Who’s the Man!

My beau is more popular than me.  It doesn’t hurt me to admit it.  In fact it behooves me to say it like a mantra,  because that pain is superceded by the actual stepping stone routine I receive from those who have urgent and specific business with him.   Actually my chanting – “my man got the power, my man got the power” - has helped me to move on from pain to humour.  Funny how streamlined is that process as you become older and wiser.  Anyway, it’s a real study in subtext to have conversations with people on remote control, their eyes darting around in his general direction, feigning interest in my life and work.  Oh the rhapsodic choreography of said operator showing me his/her back in a glorious networkers’ square dance when my beautiful lover comes into close proximity.  Sometimes I’m lucky enough to finish a sentence.  My favourite asslickers are smooth about it though - possibly because I can almost believe in the authenticity of our exchange for a nano-second.  Even better are the ones who dangle goodies b4 me – and who am I to refuse, pets win prizes after all – and then lash out in lo-grade hysteria if I try to stake claim or when their silly fantasies don’t quite deliver according to Aaron Spelling standard. 

Pets win prizes!

Some of  these grownups in the biz have a strange habit of using talented people like talismen in their big realtime Rockstar showdown.  Incestuous doesn’t even scrape the scum off the top.   Soon enough they show me their true schizoid rainbow – charming to a fault in desired company, then derogatorily finishing my sentences with presupposed character assassinations, whilst shelling out whatever was on offer .  Earlier that evening I may have been Patti Smith, Karen Carpenter & Dusty Springfield in one composite rock goddess embodiment, but minutes later, with cash in hand I’m a junked up groupie prostitute and petty thief (throw in child molester and traitor, it’s only R&R)

Do I deserve this?  Perhaps it’s all projection, perhaps it’s just honour amongst thieves.  Maybe the true subtext is that everybody uses everybody.  Why, they’re just jockeying me in the same way that I must be riding on my partner’s coattails, right?  I should  just get down off my high horse, I’m no better than anyone else, yeah?…

I may not be better than anyone else – and frankly who wants to be – but I sure as shit don’t deserve to be blown up & shot down because of my boyfriend, who doesn’t deserve it either.  My poor long suffering beautiful  beau, what he must think of me.  I tell him everything - his very life, like anyone’s including mine, depends on it – and it pisses him right off.  Maybe some things are better left unsaid.  He thinks I’ve got paranoid delusions of inferiority.  Nothing could be further than the truth.  I’ve been writing, singing, playing, collaborating and schlepping for about 20 years now, with very little return, and it is only self belief that keeps me going.  Should I be beaten down by about now?  Well yeah – that’s what the greasy machine wants, and that’s why I will continue lopin up that hill, because this nasty system and its sad little helpers cannot win. 

Blow me down, it's Mary Read

Marketing 101 – to sell commodity one must downgrade consumers, attack us where we live – sexuality being the easiest target – so that we believe that we cannot live without said commodity and will thus use it to displace our battered self esteem.

Witness how it is ok to brutalise women in the form of cosmetic surgery so that an unrealistic, shaming standard is established and we think we need to buy firming cream – harder, faster, more SHINEY! – to be loved.  So that we may even be so deluded as to believe that if we spray ourselves with catpiss we might look like Victoria Beckham.  That Cheryl Cole is a women’s champion.  Witness the debacle of Jordan and her babymansized boobs – just the same proportion of Mommaboob to Babyhead as JordanJet to grownup PornoHound – agressively flogged to a generation actively denied the breast.  Satan’s wetdream and smackdown gavel to your downsized soul, Sucka! 

I will not stand by, while I have breath in my body, and allow pathological priority to reign.  Do we know the diff b/w things and people?  Corporations have human rights but I’ve no right be my natural self.  No, I’ve gotta carve up and pump myself full o toxins to be loved or at least hired.

Top o the World, Ma!

If this horseshit is considered acceptable, if not a benchmark of success, I consider my failed career a personal and spiritual triumph.  Yeah, OK, I AM better than anyone else – HA! - I will NOT unroll my shirtsleeves until this system is chopped up fine and fed to the carrion or until it kills me off – whichever comes 1st. 

“Use me up, if you think you can…” – Joan Osborne, Right Hand Man

So twas written, so it shall be done....

