Zakynthos (2)

I did say back in August I would write more about my holiday. This actually didn't take as long as I thought, and I'm happy I found a different way to present a blog.

If I don't speak to you before, Merry Christmas!

- Lizzie

Kina Grannis - Friday October 21st 2011 - Bush Hall, London

I think the story of how I got to go to this show is kind of relevant: I have been a fan of Californian pop/folk singer Kina Grannis for around three years, it was through her essentially that I heard of most of my other favourite bands and it always impresses me how well she interacts with her fans. And rightly: it was the Internet and the videos she uploads to Youtube that brought her to fame, Kina is kind enough to put a lot of effort into interacting through Twitter and Facebook, and she told me personally through a reply to the Facebook message I sent her about her tour before she announced shows in the UK.

I was really slow finding somebody to go with me to the show, and seeing if I'd get time off school. Fortunately, it turned out I had the day off school and could get to London, but by then the tickets had sold out. I bought some second hand. Two nights before the tickets still hadn't arrived, which was very scary, but on the morning we were leaving a package was at the post office. Opening the package was a very worrying moment, I think it would've broken my heart if it had turned out to be something else.

Before the show we went to Hummingbird Bakery, where I bought a cupcake to give Kina at the meet & greet because I am a huge dork. I queued outside early, whilst my dad who I was with went to get food - he has less patience with queues than me - and talked to an Irish guy, who came on his own and had been to three of the shows.

Shepherd's Bush Hall is a tiny arena but really beautiful, it has red velvet curtains and a big disco ball hanging over the room. It's also really small and intimate - I stood really close to the front, my bag and drink were resting on the edge of the stage. They have hung up boards with information about people that have played with before, and a huge one about Imogen Heap!

The support act was also selling t-shirts at the merch table. His name is Jesse Epstein, and on stage he goes by the name of Imaginary Friend. I hadn't heard of him but I really like his music, he's a great singer and played a genius cover of "Fly Me To The Moon".

Kina came on and my first thoughts were that she was exactly like I'd imagined from all her videos and blogs - except much, much shorter. She opened with "World in Front of Me", played the whole show on one guitar, which she shared with Imaginary Friend and it was so pretty and intimate and just the way music should be. Everything about it was minimal - the way she was, one girl alone with just her guitar, and the only people on tour with her were Jesse and her manager, Jon, and music can still function like this. That makes me happy.

Kina was quiet but chatty and interacted with the audience a lot, talking about the reason for "The Goldfish Song's" title and being embarrassed about her bright green socks. Kina and Imaginary Friend played one of his songs together, unrehearsed, which was still flawless, and she also played a really great cover of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again".

The last song was my favourite, "Message From Your Heart", and she just unplugged and came over to one side of the stage - my side - and whilst she sang the audience joined in, singing the rhythm of the "bum bum bum bum"'s with her.

Being in the presence of Kina was strange because I feel like she's somebody I know, after seeing all her videos for the last three years, seeing her grow and change and without sounding too cheesy, her supporters online really have come along on the journey.

When it got to my turn in the meet & greet, we hugged like old friends. She said, "I remember you!" and for one weird second I thought she might mean from the few Facebook messages we've exchanged, but then realised I'd been stood near the front and she could see me the whole time, which is a funny idea to get my head around, though obviously I'd thought that the performer must look at the audience and see them, too. She also liked the cupcake.

It wasn't long, because curfews have venues, but I don't think I can think of a performer who's more enthusiastic about communication with their fans than Kina: she made sure she signed things, took pictures and talked with every single person at the show, just for a while.

Forever Day

I normally don't like to write blog posts that tell you to do things, and I especially don't like trying to get you to spend money but I believe that what I'm writing about today is a really worthy cause. For those of you that don't know already, Project For Awesome is a day every year where video makers on Youtube talk about different charities that mean something to them.

Thing One:

A guy called Alex Day is trying to get his song "Forever Yours" to Christmas number one in the UK charts this year. At time of writing we're at #4 on iTunes and I believe not far from #3. Today - "Forever Day" - is the first day that sales of his song count towards Alex getting the #1 spot. You can only buy "Forever Yours" once for it to count, but there are twelve different versions and remixes - this includes a demo, an acoustic piano version and a completley acapella version with each instrumental part replaced with a vocal track - each one of these that you buy will count as a seperate sale. It's a really great song, and 100% of the proceeds go to a charity called World Vision. I think that it's really inspiring that we, the internet and community of Youtubers and Twitterers and Tumblr-ers (?), have already gotten it this far. Every sale before midnight on Christmas Eve will count, and it would really make me happy if we can get an independant artist to Christmas #1 in the UK for the first time.

