A Merry Andy Warhol Christmas to you...

I love Andy Warhol's illustrations for Christmas cards that were commissioned by Tiffany & Co. during the late '50s up to 1962.  Much like his gorgeous inky jazz album covers, I find their simplicity and freshness really charming.

Here are just a few.

Delightful, aren't they?

Have a good one - and thank you for everything! x

Hey, fellas, have you heard the news...

You can’t keep a good song down, that’s what I used to think.  However, having heard a few ruined by having all the guts taken out and incorporating a simpering female vocal to soundtrack an advert, I’ve changed my mind about that statement.

But this isn’t one of those songs.  I haven’t yet heard a bad version, and hope I never will. 

Here are four renditions of 'Leaving Here' and, I hope you’ll agree, they’re all excellent.

THE BIRDS

As it happens, I heard these four versions in the wrong order.  The first time I came across 'Leaving Here' was on a mini-album of tracks by British r’n’b group The Birds released on Edsel in the mid-80s.  I'd never heard of the Birds before then (only the Byrds) and had been unaware that a certain Ronnie Wood played guitar for them before his time with the Faces and the Stones.  There's loads that can be said about Ronnie but I'll offer something a bit more random....  it's about a jacket.  Whenever I think of Ronnie, I think of my friend H and how jealous I am of an item of clothing she owns (and sometimes wears).  It’s a gorgeous slim-fitting, striped boating jacket that used to belong to Mr Wood himself!  It came into her possession through a friend of hers who just happened to be married to Ron’s brother Art, and it looks a bit like this... 

She lets me stroke it from time to time.

Alongside Ron Wood in the Birds line-up was vocalist Ali Mackenzie.  Some years ago I was lucky enough to enjoy the brilliant Small Faces tribute band, The Small Fakers, perform the whole of 'Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake' (complete with Stanley Unwin’s nephew there, narrating the relevant bits) at the 100 Club.  As the night drew to a close, Ali Mackenzie joined them on stage to give us a few extra numbers by the Birds, including this song.  It was as close as we were going to get to the real thing (both Small Faces and Birds) and I loved every minute. 

MOTORHEAD

Some time after discovering the Birds’ version and thinking it was their song, I must have heard it by Motorhead, although I’m not even sure I put two and two together at the time and certainly didn't know of its true origin.

Motorhead transcended boundaries when it came to musical genres, didn’t they?  Research tells me they recorded this in December 1976 and it was due to be released as a single by Stiff Records, but they were still under contract to United Artists at the time who prevented its release (in spite of UA’s refusal to issue Motorhead’s debut album).  So it didn’t make it as single at the time, although it did turn up on the eponymous Motorhead album on the Chiswick label the following year.  

I missed out on seeing Motorhead in 1978 when they played our local venue; I was only 14 and they were far too hairy and scary.  My sister went, though, and said it was so loud she thought her ears were going to bleed.  At least Mr SDS and I did once wave to Lemmy across a street in Notting Hill (and he waved back, bless him!)

EDDIE HOLLAND

Eventually, I got to listen to the original!   Eddie Holland released it in 1963.  Eddie was of course one third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland song-writing and production team responsible for many Motown hits. A far better informed friend of mine who knows his '60s soul introduced me to it, and it's great to hear the purity and power of the song's first appearance complete with brass, having only heard others' versions first. 

THE STRYPES

And finally, I heard a much more recent version when highly revered and incredibly young Irish band The Strypes, who had a penchant for the retro sound of bands such as the Yardbirds and Dr Feelgood, recorded it for their 2012 EP 'Young Gifted And Blue'.  They were all still in their teens, but the song itself, by that time nearly forty years old, suits them perfectly.  I found out in the course of writing this post that only a few weeks ago they announced that they were breaking up.  I guess they just packed in so much at such a tender age and I'm not sure where else was left for them to go, so I can understand and respect them for that.

Before I finish here, an honourable mention should also go to the Who who recorded an excellent cover, just as you'd expect.

So, I just have to hope no-one comes along and spoils it now... I don't think a soft tinkly piano version with a withering sing-song vocal would really cut it.

