A Poem About Graduating

Congratulations!
This piece of paper, stupid hat and gown have cost you
Thousands of pounds
Good luck for the future
Oh, and give the hat and gown back

VV Vroom

VV Brown
Travelling Like The Light

Known to her friends as VV Brown, Vanessa Brown from Northampton has exploded onto the UK music scene like Gladiator contestants bursting through the paper wall at the end of the travelator. But I can’t help and wonder – what does the extra V stand for? Vivacious? Vigorous?
Judging by her debut album Travelling Like The Light either of those adjectives would fit the bill. The record, self-described as “musical mashed potato” due to it’s borrowing of a myriad musical styles, is ace. She’s not lying with her description, as the album flows from motown to punk to do-wop to 60s pop. It’s a veritable rollercoaster of the last 40 years of the British music scene.
Thankfully none of the tracks make you want to dance the mashed potato, but they do make you want to dance. Whether it’s the bombastic “Game Over” – a goodbye kiss wrapped in a funk-blues bundle – or the catchy “Crying Blood” – the hip-swinging, 60s-style, poptastic penned effort tinged with the sadness of another failed relationship.
Her songs are ostentatious and loud, just like their author, and most tell an unashamed story of love, either lost, rejected or won.
The only thing letting Brown down is the lack of depth to her lyrics, which are less cryptic than many of her UK indie peers, and more direct – “You’re stupid and you gotta do it – leave!” she screams, but when the message is so passionate and bold, decent semantics don’t really mater anymore.
No ambition is too big for Brown, or stage for that matter, with the 26-year-old keen to move into writing scores for films and like a fat kid in a cake shop window, she’s got a finger in more than one pie. Brown has already started a vintage clothing label and has also co-produced a comic, no less.
Researching her background is like discovering one of your friends has been spying for MI5 for years – the stories just keep on coming. But, like her music, each turn is a welcome surprise. I never found out what the second V stands for either.

Back, but not for good

I cried when I slumped into my plane seat at Houston Airport. It was a combination of relief at having made my connection (thanks to a swift jog across half of Houston), and a final realisation that I was heading home. It was only when I saw the map of the UK on my seat screen that it sunk in – I was going home.
Home to England, but away from America – where I had truely settled and made some dear friends.
My window out to the Atlantic was small, but it is my window, and I can choose whether to look out of it or not. I feel like this five month adventure was a result of me looking out of my window, liking what I saw and wanting to see more.
Getting comfortable is the bane of any adventurer’s life, but i fund myself settling in Los Angeles quickly. Unsurprising, really, in a neighbourhood that was as friendly as it was affluent. The lifestyle lent itself to an easy existence, where life’s riches dropped at your door and people greeted you with a smile that suggested life satisfaction.
What my adventures truely offered me was the chance to meet new people and it threw so many brilliantly memorable souls my way.
Which is why I left the States with a heavy heart. But also with a promise to return soon, and stay longer. Much longer.
Previously on my travels to America I have been quite content to return home to England by the time my adventure was up. Not this time. I wasn’t ready to come home. I could have happily stayed longer, and had the option to, but there was something I had to come back for. Something I would have regretted not being there for.
The near future sees me staying in London, but past that, I really don’t know. I want to go back to America, there are lots of people I want to see, but also lots of things I want to do. I feel like my list is endless. I guess that’s a good thing.

