lucyjanemusic.co.uk

Hi there,

It feels like a reallly long time since we’ve played our original set, and indeed, it is!

Which is why I’m rather excited that we’ll be playing in the stable of the old Horse Hospital, Proud Camden (formerly Proud Galleries, methinks) a week on Monday. Come, do! If you’re old and/or tired, we’re on at 8.30pm. If you’re young and/or vibrant, it goes on til gone 1.

PLEASE COME DO. You can get tickets by emailing me at lucydavies94@gmail.com and I’ll post you some or leave em on the door. £4 through me, £5 on the door.

Here’s the event description….
___________________________________________

Monday, 13th September, from 7.30pm

“Hot Vox Festival will include three rooms of musical talent for people to wonder around and explore, soak up the carnival atmosphere, enjoy the variety of different Stables, entertainment and club. All this and not a muddy field in site!

The 10 live acts will be split between the Main Room, The Stables and the brand new Outdoor Terrace Bar, so plenty of music to keep you entertained. Also, after the live music extravaganza the main room turns into a club with some of the best DJs in London playing all your favourite songs!

The night boasts 10 live acts, 3 bars, a HUGE smoking terrace with deckchairs, tables and a bar. 7 boutique VIP stables (1 karaoke stable), all individually dressed including stages, poll dancing polls, flat screen TVs, Singstar, Guitar-Hero and a pool-table. The venue also has table football, pinball machine, darts and much much more.

So you couldn’t make it to Glastonbury, the line up at V Festival wasn’t your cup of tea, Download was a big no no, £200 for a weekend was too much, well shake off those Monday blues and come to the Hot Vox Festival at Proud Camden, July 19th, all for just £4 in advance, £5 on the door!

Too easy!

“Fantastic bands and an awesome atmosphere for anyone who loves live music! Hot Vox put on great nights in great venues” – iGoLoco Entertainment Guide

“Hot Vox give great opportunities to up and coming bands” – Ross Phillips (Hard-Fi)

www.hotvox.co.uk

7.30pm – late

£4 in advance/with flyer

£5 on the door

Yes, we will shortly have a new website which is looking spankingly shiny. Or something.
Anyway, it’s much better than this one and will make my random ramblings look far more professional. We’ll also have some home-made tracks free to download when you sign up to the mailing list. I’m working on that right at the moment. They’ll just be tracks I’ve written and have not yet played to ANYONE.

So that’s exciting.
You’ll know when we have a new website because, well, we’ll have a new website.
Huzzah.

I’m really sorry but the festival this sunday has been cancelled. I have
been asked by the organisers to send you this message.

It’s is regret that we have to announce the Shhh event on Sunday 1 Aug
is cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control. Those who have
bought tickets will be refunded, and there will be an opportunity for
these people to get a reduced price ticket for the next Shhh! which is
scheduled for Saturday 22 January 2011. More info to be found at

www.localism.org.uk

Apologies. We were really looking foward to it. Sigh.

This Sunday, 1st August, we shall be playing the Local’s All Dayer festival, Shhh!

I have been told that it’s a whole day’s worth of superb summery quiet fun. There will be special guests, surprises, quizzes and cakes on the lawn, the works…

It’s all taking place at the famous Cecil Sharp House, in Camden, and we shall be performing in the Storrel Hall at 2.30pm.

Starting at 12 and finishing around 9, you can get your early bird tickets ***here*** for a tenner, rather than the walkup price of £15.

Hope to see you there.

Unbelievably, sometimes, after a milion emails have been sent, and conversations have come to nothing, self doubt can creep in and you can wonder whether you’re completely deluded and shouldn’t really be doing this after all. And then you start looking around and thinking you’ve made a huuuge mistake and should have stuck with that PAYE salary and job which, although you didn’t really fit it ultimately, made sure you were in sync with the rest of the world.

When you work funny hours as I now do, you find that life is pretty much geared towards the 9-5(6,7,8)ers, with the rest of us subjected to daytime TV (our evening TV) of the likes of Jeremy K and Loose Women. What happened to decent films during the day?
I know there’s the iplayer etc, but sometimes it’s nice to watch something when it’s actually on the telly.

Ooh, and there used to be this programme on the BBC late morning time which caught benefits fraudsters. I think it was called something like Saint or Sinner.

Some deplorable mockney accented bloke (I’d look it up but it’s in too bad a taste to be recorded on my history) would recall how some person had ripped off the taxpayer by claiming and working at the same time (sinner), and then move on to an ex-serviceman with post-traumatic stress syndrome who was about to lose his family’s home as he didn’t realise he was eligable for his mortgage repayments to be paid by the taxpayer until he got back on his feet (saint).

