Music To Get You Through

These assorted rippers are currently making editing far more tolerable:

Florence and the Machine, Dog Days



Mumford and Sons, The Cave



Stornoway,* Zorbing



The Band, Rag Mama Rag



Example, Kickstarts



Julian Cope, Sunspots



*Will shamelessly add that they were among my first friends in Oxford.

British picks plus one vintage American. The Aussie thread is that they would all be welcome at a festival (in fact 1, 2, 3, 5 all from a recent British festival)...and Aussies do indeed love festival music. Enjoy!

Working in the Dark

LPC threw me an easy post the other week: to provide the tenth picture of my first folder. Nice one, LPC. It must be getting across through my long silences and pissy posts that I am running up mental sand dunes these days and in need of some small victories. I am subtle and self-contained like that. Like LPC, I am not the biggest techie going round so instead I have provided an old picture that was found in one of my few folders. It's of a mother and her girls sharing stories and enjoying Autumn in the Loire Valley, France. I took it two years ago, the day after the wedding of a family friend.

I wish this were the Autumnal mood of Oxford, here where the grey clouds overtake the peach-pink clouds by 4:30pm, and the sky becomes the darkest blue by 6pm. Apparently, there are more (or at least as many) correlations between poor health and the onset of daylight saving time than adjusting to 'normal' time in Autumn. I am not convinced. The odd farmer, please excuse me, but this whole getting dark in the early evening is, for the rest of us, simply rubbish.

Evidence for the government inquiry and/or PhD student class action (leading to legislative changes): Most evenings, I have slap my own face and throw myself against my carrel wall in order to stop myself from crawling under my desk to lie down and stare and blink. As that last dark bird passes the fluffy, descending clouds, all I want is a good tuck-in and a parental kiss. Instead, frowny, I drag myself to eat dinner in College hall (something having boyfriend had spared me) where the walls bounce an orange glow that makes me squint and feel I have been woken up at midnight to join a party, but a party of people with chunky backpacks and flourescent trouser protectors. The air is chilly and makes a sound like we are all in a plane, a plane heading for the darker months and then, eventually, death.*

Tonight, I avoid hall. I am heading home to cook something with Vitamin B in it, and watch my lovely friends (some of my oldest here, the first to make me less frightened of scientists and mega introverts) play in their band, the dreamy Stornoway, on Later with Jools Holland. They're playing alongside Jay-Z, the Foo Fighters, Norah Jones, Sting and Ginger Baker, a prospect Brian, the lead singer, said made him need to lie down. Will post a clip of it tomorrow or as soon as I can (learning not to make promises during this writing time). Have significant creativity envy, but been trying my best to reframe thesis as a hugely free, infinitely creative pursuit. Please feel free to chuck me some help here.

As for the pic, I tag Aliteralgirl (whose recent post on creative living is pretty superb).

*Not a cry for help. Last clause put in solely for my own amusement.

Festival Gear, British Style

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My boyfriend took me to a music festival, the Cornbury Festival, pretty Oxfordshire, last Saturday. It was my second time and it was super. The highlights: The Magic Numbers, the lamb, mint and potato homemade pie, and having a pretty good go at a harnessed trampoline (to aid somersaults) activity with a bunch of five year olds. It was not the same festival as the one where the above pics were taken (Wireless Festival, Hyde Park), but a variation on the same themes I am sure: music, booze, food stalls, rides, tie-dye rubbish and cheap trinket stalls, fairy outfitters etc. (One could argue, though, that Cornbury has some of the best food of any festival.)

The ladies' festival fashion wasn't far off these pics: beaucoup de check shirts, old and faux-old (Batman, scouts, Atari) t-shirts as dresses (sometimes with shorts), floral dresses (maxis are huge - haha!), charm necklaces, mixture of chunky and scrawny bracelets, leather sandals, trendy wellies, aviators, and just entered my teens hair, all tied together by a cup of Pimms or a bottle of beer and some fairy wings or glittery fake eyelashes (the posh rurals probably get into the fantasy accessories a little more heartily than the London coolies). Of course, in an instant, British festivalgoers, no matter how trendy, can transform en masse into an army of garden gnomes in dark green or black hooded, full body raincoats. I know. I saw it. It's weird.

Only in Oxford...

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...would you spend a Thursday evening eating overpriced pub grub (£10 for a slab of crumbed chicken in a dry bun) with students from Poland, The States, The Netherlands and Italy and then ride down in your Converse to join a bunch of English undegrads hear Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, present a case for why Labour should win the next election (on the basis that it is more committed to substantial equality than the Conservatives) and explain why the British Goverment did not lie to the public about the presence WMDs in Iraq; how there was no dishonesty just wrong information and that it was a matter of public confidence being lower than it should be. Only in Oxford would you find yourself unlocking your bike right next to the MP himself as he jumped into the back of a shiny cobalt van surrounded by a bunch of geezers in black suits. Only I would be so desperate for attention as to ask them for a lift back to my College, "plenty of room fellas". I got a couple of chuckles for my troubles (Mmm...tasty doggie biscuit treats).

Am off to Ben's Big Gig tonight with a load of friends. You can watch it live at this site from 8pm-10:30pm GMT. It's geek pop that Demi Moore thinks is "hilarious" and to which posh celeb chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has given the thumbs up (or the pointy finger).

Lady Crush

photo (c) Tom Plant (via LittleFeat.net)

Shaun Murphy, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you...

Shaun is the wonderful, soul singer in Little Feat (est 1969). I saw 'the Feat' play the other night in Woolver'umptun. I feel like a bit of a shonk calling them 'the Feat' when I was one of only a handful of under forty-year-olds, one of three people who didn't dance in a kind of trancy sway, one of two humans without a long grey ponytail, and the only one there who didn't know every word of their songs off by heart. I was in the front row, centre, next to this guy with his chin on the stage sending special messages to (my) Shaun.

Shaun Murphy is talent and goodness embodied. Her smile is magical, she looks at the audience members, nods as though she recognises you, blows kisses and offers her hand to the fans (who you know have cut out pictures of her all over one room of the house). Shaun has a powerhouse voice but thankfully resorts to none of the hand gestures of Celine or Idol contestants. Plus, she is the best tambourine-player I have ever seen. She beats hard but smooth; they have a good relationship those two.

In a baggy buttoned shirt over jeans, with red pointy shoes and a helmet of red hair, Shaun looks like she would cook your breakfast on a Sunday and ask about your homework on a Monday, but then she could also just decide that she wanted to leave you to play tambourine in the fields.

I must say that my hand went pathetically limp when she shook it and I gazed upwards like I was at the gates of heaven (she does have stunning blue eyes). I couldn't get rid of my dumb grin for two days...and I am still in love. But it's a lady crush, which is very different to a girly crush.

By the way, if you want special treatment from grotty little muso kids at record stores, watch a couple of these Feat clips below (the third showcases my Shaun's talent), somehow bring them into your conversation at the desk and you'll probably get a discount. 'Little Feat' is pretty much a secret code in musoland for 'I am a serious musician/music-lover so give me rushpuct.'

Fat Man in the Bathtub

Dixie Chicken

Sailin' Shoes