Here’s a little videoblog I made yesterday night on the handycam for the fish myspace site. The chaos of the last week has subsided and things are trundling along in a merry fashion.
I am off to the freak show at Venice beach tomorrow and am unfortunately having to accompany Linda Perry and J to see Patti Smith tonight so an evening of bad poetry and incompetent rock is assured – let you know how that turns out. A small thing but in LA they don’t call you on the telephone – they “reach out” ha ha ha….I think all the sunshine has melted their brains.
Ah! You don't get views like this without civilization
Whoooeee….there’s been some ups and downs, well mostly downs in the Little Fish bucket these last few days. J has been in the midst of artistic torment and LP has been a touch on the unsympathetic side. LP is not so understanding of the need for despair in the creative process. J was having some trouble getting to grips with the way that the recording process operates – it’s a complicated and esoteric thing and can be intimidating, and so it was for J – she wasn’t coping and it showed, finally LP lost it and started shouting – after it all was over – things are rocking again – and I have some entertaining drama for the film. The music’s sounding fine…
LA continues to amuse, amaze and appall me in about equal measure. I had an argument at the gym about why people were allowed to take ipods into the sauna (apparently a matter of personal freedom) and yet you are not allowed to bring licensed firearms into the sauna – which is, banned and yet ipods, which you don’t need a license for and are far more irritating and damaging to society – are allowed in the sauna, much to my annoyance. I wanted to make the point that personal freedom is an illusion, particularly at LA Fatness ( the gym of choice for Lemmy from Motorhead – who I saw there – that’s the new rock ‘n’ roll). I think I need to send my gun toting assistant producer Jenn down to sort them out – shes 6ft 2 from Texas, she owns a gun and a marvelous texan drawl, she could show them a thing or three about personal freedom…
Argggh…Here’s a little clip of the fish in their musical aquarium, splish splashing around. it’s all been a little fraught of late, but I’m sure it will improve ……
Every day from 12am to 12pm I listen to one song. the same tune over and over and over. The fucking things only three minutes long, how come they can’t get it right? Making a ‘POP’ record is an amazingly tedious and vastly repetative affair, like having sex with the same person for years and never having an orgasm – but without the fun. Linda Perry is relentless. She’s driving the band like a tank through cheese…never lets them slack. It makes J cry and N tetchy. It’s ok in the end because the track sounds mental and brilliant, the producer has a visceral talent and it’s amazing to watch the way people act around her. She’s like a little mama duck, when she moves around the studio her little ducks follow her, people also seem intimidated by her.
LA is full of people carrying around these weird little rat dogs, they are like the latest fashion accessory, it’s so demeaning to both the person and the dog, ah fuck it, they are yappy little creatures that I want to stamp on, but not as much as I want to stamp on the owners. I think they are breeding them without legs in green for next season. It’s like, have the biggest SUV and the smallest dog you can find. It’s fucked up as they would say here. The Californians vocabulary average’s 4 words these are Awesome, Totally (usually juxtaposed to Awesome) lame and dude. Makes for a fun time down at the bookstore…
The world of LA is not like the rest of the USA but it’s seductive and the feeling is of a lavish lifestyle is just around the corner. Everything is way to big here though – It’s really a foreign country and it’s definitely no country for old men…
I awake at the wrong time and have to go get a car. The only vehicle available is the size of a small truck. I can’t see to the edges of the SUV and immediately get pulled over by a very spiky LA county Sheriff on a bike (no, not a push bike, a motorbike) – for, and get this – lane straddling. I tried to say that I was new to the USA and had only just picked up the vehicle, but he didn’t care. just stared at me as if his jodpurs were a size too small (why do they wear jodpurs and jackboots?). In the US, unlike the UK you must not get out of the vehicle when they stop you – this is very important. If you do, you will find yourself looking down the barrel of a gun. Your supposed to sit in the vehicle and wait. He wrote me a ticket….this is going well I thought.
Finally I am at the Kung Fu Garden it’s nothing like a Chinese restaurant. The studio is a marvelous caricature of any and all recording studios of note – there’s something Spinal Tap about it and it’s infuriatingly poorly lit – but that’s the film maker in me – can’t get enough light, especially in the dark. The guitar collection is amazing, as are the photographs along the walls it’s a kind of museum of melody. Linda is small and intense, tattooed and gruff, yet I detect sensitivity and insight under the tough cookie wrapping. I like her – she tells me off….”get filming your not here on holiday”
So I arrived in LA, picked up in a blacked out Lincoln town car by an Algerian guy who had a host of LA stories that I didn’t want to hear. I turned my ears off. Dragging through the LA rush hour traffic the journey was interminable. After the hour wait at immigration it was as if I was in a really boring Fassbinder movie (they are all really boring – if you don’t know them – don’t bother). I arrived at the apartment that I am sharing with J and N from the band Little Fish. I was met by Ben from their record company surprisingly he was not 2 feet tall, but a normal human being – somehow in my head he had been morphed into a dark suited blackberry wielding dwarf. Not so….Inside the building reminds me of Resident Evil.
In the apartment there’s a note from J and no food, no bedroom, no nothing. Well it’s ok I can sleep on a sofa, after 10 weeks of freaks on a bus this is gonna be a cake walk. There’s nothing to do. I am jet lagged and have no car, can’t rent one till the morning – I find a bar – the Universal Bar and Grill, inside there’s a barely live band comprising of a fat Japanese girl in a tutu, a mullet wearing a guitar, and an invisible drummer hidden behind a gigantic drum kit. Everyone in the bar is like a failed extra from the Rockford files. I settle on a bar stool to sip a few beers and be told that I’m cute by the bar girl. Tired, my head spins from the beer and clockwrongness and I have to sleep. I retire hurt to the sofa, some hours later J and N burst into the apartment like clowns at a funeral. It’s a good start….Tomorrow I would meet growling Linda Perry at her studio – Kung Fu Gardens…
Listen up, I am going to the city of freaks – Los Angeles. I’ll be there for the whole of October and I will blog almost daily to tell you where I am and whats going on – I’ll be filming at Kung Fu studios where Little Fish will be recording their debut album with Linda Perry. I’ll be doing a video blog for the band on their myspace site and stuff like that – but for a more candid view on the shark infested waters of the LA music scene then check here – cos here it will be !
Linda Perrys studio....can't see no fish though
Apparently the fishes have been out drinking with Christina Aguilera….Drinking what? That’s what I want to know – Watch this space
And watch for the cover article on “The Last American Freak Show” in Mud magazine
