4 and a half cows

Before I get into any vaguely interesting or informative business I think it’s fair to say that, of all the things I do, this (writing nonsensical blogs) is the one activity in which I am both confident and proficient. I know my singing voice registers somewhere between a whisper and sonar, and that I will definitely need to start learning to play guitar from a real person rather than a book of Crowded House tabs (don’t worry Neil, our love will never die), and that most people would probably be grateful if I prefaced social conversations with a warning to “abandon hope, all ye that enter” but, (and allow me to briefly enter the role of a 19th Century American prospector here) dagnabbit, I can formulate nonsensical prose pretty well. By which I mean I indulge heartily in comma splicing, parenthetical rambles and a general now-you’re-just-taking-the-piss approach to sentence length.

(Ironically, the idiocy of my explanation has probably already driven most of you to navigate to some distant corner of the internet in search of hilarious cat graphics to soothe your now-weary mind. Fear not, however, dear loyal - and hypothetical - readers, your patience will soon be rewarded.*)

In moderately less tangential news, what I was really (actually, totes mcgotes) coming here to talk about today was the new album. Now, I understand that this album has been floating around in the intangible bullshit-o-sphere for longer than elephants gestate, but I assure you it’s all coming together very nicely (shut up, it’s hard to think up adverbs and lie at the same time). In fact, what I wanted to propose was the possibility of creating some QR codes** that link to hidden tracks, demos, videos of me dancing around dressed as Hannibal from the A-Team (the specifics may require some ironing out) and firing these around Glasgow for (preferably awesome) people to find. I am privy to daft ideas, however, and I kind of just wanted to see if it’s anything in which REAL HUMANS would be at all interested (say yes, it’ll be dead fun).

* Rewards and **QR codes. I didn’t promise such a tremendous gif but I like to go above and beyond. Don’t say I’m not good to you. 

I just saw a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls t-shirt and I am pretty excited about life. This statement is irrelevant to anything it precedes, but I need to keep up my digression quota or else I’ll lose the Miss Tangential Scotland crown. You’d think being the only contender would put me at an advantage, but I’ve lost competitions to inanimate objects in the past (the biannual Golden Dishcloth Award is a cruel mistress). 

I am currently recording the new album - working title: “Bovine Intervention” (no, not really) - and though it’s taking a while (due to myriad commitments, predominantly on my part, as well as receiving a jolly visit from a voice-seeking tonsilitic missile) the guitar (and banjo, and ukulele, and 12-string) parts are doon and I finally get to go do the fun stuff this weekend! Fun stuff is defined as any part of recording and production that doesn’t rely on my keeping pace with a metronome. Timing and tuning: the black holes into which any pretence of my ability fall completely and shamelessly. 

Anyway (I use “anyway” worryingly often in these blogs, perhaps it was ambitious of me to find only one cat-digression macro)… aside from the album, I just wanted to document NEWS such as the fact that the band has a new member (yay! Say hello to Jo) but that we won’t really be gigging so much over the next wee while (boo! Say hello to the new album and my ALL-CONSUMING PGDE COURSE) and that if everything falls apart I’ll still have a rad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls t-shirt (click > checkout) - hello tenuous circularity! 

It is probably time for bed now (10:30pm) so I shall leave myself, since I will be the only one who reads this awful post, with an it-doesn’t-matter-if-your-day-was-soul-crushingly-woeful-this-will-make-it-exponentially-better Mark Kermode gif, and the depressingly ironic observation that people don’t realise how socially awkward you are until they get to know you. 

Sorry, or Something by reverieme

As I sit here, hurling shoes at my television in the vain hope that just one will find its way in to a wormhole, travel through time and space and lodge itself in to the brain of the person responsible for the new match dot com advert (while said advert disappears from my screen in a glorious Back to the Future-style fade), I realise that I am probably feeling slightly blue about the closure to what has been a tremendous wee month.  In the next few blogettes* I will be recounting (and reliving) bits and bobs and titbits (and tidbits - that’s right, I’m gettin’ transatlantic) and little moments extrapolated out to big explanations and general digressive bletherings à la Louise, all regarding the past month or so. Expect incoherence and an unintentional disregard for chronological ordering as I delve in to these jolly times, beginning with what I hope will be a paragraph regarding my unshakeable nervousness during festival number one. Onwards!