Holy Embers, Spiderman! It’s THE SUMMER PAGEANT

As part of The Borderline’s Summer Pageant,  Louis Eliot & The Embers* will grace its stage  on 7th June 2010, playing selections from their latest album ‘Kittow’s Moor’.  http://www.louiseliot.com

The evening will also feature “candlelit punk”ers (TimeOut) SONGDOG, uber-DJ GAVIN MARTIN & female Morris dancing troupe The Belles Of London City.  To celebrate further into the ever-receding nighttime, Songdog will host an  after-party right across Tottenham Court Road, down PETER PARKER’S ROCK-N-ROLL CLUB, round about 22.30-ish.  Once again, I’ll kidnap Patmo Sheeran away from ‘The Dirt’ for another awesome set, maybe Super-Siren Cheyne Pride’ll join in if I’m damn lucky…. and if the moon shines just right maybe Martin Bell will pluck up his fiddle for us, too. 

The name's Marianne... not MaryJane, SPIDERMAN!

*The Embers include: Louis Phillips – vocals, whistle and percussion, James Sneyd – accordian, Mike Polson – bass and vocals, Jim Ledbetter – drums and Martin Bell – mandolin and fiddle.

The Borderline, Orange Yard, Manette St, London, W1D 4JB Transport Tottenham Court Road, Telephone 020 7734 5547

Peter Parker’s Rock-n-Roll Club, 4 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8LP Telephone (020) 7836 1451

Brighton My Weekend – I live in Hope

This weekend’s gonna be so mighty I can almost taste it. Had to poach Patmo Sheeran from ‘The Dirt’ whilst they weren’t lookin, to come & accompany my solo support set for the infamous SHRAG (‘Effortless pop skill’ – Artrocker) down Da Doo Run Run: It’s Alive #3, this Saturday 5th June at The Hope Brighton.

The political IS personal!

GAVIN MARTIN’s gonna fluff us up good, spinnin some choice full-frontal, female-led classics & rarities from his own personal & private record collection of musical genius. He will hypnotise your bootyshake, I guarantee!

PATMO & I are on at bout 21.30 ie dusk with my 30 minute solo set of Country-Motown-esque songs to reclaim the political as personal including a cosmetic surgical lament, wrong side o the trax romance balladry, conspiracy theory protest songs, stream of unconscious trip-hoppery & MO!

Then StormTheCharts shortlisted, darlings of this year’s London Popfest, bean-crazy grrrl & boyeee band – SHRAG – will blast up the boards with their signature post-New Wave drenched dear-diary, dirty confessionals worthy of the justified and ancient waif/naif collective that they are…

Miss it … and miss out, MISSY!

The Hope (formerly Polar Bar Central)

10-12 Queens Road

Brighton

East Sussex

BN1 3WA

http://www.myspace.com/thehopevenue1

£5-er in advance right here (only 12 left!)

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/81622

Then THEN! COUNTRY DIRT will gather together again on Sunday the 6th – 6/6/10 – to hit the mainstage for this year’s …. HOPE WEEKENDER 2010 …. in the wilds of Biggin Hill somewhere. Everything you need to know about it’s right here below including some countrified directions to this year’s new venue: Highams Hill Farm

http://www.hopefestival.co.uk/

Features Live entertainment on 2 stages and the piano + Ska-Bar; The big fire; Kids workshops and the magic show; Kids dome; Big bouncy castle; Licenced bar with draught guinness and ale; Cafe and coffee stall, burger van, ice cream

 We played the benefit gig in April, and they liked us allright. Hell yeah we’re playin this Sunday and no mistake.

Be there or blow it, Y’all! Yeeeehahahaha!

We live in Hope!

War HWUAHH What is it good For – 16th May – The FlowerPot 147 Kentish Town Rd

THIS IS A FREE EVENT. THE ONLY EVENT OF ITS KIND IN LONDON THIS YEAR:- A POSITIVE GATHERING TO UNITE MANY VOICES. NB THIS IS NOT AN OPEN MIC SESSION.

NB THIS RUNNING ORDER MAY CHANGE

Singers, Songwriters, Poets, Speakers, Journalists, Bloggers, Writers, Video Makers, Film Makers, Activists.This is a serious event, which will feature Video Projections, Music, and Spoken Word ‘Live’.

