Girl Crush Sunday #3

Ehren Dorsey

 "I enjoy pushing the boundaries of how people define femininity or masculinity"

Sweetly beautiful, striking and utterly unsuperficial, she refused to grow her hair on the suggestion of those who believed she should conform to 'normal' model looks.

Astroman

I had such a great, feelgood dream last night and it’s stayed with me all day, you know how some can.  Brett Anderson was texting me Suede videos.  I watched them on my phone and then looked across a crowded room and he was there watching me watching him.  Weird!  But very nice.

Maybe it had something to do with listening to ‘A New Morning’ earlier in the evening, and falling in love with Astrogirl...

Beautiful ones

In recent posts I’ve been doing rather a lot of navel-gazing (just a boring un-pierced innie if you’re interested) so it’s about time I contemplated someone else’s.  How about Brett Anderson’s (in a flimsy black lacy blouse, open to the waist…)?

Regular readers may have picked up on my better-late-than-never appreciation of Suede.  I was so pleased to see them on BBC’s Red Button with Lauren Laverne the other night*, performing a perfect mix of songs old and new.  As far as I’m concerned, they’ve still got it as a band.  And, even though he has (perhaps wisely) straightened out a little with age, Brett has certainly still got it in bucket-loads.  I don’t know quite how to define ‘it’ but I’m sure you know what I mean: that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that says he was always meant to be… someone. 

I wish I’d paid more attention to them in the early days.  I remember stumbling across a small piece on them in the NME when they first came into the music papers’ consciousness and, if my memory serves me right, Bernard and Brett were wearing these awful shirts.  I mean, really awful.  Big jumbo 1970s collars and horrible patterns, maybe Bernard even had a tank-top over his (or I could just be imagining that).  Along with the floppy long hair and arrogant pose, I found it hard to tell from the picture what they’d be like musically.  They did stand out, though, and the way I remember my reaction to that first picture proves they had an effect.

However, whilst I quite liked them, I never considered myself a Suede fan; I appreciated some of that Bowie-esque glam quality and Brett’s striking androgyny, but otherwise I took little notice.  I even missed out on their memorable performance of Animal Nitrate at The Brits at the time.  It has so much attitude - I was really hoping I could find it on youtube to post here but no such luck (I managed to see it recently, as we kept a recording of the BBC's 'The Seven Ages Of Rock' which included quite a bit about it.)  Anyway at least I can post a picture from it, navel and all.

The girls fancy him and the boys want to be him - or is it the other way round?

To put it into context, this is Brett’s recollection of that night in a later interview:

“We crashed the party, that was the thing.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt more out of place than that time we performed on The Brits.  It was so ridiculously corporate.  It was kinda like, you know, these snotty little kids getting up there and ripping it up, singing a song about sex in council houses and stuff.  I think that the audience didn’t really know what to make of us.  I just remember finishing the song and just looking at this sort of sea of tuxedoed people…”

Those opening bars to Animal Nitrate have taken their rightful place in my Fave Intros Of All Time, I just love the way it starts...

And as you probably know, they’ve got a new album out in March; from what I've heard so far I'm going to like it too.

* to be repeated Monday 18^th Feb.

Obsessions

Someone (I’m sorry, but I forget who) once said: the only way to cure an obsession is to get another one, and I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that.   My definition of obsession is when an interest in, or a need for, something is so powerful that it controls you, rather than the other way around.  It’s a word that smacks of unhealthiness in so many respects and sets me thinking about scarily obsessive fans (not that I have any...), OCD and other addictive behaviour with negative associations.  But at the same time, a creative obsession can drive you to do something, to make something happen, or to help you actually finish something you’ve started, so maybe it’s not all bad.

I really don’t like the idea of becoming fixated on anything although I know sometimes I do get a little bit obsessed (if it is possible to rate obsession by degrees).  But then, who doesn’t at one time or another? 

I’ve tried to learn by some of my slightly, and temporarily, obsessive mistakes – most of which are quite ridiculous.  For instance, some years ago, I got obsessed by a massive, volcanic-looking spot (don’t laugh) which, typically, appeared on my cheek the day before a rare night out to a party which had promised to be full of influential and amazing people (it wasn’t).  I thought if I dabbed a bit of undiluted antiseptic on the offending pimple on an hourly basis I might zap it into oblivion just in time.  I was in and out of the bathroom with my cotton buds and bottle of Savlon (other brands are available) like a creature possessed - which I suppose I was.  Indeed I managed to nuke the zit, but it was a good square inch of skin around it as well that I also zapped into a very red and raw oblivion.  By the way, if anyone wants a cheap and ugly chemical face peel, I can highly recommend this method.  I went to the party that night looking like I’d stuck a piece of overcooked bacon on my cheek….and I’ve never mourned the absence of a stupid spot so much.  I won’t be doing that again.

On the creative obsession front, I once bought a pack of Fymo modelling clay which, if you’re not familiar with it,  is similar to plasticine so you can perhaps imagine how much fun it was to play with.  With Fymo, though, you can bake your creations in the oven for twenty minutes which hardens and preserves them forever, and it even comes with a little bottle of varnish to give that professional looking glaze.   You can also mix the colours into lovely vivid patterns and swirls so, unlike plasticine, you don’t get that horrible shitty brown when you blend them.  Well, I don’t know why, but… I started making psychedelically coloured Fymo slugs and caterpillars.  And I got obsessed.  I spent hours each weekend making them in as many different groovy colour combinations as I could.  Every surface in the flat started to fill up with these many-hued creatures, in various stages of production: raw, cooked, cooling off, just-varnished...   I think my obsession with creating Fymo creepy-crawlies only stopped when my interest turned to making intricately patterned gift boxes, or was it when I started hand-writing my own fanzine, or was it when I got my table-top screenprinting kit…?  You get the idea.

However, perhaps one of my more healthy (?) obsessions is to do with music.  Yours too?  I thought so.  Just one song can get under my skin intensely for a period of time too and during that phase I simply want to hear it over and over again.  It hits the spot (without the need for Savlon…)  So it is with some irony that I’ve written this post because the song which is currently obsessing me is this:

And it works on so many levels.