The wrong knickers

Not the actual knickers

Sometimes a seemingly simple walk down to the local shop can be more stressful than expected.  I have a feeling that what I'm about to tell you is something both male and female readers will identify with from time to time.  This, of course, isn’t the first time it’s happened to me.

So, it wasn’t until I had got to what must have been exactly half way there this afternoon that it started.  The riding up.   My knickers - you don't need detail, just know they're not a thong - had ridden up one cheek in a very irritating fashion, and then with every further step it just continued to get worse, of course.  Pinned against my skin by tight jeans there was no way they were going to ride down again of their own accord and settle back against their assigned place just above the natural slope of cheek-base/thigh-top interface.

So, I did that thing I think we all do (please tell me you do.) I’ve got a thigh-length coat on so as I’m walking I (very swiftly and surreptitiously) slip my hand under the hem and slide it around behind, then nip down inside the back of my jeans to do a bit of high-speed furtive sortage, having checked there are no pedestrians in my immediate vicinity, whilst continuing to walk and appear as nonchalant as possible. Would anyone from a window, or any passing cars notice?  I’ve no idea what this little manoevre looks like from the outside, as I've never tried it in front of a mirror. Possibly like getting something out of a back pocket. Or possibly like someone actually putting their hand down inside the back of their trousers whilst trying to appear not to.

Ah, that’s better, I think, as I reposition everything - snug and sorted.  For about three steps.  Then the seam rebels once more.  Up it goes.  Up.  Up again and I can’t think about anything else.  I try the sneaky you-can’t-see-what’s-going-on-under-my-coat move again but this time it just makes it worse and causes a bit of cutting in in a place you don’t want to know about.  It’s further to go home than to continue; I’m going to have to get to the shop and linger around the vegetable aisle like this.  I persevere, crazily preoccupied by what’s going on with my pants.

The point of me waffling on about this nonsense is simple – wouldn’t it just be brilliant if we could treat our private underwear malfunctions just as we do a stone in the shoe?  You feel that little piece of grit pressing into your foot and what do you do? – you stop, put your bag down, stick your opposite arm out to balance, or preferably use it to prop yourself against a wall, cock your leg and remove the shoe, shake it, express surprise at how tiny the offending object was (it felt huge!), put your shoe back on, swivel your foot about a bit on the pavement to check it’s stone-free and then continue on your way. It's all very public and nobody cares.  Similarly with the slipping bra-strap.  So I would like to advocate the same tolerance of occasional open-air knicker adjustment.  Only when absolutely necessary, of course.  A quick drop of the trousers, sort yourself out, do yourself back up and on your way, instead of all this secret faffing about.  I suspect that anyone who saw me knew exactly what I was doing anyway...

Abstract moment of the week #10

I was very excited to order a new book: something particularly special in these circles as it happens because it’s been created and compiled by one of our fellow bloggers, Martin.  Not only that but it also contains a story written by him - and not only that but it also includes a contribution from yet another talented writer in the blogging community, Rol.   I’m full of admiration and delighted for them both and couldn’t wait to read their creative writing, as well as all the others.  I do like a good short story, plus it’s for a worthy cause, more info here.

So – book duly ordered from Amazon last week.  Package was due to arrive next day by 8pm, said the email and the tracking info.  Excellent!  

It didn’t arrive when they said it would, I don’t know why.  But never mind, a little message explained there’d been a problem and it should come later this week instead. 

But then when it did, there was no-one in, so the postman had to take it back to the sorting office.   A bit of a pain in the arse picking it up as I couldn't get up there straight away, but eventually Mr SDS managed to fit it in to another journey he was making and here it is at last.

Only the package didn't feel much like it had a book in it.   I've opened it up to find….

...Two tubes of Bulgarian irritative dermatitis ointment, well of course!

Just one more reason why I don’t trust Amazon to take over the world.

Grey area

Soapbox time!

A friend of mine went to her school reunion recently.  “You know it was so funny to see that all the men with hair there had gone grey,” she said, “...but none of the women had!”  