DJ Stan Brennan (Pogues Producer, with veritable trove of tunes)

Many Video Projections +

Gaynor O’Flynn (Singer-Songwriter)

Paul Howard (Singer-Guitarist: 3 great covers on Acoustic Guitar)

Rosamund (Poet-Performance Artist with excerpts from Lily Marlene)

AnnaLeDoesPoetry (Spoken Word Poetry for our times)

Pennie Quinton (Re ‘I’m A Photographer – Not A Terrorist!’ + Palestine)

Aine Duffy (Acoustic Guitarist-Singer-Songwriter from Cork) TBC

Mic Wright (Writer-Journalist-Speaker)

Siskin (Upcoming Duo who have been receiving Press adulation recently)

Grassy Noel + APE (Truly unique music)

Sonja Kristina & Special Guests (formerly singer with Curved Air, The Strawbs) Clifford Slapper, pianist (David Bowie, Boy George, Billie Ray Martin, Finlay Quaye, Jarvis Cocker) speaks about ending war, and performs John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ – with Sonja Kristina on vocals.

The Supernovas (5 Stars in The Daily Mirror Music Column)

VIDEOS

Suzanne Moore (Speaker: Journalist & Columnist from The Mail & The Independent. Standing as INDEPENDENT candidate for Stoke Newington in May 6th General Election).

Sterling Roswell Band (Inc Rosco formerly of Spacemen 3)+
Martin Belmont (Guitarist with Graham Parker & The Rumour,
Elvis Costello (Trust), Carlene Carter, Nick Lowe’s Cowboy Outfit, Hang Wangford, Carl Perkins, and the late Johnny Cash!) WITH vocalist Barbara Marsh (Singer on Martin’s new GUEST LIST CD) PLUS vocalist
Marianne Hyatt (singing Texan Tunes and providing Country Vibes from Austin, Texas)

Singin out w Martin Belmont n Sterling Roswell on the night

Country Dirt play Hope Weekender Benefit 2nd May 6pm

Country Dirt are vyin for a slot at the Hope Weekender 4/5 June 2010 by playin…

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKENDER

Hope London Benefit Gig, Mayday bank holiday Sunday 2nd May – 6pm - The Hob Gobblin in Forest Hill SE23  (opposite the station). Entry charge £5 on door.

Free entry if you buy your Hope Weekender ticket on The Door (creditcards and checks not accepted).

HOPE WEEKENDER 2010 - 4th/5th June – http://www.hopefestival.co.uk/

This year looks set to be one of the best ever. We’ve found a fab new site, just for us, on a working farm (no animals) and inside the M25.

The line up is coming together and looking great. Details to follow. Features:

Live entertainment on 2 stages and the piano + Ska-Bar

The big fire.

Kids workshops and the magic shows

Kids dome

Big bouncy castle slide.

Licenced bar with draught guinness and ale

Cafe and coffee stall, burger van, ice cream

Site Details:

Fires allowed. Wood for sale on site  NB Fires must be off the ground on most of the site so bring something to burn on. This will be enforced. Areas available for fires on ground

Wristbands must be worn at all times.

Recycling facilities available.

Flushing toilets, no showers this year

No dogs please.

The ground is hard so we advise you plan for that. Special tent pegs are for sale on site.

Camping separate from parking this year, camper vans have an area for themselves There are no hookups for these.

Please respect the boundaries of our event or you will be asked to leave. (you’ll get it when you arrive).

The nearest railway station is 3 miles away and a bus does go past the site.

Enjoy!!!

contact Dave Ripp: dave@plumbandbass.co.uk / cc: dave@skadaddy.co.uk

NO:ID Festie – The Others – featuring Country Dirt 16th April 8pm

Just when you thought it was safe to put yer pistol in yer pickup, COUNTRY DIRT skid off with full cavalry horsepower in a cloud o pure white gypsum at the NO:ID 2-day indoor festie – The Others, Stoke Newington - 16 April, doors open 7pm.  Take it away you LONESOME COWBOYS FROM HELL – http://noidgallery.net/festi.html

“This is a two day indoor festival featuring some of the most cutting edge novel + established acts in musical live performance London’s underground has to offer.

All artists have in common that we understand being on stage as being in character, and all projects are famous for combining amazing musicianship with great showmanship.