I think the idea was that benefit fraudsters watch and wibble, before finally handing themselves over to the police. Nice.

And then on the Radio there’s Lauren Laverne’s “workers’ playtime” for an hour of two every week day around lunch time. Another reminder that you are not actually at work, and are missing out on this almost smug (to an outsider) suffering with purpose together with all the other officites.

Plus the fact that most people want to meet for a drink in the evening. And if you work in the evening, almost every week evening, you do tend to miss out on most things – concerts, get togethers, plays, gigs, and so it goes on, until you realise you’re feeling out of sorts and don’t know why – that’ll be because you haven’t seen any of your old friends or had any culture, high or low, for 500 years perhaps.

And the sun’s been out baking all and sundry but I can’t really enjoy it because a) I’m not that good in the sun, and b) then I feel guilty because I should be in the park under a tree but I don’t want to because everyone else is at work and I’ll be on my tod, plus c) I’m too busy stressing about what I should be self motivating about next.
Should I email such and such, should I try and find us some better gigs, should I follow up 500 other emails, unanswered because everyone else is in the park under a tree apart from me? ARGH.

I mean, I love the fact I can go to the cinema and I’m the only one in there and I have booked up weekends on the whole, but hell. This can wear you down.

So then I decided perhaps I don’t have the mental durability to continue with this much longer. I can’t imagine someone like Barbara Hepworth was bothered by the fact she could only watch Jeremy Kyle or cash in the attic during the day – she’d be down in her shed sculpting and being self contained, or reading a book, happily chain-smoking, guilt free.

This is the first time I have ever felt like this. It’s quite weird.

Then my friend Jules wrote me a poem. (I have deleted out the swearing – I think it was for dramatic effect)

Lucy Lucy let me tell you straight,
Your music is kind of effing great,
It’s sometimes dark and a little strange
You could even say somewhat deranged
But just to point out it’s so unique
Your musical style makes me listen and think
A pleasure to play with you last year
Don’t give up your tunes,
Don’t you bloody well dare!!

I’m going to keep trying.

I guess it’s taken me over a year and half until I’ve got to this place, so in a way, that’s a good thing.

PS I’ve just cheered imagining Barbara Hepworth actually taking part in cash in the attic. That’s more like it.

Last Wednesday night Fiona Talkington played a track from last year’s album I Live To Help Others on Radio 3’s Late Junction.

You can hear it again on the iplayer. It’s 29 minutes in: Lamborghini.

If you’d like to buy the track go to Amazon.

We did. Pete and I. We were incredibly lucky.

The tape machine at Dropout studios broke. After 3 weeks of hopes of the machine being fixed dashed, on a week by week basis, I decided to try to take some control back on a remarkably horrible situation.

We had all the tracks on the album finished (almost – I’d have liked to just adapted a couple of things but though we could do this in about an hour on the mixing day)

And then I got a call saying that the machine was playing back with a warble. Hence lots of tapes, with all our lovely music on them, un-mixed and unplayable from the tapes.

I emailed Martin Rhodes. Friend from the same underground Rochdale group of lovely people (sounds unlikely but it’s true – there are a lot of very fun and creative people in that old mill town where I was born)

Martin runs Lisa Stansfield’s studio, Gracie Land.

Can you help? It’s 2 inch tape, 16 track. Yes, no problem. we can mix, you’ll love it here, come down next week. wow. How completely amazingly can-do!

So I went to pic, up the tapes from Dropout. Read the info James had written. 1 inch 16 track tape. OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
Called Martyn. told him. short silence, then, leave it with me!
I went home and had 3 kittens. They’re still running about in the garden.

This might all sounds a bit dull but in reality it was my worst hour of the past decade or so.

When you really want something and think it’s sorted out, you allow yourself to get happy. And then to realise there may not be a way out and you’ve thrown money at something that doesn’t work, with no way of getting it back without some small claims court incident, and you’ve got 10 moments of live spontaneous creativity trapped in a jar that nobody can open, and that you’ll have to ask everyone to come back and do it again, though you can’t afford to start again, and the people responsible aren’t exactly rushing to sort this situation out… well.

1 hour later, Martin called. He’d found a 1 inch tape machine.

We salute you.

We salute Steve, engineer extraordinare. I knew we were in safe hands when he said, “I haven’t seen a 1 inch tape since I worked with the Hollies, in 1973″

Also, Andy Pop who stayed up until 11pm to transfer our tapes onto digital, using the only appropriate tape machine in existence north of Watford. Thank you.

Find out more about Gracie Land here.

Go here for upcoming gigs.

That is all….

Oh and we have a gig tonight at the Library, 20 minute slot, just me and pete, at 9.30pm. Upper street, Islington.