Tryin' to Hit It, Chic-a-Tah.

Tryin' to Hit It, Chic-a-Tah.


“Moms U R brilliantastic”, she messaged, and “Luv U lodes”, so that was good, and sitting through god-awful Madonna movies was a small price to pay, it was, even if it wasn’t the premiere that she couldn’t get tickets for, how do you get tickets for premieres? no idea, and surely she didn’t really communicate like that, she was teasing her old and out of the loop mother, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she? Anyway, it had been a good thing to do, a thing to make her first vacation a bit special, to send her back to Norwich happy. Which was the important thing. Now she was back at uni and reconnecting with all her bestest friends that she’d known for about ten weeks off and on with the family sized hole for Christmas. And Becky was back to being on her own. Not so brilliantastic, that. Not so brilliantastic at all.
Who said that the best thing about gin was its power to thin mascara? More panda-eyed evenings in front of David Attenborough on the digi-box, nursing a tall gin and orange, wishing there was someone else there other than the bloody cat. Sorry Kylie, you’re a lovely cat, but not a great conversationalist. Good for cuddles sometimes, when in the mood. And then the bloody mother polar bear sets off with three babies and arrives with two, and she’s in bits again. Ridiculous. Stop it. You are an efficient office manager in a significant local authority, you do not blub over bereaved polar bears. Look, the mother doesn’t care, she’s hopping across ice floes regardless, she isn’t getting sniffly and red-nosed. But it was too much so she turned it off. Read something. She picked up that little book that won the Booker, that Jan had said was good. First they all go off to uni, which she doesn’t like at all, then one of them kills himself, quarter of the way in and there’s misery and despair wherever you look, thanks Jan. No books then. Music? Ella had left her Adele disc in the player, no cover, the cover was in Norwich with Ells, just the disc. 19, like Ells. That Adele, she really worked on her album titles; 19, 21, next release in two years any guesses what she’d call that one? But she did do Dylan covers, even if they were covers of crappy post-god Dylan. And they made her well up and overflow, too. Bugger. Make her feel her love indeed. Coffee, then. A cup of coffee out in the back garden, looking across frosty Hackney Downs and thinking Hackney wasn’t so bad, really. Pretty, on a night like this. Only occasionally set on fire by resident hoolies, generally quite pleasant. A good place for a little girl to grow up, really, whatever her mother thought; “You can’t raise a child in Hackney, darling. Where will she go to school?” Hackney. “Where will she learn to ride a bicycle?” Again, Hackney. “She won’t have any friends. Any English friends.” God, mum. Weren’t you a hippy? Didn’t you believe in peace, love and understanding? Didn’t you get off with a sexy French rioter in Paris in May ’68? What happened to all that? No English friends? She has dozens of English friends, and some Jamaican friends, and a bunch of Indian friends, and a really good mate called Sabisha who was Turkish though possibly actually from Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani?, anyway loads and loads and loads of friends. More friends than you bloody have in Welwyn Garden bloody City, that’s for certain sure. More friends than she had in Hackney, come to that. Jan. Trisha. Split a bottle of wine friends. Go to “Sex in the City” at the Rio and shout at the screen friends. Come over and weep together over lost men, lost looks, lost ear-rings. But Trisha and Jan didn’t have children. No weeping together over lost children, that she did on her own. All on her own.
When Ella was eleven she wanted, really wanted, really really wanted Britney’s new album. Please it’s nearly Christmas please. It’s called “In the Zone” and it’s awesome, please please please. But it’s hyper-sexualised twaddle sung by a pitiable young woman abused by fame and media hype, switching between declarations of abstinence till marriage and a shrill promise to shag everyone in the building because she was in a mood to party all night long. How can you like that? It’s grotesque nonsense. It’s not mum it’s awesome. And anyway Amy’s got it and she’ll burn it for me if you don’t buy it for me, and that’s just stealing royalties from working musicians and you say you don’t like that, mum you’re such a hypocrite. So she got “In the Zone” and played it non-stop for three weeks, and then decided she liked Madonna better. Did Becky like Madonna better? Not really. Though if you were going to talk about shagging a lot, it sounded better from the mouth, the dirty mouth, of a forty-something woman with a few miles on the clock than from a raddled reject Mousketeer who was only a year or two older than her teeny daughter. Eleven isn’t teeny, mum. Eleven is quite grown-up. And what’s a Mouseketeer?
When Becky was eleven, she was listening to J. D. Souther, and Manassas, and Chris Hillman’s band , what was it? Desert something. Rose. Desert Rose. Because she was quite a lonely child and Welwyn Garden City didn’t thrill her, so her mum’s record collection was a source of comfort and companionship until she was old enough to get paid work at “The Wheatsheaf” an buy her own records at Record World in the high street. She liked Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Queen, and Culture Club. David Evans pointed out to her that all the bands she liked were really gay, so she’d gone back to her mum’s records, all made by men who were men, or anyway David Crosby, who she fancied a bit. And Gram Parsons. Oh god, Gram Parsons. No-one had ever been quite so gorgeous, so heart-meltingly gorgeous as Gram. Tim Buckley, he was gorgeous. And Jeff. So like his father. Becky had spent quite a lot of 1997 mourning the tragically short life of the Buckley boy, no space for concern about over-privileged Sloanes copping it so that fluffy-headed twerps who thought they knew her could feel miserable. Jeff had rare talent, rare chops, rare beauty. Doe eyed Sloanes? Do us a favour. And Ells liked him too. Play that sad song mum. Hallelujah. They’d sat on the bed being sad together, then Ells would say “Lilac wine!” and they’d giggle because that was silly, you couldn’t make wine out of lilacs that grew at the bottom of the garden, Buddleia wine, silly, ivy wine, grass wine, giggle giggle giggle. Together, giggling together. And she’d grown up and grown into Britney and grown out of Britney and discovered Madonna. She still liked Madonna. Madonna was cool. Amy Winehouse was cool. Adele was a bit round to be cool but she had an amazing voice. And off she went to UEA with her new i-pod full of Madonna and Amy and Adele, off to learn about French and drama and boys and being her own girl, her own young woman, and being away. So far away, much further than Norwich.
Becky went back inside, because she was a bit chilly. Half-past-nine, time for bed? She went to turn off the cd player. She ejected Adele and stood there with her finger through the hole in the disc, wondering where the cover was, remembering where the cover was. She wasn’t going to cry any more, she wasn’t. She looked through the stack of cds to find an empty box. They were all the discs Ella had dubbed onto the i-pod her dad had sent her for Christmas. There was “In the Zone”. Becky put it on, track one, “Me Against the Music” It’s me against the music, says Britney, just me. And me, says Madonna, and me. If you really want to battle, saddle up and get your rhythm, tryin’ to hit it. Chic-a-tah. People passing a terraced house in Clapton might have heard, if they’d listened hard, the sound of a woman doing not only Britney’s part but also Madonna’s part, whipping her hair, to hell with stares. Getting her rhythm, trying to hit it, trying to hit it. Chic-a-tah.