To begin, here are two lessons I learned on the journey to T in the Park:

1. You know the song you’re listening to is being played from a cassette when the song you’re listening to is ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’.

2. No one will stop you from bringing Madame Bovary to a festival, but they will judge you for it.

Blogette 1: Nerves (or, how I suppressed my neuroticism and learned to love the Jakey’s Bowel cocktail). 

A belief I’ve always held to be true (since my infancy, at least) is that chugging Jager bombs in the back of a moving vehicle is a pretty much guaranteed method of ensuring drunkenness, particularly if all it usually takes is half a glass of rosé. I realised fairly early on during my T in the Park experience, however, that no matter how many German digestifs and soft-rock power ballads I subjected myself to, the anxiety I was feeling about our imminent performance was always going to trump any potential inebriation. Never one to feel too devastated about missing out on fun (I think I may actually be allergic to it, at the very least I’m pretty sure I could secure a doctor’s note to excuse me from taking MDMA), I left the others to have a good time while I sank in to my own sad little pit of un-cushioned, despairing tension (ironically, something I find quite comforting).

With hindsight, I think it may be worth taking a moment to apologise to the aforementioned fun-havers, most of whom functioned as the unwitting recipients of my nervous jabbering over the weekend (“What’s in that cup? Have a cereal bar. Rum and Tennant’s Super and COCONUT CHUNKS? The gig’s in two days. TWO DAYS. 246 TOOTHPICKS.”). Sorry everyone, I shall leave both the basket and the case at home the next time I attend a festival. 

ANYWAY, if the Disney channel’s endless stream of all-singing, all-dancing this-is-aspirational-because-everyone-wants-to-be-on-TV-and-have-shiny-teeth programming has taught me anything, it’s that nerves can be a good thing. I am entirely sceptical of this idea myself but I feel it is a positive place to leave the post on whilst allowing me to exercise some degree of blog-writing economy (and holding off talking about the actual shows FOR NOW - a-ha!).

Tune in next time for The Band and The Practise(s), featuring Andrew Lindsay, Florence MacDonald, Jamie Hewitt and Dougie Frew (pictured below**)!

* Because they are wee.

** A girl can but dream. 

So, you may have heard.

Hm, that sounds kind of grim. This is not grim news. This is fundamentally un-grim news. I’d go as far as to say that this is good news. Better-than-good news!

I’ll start again.

Guys, I have some better-than-good news.

Wait.

Guys! I have some tremendous news!

(Better. Btw does anyone else think I’ve now used ‘news’ so much that it no longer looks like a real word?)

I’m playing T in the Park! Say what? 

Now, I’m not going to go in to the exact details of the dirt I found on the T Break judges in order to wangle my spot on the stage (lets just say there were goats involved, goats and midgets), but I would like to condense my joyful response to being selected with two exclamations: yay! and THANK YOU!.

Some lovely people have already responded to the selection very kindly (to whom I extend a big cheery declaration of gratitude!). These include:

The Pop Cop,

Napalm Love 

and Curious Joe.

For the same reason that I do not carry out un-anaesthetised flayings of my forearms every other Tuesday (Wednesday, perhaps), I am not as keen to respond to the negative comments.

Something else I may not have mentioned here is that I’m also playing at Wickerman! Say what (yes, I know that wasn’t funny the first time but you have to be patient - my genius will reveal itself in time)?

And what is one of the crucial links between my playing at Wickerman and T in the Park? Why, it’s the fact that it’s not MY playing but OUR playing (aha!) because, as I hope you have inferred by now, Reverieme gots a band! You simply must meet everyone!

The majah playahs are the lovely Andrew Lindsay (of Coat Hooks and large hair fame), Ms. Florence MacDonald (one of the most talented people I’ve met), and Jamie Hewitt (who makes it difficult for me to adequately summarise the frustrating number of strings to his musical bow).

They have, like eagles in a house fire, come to my rescue and I truly cannot wait to get playing with them (you know what I mean)! If you want to check out some photos of Andrew, Florence and me (expertly snapped by the saucy Lauryn Waggit) you can head over to my facebook. This is a clever, art-of-war style tactic of mine, since everyone likes pictures! If you don’t like pictures then now would be a good time to not say words.

There is a whole tonne more to say but if I don’t leave it at that then this post will never be finished! Thank you if you’ve read this far! If you haven’t read this far then I should probably take this time to tell you your hamster died and that your mother and I are getting a divorce.