This is where my famous green typing ends for a while, and you get to sample The ‘Zine. It is a magical thing when you can use paper and a pen in a cross-promotional marketing strategy inspired by THE APOCOLYPSE OF PRINT. Here we go:
The Mona Cheryl by Hannah J 'Leonardo' Davies
*Have you got any thoughts on this month’s paper-licious issue, written on pretty ancient paper my mother used whilst at university I might add? Email me: hannah@hannahjdavies.com with your thoughts. A letters page might happen, y’know.
PS: Click here to watch something which touched my heart this Valentines. Vice Magazine’s VBS bring you, yes you, a Rule Britannia special six-part ‘Swansea Love Story’, focusing on addicts such as Lee Dennis, who graphically recounts his drug abuse and how he contracted Hep C in prison, as he rifles through his possessions in an Iceland bag casually. Desperate fights to get clean in a city which, according to its older inhabitants hasn’t changed…its the people who have. All in all, such deprivation, tales of sexual abuse and familial collapse are handled with class by director Leo Leigh sooo go watch. Plus, CNN thought it was noteworthy.
Listening to: JAM. I hope Liorah Tchiprout, the author of this pretty amazing playlist for use with Spotify, won’t mind me sharing it with you x x
Even more January greetings from hannahjdavies.com…I realised that it would be a cool idea to keep a track of how many posts I’ve made by occasionally quitting with the ‘oh-so-ironic’ names and actually just telling you a number. So here we are: post number 24. Yeah, I was gonna make a Jack Bauer joke there but I think a Dane Bowers one might be more appropriate considering that the ‘singer-songwriter’ has just come second place in this year’s Celebrity BB.
Is it just me or…
1) Does Dane look weirdly like Anthony Costa? Are they, in fact, the same person?
2) Does a “Dane Bowers” sound like a specially bred sheepdog?
3) Am I the only person who heard this:
on loop everytime he engaged in parlance with other members of the house? It’s stuck in my head like a tapeworm.
Anyways, I digress, Alex Reid – the loveable ‘doofus’ of the house came out on top (not a reference to his new adult flick) – and Dane has seemingly gone back to being a ‘singer-songwriter’ for the time being. Whatever that means. Swedish voyeur Jonas aka Basshunter has presumably flown home, so us girls can breathe easy for a sec without having to worry about him re-enacting the moment when he left a pencil lying around for a helpless lass to chew on…which had been up his friend’s “area”. Should always observe that rule about not chewing borrowed stationary, right?!
Meanwhile, foul-mouthed ‘Lady’ Sovereign’s raison d’etre was to shock us with her childish behaviour, and then slag everyone off for “treatin’ me like a child!” She really made a (corned beef) hash out of staying popular in the house. Not sure if it was just me who thought that this Daily Mail pic looked like Davina “Peter Pan” McCall had gone all Fantasia on us and spawned an evil, (younger) twin?
Shawwwwty Sov. And her delightful older lady-friend, Run(ningawaycoveringmyears) DMC
Annoying Davina actually went in to the house, albeit for 48 hours, but the real stars of the show were big-lipped billionairess Ivana, who was duped into thinking she had won a business award, and Dane, whose chilli-themed attempts to ruin dinner for a task were actually met with culinary compliments. He went on to fake a nightmare in order to win the task, but to be honest I doubt anyone in the house was getting sweet dreams with oddball Stephen ‘Alex’s Brother’ Baldwin’s cautionary Biblical tales and glammma modull Nicola T’s spooky premonitions that something was wrong with her baby daughter.
Anyways, I digress; but this is a little scary:
Celebrity Big Brother 7 was one to remember, alright. We had a bit of everything, really, including wrinkly Ronnie Wood’s ‘girlfriend’ Katia, who bore a striking resemblence to a creepy doll and didn’t really have a lot to say for herself.
Sisqo was surprisingly cool. Guess I would be chilled-out too if I’d been living in the bargain bin of Asda since 1999, right next to all that Birds Eye.
Moving swiftly on…
Are the KIDS united?
I hate book-ending ‘pop culture’ posts with ‘culture posts’ but here we go…
Jacob Wheldon is your average 16 year old.
Until his parents took away his copy of COD this week, he could happily spend hours online and his penchant for Facebook is undeniable. He loves Cheryl Cole. Oh, I almost forgot…he’s a musician who was sharing a stage with Bloc Party when most of us were just getting to grips with the idea of ‘indie music’ rather than dance compilations of Billie Piper and Sonique (I do genuinely own a few of those). For all intents and purposes, Jacob has been Lo Fi Culture Scene since the age of 13, although he caught up with me to talk about his future now that the band are on a hiatus…
Here’s a tasty portion of vintage Lo-Fi if they’ve escaped your radar, with “ABSTRACT” from 2008:
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Hannah J Davies: “Abstract” was written when you were rather young…is the girl in question real, or was she a composite figment of your combined pubescent imaginations?
Jacob Wheldon: I write all the lyrics for the band, i think “Abstract” really was a large overreaction to friends who were starting to drink/do drugs/smoke for the first time. The girl is basically just a metaphor for what I hoped it wouldn’t do to my friends. I still hope it doesn’t, but i’m less worried now.
HJD: Officially best hidden drug ref since ‘Golden Brown’ in that case. Your video for the new single “Waxwork” was filmed at Bush Hall, which is a beautiful venue…do you prefer ‘haunts’ like this to the commercialised ‘chains’ of venues *coug&h O2 Academys etc?
JW: Definitely, with no disrespect to any of the O2 Academies we’ve played, we are not fans of them at all. Bush Hall is the venue I use to put on all the shows that I promote, it’s a beautiful venue, and the people there are the best people to work with. I think it’s a shame that there aren’t more venues like it.
Lo-Fi with “WAXWORK” (’09), as heard on Radio 1. Ring the changes…:
HJD: Do you ever get any weird fanmail?
JW: We get a lot of strange messages through our Myspace, most prominently from Japanese fans as their English isn’t great, but all of it is really appreciated.
HJD: Do you think having four out of five members with curly hair impoves your indie credentials or makes it harder in a way…besides avoiding cities with high humidity you must get a lot of people assuming that you are a standard Kooks/The View cover band?