Friday April 16th is featuring some astonishing acts, mainly acoustic, headlined by the Lonesome Cowboys from Hell which are somehow Psycho-Country or Country Jazz. Mescaline for Methodists play dancy world fusion to round up the night.

Both nights are moderated by the amazing Aunty Luxury (Annouchka Bayley), acts being connected by DJ’s and live performances of the unexpected kind. There will be a bar, and a merchandise and record stall.

COUNTRY DIRT 8pm-ish - 2b broadcast on ReelRebelsRadio.com

MAIN ACTS FRIDAY 16th:

Rude Mechanicals: Absurd rock music, punk funk caberet – musically somehow reminiscent to some stuff by Frank Zappa, but voice and appearance of Jo Robert are beyond comparison. Jo Roberts – vocals, harmonica; Cos Chapman – guitar, bass; Guy Avern – bass, keyboard; Kate Newell – oboe, keyboard, concertina; Dylan Bates – violin, trumpet; Tom Greenhaulgh – drums.

Country Dirt: if there is “alternative country music”, this is it. Crafted with great musicianship, this ensemble questions and transgresses the limits of a genre. Featuring Marianne Hyatt.

Lonesome Cowboys from Hell: a mix of traditional and self-constructed instruments creates music that can best be described as “psycho-country”, fronted by Frank E. (Calum F. Kerr) whose lyrics have been called “the last word on what’s to be said about the art-world”. Seriously one of the most interesting combos that came out of the “noughties”. “JK-EE” Tim Fitcroft – ukuleles, guitar, accordion; “Jan E. blister” Jan Suchanek – bucket bass; “A.N.Other Musician” Billy Smith – fiddle; John “D. Vile” Devolle – drums.

Mescaline for Ministers: A tribute to Peyoti for President, who have been touring world wide with famous Manu Chao and are London’s most sought-after world fusion band. Dance your shoes off. All musicians have requested to not reveal their ID… ”

The Others, 6-8 Manor Road, London N16 5SA   http://www.theothers.uk.com/

New Direction

Yo Mama's Day Noche!

01 Folsom Prison Blues

Jones-in for The Dirty Johnsons – Pussycat Scratch Fever down the Dublin Castle – 11 March 10

“Baby, you don’t look at me the same way anymore …..Maybe it’s because your eyeball’s come out of its socket….. and it’s rollin on the floor” – Zombie Nightmare

Still got plenty o time 2 get in yo kitty car & drive away, unless you can fight better than you can drive

She’s just a wispy slip of a pussywhip, afraid of the dark, but dancing in it, like it’s her last refuge – flinching from the collective strobe of fanatic flash like a cat who glided into a hot water wiggle.  Pussycat Johnson dodges  her ever-watchful-through-the-lense spectators, and stakes her claim at stage’s edge, looming over us sky high in her hometown platforms, painted on rubber suit and hair shellacked high – frozen at the moment she broke the sound barrier in Russ Meyer’s car during a desert drive-by.  It’s only by coincidence her hairdo looks like engorged and erect kitty ears.  It was just a freak accident when her outstretched fingers cauterised to claw during the driving rhythm.  She dares us to take the leap with her but doesn’t wait a single second for us.  Faster Pussycat, KILL! KILL!!

Was that "Welcome to the pussyfoot jungle?" or "Made in Basingstoke" I saw tattooed on her shiny vinyl tail?

“I’m your Hammer horror,  …. I’m a real cruel woman, you’re in real hot water” – Boogie Woman

When Jake (Psychobilly guitarist deluxe) & Ant Johnson (drummer de-Sade) are nearly spent b/w numbers, Pussycat still purrs out an extended lo-smoldering pussycat rant, lisping about herself – Pussycat – in 3rd feline Basingstoke lilt.  The ’burbs are back!   Jake & Ant’s unforgiving rhythms and merciless cock-a-billy rev spark up her non-stop monologue and welcome us to her world.  Once she was a little kid who stood in the corner, with her little whiskers grazing the chalkboard, for saying the right thing at the wrong time – “Some guy put his balls on my head once” - now Pussycat lets rip an ancient, feral, helium howl in defense of the archetypical villainess; trapped behind the fetish-shop mask she glued on to her face (for real).  Oh the triumph of the under-cat.  Use her up if you think you can. 

