The Dresden Dolls & Richard O'Brien - 'Time Warp'

My punk cabaret raggamuffins of choice, The Dresden Dolls are touring down under at the moment and have done Oz and Tasmania and are now in New Zealand. Amanda Palmer was wandering round Auckland yesterday and popped into a juice bar for refreshment. A bloke noticed her eyebrows and asked her if she was going to see The Dresden Dolls that night. The bloke turned out to be Richard O'Brien who is opening his own show in Auckland. So he joined them on stage and here's the result - 'Time Warp'!



This made me smile and I couldn't help but grin when Brian channelled Little Nell for her lines in the song. Amanda doesn't know it but her job is to make me happy and she's doing it nicely. Magical things happen around her and she generously shares the magic. Thank you.

Gabba Gabba We Accept You, We Accept You One Of Us

Are you one of us? Were you there in the '70s when Glam rocked, disco danced and punk rebelled? Three great musical traditions in one short decade.

Someone I follow on Twitter had a fifty-something birthday today, Older Than Elvis, and she wasn't happy. She started me thinking though, and I realised that every now and then I still think that people who are 50 are old and then I remember that I'm 51 and I don't consider myself old at all. One rule for me and one rule for everyone else.

I'm still seeing and doing new things, experiencing new things (hey, I baked cakes for the first time two weeks ago!). I haven't settled into the kind of routine I saw my parents enter and, presumably, every generation before them. I'm not old, but I'm older. I still think in terms of 'when I grow up' (and only sometimes I'm joking), when I settle down, when I buy the cottage in the country or by the sea... and it'll probably never happen.

I'm deeply proud of some of my heroes. I was browsing through some old blog posts to find something about the Blood Red Shoes and found my post about Siouxsie playing at Shepherds Bush four years back and noted then that I said I was proud of her. It's an odd thing to say, that I'm proud of someone I don't actually know, but I am. Those old punks are still doing things. The onus is on us to still be worthy of them.

One song that always gets me going is 'Quickstep' by The Adverts from their 'Crossing The Red See With The Adverts' album that includes the line, 'Pretty soon you're gonna see what punks can do...'. And we all did - you changed music, you changed culture, you changed me.



Young people are beautiful, all of them. And so are older people. We are all beautiful. Look into my eyes and guess what wonders they've seen, Look at my feet and wonder which paths they've wandered. Have you seen what I've seen? Have you done what I've done? Have you sat in a theatre with tears running down your cheeks with emotion or pogoed all the energy out of you to ear-splitting music?

Yasmin Limbert tweeted last week asking about things to do before you're 50. I replied seeing the orange/pink dawn over the Ganges at Varanasi. I could have added wandering down jasmine-lined country lanes in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka. Or danced with ghosts at Karnak? Or be taught to use chopsticks by an old Japanese couple in a restaurant in a little town outside Siem Reap in Cambodia. Or be shown how to see the rabbit in the moon in ruined temples at Kandy? I could add lots of things. I've seen wonders.

I wouldn't have seen those wonders - or appreciated them - if I was 20 or 30. Wisdom may not come with age, but experience certainly does. So does death, sadly.

I was strangely affected by the death of Poly Styrene last year, one of the great heroes of my youth and a hero of my older age by releasing 'Generation Indigo' last year. Poly came back to us in a flash of glory and then left to join Krishna. I never met Poly and I wish I had.

I also never met The Ramones but I saw them play back in the day. The founding Ramones all sadly died, but Tommy Ramone is still going and I had the joy of meeting him and shaking his hand when he supported Buffy Sainte-Marie in New York a few years ago. I *had* to go up to him and say I enjoyed his set as Uncle Monk, I just *had* to.

For me, the real punks were always just being themselves, not what anyone else thought they should be. And that's a key message for all of us. Don't be homogenised, don't be the same as everyone else. Walk your own road and be you. You might not be terribly radical but that doesn't matter. I always wear mis-matched socks as a choice. I'd rather not wear socks at all, but the weather doesn't always allow that. I have glitter in my bureau to comb into my beard when needed. I can see ballet one night and raucous punk the next night. That's all part of me.

Be you. Are you one of us?

Blood Red Shoes Are Back

At long last, Blood Red Shoes are back with some new music! They tweeted a link to their new site to promote the album, 'In Time To Voices' and it fell over with the volume of hits. So they tweeted a link to a sound-only video on YouTube for the first single, 'Cold', and here it is with both Laura-Mary and Steven sharing lead vocals. No doubt there'll be a proper video appearing over the next few weeks. Give it a listen and enjoy.

Matilda The Musical

Last night Chris treated me to a late booking to see the new musical on the block, 'Matilda The Musical' at the Cambridge Theatre. I'll pre-empt a lot of wittering on by saying it is excellent. It really is. And great fun.