Hush Puppies

Like Vines by The Hush Sound

It’s not often a band’s name is such a blatant lie, but the Hush Sound are anything but quiet.
Smashing piano keys with the force of an angry Ben Folds and banging drums like Animal from the Muppets, this quartet from Illinois don’t really have a low-decibel moment.
Especially during their 2006 album Like Vines, which is like being musically punched in the face, but instead of it hurting, it makes you start dancing.
The album explodes to life with We Intertwined, a song about love with band founders Greta Salpeter and Bob Morris’s lyrics embracing each other like the characters in the song.
The two, who met in High School, share lead vocals throughout the album and switch over with effortless ease, like tag-team wrestlers.
Sweet Tangerine and Lions Roar are other stand-out tracks on the album, crashing into your ears and sounding like musical numbers, backed with big bang-style orchestral bigness.
Even during the so-called softer songs, the strength of the instruments and voices makes it anything but background-music.
Maybe it’s the strength of Salpeter and Morris’s voices, maybe it’s the array of instruments used to bolster each song – an accordian here, a flute there – maybe it’s just good production skills. Whatever is it, it works.
I feel like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a west end play, Salpeter and Morris dueting with pitch-perfect voices. In fact, The Hush Sound – The Musical could work. They already have the songs, just scribble some script about Salpeter and Morris being star-crossed lovers or something and you have a play on your hands.
My friend Kirstine sold me the album off the back of We Intertwined but warned me “the rest of the album isn’t really like it”. She lied.
One slight criticism: Many of the songs are quite samey. I found myself humming one of the songs the other day and going straight into the chorus of a different song.
Sounding strangely like Ok Go, although sadly lacking the treadmill skiing skills to produce anything even close to a music video to match the Chicago-based rockers, The Hush Sound still rock my world. Check ‘em out.

N.B. The band have a newer album out – 2008’s Goodbye Blues. I have it somewhere and have only spun it a few times, but from memory it rocks also. Will review it soon.

I See London, I See Francis

Robert Francis @The Fly, Camden 9/11/09

The mystery that surrounds Robert Francis is how he manages to turn from socially awkward agoraphobe to passionate singer with the strum of one chord.
The Californian Emile Hirsch look-a-like wanders up to the stage like a man carrying the burdens of 1,000 souls, and fiddles around with his instruments like a 13-year-old before a music recital.
But once he starts playing a different Francis emerges – still tormented, like a prisoner recently released from 30 years incarceration – but a confidence flows out of him while he delivers his White Lies-esque mellow folk pop.
The most striking things about Francis and his band at The Fly in Camden last night was their apparent insistence to look like one another, all decked in plaid shirts with messy indie haircuts and David Beckham it-looks-like-I-haven’t-shaved-but-actually-I’ve-spent-ages-sculpting-this beards. It was like standing outside a GAP window.
Ignoring the appearance faux pas, Francis served up soulful sounds that lent a little of everything, at times sounding like roots blues from deep Mississippi and then flowing into country rock, all served with a dash of self deprecation and humility.
Which is less than can be said for Francis’ mid-song demeanour, a confidence, bordering on arrogance, that unfortunately manifested itself in more than enough cum-faces-during-guitar-solos than is necessary.
What is undeniable was the boy Robert’s voice, pitch perfect every song, and hauntingly chilling during each tormented verse. Coupled with melodically memorable songs and pretty boy looks, Robert Francis has potential. Just enough with the weird faces, my friend.

The Boy Dennen Good

He may blur the lines between masculinity and feminity when he dances, but Brett Dennen can certainly turn out a decent song.
On stage, the ginger singer-songwriter who looks like the offspring of Carrot Top and Ellen DeGeneres (or Norwegian footballer John Arne Riise), has a knack for churning out soulful, catchy, melodic pop that makes you want to move your hips in a very inappropriate manner.
Which is exactly what the 30-year-old Californian does when he is on stage, gyrating in his skinny jeans, giving anyone in the front row a very clear view of his groinal area.
But most don’t care, because they are lost in his tuneful pop, a sort of Ottis Reading meets John Mayer.
His latest effort, 2008’s Hope for the Hopeless, is an 11-song, head-nodding, collection of love songs, each one flowing into the next with easy-listening beats, memorable lyrics and catchy hooks.
It’s the sort of album you could listen to walking the streets of San Francisco, or hear as the soundtrack to an independent film where the hero strives mercilessly to win back his one true love. Probably set in San Francisco too.
And ‘San Francisco’ is the name of the album’s opening track, a smooth, motown-esqu track that almost grabs you by the hand for a slow dance. Gyrating your hips is the only way you can dance to this track.
The rest of the album gently takes you by the shoulder and leads you to the dance floor. Some tracks are slower than others, like ‘So Far From Me’ a slow-winding track that almost cradles you as it plays.
Others are more upbeat, almost jazzy, like the sing-a-longable ‘World Keeps Turning’. Each song with it brings it’s own message of love won, love lost, or love yearned.
Voted one of Entertainment Weekly’s One to Watch last year and a touring bill with Jason Mraz this year makes the future look good for Brett Dennen.

