RosieBell

Tribute Night to Leonard Cohen

In red sparkly shoes

Camille O'Sullivan was performing at The Queen's Hall on Tuesday.  She sang Hurt:-

 

She was sitting on a chair in a red dress and very pale fish net stockings banging her feet and legs up and down to the music.  As she moved this song along on its steps of menace and doom, she made the shivers go up my spine.

What a voice - she growls, she rasps, she belts and then she can go sweet.  She inhabits the songs - she delivers them with high theatricality.

She covered Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Nick Cave:-


 

She did a big teasing routine before she did In These Shoes - picking up the red sparkly shoes, putting them on, letting the intro go on for ever, and then performed it magnificently:-

 

She is a great cabaret performer. 

Go and see the pandas

In the Captain's Bar last night the duo Rantum Scantum were playing.  Bobby Nicholson on guitar and vocals, Eddy Hanson on fiddle.  Bobby Nicholson, writes funny, satirical songs.  This is a recent topical one, Go and see the pandas:-

 

Things to do when nothin's on the telly (recorded live, so sound quality not good:-

 

After the gig

So it was worth it - the rehearsals, the practice at home, the horrible stomach-twisting and cold-sweat nerves I get before performing.  We played a blinder, and went down a storm.  There were a load of bands playing that I've seen over the years, and they were all rocking at the top of their game.  It was a grand memorial gig.  Fritz would have really liked it. 

Kudos to the organisers.  Every band started on time with none of the usual delays.  The sound engineer was excellent.  A brilliant night.

Review of the gig here.

The first act I saw were Fraktured Fingers – an amalgam of (I think) Frak and Nicotine Fingers. Appropriately enough the first song that I heard all night was written by Fritz and it kicked off a hugely enjoyable half hour or so of punky/new wave pop.

Made it to Seventy

Born 2 March 1942.

Surprisingly Lou Reed's still alive.

From The Velvet Underground & Nico

 

From Berlin

 

As a contrast to the mood of those two songs, I have to post Perfect Day.  It's an urban love song - the lovers spend the weekend together going to the park, the zoo, the movies.   Then comes the lines:-

You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else,
Someone good.

which is one of the effects of happy romantic love - that you feel wonderfully virtuous, ready for heaven in fact.

Lou Reed's singing voice is flat and untuneful so I thought I'd see if someone else had covered it.  It's a very popular song, but I couldn't find one pleasing version of it.

There's Susan Boyle - they have souped up the strings and given it full orchestral treatment with a choir in the chorus.  I can't have that.

 

Mind you, Lou's badly used face behind Boyle's smiling nice lady who does the flowers in church is something worth looking at.

Coldplay (look for it yourself) - that's with guitars.  It needs a piano accompaniment.

Bono - not so much singing as half speaking.  Adds nothing to it.  Why all those different voices, jumping up and down the register?  Far too staccato as well.

Kirsty MaColl - I thought this was a real find since I really like her voice but I don't think it's right.  She's duetting with Evan Dando and it's a little expressionless and bland.

 

I googled "Perfect Day Best Version" and found some unknown on YouTube had used "Best Version" as bait to his own terrible rendering. 

There's the BBC Children in Need one where twenty or so artists do a line each.  It's excruciating - some poor belter like Tom Jones is cut off before he's got even into half a stride. 

I couldn't find any version that I liked.  Why doesn't k d lang do it?  She can put across a song and she doesn't overdo the orchestration.  Here, for instance, she does a marvellous version of Joni Mitchell's A Case of You - she gets the emotion but doesn't rant, every word is clear and she sounds so relaxed and easy. 

 

So nothing else but to hear the man himself do it. 

 

Remembering Fritz

A lovely obituary for Fritz Van Helsing written by Norman Lamont (musician, not politician).

I never knew his real name, but then he wasn’t a guy you would ask. He lived punk, all torn shirts, black leather and spikes, with a Keith Richards sway, and he tried to convince you he was a badassed mean sonofabitch.

“How are you, Fritz?” one might ask. “Too damn sober,” would come the reply. But it only took the briefest conversation to penetrate the image, and find a friendly, considerate – and very organised – character underneath.

From the late 1990s till 2005, he ran the Full Moon Club and fanzine along with Rosie Bell and Malcolm McLean. In Bannerman’s bar in Edinburgh and various other venues he would invite bands he liked and bands he wanted to give a chance to.

It’s a fair bet that more than half the sets I played for a good few years were at his invitation. Because if Fritz liked what you did – and it didn’t have to be anything like punk – he would do everything he could to get you an audience.

Fritz, Rosie and Malcolm were a dream team: organising venue, equipment, instruments, photography and a fanzine write-up, all for the love of it. They just called you, you turned up, plugged in and played. They gave you a great intro and a warm reception. And when you weren’t playing, there were people to meet and great bands to see.

