bit a while back. Can't really explain why, i just didn't have as much fun for a while, there was too much modern music and not enough songs that actually had sad lyrics (though of course songs are subjective, me and Carl have often argued about whether or not a song is sad) and not enough 'classic gloom'. I'm very happy to say i think it has gone right back up and now i am so happy whenever i get to go.

This night is run by two great blokes, Mike and Carl, who masquerade as 2 sad, lonely, nerdy muso men who live with their Mums (Phwoar!!) named Len and Cliff, who formed the club and come and dance and play on stage sometimes. These guys also have a club i used to adore, Club de Fromage, which is basically a cheaper, more fun version of Guilty Pleasures. I still love the club but some of the male clientelle really put me off going back (just a note guys, rubbing your erect penises up against a woman who has shown no interest in you whatsoever is not the way to win her heart) though i do like going on occaision if i have a big enough group to protect each other. 

 But anyway, Feeling Gloomy is just my absolute favourite club (so far) there's generally only a few songs a night i dislike and can tolerate just standing around for them, or going to pee or whatever. It can be busy but i always find a little nook where i can flail myself around like a mental patient in a padded room and if you're brave you can dance on the stage. A faux pop band called the Miserabalists lipsynch and play air guitar and give out carnations which is entertaining. There are themed nights like Mozza night or Bowie night where there will be lots of songs played by those artists, so it's good to check on the website so you don't miss out on Belle and Sebastian night, or wander in on Rolling Stones night as i did (there are only 3 stones songs i like). Also if it's your birthday (or you're pure evil and lie) you get cake! 
Drinks are pretty expensive (for a poor artist like me anyway) so i generally just get pissed before i get there. It's just pure fun for me, listening to gloomy songs really does make me feel better, and the melodrama in a lot of the lyrics really cheers me up. Also lots of the DJs are really very handsome so i can have a good perve.

If i were a DJ there (which i should be because i am cool and they need a lady DJ) here is a little sampler of what i would play which also acts as one great big playlist with most of my musical tastes for anyone interested!
Spotify Playlist
If you don't have spotify... Umm... i'll try and work out how else to post this, but i'm so bad with these things i only just got my head around spotify.

Feeling Gloomy goes on every saturday from 10:30 to about 3:30 (website says it's 4 but it's usually earlier) and costs from £4.50 to £8 depending on the time you arrive, if you have a flier or are a student etc. It's on at the 02 Islington Academy which is very near Angel tube station. Also they have just opened a once a month night in New York.




Fun Fact: Carl who runs the club was the first person i was brave enough to ask out since Robert Lever when i was 14. Poor Robert, when i asked he stared, open-mouthed in horror before shouting 'NO!' and running across the playground.

Someone who seriously inspires me

and will continue to inspire me until the day i die is the bands Sparks.

The Sparks Brothers (Ron and Russell Mael) are just to me the most amazing, exciting and inspirational pair of men that i have ever encountered. They are a band that defies any for of catergorisation and transcends simple music into an expression of art. They have been going since the late 1960s and have released 22 albums to date (the latest being a radio musical based around Ingmar Bergman), despite both being in their 60s they have shown no signs of slowing down or a wish to retire from the pop schene. A couple of years ago when their 21st album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep, was released they decided to stage an amazing series of concerts where they played every one of their 21 albums in 21 nearly-consecutive nights (from my memory they had 2 days off a week so as not to die). I managed to get the 'golden ticket' to see every show (a gift from claire before we were together. It was the most amazing present i've ever recieved) and it was probably the best experience of my life.

Sparks music is truly genre-defying as they are true chameleons, changing their sound far more often than others well known for changing their styles (Bowie, Madonna etc) and have gone through glam-rock, prog-rock, disco, club/rave music, electronica and now a sort of operatic, multi layered symphony effect. And through all these multiple changes in musical style they have defied pop conventions, singing songs with lyrics which vary from stories of living cigarettes (Nicotina), the misery of being born beautiful (Funny Face), the misery of being born ugly (I Wish I Looked a Little Better), suicide pacts gone wrong (Here In Heaven), buyers remorse (I Bought The Missisippi River, Now That I Own The BBC) and so on and so forth.

