Despite All The Amputation, You Could Dance To A Rock 'n Roll Station

When I was little my favourite band was my dad's band. My favourite songs were Rock 'n Roll and Visjes. If you had asked me whose songs they were, I would have proudly said 'my dads!', until I harshly learned about the concept of 'coverbands' when I asked him why someone was singing one of their songs on the radio. 

It took me a while longer to find out that 'Vicious' was not a Dutch song about small fish.

As a teenager I got into glamrock and eagerly obsessed over Bowie and Bolan, Slade and Sweet, and movies like Velvet Goldmine and Hedwig And The Angry Inch, and it lead me back Lou Reed. I listened to Satellite Of Love, Walk On The Wild Side and Rock 'n Roll a million times. I bought the Velvet Underground banana album and I wanted to live inside it.

I listened to nothing but Perfect Day for days after I spent the perfect day with my girlfriend.

Your favourite songs become a part of you after a while. When you hear just one note of a song and a warm, familiar feeling runs through you. The first second of Walk On The Wild Side feels like coming home, taking of my shoes and petting my dog.

"If Lou is doing Bowie, and Bowie is doing Lou, Lou is still doing Lou" - Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. 

Lou was the coolest guy on earth, and now he's going to be the coolest guy in rock 'n roll heaven.

 RIP Lou, artsy glam king, bisexual hero of grumpy weirdness

I will never get to ask you which different kinds of organic soup you talked about with Chuck in his Genghis Khan suit, but if I had you probably would've rudely ignored me and left.

*Lulu did not happen, I repeat Lulu DID NOT HAPPEN it was a figment of our imagination

Do You Think That It's Ok If I Bring Some Friends To A Party

I was just folding up some clean clothes when suddenly I remembered Jann Wilde. Jann Wilde is a Finnish musician that I used to be really into, and actually never quite stopped being into but just kind of didn't think about for a while. But Jann Wilde deserves to be thought about. Because he had this amazing song that starts with my favourite line in the world.

" I say we should get together, because our love is like pink leather"

I once went to see him in a small café in Tampere while I was visiting my Finnish friend. It was amazing. 

He was always my ultimate musical secret, the artist that no one had ever heard about and that I would try to impress people with (which obviously didn't work because no one takes my taste in music seriously.)

He changed his look to something a little less flamboyant, but I will always love him the most in a one-shoulder glitter unitard trying to get onto Eurovision like in this video which refuses to embed

He also had amazing two-toned hair and he manages to sing like Bowie, Johnny Rotten and Elvis in once song:

 Just take my word on this one guys, this is is something you want to listen to. His amazing music doesn't seem to be on Spotify, but youtube is bursting with it.

You Put Me In The Magic Position

Today is a beautiful sunny day to match my sunny and positive mood! Last Wednesday I went to see Patrick Wolf, and I was really blown away by how amazing he was. He is one of those artists that I've known about for years and years, and I always enjoyed his music when I came across it but I've just never completely got into him for no particular reason. When Lisa told me he was going to be playing in Southampton I decided I was going to go and see if maybe he would convert me into an actual fan if I saw him life, and itt turned out the gig was actually in the university concert hall, 10 minutes away from my house! I was into it right away, he is one of the most sympathetic and interesting artists I've seen in a long time and his music is just beautiful and unique and wonderful.

Another significant thing that happened this week is the discovery of the above picture. It has inspired me massively to write a collection of surreal poems about fish. I've been writing a lot lately since my creative writing module has started, in fact I've just finished my first assignment that I might put up here later. It's about the time I spent in the magic land of witches and talking skeletons (my childhood). 

Also, very soon I'll have exciting Darkness adventures to share with you all! Three gigs of my beloved favourite band coming up in the next three weeks or so.

Enjoy the sunshine, and if it is raining remember what Percy Shelley wrote: 

"Oh wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

Couldn't remember the greatest blogpost in the world

... this is just a tribute.

I was going to write about something really awesome but I forgot. So I decided to shamelessly copy Lisa's idea and write about fun things about living in England.

- The wide range of Marmite themed products.

These are things I have purchased at the supermarket. Supermarkets sell Marmite teapots and mugs. Also Marmite cheese is one product here, not two separate ones. I think the word you're looking for is H.E.A.V.E.N.

- It is the country where Lucie also lives.

 Lucie is one of the most funny, stylish and just downright AWESOME people I have ever met.

-I get to speak English every day, and hopefully stabilise my accent. I used to do 2 things that made my English accent really weird, they imitating characters from the Mighty Boosh all the time and spending a lot of time in Newcastle. I literally spoke like the lovechild of The Hitcher and Cheryl Cole for years. Which was actually pretty awesome now that I think of it.