As soon as we got inside it started to draw me in with the chalk boards all over the walls with kids drawings, silly jokes, comments on school dinners and suchlike, getting us all in the mood. My favourite joke as 'Why is 6 scared of 7? Because 7 8 9' (geddit?). I'd be scared too! Inside the theatre proper and the stage and surrounds are also decorated with chalk boards and building blocks with letters scrawled on the side, flooding the place like a big primary school. It worked really well, not too over-powering but just enough to get us all in the mood.

It's the story of little five year old Matilda Wormwood starting school. Her parents didn't want a child and, if they did, wanted a boy not a girl. She's a genius in a humdrum household of a ballroom dancing mum and a used car salesman dad. But Matilda can tell stories and can challenge authority in the shape of the evil headmistress and help the nice teacher get her inheritance. O yes, Matilda is special all right.

I was terribly impressed with the professionalism of the child actors singing and dancing their hearts out, choreographed to a T and no flagging at all. The child actors change regularly but I was very impressed with James Beesley as Bruce with his love of chocolate cake, Jemima Eaton as Lavender who must tell us everything and, of course, Cleo Demetriou as Matilda. She gave a masterful performance, striking all the right poses, tugging at out heart-strings and successfully speaking Russian at the end. It'll be interesting to see where she in in 10 years times.

Of the adults, I liked Peter Howe as Matilda's dad - he usually plays her brother but was stepping up due the normal dad being off - and Josie Walker as her selfish mum. Lauren Ward was lovely as Miss Honey, the nice teacher (naturally) and Bertie Carvel was magnificently menacing as the creepy and evil Head Mistress, Miss Trunchbull, the former Olympic hammer thrower.

The songs are by Tim Minchin and they stand up in their own right with no hint of his voice singing them. I loved 'Loud' sung by Mrs Wormwood in praise of make-up and hair-dos and being loud as opposed to the mousey Miss Honey but my favourite song was 'When I Grow Up', the proper opener to the second half. It's a lovely song of hope and aspiration from the point of view of a small child and it transported me back an awfully big number of years to when I might have sung that song. I bought the cast recording on the basis of that song and I'm enjoying listening to the whole show again.

I also bought a badge at the merch stand that reads, 'The Bigger The Telly The Smarter The Man'. That is so *wise*.

Go and see it as soon as you can. And then see it again. I shall.

The Slow Demise of the Record Shop Lesson 15

There are very few record shops around these days. There are some brave independent shops fighting the good fight in various nooks and crannies but the only high street shop is the venerable HMV that's been around forever. It had a poor Christmas season and doesn't seem to know what to do to increase sales. Its days are probably numbered, at least as it is now, so I try to support it by shopping in my HMV of choice on Oxford Street. It is a huge shop with two floors full of music and one full of DVDs and I love browsing there, picking things up and putting them down, then picking things up and heading to the till to pay for it.

One thing I like about the big HMV shop is that it's virtually guaranteed to have every record on the day of release and, as a fan, that's when I want to pick up the new music from my heroes. Or, the re-released and re-mastered records from my heroes. So, since today, all the records from Public Image Ltd were re-released in re-mastered form (except 'Metal Box' that we re-released in 2009), I hopped on a bus to my record shop of choice and headed for 'P' in the racks and there they were - lots of shiny PiL records!

I was busy harvesting my records of choice without really paying attention, just checking they were all the re-mastered versions, when I suddenly noticed the price - £13 per CD. £13?!?! Eh? Single CDs don't cost that much these days - double albums maybe, but even then I'd think twice. I put the records back, all except for 'Happy?', a PiL album that was deleted back in the 90s and a record I never had until a year or so ago when it was finally available for download. I couldn't leave without any records, after all.

I've just taken a look on Amazon and all the PiL re-releases are priced at £6.99. Amazon is undoubtedly making a profit from selling the records so what kind of mark-up is HMV expecting to get from these records? For a company that's already in trouble, why is it going out of its way to alienate customers with a silly pricing policy? I'll buy my PiL albums from Amazon, thank you.

Butterfly Cakes

Today I took my first steps into a bigger and tastier world. I baked my first ever cakes!

Over the summer last year I found myself becoming more engrossed each week by a telly programme, The Great British Bake Off presented by Mel & Sue. I'm not a great one for cooking shows (or cooking generally) but I like Sue Perkins so I tuned in to see what the programme was about and fell under its spell. Then last week there was a celeb version of the show for Sports Relief. That was it, it tipped me over the brink into wanting to try baking myself.

Today I went out to buy some cooking scales and a load of ingredients and then started making cakes. I'd picked the easiest recipe I could find in the Be-Ro cookbook online and this was for Butterfly cakes baked with a straight forward Victoria sponge recipe. Butter, caster sugar, eggs and flour, carefully mixed in the right order, spooned into 16 paper cake cases and then baked for 15 minutes. I was astonished to see them change colour and rise as I watched them in the oven - the magic was working!

Then I made the buttercream icing with butter, icing sugar and a few drops of vanilla essence. Cut the top off the cakes, spoon on some icing and then put back the cake top cut in half to make wings. I used the plain icing for most of them and then added red stuff to the icing so the last few were more colourful. I need more practice, obviously, but an hour after I started and I was eating my own cakes.