A night in the Full Moon could offer you anything from the power of Shock and Awe, Mutterfly and the Z-28s to solo acts such as Electra Smith and William Mysterious. Vanhelsing wasn’t one for introverted singer-songwriters, but if you did what you did with conviction and even a smidgin of devilry, he was your fan.

At the Full Moon, I played solo and with various bands, any which way but get up there and play.

For a while, Fritz was even the drummer in my band The Innocents, and not in a polite and reserved way. He loved a song we did called The Ballad of Bob Dylan and took manic glee in propelling it to new speeds where I could barely spit out the syllables to keep up. That was fun.

He really came to the fore as a drummer in his own bands, FRAK and Nicotine Fingers. Probably the finest moment in the history of the Full Moon is FRAK’s The Last Band to Play Top of the Pops, which you can still find on YouTube.

When Fritz stopped promoting gigs and long-term illness began to get the better of him, life wasn’t easy and many said he was his own worst enemy. But during his last years, he did get out to enjoy gigs without the pressure of having to organise them. Whatever we heard, it was clear that he loved music, loved his bands, and loved his wife Mary and daughter Jet. If you’re anywhere, Fritz, wherever you are, rave on – and thanks.

Fritz died peacefully in the Royal Infirmary, surrounded by people he loved. Of the last few years, his wife Mary said on Facebook: “He was not just stoical – he was having a good time. He was some machine.”

Fritz loved Norman Lamont's song The Ballad of Bob Dylan.  Norman can never get to play a set without including it.

 

Release the Bats

I was at Fritz Van Helsing's funeral. He asked for this song to be played:-

  

He had always said he wanted it to be played at his funeral.

Also this one:-

  

 The funeral was very well attended, with many from Edinburgh's punk and music scene there.

The Last Band to play Top of the Pops

 

Fritz Van Helsing
2nd July 1960 - 15th February 2012

Fritz Van Helsing wasn't his original name. He was an old punk who played the drums, ran a fanzine and put on a load of gigs.  He had a great passion for punk and pop music, and if he became an enthusiast for a band, would go to their every gig.  He ran the Full Moon Club in various venues throughout Edinburgh, and many bands got the chance to play because of him.  He was a real encourager.  He encouraged me in my song writing and performing.

We were a couple for seven years, but split up six years ago.

He and I founded a band called FRAK. This was our best song, one that Fritz wrote.  It's called The Last Band to Play Top of the Pops.

We did this video, but the band split up before it was completed.

When I was a kid
Every Thursday night
We’d turn on the TV
In black and white          
There on our glorious 14 inch screen
Were all these bands that we’d never seen.

Wanna be the last band to play Top of the Pops
They’ll be playing all the biggest hits of the day
And we’ll be on stage thrashing away
When we’re the last band to play Top of the Pops

There’ll be ageing DJ’s
Telling crap jokes
And some feminine dancers
That turn out to be blokes
We’ll play the last number and it’s over too soon
So we go get drunk trash the dressing room

We were way too young
For the Old Grey Whistle Test
Cheggers Plays Pop
Soon passed its best
Lift of with Ayshea, Shang A Lang
Ready Steady Go, all in the can.

It’ll be a sad day
For the BBC
When they show the last ever TOTP
That missing half hour
What do we do?
Watch the repeats on BBC2

Fritz Van Helsing - drums
Becci Dearnley - lead singer
Steve Galbraith - guitar
Sam Barber - guitar
William Baird - bass
Rosie Bell - keys

Sam and William are now in a band called The Outcasts, which gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Update:- I should have credited shooting and editing the video to Carl Barber and Malcolm McLean.

After we split up I got a text from Fritz saying, "We did have some fun, didn't we?"

So we did.

Song for the day after Valentine's Day

Dory Previn has died.  I only knew a couple of her songs, but I did like this one.

 

Beware
Of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale
Of twenty and four
Delivering daisies
With delicate hands

. . .

Beware
Of young girls
Too often they crave
To cry
At a wedding
And dance
On a grave

On Morecambe Bay

I heard Christy Moore this morning singing On Morecambe Bay.

 


I have met them in the markets,
Brushed their arms in grocery queues,
I should have grabbed them by the jacket,
Should have told them what I knew;
Told them what my mother told me
As we paddled in the waves
Never try and race the tide
Across the sands of Morecambe Bay

For the tide’s the very devil,
It can run you out of breath,
It can race you on the level,
It can chase you to your death,
Yes the tide’s the very devil
And the devil has his day
On the weary cockle grounds of Morecambe Bay

Words and music by Kevin Littlewood