Like/Dislike

Here are a few things I like about living in America, and a few I don’t.

Rocks:
Turning Right on red
Jamba Juice!
Being English
Craigs list
HBO
Oreo
Trader Joes
Car pool lanes

Sucks:
American newspapers
American coaching techniques
Drivers
How spread out everywhere is
Stop signs. Now and then sure, but every 50 yards? Seriously?
And All-way stops. Fine on a 4 road junction, but on an 8 road junction? Where one of the roads appears in your blind spot? Sort it out, America.

A New Life

Well I’ve failed that project just three days in. The poem-a-day project was supposed to be an excuse for not having to write long blogs but seeing as I couldn’t even keep up with one measly poem every 24 hours, I thought I owed you a blog.
I’m entering the last five weeks of my programme here which means England beckons. As does my old life, which I came to America to get away from. Well, take a break is probably a better phrase, and it’s fair to say that’s exactly what I have done. My standard of living here could not be more different from home, and it is not neccessarily a good thing.
Before I was living in a tiny, yet cosy, flat in Tunbridge Wells. My lifestyle was modest and my economic approach meak. But I liked that. I lived well withing my means and didn’t need 1,000 commodities clogging up my small room. I lived a simple but ultimately very fun life. All I needed was my awesome flat mate and friends around me and I was happy. What other people had didn’t worry me.
Fast forward six months to Summer 2009 – Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles. For the last month I have been living with a very wealthy family near the beach. I’m staying in their guest house all on my own, which is a few yards from the main house. The house is large, beautifully decorated and filled with TVs, expensive furniture and modern gadets. Most importantly though, it is also filled with an amazing family, who have taken me in as one of their own, and as a result I’ve settled in quicker than my brother in front of a Die Hard DVD.
But I worry that subsconciously I am getting used to this lifestyle and returning home will be a shock to the system. Here my family take me out to dinner, back home I had to make do with what was left in the cupboards. Here my family but my clothes I need, back home I had to save up and then still go to a second-hand store. It’s brilliant living here, but it’s not my life. It’s theirs. I’m just a part of it for a small amount of time.
That said, my family are building a new house around the corner (even closer to the beach) and I popped round to have a look today. I think it is fair enough to call it a mansion. Even that isn’t generous enough. It’s the sort of house you’d expect Usher to be showing you around on MTV Cribs. It has sea views, three floors, 10 plasma TVs, a bar, a theatre complete with confectionary stand, a lift from floor to floor, a pool, a hot tub, massive bedrooms, a bathroom for each room, and so on. I have never been in such a place and I doubt I ever will (unless I visit them next year). And yet they have designed it so well that despite being such a large space, every corner of every room is as homely as my flat in Tunbridge Wells was. Just slightly bigger. And with imported French bricks for the wine cellar.

Poem 2

Here’s today’s poem.

“No no no no no no!”
Screams the coach
“Kick it honey!”
Yells dad
Desperate for his little princess
To make up for the soccer career he never had
Tempers flare on the sidelines
An air of general malaise
Never once being encouraging
Never once dishing out praise
A goal
A kick
A block
A run
Kids only concentrating on having fun
Take out the negative edge
Relax, take it smooth
Install some enjoyment
And the kids will only improve

A Poem A Day

My new project is to write a poem a day, and you will get to read them, in all their rubbish glory. Here’s the first.

The Beach

Walking over tiny sand dunes
Like Gulliver trampling the Sahara
Hypnotised by the waves
Their neverending chime
Frothing at the shore
As they gently intertwine
Sand clings to my feet
Like sprinkles on a cake
Men solemnly try to bronze
Like antiqued wood
Seagulls gather close by
The most sociable creatures on the beach.