I know it's not the most amazing thing in the world, to bake some simple (but yummy) Butterfly cakes, but I'm quietly proud of myself. There's now a messy kitchen to clean up but that's nothing compared to the glow of pride and the yum in my tum!

The T.A.M.I. Show

Last night I watched the T.A.M.I. Show on DVD, the Teenage Awards Music International (or sometimes the Teen Age Music International). It's a live music show filmed over two nights in Santa Monica, California, in 1964 and then released as a film across America. It was released on DVD only in 2010.

The film is compered by Jan & Dean and includes great live performances from the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Lesley Gore, Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas, The Miracles (with Smokey, of course), the Supremes and the Rolling Stones. An odder line-up will be hard to find. It was full of go-go dancers (on speed from the looks of it) that included a young Teri Garr and Toni Basil and John Landiss (later to become a film director) was in the audience and provides a short commentary on the DVD.

If you're a fan of any of the bands you'll love this DVD - they all look so young. Except, of course, Chuck Berry and James Brown and, in all honesty, Mr Brown stole the show with his consummate professionalism and showmanship, falling to his knees in exhaustion only to get up again and drive the show forward. It was a case 'ouch' for his poor knees followed by 'wow' for the recovery. It must've been awful for the young Rolling Stones to have to try to follow that performance since they topped the bill that night. The Supremes looked a little bit lost in their nice evening frocks and big wigs standing next to the Stones (that Jan & Dean introduced as "Merseybeat").

The performance that made me think and wonder was from Billy J Kramer with his rocker hair and big white smile. Billy was big in 1964 and the decline started the next year. He was 21 and his career peaked with this show - he had more hit singles but none were as big as his 1964 hits, especially 'Little Children' and 'Bad To Me'. I'm not a fan of Billy but he has a nice voice, a big white smile and looked so young in the film, starting out on his career without realising that the biggest hits were already behind him. That's not to say that the best times were behind him - they probably weren't - but it must be odd to think that nothing will ever be the same again when you're only 21 years old. Of course, you don't necessarily know that at the time.

On the other hand, that's a great way to start your adult life, all the travelling, the people he must have met, the places he's been and things he's seen. He lives in America now and still performs now and then. He still has an impressive mane of hair.

The Dresden Dolls Live On Tap

Last week I watched Their Holinesses The Dresden Dolls play live in Australia over a webcast on Party On The Internet. The full show is now available online courtesy of those nice folks at Moshcam so here it is for you to enjoy:

Watch Enmore Theatre and other great gigs on Moshcam.

The gig starts with an acoustic 'Cosmic Dancer' before launching into Brian's thumping drumming for 'Sex Changes'. I saw The Dolls play 'Cosmic Dancer' years ago at the Astoria and still remember the buzz of conversation while they played since so few people knew the song (it's by T.Rex, of course) but good on Amanda and Brian for still playing it.

You can also see the encore in which a drunk twat gothgirl gave Amanda a nasty hickey and The Dolls play Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs', another old school song. Now I have live Dresden Dolls in high quality video available on tap whenever I need a fix.

Thank you Amanda and Brian and thank you Moshcam and Party On The Internet.

Vinnie Jones hard and fast ...

This is a new advert from the British Heart Foundation that is being shown on telly throughout January - forget the kiss of life and go for hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Let Vinnie Jones show you how...

The Dresden Dolls Live in Sydney

Yesterday morning I saw The Dresden Dolls live on stage from the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, Australia, through the wonder that is the internet. The gig was filmed by Moshcam and broadcast through Party on the Internet. The quality of video and sound was excellent and it was great to see Amanda and Brian together on stage again.

They played an old school Dresden Dolls concert with a mix of their own songs, covers and surprises and it was fun to see Amanda take over the drums while Brian picked up his guitar hero axe for 'You've got to fight! for the right! to paaartaaaay!'. Starting with 'Cosmic Dancer' and finishing with 'War Pigs' was like the olden days returned for a re-run and it was great to hear Amanda's solo song 'Astronaut' with Brian bashing and clashing and tishing away most creatively on his drumkit. It sounded excellent.

The only bit I didn't like was during the first encore song of 'Mein Herr' when Amanda went up into the theatre balcony to sing and some drunk or stoned goth girl latched onto Amanda and wouldn't let go until she was prised off by a security bloke. Standing at the edge of the balcony looked dangerous. Afterwards Amanda tweeted a pic of her throat that the twat of a gothgirl had been sucking on and it looks nasty (see below or avert your gaze).

'Mein Herr' took me back to seeing the Dolls for the last time at The Roadhouse in 2008. They played two nights and I went on both nights. The gig was filmed for DVD and it's widely available. I still have fond memories of lighting up a sparkler to wave during 'Sing' at the end - little things make me happy.

Anyway, I took a few screen-grabs during the broadcast so here are a few pics of the Dolls live and kicking in 2012. Love at ya!