JW: Yeah a surprising amount of people comment on all of us having curly hair, i don’t really know what it does for our ‘indie credentials’, we get a lot of people relating us to The Kooks, which i don’t see as a bad thing at all, though many do, but i loved Inside In/Out [The Kooks] [Ed: can I join…please?]
HJD: What has been your favourite track to play live with Lo-Fi?
JW: Favourite track to play, in all honesty was our cover of “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas at our school’s Battle Of The Bands to end the night in November, and that was incredible. But of our own songs, probably a song called “Yes”. It gets people dancing and people are usually singing along with the chorus before the end of the song, even if they’ve not heard it before.
HJD: Finally, where does Jacob Wheldon go from here?
JW: I’ve got to get my GCSEs out of the way – we all do. For the moment i’m doing a lot of lyric-writing, and some songwriting. I’m working on with a guy called Dean Tynan which i’m very excited about, then soon we’ll [Jacob and Lo-Fi members Angus, Tom M, Tom H, Callum] be getting back together to start writing for whatever the name of the next project will be. I’m also starting to write for a website called Get Your Ears Out, reviewing a few shows and introducing some new bands. I’m hoping to do some more promoting as I did a few shows last year at Bush Hall to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust so i hope to do a few more this year. I also want to get involved in some form of acting if i can as soon as possible…so i’m busy as ever.
Sounding off:
Jacob on… the disposable music industry:
Haha, well i would say that i’m very separate from the others [members of the band] in that, i got very very bored of guitar music about 6 months ago, and as a result have just looked elsewhere for new music. It’s not just pop music that i’ve taken to, but there was definitely something that intrigued me as to the way [pop producers] Xenomania work. They seem to have some kind of formula to writing great pop songs, and it was intriguing to see how they’d managed to do it for so long without really having to change a lot in terms of style. What interests me about pop music is the core of the songs and the melodies..I think if you can look past all the over-production and the auto-tuned vocals, a lot of it is very good stuff or else the people who wrote the songs wouldn’t be paid to write them.
Jacob on… the lowest point of Lo-Fi:
It was probably an internal thing at some point. It’s not like we don’t get on, but there’s always going to be arguments in any relationship. It keeps things fresh and exciting, though it’s important not to let it turn into an episode of Hollyoaks, which has happened on occasions.
Jacob on… freebies:
We got a lot of free albums and studio time from labels who wanted to sign us which was quality, we were delighted with it. Our booking agents also get us absurd amounts of guest passes to various shows which we are eternally grateful to them for.
Jacob on… mixtape heaven*:
Bloc Party – So Here We Are
Coldplay – The Scientist
Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road
Mark Knopfler – Sailing To Philadelphia
Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up
*subject to change…every few minutes 🙂
– Thanks to Jacob Wheldon. Lo-Fi are represented by 13artists and Kids records.
VICE VICE BABY: Noam Chomsky
Before I go I better talk about VICE. I’ve – rather excitingly – just become part of their new Blog Network (you can find a list of the other Vicetastic members here. This just means that, from time to time, I’ll cover new and exclusive content from Vice and VBS, but it doesn’t mean that my output won’t remain typically hannahjdavies!
Firstly, VBS caught up with Noam Chomsky recently…you can watch the full interview here, and below is a little teaser of the esteemed academic and ‘father of linguistics’ talking arts, speech, protest, Bad Religion, Obamarama and Americana plus much more, all with his usual eloquence and Conservative brand of anarchism.
Slightly more sense spoken between Obama’s online publicity guru Kate Albright-Hanna and Chomsky when they caught up in Dublin where he was giving a lecture, than happened here in 2006:
Chomsky proves himself to be a thought-provoking speaker in both interviews, although the latter certainly sheds more light on the world of politics and arts than Cohen did, although oddly enough, he is also Jewish and has a pretty good degree behind him so maybe they talked more enlighteningly off-camera.
Do watch Kate Alrbight-Hanna and Noam Chomsky having a truly intellectual interview here.
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Adieu til next time,
x x x x
NB: Don’t forget to send me some feedback if you have any, as well as feature ideas…hannah@hannahjdavies.com!
Happy new year. I mean it. At the beginning of last decade we were all too busy wondering whether all of our computers would crash and chaos would ensue. Ooh, and it was the beginning of a new century, a new millennium, how extremely novel. 2010, by comparison, snuck up on us like an itchy throat leading to a flu. Yes, I have been bed-ridden due to a horrific flu for the past few weeks, which is when I saw the year ticking away with extreme alacrity. Christmas was pretty good – Mad Men and 30 Rock box-sets of course – but something about 2010 was strangely scary. I started listening to Blur’s ‘End of the Century’ everyday in pensive anticipation before realising that it wasn’t the end of a century at all. It wasn’t even the end of a decade with a particular scent. I thought about all of the cool stuff that has happened since 2000, and none of it really jumped out at me as original. In the 2000s we recycled music, films and books. We remade really good things into not so good things, like Psycho. Even the top 30 films of the decade featured just two originals . Anyways, I digress. I have loved the past 10 years so here is my review:
2000
The year when giants of mainstream metal Metallica sued poor little college boys Napster (future millionaires cough cough). Also the year when Madonna brought out the electronic smash ‘Music’. I’m not sure if I knew what the bourgeoisie was when I was 8, but hell did this tune sound fresh. It still does a little. Madge helped the anti-piracy ship by getting pretty damn angry when this song was leaked on the internet four months early. Can’t mention rebellion in a song and then get angry over errrm rebellion, can you? But still she can do no wrong in my eyes.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: ‘Beautiful Day’ by U2. Yes, it’s the ‘football song’ thanks to our ITV. Yes, it wears pretty thin, pretty quickly…but Bono and co’s ability to create arena anthems full of optimism and pretension is second to none. Philosophical father of music, Michael ‘Losing My Religion, Everybody Hurts’ Stipe stepped off the moral high ground for a second to declare that he wished he’d written the song himself. Bono returned the favour by praising REM’s ‘Reveal’ the following year, but REM haven’t made a record so full of gritty personality and optimism since Shiny Happy People. In 1991. Carpe diem, Mike.