They say that grey hair adds six years to a woman’s age. Gee, thanks for that, just what we need for our confidence when we're already going through you know what.

Of course that's perpetuated when so many use artificial hair colour.  Imagine if everyone who covers up their grey hair stopped doing so, then this ‘six years older’ thing would be meaningless.  It’d be no big deal as, by the time we reach our mid-fifties, most people have gone at least 50% grey anyway.

However, as every modern woman knows, it’s against the rules to show your age.  

For example, you rarely see a middle-aged female TV presenter with grey/white hair, compared to their many male counterparts for whom it doesn't seem to be a problem.  (Gets me all feminist, this...)  The pressure on women in the media to stay looking younger is colossal and, ridiculously, it seems their jobs can depend on it  - but that's a whole topic for another time and place.

Although, seeing as I've brought it up...

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

See what I mean?

Anyway, in the meantime, I'm taking a stand.

White hair is nothing new to me; since late childhood I’ve had one small patch of it – a ‘Mallen Streak'.*

The 'Mallen' Streak, as later sported by Dave Vanian

and more naturally by the Millibands

It's not that much but I hated it.  I remember the time a couple of mean girls at school shouted, “Ugh! You’re going grey!”  and, as a sensitive 13-year old, this felt mortifying. So bleaching the whole of my hair and adding unrealistic colours through the punk/post-punk era conveniently disguised it as well and I loved what I could do with all those nasty smelling chemicals.  It's ages since I've used peroxide or Crazy Colour  – but still I've spent years tinting that stubborn white stripe (I should call it Jack) to blend in with the rest.

This year the long, sunny Summer bleached my dishwater blonde and the freaky white bit didn’t show up as much so I left it.  But now, as my Winter coat grows, it's more obvious, and suddenly so are plenty of other new white hairs joining it.  I'm going grey.  Just as you'd expect at my age.

So I could reach for some Nice'n'Easy now and be ruled by an endless regime of dyeing and touching up roots.  Or I could just think, you know what, fuck it.   Doesn’t mean I've given up caring about appearance - just that I’m still me, whatever.  If it's against the rules to show your age, what are rules for if not to be challenged and rebelled against?  Why should visible signs of maturity be so negative for women?  (I think men still look great with grey hair... or no hair... and all stages between!)

I may cave in, especially if I get talked down to like a little old lady, whereupon I'll be tempted to do all manner of unspeakable things with the pointy end of an umbrella, and then reach for the bottle (of 103A Medium Blonde). 

For now, though, I'm finding it oddly liberating and have decided, in defiance of both sexism and ageism, to embrace it.  So there!

Exhibit C

* Apparently it's 'Poliosis', a genetic condition where there is an absence of melanin in head hair, eyebrows or eyelashes.

"Keep that one; mark it fab"

You like your music edgy, raucous, fast and pounding, verging on the anarchic?  With crashing percussion, some reverb, overloaded and slightly off-key guitars?  A freshness and rawness to it with a screaming vocal that stretches almost to ripping point at times, the music’s driving, chaotic energy taking you with it before ending in the glorious sound of feedback?

“Surely not the Beatles?”,  I hear you say.

You know the official version of ‘Helter Skelter’ from the White album; it’s already considered a bit wild - the Beatles’ ‘heavy metal’ moment - but if you like it even wilder (as I do) please take three and a half minutes to listen to this previously unreleased session rendition, which is more visceral than ever and about as punk/grunge as a 50-year old recording gets.

I can't embed through Blogger so here's the youtube link:

Helter Skelter (second version, take 17)

(Available as part of the 50th anniversary super-deluxe 6CD/blu-ray box set thingy that's just been released this month)

But is it art? VI

The sunlight was so bright yesterday morning that I had to pull the blind down to be able to work.  But I was unexpectedly distracted and mesmerised by the scene it created - the flying and flitting silhouettes of sparrows (there's a birdfeeder on the other side of the window.)  It's often the simplest things that I find the most charming  - couldn't resist a clumsy attempt to capture their movements in a video.

Art?