Thing Two:

Without saying much more, this is really powerful and affective, and to me was one of the best Project For Awesome videos on Youtube this year.



There's a link here if you wanted to see the information box for the video and donate, or go to any of the sites and helplines he talked about.

Thank you for reading this. Happy Forever Day.

- Lizzie x

*I must be starting to feel too involved.

Christmas Playlist

Some Christmas songs you maybe haven't heard before...

"I KNOW WHO TOOK THE MILK AND THE COOKIES" - KINA GRANNIS
A song about coming home.




COVER OF "FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK" - BILLY BRAGG AND FLORENCE WELCH
"Fairytale of New York" is one of my favourite Christmas songs, and nothing beats the original but these two have really great voices and the mandolin part is lovely. Plus Florence and harps go together like... um. Suncream and skin.



"JUST FOR NOW" - IMOGEN HEAP
Beautiful layered harmonies, words about family feuds and false smiles and kicks under the Christmas dinner table.




"THERE'S ALWAYS CHRISTMAS" - ARDIE COLLINS
With a guitar rhythm that's kind of woefully cheerful, a song about a faltering relationship at Christmas time.




"TIMSHEL" - MUMFORD AND SONS
This is not exactly a Christmas song, but it reminds me of Christmas time and mountains, water, snow. I was torn between posting this or "Winter Winds", both sound like Christmas does. But this is so melancholy, both comforting and very cold.




"GOODBYE ENGLAND" - LAURA MARLING
Again, more a wintery song than a Christmas song but it feels like Christmas to me. I wanted to find a video of her playing this in a cathedral like when I saw her (I'm currently trying to get up to date on blogs about concerts from October) but couldn't. Hearing it with just her and a guitar, in a big dark, cathedral, was really magic. But this version is lovely too.

Held Hands, Stabbed Backs

When I was eight years old, I believed in ghosts.

I believed in ghosts because we all believed in ghosts; how couldn't we, when they were a regular occurance in our daily lives? We all knew about the Moaning Myrtle-like ghost girl who stalked about in the school toilets, because we maybe hadn't seen her ourselves but people in the class who told us about it certainly had. Some of the braver children had tried the "Candy Man" trick, calling out an incantation three times into a bathroom mirror to see if faces appeared. It was Year 4 and my whole class were obsessed.

Then, one night my friend called me and she told me that there was a ghost in her house she'd met. Her name was Stephanie, a little girl who had died when she was pushed down the stairs. Her and another of her ghost friends protected the two of us; they had to because for some reason or other, a man called Bob who was also dead wanted us to die, he had been the one that killed Stephanie. I remember Molly telling me that Jane, who correalating with my weird eight year old obsession with the Tudors at that time I imagined looked like Jane Seymour, would hold my hand and protect me when I stuck out my own arm. They obviously never appeared but once in the classroom my friend told me that man was there, that he was touching my back and I could feel it, I could feel this pressure and this pain, it was so real that I didn't want to look behind me because I really felt his nails digging into my shoulders and I felt that I would see them. Similarly, Jane held my hand when I was scared. I feared her at first but not after a while. Her hand was cold and soft, her fingers very thin.

We were so young that it's hard to work out how long this odd little playground game went on for. Maybe a month. Maybe six. Maybe a year. But one day Molly told me she'd made it all up, made up Stephanie and Jane and the killer because she'd just wanted something to go on in our lives. At first I wanted to smile at her and shake my head because didn't she understand, it was real. I knew these imaginary friends so well. Then she told me she felt the same, that they'd become real, that we'd felt and heard and maybe even seen them and it was so strange because it was the strength of both our imaginations, childish faith and belief, things we'd told each other and most of all a need for comfort from monsters that had really made them real, our Ghosts.

A few years back I went to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair as a kind of experiment with my mother. I was too young to see a medium but she did. He'd known so many things. He'd known the name of her baby sister who died, he knew about a cupboard in our house that things had been moved in. He said that she had a daughter who got a funny feeling in her left leg, and that it was "the big orange cat" - our family cat Ginger died about a year previous to this - rubbing himself against her leg like he always used to. And that was true, I did used to get a tingling feeling in my leg. At the time we all cried and hugged. I felt so happy.

But since then I've started to doubt it, and a lot of this is down to me discovering Derren Brown. In a documentary he gave readings like this, claiming to be contacting the dead and using names, dates and things from people's personal history, that he always declared was using trickery. He did this to make people aware of false "mediums" but I have no idea how, if it was a trick it is still somewhat incredible.

I think I still believe in the big orange cat against my leg. I know that sometimes when I think about it I feel it, but am I conjouring it up myself? Because I've tried to work it out and there's really no way to know.