Also love:
2001
The iPod launched in 2001 to much Daily Mail hype. I was still in primary school, so I wasn’t in the first batch of white-headphone-wearers who were mugged for their £200 jukeboxes. ‘A glorified Walkman’ according to my mum…but did a Walkman have Music Quiz, Brickbreaker and a cool b&w screen? Thought not. Too cool, even though there are four ugly control buttons on iPod snr (later removed and integrated into the click wheel). Little did we know that everyone would have an iPod a couple of years later, and prices would drop as a result.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: A huge loss was felt in the world of R&B when soulful sweetheart Aaliyah died aged just 22. I remember being on the motorway as a little un and hearing a news bulletin about her death in a plane crash and feeling really, properly sad despite my geographical location (somewhere in the South of a little island called England). A massive talent had passed away before reaching her prime, and the world mourned her to the sound of ‘More Than A Woman’ from her eponymous, posthumous album which topped the charts in this year. Passion, Instant…a timeless tale of sexy suggestion and no submission from La Haughton.
Also love:
2002
September 11th 2001 was a tragic moment for the whole of the world, and it led comic-book clerk Gerard Way – who at the time couldn’t sing and play guitar at the same time – to form a foetus which later became the phenomenal, global emo spawn ‘My Chemical Romance’. I know I just said ‘carpe diem’ but carpe-ing by starting a band aged 22 with little experience? They were signed in record time and, from 2002 onwards, alt-kids worldwide from Philadelphia to the Philippines clung onto the new breed of dark heroism… and the rest is history.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavinge. I don’t care if you’re laughing, Sk8er Boi pretty much summed up every clichéd ‘she’s out of my league’ love story ever and delivered it to us complete with a backing track that sounded suspiciously like one of those ‘play along’ ones from a Guitar magazine tape. She half-talked, half-sung her way through what I thought was the antithesis to a bubblegum pop song with its narrative of kiss-chaste between a ballet-dancing girl (read: tease) with friends who ‘stuck up their (presumably collective) nose’ at a sk8er boi (yes, we had just discovered texting too). As it turns out, the black-clad, three-chord-playing Avril was actually a blonde in disguise, but we wouldn’t find that out for a few years so let’s just remember the way things were.
Also love:
2003
It was Mrs Robinson Revisited when Simon and Garfunkel embarked on a reunion tour in 2003. Also returning, albeit after a shorter hiatus of two years in 2003 was our Britney with ‘In The Zone’. It was not her best, but shall surely be remembered if only for the graphic ode to Britters’ solo bedroom exploits ‘Touch of My Hand’. Of course, its nothing in comparison to 3 – released sex, sorry, six years later – but it caused a stir at the time, as did squeaky-clean Spears’ VMA kiss with Madonna and Christina Aguilera. The transformation, which had started with the relatively tame wannabe-subjugation of ‘I’m A Slave 4U’ was complete, and set the tone for the decade when Britney would become a bride, mother, mother and bride again, not to mention a shadow of her wholesome 90s persona.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Delta Goodrem first bounced onto my radar as Nina Tucker on Neighbours. Sadly, I didn’t even need to Wikipedia that fact. The Down Under Diva was destined for stardom like plenty of Ramsay Street residents before her, and in a strange twist from other actress-turned-singer alumni she actually played a singer in the programme whilst signed to Sony (a trick later reused to launch Caitlin ‘Rachel’ Stasey from schoolgirl to star in 2008/9). Unfortunately Delta had to leave the soap when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but she recovered and rose to popularity with ‘Born To Try’, a song debuted on the soap. The saccharine-sweet piano and nasal tones gained Delta a UK number 3, which can surely only mean she was robbed. In a strange twist of fate, she ended up with a pop idol from across the globe, Westlife’s Brian ‘Kerry Katona’s leftovers’ McFadden and the pair are currently engaged.
Also love:
– NME’s top song of the decade, can you believe it.
2004
The year I went to high school. It makes me feel nervous even now..all of those people, the noise, the crowded spaces, the canteen queues that seemed to stretch for miles in the baking sunshine and the possibility of getting lost on my way to the toilets. Pantera guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell was shot dead in this year by a mentally ill fan, although it would take me a few more years to discover the genius of 1992’s ‘Vulgar Display of Power’. It was also the year when No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani hit the mainstream with her reggae-rockstar status invigorated with new-found R&B/Harajuku funk fusion to create Love.Angel.Music.Baby, kicking off a L.A.M.B franchise which continues to grow today with a clothes line and (pretty good) perfume.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Mormon rockgod Brandon Flowers was an 80s dream as he characterised a jealous boyfriend in ‘Mr Brightside’, and when The Killers debuted on Saturday morning kids tv I resented the goody-two-shoes aesthetic of this whiney, shy little man. Who on earth was Brandon Flowers and would he be all over cool lists and future charts with his bashful eau de anti-fame like an American Chris Martin? ‘Mr Brightside’ answered my perplexities with a simple YES with its perfect composition and background-music capabilities. We could choose to listen to this swirl of deliciously repetitive electronic guitar and bass or simply stick it on in the background whilst playing The Sims. And I quite liked that.
Also love:
2005
Kanye West warned us about Golddiggers who don’t mess with no ‘broke niggers’ in 2005 with help from a cast of (deceased) musical legends, a tiny Sheffield band exploded with their odds-on bet that we’d look good on the dancefloor and a cast led by a flower-print catsuit wearing Brazilian ordered us to “make love and listen to death from above”. But there was also a Maroon 5 obsession on my part, probably started due to my obsession with another A Lavinge.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: I first heard ‘Sugar We’re Going Down’ by Fall Out Boy whilst watching an MTV2 chart show, something I used to do pretty often once I had my iPod, iTunes and wanted to waste my iNheritance in advance. One of the first songs I downloaded was this slice of American alternative culture. I hadn’t listened to The Shins or Brand New yet (forgive me, Jesus) but I really liked Fall Out Boy and this schoolboy heartache in a strangely high key for a pop-rock song was comforting. I downloaded a few remixes. I ordered a t-shirt…from America. If only I’d had a premonition – by the end of the 2000s FOB would be trying the R&B route too, and I’d be sleeping in that fetching yellow top. A couple of years later I’d understand those John Hughes refs.
