All in one

What do I have in common with Lady Gaga you might ask.  We're both ladies, allegedly, although she has to put Lady in front of her name as confirmation (I'm not as needy).  We also both have a weakness for clothes that make ordinary, everyday activity a bit of a challenge.   I've been a vegetarian since I was 16 so there's no pork chop frocks for me but I was reminded of Lady G at last night's gig as I tried to extricate myself from my jumpsuit on a pre-performance visit to the ladies/gents.

Yesterday's gig was at the intriguingly named Horse Hospital, easily one of London's most interesting and unusual venues.  Round the corner from Russell Square tube, on a mews,  is a rather uninspiring building upon which is painted the words Horse Hospital.  The sign is very necessary as nothing about it would tell you that it is either an arts venue or an equine emergency facility.

And it really was once a hospital for poorly horses.  When you enter the porch you can go up or down via cobbled slopes, designed for horse hooves.  The main rooms are also cobbled and there are runnels in the floor, presumably to divert any horse wee to the drains.    The whole place has the feel of a Dickensian hide out, the air on a December night is decidedly nippy and very little natural light enters the rooms.   I'm sure the horses warmed it up though with their hot bodies and so did our audience last night.

Once the room had warmed up a little, I bravely removed my clothes and put on my stage outfit; an all in one jumpsuit which I always wear with a black turban.  Someone once thought my outfit was vintage Biba, rather than contemporary Luton market, so I always give myself a little pat on the back when I wear it.  

Never the most practical outfit, it took on a whole new level of inconvenience in a place where there was only one loo and an outside one at that!  In the corridor which lead to the cubicle, was a queue of audience members who kindly allowed me to go first owing to the fact I was about to perform.   Queue jumping is something Lady Gaga and I also share; she's always jumping the queue for the bogs at her gigs.  

Once in the loo, I had to undo the jumpsuit and strip right down to my knickers and bra, while the icy cold wind whipped round my nether regions.  Why oh why had  I worn an all in one?  Vintage Biba, my freezing cold arse.

The Elevator Pitch

In my working life, I often come across the term 'elevator pitch'; a pithy statement about you and your business that can be  delivered in the time it takes to travel with someone else in a lift.  With so many people desperate to give their elevator pitch, there must be lifts somewhere full of people making earnest eye contact and, perhaps,  doing a quick Powerpoint presentation between floors. 

Being naturally effusive and not that interesting, I've never had an elevator pitch. However, I was reminded of the concept tonight as I tried to think of words to sum up each of the songs on Juice for the Baby.    Whenever someone asks me to describe Spacedog, I always find myself stumped for an adequate description.  I end up either making us sound incredibly naff or so inscrutable the other person wishes they hadn't asked.

Often the trick is to tell them the bits that you think would interest them, which is basically the science bit behind describing your tracks on Bandcamp. We are selling the album and separate tracks on this site, where you can tag each song with descriptors which you believe will attract people to your music.

This is relatively easy if your music fits into a genre - e.g: rock, cabaret -  but when your music crosses genres it becomes a litle more involved.  In addition, you want to describe mood, influences and references as well as genre.  You can see it gets difficult.  

In an attempt to anticipate the sorts of people who might enjoy our tracks or search for music like ours, I ended up settling for terms such as hauntology, radiophonic, English folk, variety, electronica,  not to forget strategic mentions of unusual instruments such as waterphone, theremin and musical saw. Let's just hope an advertising creative desperate for the perfect piece of music for an advert is even now looking up theremin, hauntology and variety.  I like to think they would.

Two Wyrd Sisters

When we were very small, both under five, my sister and fellow Spacedog Sarah and I saw a wonderful thing.     We lived in a council flat at the time with a balcony and on the railing was balanced a peacock.  Its sumptuous tail trailed over the side of the rail and it cocked its tiny head,  jewelled eyes glinting in the sunlight.    Well, at least that's what we think we saw and yet it seems so unlikely.  The strange thing is this memory, even if imagined, is exactly the same for both of us.  We describe seeing the same thing, whether we did or not.

For me it's this shared memory and history that defines siblinghood and in our case sisterhood.    Sisterhood is something that seems to fascinate people, something we've discovered as we've worked together as Spacedog.  People are intrigued by the closeness, the way we only need say a few words to one another to communicate quite complex ideas, the way we're tuned into one another's signals.  Some mistake this for our being lovers and imagine it's erotically charged! But mostly people are fascinated by the idea of 'wyrd sisters' working together to create other worldly - our world - music, steeped in common background, culture and psychological landscape.