Rough Magic and Skewed Visions: some thoughts regarding Lupen Crook's new album "The Pros and Cons of Eating Out".

Fairy stories come in two flavours: Walt Disney, and the Brothers Grimm. The one has friendly woodland creatures doing the washing up, and the other has women slicing lumps off their feet to make the Charming Prince's shoe fit. In Lupen Crook's world, every glass slipper contains at least one severed toe.

His new album "The Pros and Cons of Eating Out" is the most coherent example of the Crook world-view yet. There's the trademark hurky-jerky percussion, with gorgeous guitar lines swimming out of the chaos. There's the disorientating mix of spat-out, venomous lyrics segueing into songs of immense tenderness. He writes and performs and discards more songs than any ten other bands. Some of them I love straight away, some take a while to sink in, and some (a few) I don't care if I never hear again; but all of them are interesting, every one repays attention. Here, he's built an album of songs that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts, and the parts are really good.

He fronts a band that's sort of two guitars, bass, and drums, but the resemblance to most other skinny indie guitar bands stops there. He likes a wild anarchic atmosphere, so as well as Bob Langridge' sympathetic swinging drums, there's pots and pans and hubcaps being bashed everywhere, and chaos and noise and wild, and then there's a guitar coming out of the riot that is filigree and bell-like and truly beautiful. It's a trick he plays a bit too often maybe, but the sound is angelic. Hellish cacophony, angelic melody. There's a theme here. I really liked the German bit in "Sleeping Lions", which sounds like a prison-warder shouting at inmates, but which translates as "Come together. Hold hands. Love one another. Quickly. "

There are ideas and surprises in every song, and they all get better with lots of listens. Tom Langridge is responsible for most of the lovely guitar and keyboards, and is perhaps the greatest hubcap percussionist in Britain. Clayton Boothroyd holds it all together with some subtle, supple bass, Bob Langridge is such a sensitive, appropriate drummer, kicking it when he needs to, laying back when he doesn't. They all support and sustain Lupen's phenomenal song-writing, angsty, visionary, compelling. It isn't always comfortable in his world, but it's never dull.

The first track on the album, "Fantasist in March", has a line:"As for us, we'll be damned, that's for sure." and a really cheerful voice from the back goes "Yeah!". That's what the album felt like; we might be going to hell but it's going to be an interesting ride. And as the last song says: "Hang on everybody that don't belong, it's going to be alright."



Chris Lilly





Lupen's blog and information can be found at: http://www.lupencrook.com/