Also love:
2006
My best friend and I used to convene at my house on a Monday after school, and this changed to Friday sometime around 2006. One day – either Monday or Friday, but I will put my bets on Monday because hours of sorting out press releases at NME taught me that most albums are released on a Monday – we raced home. No time for Ritter Sport or gossiping by the funeral directors, no we actually ran home. At home there was a brown package with that familiar black writing – Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, etc etc. We quickly gleaned that it was from Amazon. Even though I had recently bought an iPod, nothing could’ve compared to my excitement as I unwrapped Red Hot Chili Pepper’s first offering in four years, ‘Stadium Arcadium’ – the first album I had pre-ordered from the internet and the most eagerly anticipated one I have ever wanted. Oh, the disappointment as we discovered the 2 disc mess. Since year 5 I had been ridiculously into the Peppers, probably egged on by a favourite Kiwi teacher who rolled into school wearing a moth-eaten ‘By The Way’ t-shirt and chatted ‘Californication’ and calculators with us. The biggest hit was ‘Dani California’ as I could’ve predicted from this menagerie of sci-fi influences and country casuals, although ‘Storm In A Teacup’ sounded like a haka at a zoo (apologies to the Kiwi teacher).
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Naive – The Kooks. Oh, gosh it’s embarrassing now but for a little while we all loved Luke Pritchard. He was a pale, curly-haired little Lothario from Brighton who patronized a girl beyond belief with this ode to youthful nonchalance and could’ve been the face of a blood transfusion campaign. His pain showed through as he spoke of his adoration giving way to enlightenment: the girl (*cough*Katie Melua*cough) was naive despite her pretty face. Grossly overplayed, it wore thin after a while, once they – along with ‘rivals’ The View had bitten the dust (the busker trend didn’t really continue to top the charts after this point). Little did I know that I’d be jamming away to tales of ‘Wasted Little DJs at a little music festival called Reading in 2009.
Also love:
2007
There were – in my mind – some amazingly hot hits in this year. I discovered DANCE by Justice by way of MySpace (remember those days?) and one of my best friends came to school with Klaxons inked all over her hands. Such a shame that the aforementioned catsuit-wearer got her hands on one of the ‘Golden Skans’ boys but still. My love affair with late-night radio from about 2000 onwards meant I usually just got the best tunes from XFM, and LCD Soundsystem’s ‘North American Scum’ (ahhh haaa haaa) was glamourous, hip-shaking and more 80s than Brandon Flowers et al. One of NMEs picks of the decade, MIAs ‘Paper Planes’ was released for the first time, but we didn’t know it would go on to feature on the biggest film of the following year.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Radiohead laid it bare with ‘Nude’ from their revolutionarily-released ‘In Rainbows’. Creeps all over the world paid whatever they wanted to get their hands on the album, which included this unforgettable story with a haunting pessimistic quality. Sound familiar? Possibly, but Thom cut down on the lyrics and focused on the slow-burning instrumentals which made his band famous. The organic, tumultuous yet structured sound which is created warms like a fire at a campsite whilst remaining strangely frigid to the touch. It’s no soulful Karma Police and one interpretation could be that it is about altogether more dark matters, but it holds a link to the past through Yorke’s irreplaceable, fragile vocal.
Also love:
2008
The year where Katy Perry kissed a girl, liked it and hoped her boyfriend didn’t mind it. One of my opening posts for this very website, which you can find using the Archives on the right was all about how very annoying this song had become, but it was still hugely successful and helped to launch a career which has been all about fun, flirting and press coverage. Beyoncé was also turning the tables by wishing she was a boy, and X Factor songstress Leona Lewis surprised the musical world by covering..wait for it..Snow Patrol’s Run. A strange choice, but it was a hit here and in the US, pushing Lewis from Hackney to Hollywood.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Lollipop certified Lil Wayne as an ODB and also publicised that dreaded Auto Tune which has unfortunately become commonplace in all kinds of music over the past decade. However, it was so catchy that we didn’t care about the misogyny or magic behind this candy-sweet club tune. It was also a posthumous hit for rapper Static Major who produced tracks for artists, including – ironically – the also famed-in-death Aaliyah (see 2001). Explicit, ringtone-material fare but its popularity showed that Tha Carter could straddle between genres better than 2008’s rap/rock flop ‘Scream’, an album produced by Timbaland for Chris Cornell (a UK number 70).
Also love:
2009
So many brilliant albums were released in 2009. Blur reformed. Springsteen did Glasto (see my archives). Jacko died (see my archives). Lady Gaga burst onto the scene (see my archives). Somewhere in there Kanye (see 2005) even managed to hurt the feelings of a poor little country girl named Taylor Swift. Ok, so a lot of things happened and I wrote about a few of them, so I shall not just be lazy and recycle all of that here. I’ll just cut to the chase: my song of 2009.
hannahjdavies.com’s song of the year: Tik Tok by Ke$ha was essentially ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ on speed and Auto Tune. Someone stone me?
Oh Ke$ha, how misplaced my adoration might be. Vacuous ode to hedonism “Tik Tok” stuck two very manicured fingers up to frugality in a year which saw culls at independents and even some previously untouchable artists such as Marilyn Manson getting the boot from the majors. Along came a brazen blonde who didn’t have “a care in the world” but did have, in her own words, “plenty of beer”. She encouraged us to go to parties and get “a little bit tipsy”, and although this French (kiss) Revolution was a definite step backwards, some of us started to feel empowered by this sweet antichrist for modern feminism. Yes, she references P ‘sugar daddy’ Diddy and her concept of time is slightly awry…but Ke$ha, your poor oral hygiene (anyone for brushing their teeth with a bottle of Jack?) and Dixie overpronounication made 2009 a little bit more frivolous…like.
Also love:
HAVE A HAPPY DECADE EVERYONE. GRANDS BISOUS AND CHEERS IF YOU READ THE LIST,
x x x x
PS: Thanks to all my readers for helping me get a crazy 2,000-3,000 people a day onto my site a few exciting times in 2009! Cheers to all of the people who’ve helped me get published in 2008-9, and all of those I’ve bugged for directions, phone numbers or press passes. It’s really appreciated, and I hope to work with even more great people and organizations this decade.