So far, so romantic.  Yet siblings bicker, siblings fight, siblings can be rivals, siblings move away from one another.    Certainly as I was growing up, the older sister, I felt a little resentful of the fact that Sarah was so much cleverer than me.   Her facility with maths left me standing in a dyscalculic daze.  It was as if, unfairly,  she had been given all the ability and me none.  As we grew up I realised that actually it doesn't matter, that we all have something to give. So I'm happy to pop up the shops to get the tights and haunt the sweaty aisles of Maplins, while Sarah does something technical I can't fathom. 

It's true, we are not the little girls in matching nighties we were once.    Time doesn't stand still and your viewpoint changes, you become more rational about some things and gain insight into others.  But you never forget the things that went bump in the night, the things that delighted you both, the things that made your hair stand on end or your body shake with laughter.

And yes,when we stand on the stage and work together there does feel like there's some sort of nebulous, powerful magic of sisterhood there.   It's as if that peacock is still on the balcony, binding us together in a genetically determined imaginative experience.  What is is I don't know and whatever I do say sounds irrational. 

Perhaps it's better we never know if the peacock was really there.

Here comes 'Juice for the Baby'

My recording career began at age 13 when I was the soloist on a record (yes, your actual vinyl) called 'Here Comes Christmas'.   It was, not surprisingly, aimed at the Christmas market and as well as carols included readings of famous Christmas poems by up-and-coming actors.  I was a pupil at Watford School of Music and was chosen to sing the solos due to my, then,  angelic tones.

In those more innocent times, my parents allowed said angelic daughter to wait on a street corner to be whisked off, by a little known adult male,  to go to an attic studio in an unknown village.  Fortunately it was all very respectable; the studio was in a beautiful house that had once been in an inn and the man was more grumpy than lascivious.  

I could sing but I'd never been to a recording studio so when I was asked to put on the 'cans' I looked at him blankly - he looked irritated.   After several tries at 'cans', the word 'earphones' was deployed and we were away. I recorded 'We Will Rock You' and 'Away in a Manger' and was soon on sale in The Early Learning Centre. 

My family were incredibly proud and for years brought out 'Here Comes Christmas', to my huge embarrassment, every festive season.    Fortunately it was deleted long ago although copies of it lurk Dorian Grey-like in the lofts of family members.

And so we come to 2011 and I am 46 and making a recording of a very different sort with Spacedog.    As our funds are limited, we were forced to record at home and my house seemed the perfect location being relatively quiet.  Sarah's house is on a main road and many a time we've had to stop recording something while a bus goes past.  Added to this, her adorable little dog Dolly likes to 'join in' at inopportune moments.

So the three Spacedogs  assembled at my house where we created a temporary recording studio.  The house changed overnight, strewn with instruments, and looking less like a suburban house and more a branch of Maplins.  Generous friends had loaned us extra microphones and these were set up, with leads snaking round the house and perilously up the stairs, to where I was to work in my landing  'vocal booth'   

Sarah's background in acoustics came to the fore as she devised a cunning solution which involved hanging all the duvets I could lay my hands on from stepladders  Soon I was ensconsed in my multi tog nest with just a microphone for company, waiting like a medium for messages from the ether, or  more accurately the living room where Sarah and Stephen were recording. 

My children's lives were put on hold, literally, as they were discouraged from using the toilet and particularly flushing.  The problem with flushing, which doesn't occur to one normally, is that the noise goes on interminably. After the initial flush you get hissing and gurgling for around five minutes.   Five minutes of important recording time! The sound of a swirling cistern is the last thing you need on a sensitively crafted song; tends to ruin the atmosphere a jot.

With just three days to get ten tracks down, we worked like dogs (although not like Dolly) and kept ourselves going with our drug of choice, tea and crumpets - rock n roll. Reader,  we managed it!  There were a few tears, a couple of brief snappy moments, lots of giggles, occasional fag breaks for Stephen, a bar counting mental breakdown for me, but we did it.

For the past few weeks Sarah and Stephen have been hard at work on the production side.   'Juice for the Baby' is almost out of the door and we are launching it with two gigs on the 9th at the Marlborough in Brighton and on the 14th at the Horse Hospital in London (yes it really was once a hospital for gee gees). 

Oh and no one ever said cans!