- There was a box with a face on Sussex Uni campus when I was there last week.

 I don't know about you, but I personally consider this a great perk. 

- I got to interview Toby who used to be in Stone Gods and is now in O.W.L.S. He is a very nice chap and his new band is pretty sweet. My review of their gig is up at The Edge here and the interview will be up very soon.

- I can just take the train to London. Which I will do in a few weeks to see Mika and go to an awesome Christmas event with Cailtin Moran and lots of awesome bands. I want to give Caitlin some stuff that I wrote. I'm thinking the Kitchen Appliances Murder Mystery because I still think it's the funniest thing I ever wrote. Except really funny jokes that I make in facebook chat conversation with Cécile but they are unpublishable I'm afraid.

-England is, of course, the country of Really Fucking Sweet Music. Everyone who doesn't believe that Britannia rules the soundwaves know nothing about music and should go on a strict diet of Beatles, Bowie and Britpop. 

 -Have another picture of box

A Light in The Darkness

About 8 years ago, I turned 16 and my uncle came round to give me a present. It was a cd. To be precise, it was The Darkness first album Permission to Land which had just been released a few months earlier. I spent the entire next day wandering around the house on my own, and sometime during the afternoon I remembered I had a new record to listen to. When I put it on, and those first few chords of Black Shuck started, I was immediately intrigued. I hadn't necesarrily expected anything one way or the other, just that going by what I'd heard about this new retro glam/hard rock band I'd probably enjoy their music at least a bit, but I certainly hadn't counted on the fact that this album would change every single thing about my life. I listened to the album a few times, and I just really, really, really liked it. I looked up stuff about the band on the internet, developed a crush on their guitarist Dan Hawkins, and from then on when someone asked me who my favourite band was I would say 'The Darkness!' without skipping a beat.
Gradually this appreciation turned into a fully fledged obsession. When I had finished high school, I took a year off because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and within the first few months of this rather boring time, my high school sweetheart dumped me. It's fair to say I was going through a proper identity crisis. If I wasn't going to uni, didn't have a job beside delivering mail 2 mornings a week, lived with my parents and didn't have a boyfriend, WHO ON EARTH WAS I EVEN? I cried for a while, and then one day I was working and had a stack of Oor music magazines to deliver. On the cover was my good old favourite band The Darkness promoting their second album One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back. As soon as I'd finished my round, I cycled to the local record store and bought the album, and I listened to it as I was laying on the floor in my parent's living room. I had found my new identity, it was that of Darkness-fan, and from then on the only thing that mattered to me was this band. I'd wake up and think 'why is it again that I'm so happy? OH WAIT THE DARKNESS EXISTS.' In the next few months I underwent a complete transformation. For the first time in my life I felt like I was doing something entirely because I wanted to, not to please people or to overcompensate for my low self-esteem, but just because I thought it was fucking awesome. On the day I ran away from home to fly to Liverpool on last notice to see the band, I wasn't the ever embarrassed victim of bullying, the ridiculous idiot that people only hung out with out of pity, I was the fucking star in my cowboy boots and black eyeliner, I was exactly where I wanted to be and as far as I was concerned I was going to stay there forever. In England, in a dark alley behind a music venue, with my favourite band.
In the following years The Darkness broke my hearts by splitting up, but they continued to influence everything I did in one way or another. Dan started a new band with whom I had some of the most amazing adventures any person on earth has ever had, I met some dear, dear friends, I got into various other bands like The Answer and The Ark who all changed my life in their own way, I went to fashion school and quit again, I travelled to England on my own several times, started studying English in uni, moved to Amsterdam, made more dear friends, fell in love a million times, I had amazing times and awful times, but unlike Before The Darkness, I felt that I was in control of my life. It certainly wasn't always easy defending my dearly beloved glamrockers to 'serious people who know a lot about music', but to me they were never a joke band. Their funniness, their humour and the way they are serious about being silly is what has inspired me so much, they taught me that it's ok to be a bit flamboyant and outrageous, to be a bit retro and a bit modern at the same time, to wear insane outfits and glitter and make stupid jokes, and if people don't understand what you are about then hey, it's their loss, they're missing out on the party.
The two things I've constantly wished for in the past years were always 1. for The Darkness to reform, and 2. living in England for a while. I'm listening to their new album right now, and moving to Southampton in 5 days. Within the first 2 weeks of living there I'll go and see 2 Darkness gigs. Sometimes, life can turn out at least a little like you want it to :)