...and this is one of the many reasons I love to visit my Granny Jane. it's a phrase that inherited from her mother to describe the look of blue blue Irish eyes fringed with dark lashes and is such a beautiful, archaic expression it makes my heart flutter.
just returned from a very Easter-flavored Easter Sunday, visiting Granny Jane in Henley-On-Thames with my two mad sisters. we had Sunday lunch followed by three bags of chocolate Easter eggs, before going to feed the ducklings on the river and then hot-cross-buns for tea. it was too lovely all of us kicking it together although GJ was concerned as always because I look so tired.
"have you been working late again darling?" she asked me. all I could do was nod dumbly and mumble "er...yeah. sort of. a bit. mmmmm..."
I feel thoroughly run over is the truth, but I've had a pretty rocking few days so it's not so surprising!
as some of you will know I've mostly been underground for the last few weeks in a dark basement in Shoreditch, hammering away at the brand new Hooligan Night demo album...reworking old tracks and recording a couple of new ones. it's been pretty trippy doing 8 hour days in the studio, especially as it's been so gloriously sunny outside almost the entire time! however I squared it with myself after I started imagining the Demo as a bulb me and Nik were nurturing, pushing its first green shoots from its dark place in the ground, upwards towards the light...
it was finally completed on Good Friday, two thousand and nine years after the day they killed Jesus Christ, on a full-moon night, in true Hooligan Night dark-as-fuck style! and in true Ruby Blues manic-style literally 5 minutes after the first brand new CD had been 'pinged' out of the toaster (after a month-long labour we gave birth to a bleedin CD!) I had to leg it over to Cordy House to trowel on some slap and wriggle into a purple tiger-print catsuit for a hit-n-run photoshoot and interview for Q magazine (!) it was all very last-minute-dot-com, but the interviewer and photographer were lovely and it was all very relaxed and fun and I thought, really not a bad way to start celebrating on the day you finished mixing your first demo album! after the shoot I grabbed Joe and together we dashed across town to to see the legend that is Peaches play the South Bank Centre - along with the rest of London clubland as it turned out! unexpectedly ended up with a pair of backstage passes after being rescued by my lovely friend Max and were upgraded from our mile-high, mile-away seats to the very front of the stage, where I bumped into one of my favorite gig/trouble-buddies Demelza and spent the rest of the gig pogo-ing away like a loon and watching Peaches fly (yes - Peaches can fly motherfuckers!) afterwards went for Margaritas with Max and hung out with the lovely Stah and Viktoria, before heading to Shoreditch for a party crawl, which mostly involved drinking a hell of a lot of cheap tequila.
woke up the next day still toasted and headed to a mastering studio in Caledonia Rd and spent the next 8 hours in great pain listening to our tracks over and over again at full-volume and regretting the tequila with every fibre of my being.
however at the end of a very long, very hard day we ended up with X1 professionally mastered Demo album and that's worth 1,000 hangovers.
not only this but also had the great honour at the studio of stroking George Harrison's very own stolen guitar and listening to the master-tapes of Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition', Marvin Gay's 'What's Going On?' and a Nirvana track...I forget which...something from In Utero. basically what this meant was we were able to solo each part and listen to the naked vocals, with all the music muted, and hear every breath, every quirk, every little aside at the end of the tape...fucking incredible...there was something so personal about it - like peeping in someones diary...it sent shivers down my spine and Stevie Wonder's vocals were so fucking perfect they almost made me weep.
after 8 hours in the studio, I dragged my hungover arse to TG to participate in Rachie and Lady Lucy's fashion show, for which I was squeezed into transparent flesh-coloured latex spray-on dungarees, had a crown of hair-thorns jammed on my head and had my nipples painted gold (again!) it's all a bit hazy as I was so completely exhausted by that point, but I had a giggle, especially rocking out on stage playing air-guitar with the gorgeous Laurie Hagen when it was our turn to walk and the bleeding-eye bit with Viktoria looked exquisite as well. somehow made it home and managed to squeeze in 5 hours sleep before dragging myself out of bed and heading off to meet my sisters at Paddington this morning.
fuck me I deserve a medal for sheer bloody-minded endurance no or something no??
it's lucky I love everything that I do really cause one day this shits gonna kill me.
right. tea. dinner. bed.
cause tomorrow I'm right back on it.
goodnight kids...hello oblivion!
x
Current Mood: 
shattered