If you’ve just discovered the magical ramblings and professional articles then hello, I’ m Hannah and I’m a wordaholic. Welcome back if you’re one of those who has commented, critiqued (or just laughed at me) over the past 12 months.
So, its been almost a year since I kicked things off; using this site in part as a way to share my truly random findings, my best music, fashion and lifestyle pearls and also to link to my work elsewhere. It has been met with complimets and confusion, so much so that I think it might be time to reorganize things a bit, and redefine… something I’m not going to start now, because I have two months worth of material to just offload here…
So here we are, catching up with the calamity.
I’ve been told to write in black from now on by a load of very valued readers, but my green font and pink background are part of what makes me the ‘Schindler’s List girl’ of music websites. Yes, I know that film was about the Nazis. Maybe I should’ve just stuck with a comment about my Daria-like cynicism.
Anyways, I haven’t enirely been slacking off from writing in recent months. Firstly, I did another truly fantastic work placement at NME which meant listening to lots of new music and helping out in the most beautiful building in London* where anything can happen! (*my view entirely).
Inevitably, there are mundane, everyday goings on (stalkerish post, terrible demos, arguments over deadlines), but not many work experience girls can say that they’ve got to swoon over The Drums in person, who popped by to record a session for NME Radio. The Kink(s)y pair were a Stroke(s) away from me (those were much better in my head)..I digress: I was three metres away from the sparkly Speakeasy-city charm of the polished-and-deconstrcted duo. They are a dream of 1950s/60s surf soul and self-conscious noughties prose and repition. Choirs and restless brass accompaniment courtesy of these beach boys put me at a night spent in passionate conversation on a Brooklyn fire escape in swirls of iced (latte) rain. I hate on the bougeousie far too much for my own good, but The Drums are romantic and possess – for fear of tarring them with the same brush as CSS, The Shins, Fleet Foxes – a future-forward cult cool on tracks such as Instruct Me which is usurped by mixtape grainy licks of grunge rhyme”Submarine”, which seems to cite The Polyphonic Spree and Placebo.
Oh yes, and they look like they should be working at A&F.
Proper highlight material there, as well as the fact that I got to present an opening for a Roland Eye Session (a new performance venture from the guys at Roland Amps/Keyboards) and attend an unforgettable session with hardcore sweethearts Failsafe.
The boys performed their Kerrang anthem ‘Only If We Learn’ as we glided over London in our spacious pod. Not only did they give a stunning, intimate rendition, they were also some of the nicest guys I’ve yet to meet. It was easy to cast aside the Metalhammer image of a 2000s metal band being a masked gang of animal-sacrificing Viking warriors, greasy-haired axe-wielders or a pre-pubescent suicide forum with fringes…and feel what I call ‘soulcore. Metal music, courtsesy of the soul. Fellow worky Anna and I couldn’t believe our luck, and typically we spent most of the journey snapping panoramic shots on our BlackBerrys and getting soundbites about the band’s next gig which was the following evening in Newport.
And our express tickets meant absolutely no queuing. Haa.
Check Failsafe out here, and keep your eyes peeled for the video of the session which will hopefully be up here very soon!
I haven’t been totally slacking from the writing side of things, however, and I reviewed the BBC Emerging proms for my friends over at Converse Music last month – you can find that review here !
By sheer coincidence, the gig I was reviewing (which, I unfortunately didn’t enjoy at all, see above!) was at the Roundhouse on the same night Failsafe supported Bowling For Soup. Would’ve rather been with the latter bands.
I also wrote a little piece on my favourite fanzine, The Pix, run by the incredible journalist, DJ, fashion goddess of i-D Hanna Hanra. Yes, I would love to meet her, and not just because we have the same name bar one letter.
This picture pretty much confirms her status as like, SUPERCOOL…like. Anyhow, here is what I wrote – flippantly and sans title – for her fabulous website.
Here’s a review of a single I did whilst at NME. Be warned…its not too pretty:
The Duke and the King
Summer Morning Rain (Loose Music/Universal)
What exactly does ergonomic mean in relation to keyboard design? That is a question I pondered as I struggled to capture a sense of creation behind the faceless and self-indulgent mundanity that is ‘Summer Morning Rain’. Optimistically billing themselves as glam, folk and soul, these Later alumni deliver no more than unremarkable join-the-dots guitar which borrows more than slightly from Tom Petty’s ‘Free Falling’. Cliché seeps from every apparently cultish Brooklynite pore via sweet but ultimately dry observations. If there is one noble thing about The Duke and the King, it is their ability to endow the masses with genuinely comforting, uncontroversial blues. However, they seem to be swaying in the middle of the same dead-end dirt track inhabited by tributes, buskars and other imitators…and for this they will never be the raconteurs an original fairytale of New York.
Don’t think I’ve ever written a positive single review.
I went on a journalism course this month, run by the brilliant Debate Chamber, which confirmed for me that I definitely want to keep slagging people off writing and commenting and thinking, and ultimately that I WANT TO BE A JOURNALIST! Very useful course either way, would really recommend it to anyone thinking of joining the media.
Anyways, I’m going to have to get some sleep, feeling pretty vile and in need of these
those:
(yeah, they’re limited edition Snoopy tissues I went crazy for aged 12, ok?!)
and this
(the beautiful Converse/heel combo I’ve seen about London town, possibly an asian copy of a catwalk style but they are buff…even if they smell of pvc and polystyrene, and the heels might break at an awkward moment resuling in severe injury/loss of feeling in your toes).
Merry Christmas .. I’ll be back to give a cynical overview of the world very soon.
Yours,
x x x x
Currently watching: The Thick Of It, Sat, 10:40, BBC 2. Hilarious, sharp, culture-rich, punchy even after the commercial success of cinematic spin-off In The Loop…if it were a person, I would marry it, if only for the witty banter and eventual inheritance.
Currently reading: Hippo Eats Dwarf by Alex Bosse…a detailed look at Urban Legends through the ages. Well-written, if not slightly alarmist with its gruesome tales of the link between human hair and soy sauce. Pass the bento bucket!
I’ll leave you with a image from my favvvvvvvvvourite website of the year, thisiswhyyourefat.com. Hot Apple Bacon Turnover With Icing is wrong, dirty and makes me so very hungry.
Yoooo. Shit that is even more 2004 when written than in my vacuous little head.