One last thing; I was in an exam recently I just knew I'd done awfully in. I did what I could and finished forty minutes early and that's always horrible because all there is to do is sit, stare at the clock, think about how much you fucked up. It sends you into crazy ways of finding entertainment, because of how lonely it is being in a room full of people where everyone else is silent and concentrating.

I wanted comfort and I was imagining holding a hand. Nobody's hand in particular, just a hand. I shut my eyes. And after a while, it was there. I moved my fingers around, feeling mine tangle in their's, feeling the softness of their skin. We played with each other's fingers. I squeezed and they squeezed back.

I have different amounts of belief in all of the above, different kinds of seemingly physical contact with an imaginary force. The hand today was not real, I know that, and neither were the ghosts in the school bathroom and the girl that died on the stairs. I'm still not sure about Ginger the cat. I know it's something I'd really like to believe in.

***

There were some stories in that I wanted to go back and change to third person because I'm so distanced from them it was weird to say "I".

In other news, this song has my heart at the moment;



I'll be back soon.

- Lizzie x

Wakey!Wakey! - Tuesday October 11th 2011 - Night/Day Cafe, Manchester

Wakey!Wakey! is a band started by Michael Grubbs, a singer and pianist from Virginia. One of my friends introduced me to their music because she heard it in a TV show called One Tree Hill. I love their record Almost Everything I Wish I'd Said The Last Time I Saw You... because every song is just so different.

We were late for the concert, doors opened at seven thirty and we stumbled in after getting lost in Manchester at about ten o clock, but luckily they'd only played about two songs when we walked in, I'm guessing they started that late because there were two support acts and I think the venue probably had no curfew.

I'd never been to Night/Day cafe before, and it's a really special place; basically just a bar with live music sometimes, but there are posters and shirts and signed things all over the walls, and I felt oddly welcome even though I don't think I spoke to anyone that worked there. It held about eighty people that night, I think

Michael Grubbs played a keyboard, there were an arrangement of other musicians as his band that seemed to wander on and off the stage at will. He wore a plain white shirt, his hair was messy and everything about the show was so relaxed. He shouted across the room to a singer who'd opened for him, who was in the crowd, interacted with the audience, took pictures and told so many stories sometimes it seemed like he was forgetting to play songs. I laughed so much during a story he told about a karaoke bar in Toronto that there were little tears in my eyes.

But it didn't touch the music. Everything was perfect, the whole band in sync with each other and the violinist was particularly amazing in "Take It Like A Man".

Before we go to shows together, my friend Becky and I always predict little things that will happen, and I said he'd play an ironic cover of a song like Rihanna's "Umbrella". I was partly right, but it was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, which is even more awesome.

"Light Outside" had to be my favourite - it was two or three songs after we got in and I remember hearing those first few notes and just grinning because we hadn't missed it during the time we weren't there, and because so many people in the room were singing along with the song I love, and save for my worst days.

He did a meet and greet type thing afterwards, and as we stood around a few metres from him I didn't really feel starstruck or nervous, maybe because although I knew his music I didn't know much about the person until that day. I was planning what I was going to say to him and I had been throughout the show. About a really crappy night I had, about things being better and going home after everyone was gone and sleeping and listening to "Light Outside" and not knowing how to feel, but how that song made me feel like someone knew.

I didn't tell him that, I chickened out. But I did get my video camera and ask him to say something for my friend, who'd introduced me to his music and couldn't go. I still have it on my camera. We took a picture, he signed my ticket and we went home.

I wished I'd told him about "Light Outside" and how it's mine, because he wrote it and deserved to know. I kind of told myself that it was the situation, just like what's happened with me meeting heroes before, that the backs of bars and studios with people around are places for signing tickets and spelling names but it's hard to stumble out the words you really want to say, and I'm not sure he would have known how to reply.

I hope that Wakey!Wakey! stays at this level of fame forever, because it suits Michael Grubbs' charisma, to be able to tell stories and to sing songs.

Mostly Sleep-Talk

I'm feeling lazy but I didn't write a blog last Wednesday... or pretty much throughout November, but I feel like I owe my neglected blog an update so you get a list. I like lists.

- I am in bed and it is 1am.

- I read a book called Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's affected me in such a way that I don't know if I want to talk about it at all, but it's the first book that's made me cry. That sounds really dramatic, but the night I finished it I lay in bed and wept, not knowing exactly why.

- I babysat tonight. fun fun fun.

- Exams this week and next. bleh. But I booked concert tickets so things are good.

- Poppy and I are playing a show next weekend. That is exciting.

- Lolita is a weird book but so far good.

- Thank you for all your responses on Twitter and Tumblr and things re the Caggie interview. I still feel really weird about it.

- Coming soon: proper post of relevancy and conclusion.

I like you sufficiently.

Lizzie xxx