An Anglo-Saxon education

I took myself off to a very rainy London the other week to meet a friend at the British Library, where we wandered around an eerily lit gallery to view some beautiful art, literature and treasures from 1300 years ago. 

There in the semi-darkness I half expected to bump into Lance and Andy from ‘Detectorists’, for there was indeed Anglo-Saxon gold on display...

Exquisitely shiny, tiny coins, brooches and intricate heavy-looking belt buckles almost glowed from behind their glass cases.  The exhibition was well-attended – with white hair and glasses the look of the day - but no-one spoke, or if they did it seemed only in hushed, reverential tones.   It felt terribly straight and subdued in there, but I was excited by what I saw to a degree I hadn’t expected, and found myself having to stifle little gasps of inappropriate enthusiasm.

What always gets me about the sort of artifacts on show here is when I can make that human connection.  When I think about the real person who wore that buckle and the fingers that looped the belt through its clasp – that kind of thing.  And, as an illustrator, I wanted to see the marks of the artist’s hand on the manuscripts, the strokes of ink and the characterful features, and imagine the creator’s mind at work,  just like mine.  I was more than rewarded by what I saw – astounded at the brightness of the inks in particular – I had no idea that the vivid oranges and greens so frequently used in the illuminations would shout out so much, not unlike the shades and strength of the felt tip pens I used as a kid.  Almost garish.  I’m convinced too that people had better eyesight 1000 years ago than we do now, and nimbler fingers too, for the minute scale of the details in the decorations was quite mind-blowing. 

In the dumbed-down world we live in I’d come to hate the way labels on products often refer to them in the first person.  I’m usually irked by a pack of carrots and its patronizing instruction to “keep me in the fridge!”, etc.  But after this exhibition I realised this is nothing new and it’s softened my attitude. The anthropomorphism of inanimate objects was very evident in Anglo-Saxon times – the books that introduced themselves:  “(Name) wrote me”, and the brooch which threatens any thief with an inscription: “May the Lord curse him who takes me from (owner)”, etc.  Books of riddles too, a huge literary genre 1000 years ago - more proof that really we’re still the same people at our core, and that’s what I want to believe.

Even an early version of a word search, with a palindrome...  

I love the figure at the base.  (British Library postcard)

Plus, I love books.  I love the physicality of books, the feel and look of them as objects, their construction and their role.  Huge books of manuscripts with metalwork bindings reflected their importance and I was amazed by the sheer outrageous size of a giant bible (the ‘Codex Amiatinus’), measuring 2ft long by 1ft wide and an incredible 1ft thick, weighing in at 75lb (over 5 stone for those like me who still think in Imperial). 

With my desire to relate to the illustrators involved in particular, I was really gratified to see a lovely 11^th Century book called ‘Marvels of The East’.  Written in Old English, it’s like a mythological travel guide, describing the weird and wonderful creatures that can be found in some faraway Eastern place, such as the “men who are born fifteen feet tall and ten feet broad.  They have big heads and ears like fans”.  I'm thinking Martin Clunes.  Nooo!

Or how about this:

"Lertices, a small creature with donkey’s ears, sheep’s wool and the feet of a bird."

 (British Library postcard)

Or this:

"The Blemmya, a man 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide with his head in his chest." 

(British Library postcard)

I lingered long over this image, studying those fingers wrapped around the frame in an imaginative graphic touch, the benign expression on that face and that lovely inky outline and, never mind those hundreds of years that have passed, at that moment I’m inside the artist’s head.  What a great commission that must have been!

The thing is, I was absolutely shit at History in school. Bored out of my mind I would concentrate on trying different handwriting styles and experiment with coloured inks as Miss Jones drearily dictated facts about Acts and... well, stuff I simply can't remember for that very reason.  It's the human relatability that makes it come alive for me and when that comes via two of my favourite subjects, art and language, as it did in this exhibition - I'm in.  And seeing that Anglo-Saxon gold, well, to paraphrase Lance, it's surely "... the closest you'll get to time travel".  Definitely worth a trip to a very rainy London.

'Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War' at the British Library, until 19 February 2019