I’m toying with the idea of giving my entries lyrically-inspired names again. Yes, I used to do that a lot…then I got bored and decided to stick with these random titles. Like when they tried to give Neighbours episodes names for a while back in about 2003. Needless to say, it didnt work…after all, if something isn’t broken, why fix it with poor wordplay.
Not much continuity there, really. I’m rambling incoherently like a Clay Aiken song now. God, he used to scare me… like Elton John if he had been raised on a diet of maize and corn in Africa, malnutritioned suitably and then dumped in the Deep Sawwwth to push corn and meatloaf around his plate and experiment with MAC on the weekends. Praise Jesus! I DIGRESS, this month has been one massive load of change for me, probably because I’m in a different school and because my best friend has moved away from London. So here I am – alone – wondering whether a drag queen has ever innocently emptied some of MAC’s Crystal Avalanche eyeshadow into a small bag and been arrested for possession of crack.
I’ve also been thinking about music…surprising eh? My current hang-up is how much people are TOTAALLY in lurrrve with the oh-so-folsky, uninspired class of today rather than enjoying the masters of yesteryear. Ok, so its plain stupid to say that everyone around nowadays is ripping off what was popular 10 or 20 or even 30 years ago. But to prove a point…
CASE IN POINT NUMERO UN im too lazy to write a proper caption: DEVENDRA BANHART
Let’s start with the random, relaxing imagery. ZEN BABES. GOOD FUNG SHUI…
ⓒ Life Magazine
I’m not gonna lie, I have literally wasted yearss listening to Little Yellow Spider by this guy since it was on an Orange advert about three years ago. I have recurring dreams about daisies, salads with pickles, banjos…and this ditty whirring out of an anologue radio like the Mad Men picnic scene from last season. The cutesy if slightly retarded intonation (“shpider”, “munn-key”) and the fucking repetitive guitar strumming of three strings challenged me to think of greater things like ABCDEFG. And to check under the bed for little yellow spiders, such was my OCD. Anyhow, so Devendra is a MAN, just fyi, and if you know your stuff about the uberhip, underweight Californian classes then the idea of giving your child a Hindu name and a Star Wars inspired middle moniker is nothing new. As Gwyneth ‘Goop’ Paltrow said, its like yoga, Blackberry, colon cleanser, Pinkberry, yoga, (little yellow) spider diagram of potential names. Devendra is a talented performer, and reeks of nonchalant South American charm like a child called Pepe running without shoes across a field shaking a maraca…dispell any images of them running away from a militant attack on their delightful, colourful village and you have Brand Banhart. It’s haut culture for a generation who know that the West Coast means programmes from The CW and red string Kaballah bracelets blocking up the gutter.
Just for good measure, watch this smugfest gastroporn. Deboning chickens is soo much less exciting than she’d wish us to think. Champagne vinegar and maple syrup weren’t made to mix.
My major hang-up is THE OLD MEDITERRANEAN MAN DRAWL. It might not be too obvious what I mean, but check out ‘Will Is My Friend’ by Banhart, and ‘Candy’ by Paolo Nutini for examples of this truly annoying tendency to sound like Herbert from Family Guy / Manuel from Faulty Towers. Paolo especially. God, I have tried so hard to enjoy his music, but something about his known skirt-chasing behaviour versus his elderly voice at only 22 years makes me want to chuck my head down the toilet and spell out Crimewatch Update with my puke.
Devendra’s main problem is that he has focused so hard on being the cool, vaguely foreign bearded guy who also shops at MAC – the sort whose lift you politely decline, clutching at rape alarm as you back away from the hemp-scented car with the Magic Tree and Eric Clapton slowly drifting in the breeze – that he has almost forgotten that he is an artiste. On first listen, ‘Bad Girl’ seemed the antidote to his love of playing some kind of Richard Gere/Anansie figure. Letting his voice melt down somewhat into an almost modern, Julian Casablancas-style with minimal animal sounds and not a ‘cultured’ Spanish word in sight, it seemed that ‘Bad Girl’ was a slightly more mainstream Devendra – moving his style along slightly to accomodate our need to feel included rather than left behind in a stream of confusion. ‘You know I taste Great’ on ‘At The Hop’ from an earlier album only ever evokes Tony The Tiger’ unfortunately, rather than moody soulfulness or even sexiness. ANYHOW, ‘Bad Girl’ is a pretty song, but a quick Youtube confirmed my suspicions that he had been not only lifting the mood but the content. The M&S song – Albertross by Fleetwood Mac – may not have just been a point of reference here.
Dev: tender Count Dracula fanboii, moi?
And so, my slightly renewed faith in the artists of today lulled again. Plus, he starts miaowing halfway through the song which is enough to bring visions of a stool and rope into close view. I have been told before that I am a true 80s child, and often feel upset that I was born too late to be a true fan of the bands I really adore, like Tears For Fears. BUT, maybe there is something advantageous about being born in this join-the-dots age I guess. Sure, Florence isn’t Kate Bush, Winehouse is not going to go down as one of the greats and Pixie Lott is consistently cheesy, flat and smug, but at least this seeming lull is allowing me to explore what I might’ve missed in the time BC (Before Cynicism) whilst pretending to care about the crap floating out of Capital Punishment FM.
PS: I’m just bitter because my dream of becoming LA Reid’s bitch never happened. I wasn’t talent spotted (errr…why?!) and I don’t own a car, a house or even a wig like Miley Cyrus’.
But what I do have is the hope that one day we might actually get some people who play instruments, don’t mime when ‘live’ or demand shit like Blue Smarties and ten lines of coke just to do substandard sets and let people down. Devendra, if you were British, I might salute you – not for your talent but for your strength of character. Pixie’s fellow Italia Conti alumni Newton Faulkner take note. Playing your only hit on an advert for your NEW ALBUM is even worse than your ginger dreadlocks.
After all, there’s copying other people, and then there’s copying yourself.
May CLAY watch over you and possibly infect your dreams into a nightmare of Disney and Deep Truth Highly Pigmented Eyeshadow Powder by MAC. He is a true American Idol. I haven’t been paid to sponsor any products but I am open to whoring out my writing space for blatant adverts.