If Poison Ivy, Fur Dixon or Wanda Jackson fronted The Cramps

“It ain’t music, just makin noise….. I don’t wanna if I gotta look like boys….. & oh those boys, oh shoot, they look like girls…..  I don’t wanna ride what they’re tryin to sell….. DON’T WANNA GO TO THE SHOW ….. DON’T WANNA KNOW …. RA RAAAAAAA” – To the Show

Well I do!  They’re playin again at the Haiti Benefit Party             26 March The Grosvenor, 17 Sidney road Stockwell  SW9 0TP  £3

Pussycat and the Dirty Johnsons + Kodek + Midiot + Active Slaughter + Killerbomb + Rude Mechanicals + Lord Muck + Anarchistwood + The Bailiff + Tokie

Come to my GIG + Archive Party this SUNDAY Eve 14th @ The FLOWERPOT

An Acoustic Night – Marianne Hyatt & Alex Thomas + Knox of legendary UK Punk band The Vibrators in a ‘special guest spot’

6.oopm Gavin Martin’s DJ set (Mirror’s Music Critic) 

7.oopm Stan Brennan’s DJ Set (w cool vid projections)

8.oopm Rare 1960′s Acoustic ‘Blues’ Video performances on the Big Screen

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

Sonny Boy Williamson

Muddy Waters

Cyril Davies All Stars

8.15pm Knox of The Vibrators goes acoustic. Very entertaining!

8.45pm Rare Country, Ballads, & Rock ‘n’ Roll all on the Big Screen

Christian Bollocks

Dusty Springfield

Bill Withers

Johnny Cash

Phil Ochs

Barry McGuire

Country Joe MacDonald

Nick Lowe

Rambling Jack Elliot

Jerry Lee Lewis

9.15pm Marianne Hyatt & Alex Thomas play ‘Country Dirt’, and more

Master Fiddler with the Bitch in the C(o)untry Kitschen

10.00pm New York New Wave & Rare Punk Rock on The Big Screen

****The Ramones*****Blondie**** The Saints**** The Tubes  *****  *****The New York Dolls ***** Radio Birdman ******

10.30pm End 

http://www.henrysgigs.co.uk

RADIO JOY live broadcast – the Foundry Sunday 7th March 8pm

Everybody's got some

Text & visuals from – Nicola Wayne Maskrey, Inga Tillery, Tracey Moberly

Dancing songs from DJs Gavin Martin and Johny Mugwump

LIVE SET from BAND OF HOLY JOY

Ten years ago Tracey Moberly produced a show at the Foundry in Hoxton whose title LOVES DIRTY HABIT came from a Band of Holy Joy song. The premise as I remember it was that we set a thousand pink balloons up in to the night sky with a mobile phone number on and a request for any balloon finders to text in their ‘Love’s Dirty Habit’. The answers would be stuck on the gallery walls in the basement of the Foundry. The new language and future of communication was uppermost in our minds but we also wanted to throw a great party. The opening night was a blur of pink balloons and scuzzy texts that were zapped in from the hinterlands of London.  It was a great night and a supreme show if memory serves.

Tracey has kept the project very much alive and a decade on we revisit the notion. Nicola Jayne Maskrey and Inga Tillere will take Tracey’s texts and set about visualising them from a new perspective. The Band Of Holy Joy will play a live set from a collection of songs they are about to release called PARAMOUR, songs which are very much about Love’s Dirty Habits: Betrayals, lustings, casual sexual murderings that kind of low and grand déclassé behaviour. As the Foundry is about to close its doors soon we would love to make this event as memorable as the first. Indeed… We want your texts and we want you to come. 7th March is the date 8pm is the time and the Foundry is the place. On Valentines Day we will issue a number. We want you to use it.

Radio Joy will broadcast the entire evening. The DJ’s Gavin Martin and Jonny Mugwump will spin the songs to keep the night flowing. James S Finn will supply a soundscape. The immense Andrew Bailey will perform a twenty-minute set.  

Tune in & turn on here  http://www.bandofholyjoy.co.uk/radio.html

Drop in & turn out here:  The Foundry – 80 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3JL

http://www.bandofholyjoy.co.uk/news2.html

http://www.myspace.com/andrewbaileymusic

http://www.myspace.com/bandofholyjoy