When they do write songs with more traditional plots of love, heartache etc they always have a twist in the lyrics. For instance their song 'Perfume' lists a large string of ladies and their choice of scent before declaring the reason he loves the girl he has chosen is because she 'don't wear no perfume'. ('The Olfactory sense is the sense which most strongly evokes memories of the past. Well screw the past! That's why i want to spend my life with you). Or discussing that women can be won over as they are turned on by linguistic devices ('Chicks Dig Metaphors, use them wisely use them well and you'll never know the hell of loneliness). I could go on all day (and probably will right many, many other posts detailing my love for them).


Their looks are also commented on often. Russell was a classic 70s heartthrob with his huge poodle perm and handsome face but his brother with his slick backed hair, angry stare and Hitler/Chaplin moustache made them quite a novelty. Ron's moustache changes as often as their musical styles and he even wrote a song about the merits of sporting a 'tache.

Ron writes the songs and plays the keyboards while Russell sings and, even to this day, leaps around the stage and dances. They have an amazing sense of humour, once claiming that they were Doris Day's illegitimate children (this led many confused journalists to claim their 'real names' were Ronald and Russell Day) and saying the reason they were more popular in England than their native America was because Russell has bad teeth. I had the honour of meeting them at a signing during their 21 albums in 21 nights and they told me i was 'really cute' and they liked my outfit. I just stood and trembled and repeatedly told them that they were amazing. I wish i could have said something more.

So, why do this band and these 2 individuals inspire me so much? Well firstly their lyrics have inspired me to make many, many paintings, outfits or looks based upon the stories they tell. But mainly I just think they truly represent the spirit of individuality. They show me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being exactly who you want to be, even if your appearance makes shop assistants run screaming from you in Woolworths (like poor Ron). That you can get to amazing places by doing just what you want to do without changing to meet what is popular at the time. And they teach me to never, never give up.

Also this counts as my post for Muso Mondays! :P

Muso Mondays - Thomas Dolby

Mr. Dolby is an odd choice because frankly i'm only really keen on one of his albums. While the others are good too, I just wouldn't consider them some of my favourite music. However his album The Golden Age of Wireless is absolutely fabulous! In my mind it's hit after hit with only one i dislike ('radio silence' it bores me) there's the haunting 'Airwaves' which makes me shiver, the famous 'she blinded me with science' about a romance between 2 chemists and my favourite 'Europa and the Pirate twins' which tells the story of childhood friends torn apart, one becomes famous and the other can't get close to her, but he remains hopeful that they'll be the pirate twins again :) I also love 'cloudburst at shingle street' which hs the most amazing ending lyrics: 'when i was small i was in love, in love with everything. And now there's only you'.

Beautiful synth-pop 80s fabulousness. Songs with lyrics about science, childhood, submarines and windpower!

Another fabulous thing about Thomas Dolby is his amazing look and concept. He basically dressed and acted like a mad scientist, but experimenting with music instead of.. science stuff :P

I had a strange experience a few years back concerning mr. Dolby. I went to a gig of his and adored it, i wrote about it in my livejournal and commented about how i was just disconcerted by the fact he now looked like an ordinary middle aged man. I didn't mean it in a bad way, i was more making fun of myself because i'd had this bizarre image of him in my head of still looking like a big 80s mad scientist. Somehow he came acoss my blog and commented that he didn't think he looked that bad for a man of 50. Of course i was mortified that i could have accidentally hurt him so i wrote a grovelling apology in reply. I don't know if he ever saw it. So if somehow you manage to find this too mr dolby i am truly sorry and never meant to imply you looked old or anything, i think you are fabulous!

Anyway i don't have much else to say, but i think he's just fab. Oh and he was responsible for the soundtrack of the infamously bad flop 'Howard the Duck'.



Hyperactivate!

(most of the songs i mentioned are on youtube but embedding is disabled, if you're interested check this: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thomas+dolby&search_type=&aq=f )

Muso Mondays - David Devant and His Spirit Wife

So this is going to be a new weekly thing of mine, muso mondays, where i shall bore you with ludicrous ravings about my favourite bands/songs/singers and so on. Usually this will come on a monday (simply because of the alliteration) but i was busy earlier this week, so today will have to suffice for the first one. I like the idea of setting certain blog themes to days of the week because it will give me some sort of structure so if i'm being lazy it will hopefully make me blog out of an obligation to myself :P
Anyway just so you know these are just my opinions, i certainly don't have the worlds coolest taste in music and i don't particularly know much about it (the compulsive music classes i had until age 15 didn't take a hold in my brain) i just know what i like and why i like it. here's a very generalised list of musical genres i like: 70s british punk rock, old school hip-hop and rap, brit pop, bubblegum pop, glam rock and most stuff from the 80s. I tend to dislike modern pop, r n b, classical, reggae and christian rock.