Hannah J Davies was too busy living it up at Reading festival to prepare a blog this month. In actual fact, she almost came to a terrible end during Bloc Party, who obviously don’t understand the meaning of party. Their demeanours are most like Bloc Funeral.
D
I
n g 2009 MMIX.
Radiohead were amazing of course…in that offbeat, half-caring, underdone, overdone, thoughtful way that only they and a few other bands can lay claim to. It was an amazing experience, nonetheless: Hannah J Davies’ first Reading festival…breathing in dusty air and smoke, breathing out awe and idolatry as she watched her dream headline act. Thom Yorke’s Kermit-style croak of “wassup” did little to question his place as the awkward but ultimately genius Master of The Universe.
Anyways, enough about her, she is waste and didn’t prepare a blog for her readership. Let’s turn our attention to 3OH!3 instead, whose straggly swagger was current. “I’m Not Your Boyfriend Baby” separated the men from the boys, although ironically there was some plenty of couple action during the tune.
Master Shortie infected our minds with his subliminal Demon Headmaster promotion of – in no particular order – his tour, album and trainer line. Phew! His cover of Prince Charming by Adam and the Ants is standout, and rather memorable if not ironic.
Amateur H had an amazing day, even though she was almost crushed and owes her life to three gentlemen who aided her in crowdsurfing out of aforementioned Bloc Mortuary. She sustained a twisted ankle and a few bruises, and lost a friend who she has consequently not seen since but who got out of the lion’s den alive.
Reading was eyeopening – a small, self-sufficient world just beyond a motorway and a McDonalds where anyone – from former teachers to friends of friends of friends could be found. Communities were formed, but alas Amateur H was not part of any particular one, going only for one day, and – primarily – to see T Yorke and co. deliver classics such as Karma Police alongside …wait for it… two new songs, one of which had never been heard before! So much so that I now don’t remember what it was called, but boy was it good to be involved in that tenuous make-or-break moment.
It was a success, and lame claims to fame include seeing Edith Bowman’s hair and shoulder pads sans neck, floating through a glass window, and standing 10ft from Vampire Weekend’s drummer at Radiohead. That is lame, based on a VP set which was a happily mediocre crashcourse in mediocrity. Although Ezra has to be in the top 10 musical Jewish hotties…way above Simon & Garfunkel at any rate.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are given a resounding Yeah Yeah Yes by this writer after an amazing set…and Karen O’s pointlessly yet highly important costumery. A true, crazy legend.
So home we went, with the search for our missing friend over and a train which featured artbitches snorting cocaine (literally) and a bunch of perving wideboys. I’m sure the french people would’ve been of no help whatsoever had the rapey atmosphere exceeded its 12/10 mark.
So, alls well that ends well…and I’ve had enough music to last me a good few weeks.
Just a quick one to tell you about my second appearance on Artrocker.tv!
Click here to read my highlights of the Underage fest, along with some from fellow writer Jasmine Sherman!
There will be a whole lot more to read when the FULL REVIEW is published in issue 94 of Artrocker Magazine, out on September 5th and available in WH Smiths, Borders and more!
Evening readers, and welcome to my monthly cocktail of filth and stories about the inside of d-lister’s noses. I’m sure there’s no incriminating white fluff up there, girl who won Pop Idol in 2005 etc etc.
Anyways, it struck me as odd that I’ve literally never seen a celebrity doing normal stuff like shopping and drinking meal replacement shakes, even though I hang out all over London like a lost urchin with a curly mullet. So, I decided to ask some other people to email me with what they’ve seen celebrities doing, and I think I have done better than NOW magazine (seriously, the best they had last week was two BB6 people or something shopping for sausage rolls at Greggs. Guffaw.)
John Frieda was giving bowl cuts to kids on my ruff lundun estate and insuring them that they look just like Ziggy/Zammo, just sans the frizz…All the working class kitchen sink grit of his Polish ancestry shines through…NO. I tried to just say no but free haircuts only happen twice: once from publicity-hungry celebrities and the other in the Army. I’m too young to die, so I chose the ‘accept offer from Sheer Blonde creator’ option. I am going to be called soft forever, but thats ok because I work at B&Q and my sister’s bastard son was box 16 on Deal or No Deal once…so I must be straight.
(I actually think he was very brave to email us with this picture…after all, there is a place where people with teeth like his often end up…it starts with Beachy and ends with Head)
Richard Bacon was eating errrm a bacon sandwich outside a synagogue in North London. Incensed our group of friendly Jewish lawyers…I would’ve confronted him there and then but we must be home before sundown on a Friday (ready for Jonathan Ross presumably).
(Another brave, brave soul who – rather than confront Bacon on his crime for fear of sinning – actually decided to call a lawyer and try to settle away from court for a great deal of his assets (flat, car, signed poster of Rachel Stevens). Good on you Mr’s Chace, Crawford , Taylor , Momsen, Leighton and Meester).
From: lindsaylohan@
icantgetlaid.nu
Hiii Hannah ❤
Saw your best UK export since like, the Queen, that sexy Cat Deeley snogging a butch woman in LA…no one noticed because said butch woman was probably C.D’s effeminate identikit lover JACK HUSTON. I’m definitely not jealous that she is going out with someone who is 89% Johnny Depp and 11% Morticia Addams, because I am a bonafide lesbian. No 89% men allowed! A woman needs a man like a fish needs a tricycle! xXx ps: that said, any directors I can hang with y’know, get me some film roles maybe? Ten year hiatus sucks when your Coke Fund runs dry, eh?
(Good choice, Linz <3, don’t think you’ve really been the same since you did Freaky Friday. Maybe it was that time you spent as Jamie Lee-Curtis…)
Hey Harriet J Davids i super love your website…I’m a 13 year old girl who is definitely not a 50 year old man LOL. Anywho, KStew and TLautz buying garlic and rabbits paws and copies of the Mormon biblein this totally hip and uber ironic shop called like yeah I dont remember because I picked heroin and Oreos for breakfast. Bad choice. But like, you should keep yourself safe before an interview with a vampire and such, bbz…sorry, I hear my goddamn blackberry… must dash, it could be one of the girls from The Hills, i put my PIN on a facebook group and have been so popular ever since LOLZ – *gunshot*
(It’s funny how much she looks like a stock image…maybe she is a model…or more likely she works in a video store like one of the sad kids in Scream, desperately downloading Neve Campbell screensavers for special time. I like inappapropriate italics.)
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ANYWAYS, moving swiftly on – THANKS AGAIN – Cathryn Innocent & I have started an exciting, brand new, never seen before website in the past month!
BELLEJAM.com is a place where us two crazy gimps hope to engage and entertain our readership with photojournalism, reviews, etc…its a HANNAHJDAVIES offshoot so I know that if you like this, you will LOVE Bellejam.com!!
Log on if only for my review of the J Depp/C Bale film Public Enemies!
(Image: C. Innocent)
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Bands I’ve seen – Jul 09 – o2 wireless festival, london; featured great performances from Kanye West (electriying even solo) and the Noisettes among many others. Fun day out, got plenty of freebies and had Domino’s from a van…
(Fan photography by myself – Shingai from the Noisettes shortly before a massive wardrobe malfunction rendered her indecent for a period. My friend and I were pretty close up as you can see…singing along and invariably gaining cigarette burns and beer in our respective hair [especially during Calvin Harris]. All good fun though…)
+++ MORE MORE MORE: coming soon when the Bellejam.com girlies (Cathryn and myself) go to the Underage Festival with !!! I can’t wait to chat artistes with Santo/igold and enjoy some Dubstep from Rusko & Caspa!I’ll keep posting after the festival!
Til next time, bonne nuit (yes, I teach French on the side)
x x x x
PS: massive massive huge congratuwelldone to this woman:
…if you’re not sure who she is and you are under the age of 30, then you maybe you should consider a career in caving…i mean that in the nicest way possible for such a facety remark. K to the Rissi!!
I absolutely hate delivering a late blog entry…it makes me angry! Still – I had quite a good excuse not to have been slogging over the Bberry or laptop, eyes glazed over and fingers bent…I also managed to go ginger somewhere in there as well:
I had my prom, when I should have been thinking about this very blog (Tuesday night). I had always imagined feeling like Cinderella on my prom night – rising up from the aesthetic mediocrity of not straightening my hair for weeks on end, not wearing any make-up and sitting around watching ‘The Hills’ in a tracksuit which looks like a Juicy second. Then – suddenly – the exams were over, and it was time to start thinking about looking nice – an alien concept after weeks of nighttime revision with Lucozade and Brickbreaker as my only friends…
An LBD was the order of the day, as were NBHs and an SGB. Make of that what you will – in other words, I dressed up, and then danced so much that my feet will surely never forgive me…
Anyhow, this blog isn’t all about me; in fact, this month it is about someone much more interesting: Michael Jackson. I was watching BBC 3 last Thursday night when the 60 Second News announced that he had been taken ill with a heart attack. Then, I went to check Facebook a few minutes later, and the story had exploded like a popular culture atom bomb all over the usually mundane midweek updates of “I need a fag” or “tonight was so much fun” etc etc. The word on everyone’s status was Jackson, soon followed by “dead”.
But was he dead? Was he actually dead or were these just vicious rumours. For someone whose life had been shrouded in mystery the clear cut accuracy of “Michael Jackson is dead” scrolling across the screen of Sky News did not quite fit. Neither did the Twitter tributes pouring in from @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) and @mileycyrus (errrm, Miley Cyrus). He was a little boy had never quite grown up, and who was the epitomy of a child star gone wrong. Whilst I was a great fan of his music – tunes such as ‘Beat It’, ‘Thriller’ and S’mooth Criminal’ are truly timeless – his life was some kind of candycane sugar-topped Disneyland JM Barrie adventure with a distinctly bitter aftertaste.
Here he was, in the early days of change…
But, before long, Michael Jackson was truly unrecognisable as the baby-faced boy who had charmed with the Jackson 5 (see below).
In life he was surrounded by scandal and allegation, not least those that he was a dangerous paedophile who had built his Neverland ranch to abuse young children. However, it was his physical appearance which fans such as myself had often wondered about? Did Jackson’s bitter memories of his family, and his early years spent as part of the band in a ‘travelling circus’ style, force him to shed his ‘black’ appearance for a new ‘white’ one, or was his obvious transformation one which happened because of a skin disease or even skin cancer as had been rumoured? We may never know now, but we are left which the legacy of his music and an exciting possibility to hear previously unreleased tracks which he recorded prior to his death, in order to provide a future for his children posthumously. A tragedy has occured in the world of music, but I for one think Michael Jackson has bowed out with some dignity intact and that, left any later, his death may have occured in worse circumstances.
I wasn’t down in Somerset, but I know quite a few people who were rocking out at NERD, Lily Allen and errrm Bruce Springsteen. Now, neither they nor I were born in the USA, nor were we born to run, nor were even born, when Bruce was in his prime. But – for them watching him there in Somerset, and me watching here at home on the BBC – was an eyeopening experience. Here was a star from another generation – a generation of rock n’roll, peace and love and Gardener’s Question Time – showing ‘young’uns’ how to have a good time. He even went over his set, still full of energy and vigour, crowd-surfing and slapping hands as he went like a mahoghany cowboy. Think what you might about the oldie crowd dominating modern music festivals, but stars like Springsteen sure know how to get things going (his foray into overtime ended with a fine which was – rather ironically – paid off by the festival’s organizer, Michael Eavis, who had enjoyed the set).
Also performing were Crosby, Stills and Nash (the beardy guys with the funky pagan logos methinks) and Neil ‘not-so-Young-but-very-talented’ Young.
Old Jersey: Bruce's heyday involved posing in front of the flag shop
Liking:
– Beautifully hot weather
– Beautiful sunshine
– Creepy criminality courtesy of the Crime & Investigation Network
Not liking:
– Stupid spammy @ replies clogging up Twitter thanks to Tweet Bots. Who thought up these literal, disasterous things?
– The NHS. Swine Flu is clogging up our clinics like the Ho Chi Minh trail.
That’s enough I think, I wouldn’t like to squeeze anymore Springsteen puns into this post…
(Image: 
!!! I can’t wait to chat artistes with Santo/igold and enjoy some Dubstep from Rusko & Caspa!I’ll keep posting after the festival!
Hannah J Davies 