So, lets get going on the first post!



On thursday i got to see my second favourite band in the whole world*, David Devant and his Spirit Wife. By some bizarre series of events i have become friends with 2 members of the band, Foz? and Mikey (this would be shameless namedropping, but i can't imagine anyone reading this blog has ever heard of them. I could be wrong, but i doubt it) which has led to some really odd adventures.

Anyway, how best to describe David Devant? Hmm i guess on the surface they'd be classed as an 'indie-pop' band, if that can exist, or possibly just Brit-pop seeing as they were most prolific around the big Brit-pop boom, but they are so much more than that.

The band have been going since the early 90s (i think, i can't be bothered to do anything crazy like actually checking my facts) and while they never hit 'the big time' they did get a large and loyal following and very nearly broke into the charts after the success of their first album. They play rarely now, twice a year at the most, but these gigs are always amazing and bring out all of us loyal fans, the dangerously devoted.

Originally they were sort of a 'novelty act', not in a crappy kids-entertainer or joke-song sort of way, but in that they actually had a novel, original idea. They were sort of a 'concept band' and had amazing stageshows, involving 2 men with props, or 'spectral roadies' as they were called who would perform magic tricks or other stunts, the most famous being during the song 'ginger' when one would grate carrots onto the head of the other to literally become a 'carrot top'. The band were made up of 'The Colonel', 'Professor Rimschott', 'The Vessel' and 'Foz?'. The idea was that David Devant (a victorian english magician) would possess 'Vessel' (or Mikey, the main singer) and... well i've never been really sure how the others in the band or the stage antics fitted into this concept, i guess it's not very neat, it's just all an expression of individuality, art and magic that culminates together. Sadly these on-stage shenanigans were mostly dropped by the second album, though a more perfomative side is sneaking back in to the more recent shows, and i've heard rumours of something big coming soon.


In this video you can see some of the old tricks the Spectral Roadies would get up to. Also anyone as nerdy and into films as me may recognise the suit, once worn by Malcolm McDowell in O Lucky Man!:


Onto the music itself. Well, this is the part i'm going to have the most trouble with, describing music is incredibly difficult to me. It's sort of Beatles-ish, sort of Bowie-ish, poppy and fun, lots of keyboards, guitars and good drumming. The lyrics (ah, now i can go on about lyrics for ever and ever) are just fabulous. While they tend to keep to sort of regular themes of songs, love, life, the human condition etc. the actual words and spirit of the songs is a lot more playful. Recurring themes would be mis-rhymes ('Living in London don't seem that appealing, maybe your lover is living in Deptford', 'And my Uncle says i'm Barmy cause i don't pack my bags and join the Navy'), the supernatural and hopeless love. Early songs tended to revolve as lot more around stories about David Devant and the aformentioned wife.

One of my favourite tracks is 'I Think About You', a song which is purely about lust, lust of such overwhelming power that you're left unable to think of anything else at all. It also has some great references to masturbation (something that often occurs in my favourite songs. I wonder what that says about me O:) and even manages to make a nob joke out of a medal 'Oooh ahh in the garden with my famous purple heart on', 'When i think about you i do something i am not supposed to!', excellent.

Another song of note would be 'I'm not even going to try', the words of this speak deeply to my heart: 'I hope tha you understand what it means to me just to live a lovely life that is prospect free. Cause i'm not even going to try'

There most famous track would be 'Ginger', which Mikey said was meant to be a sort of war cry for outsiders (a bit like Mis-shapes by Pulp or Trash by Suede, those songs were big at the time) but using red hair as an analogy for an innate 'difference'


So in short i think they're an amazing band. I can't exactly say in words just why i love them so much, they just have a sort of magic around them and i guess that I, like Madame Devant am drawn in to these miraculous showmen. They certainly won't be for everyone, but if you like witty lyrics, men old enough to know better prancing around stage in glittery costumes and 3D glasses and indie-pop-art-brit-rock then give them a try :)

Also they have a song about Cluedo.

*although this is liable to change at any time, but number one is always the amazing, unimitatable, unforgettable Sparks. I'm sure i will bore you about them for many muso mondays to come..