Writing reviews really pays off, apparently! Over 80 views on my blog yesterday, and most of them from people who googled things like “skunk anansie”, “skunk anansie rockefeller” or “skunk anansie review”. I should do more of this stuff! Because, you know, only reason I blog is that I’m another attention whore.

I took photos yesterday! Or, well, Tina took photos of me. It was lots of fun, getting all prettied up to take pictures in a real studio, with real equipment and a professional photographer. We took loads of pictures! I think Tina’s gonna have a hard time narrowing it down to just four, which was the deal… She’s sending me some jpeg’s soon of the ones she’s picked so I can approve them, and then she’ll fix them up, you know, colour and contrast and stuff, and she’ll make black and white versions as well, and then she’ll send me the finished ones in full resolution to do with as I please. Yay!

Tonight we’re going out for beers! It’s one of the things I miss the most… It seems like people at the uni mostly just go out clubbing and things. The only people I know of who actually go out to the pub for a drink are Ree’s jitsu friends, and for that I’d have to go to Wolverhampton. That’s two hours traveling time for a pint… Not saying it’s never worth it, just that it’s a hassle.

So, yes, beer and people and talking and having a nice time = awesome! I’m looking forward to seeing my friends. It’s looking to be a great night, if I just get rid of this headache first…

I would like to preface by saying: Why the hell did I not know of this band? While it did turn out that I actually knew one of their songs from before – Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good) – I didn’t know that song was theirs. Basically, when Morten asked me along I had no idea what I was going to. So how on Earth have I missed this awesome rock band, with a female singer who’ll pure-attitude the pants off any male in the business?

A bit of background: Skunk Anansie was formed in 1994, split up in 2001 and reformed in 2009. They have released four studio albums and one best-of collection. Tonight was the first time they played in Norway in eleven years.

The warm-up act was The Virginmarys, a relatively new band who’s just released their debut record, and who have apparently been hailed as “the new Led Zeppelin”. I’m not sure I’d go quite so far, but they were very talented and I enjoyed their heavy, bluesy rock music. I also bought their CD, and they all signed the sleeve for me which was very nice.

The main act can only be described as fantastic. I enjoyed it from the first song (which was Yes It’s Fucking Political from their second album Stoosh). Loud, angry and hard rock music tends to make me happy, and Skunk Anansie displayed plenty of all three, though  there was the occasional ballad. It was the last show of the tour, which means they made a pretty big deal out of the whole thing and seemed to have a lot of fun with it. A lot of people say the last show of a tour is always the best. I’ve been to three last-shows-of-the-tour (including this one), and they’ve all been amazing, so in my experience there’s definitely some truth to that. I’m not sure whether my favourite moment was Skin breaking out the theremin or taking a walk out across the crowd. I mean, really, crowd surfing takes quite a bit of attitude in and of itself, but crowd-walking? Absolutely mad! I love it!

I have, it would seem, found a new idol. Skin impressed the shit out of me! At first she seemed a bit weak, perhaps, I thought… Like she hadn’t quite found her body yet. Maybe she was nervous, who knows… But very soon she just turned it around and put on one of the most impressive vocal performances I have ever seen.

Female rock singers are rare enough, but one with that much attitude, talent and raw power… I’ve never seen or heard anything like it, she rocks my world just by existing.

For the final number, we managed to somehow make it all the way over to the mixing desk, where we discovered the schedule for the show was lying quite unguarded. So we swiped it before we left. A bit of memorabilia is always fun.

On the way out we stopped by the merch stand and bought t-shirts, and the previously mentioned The Virginmarys CD. My t-shirt says, “It takes blood and guts to look this cool, but I’m still just a cliché” which is, I am told, the title of one of the songs from their first album. I just thought it was a cool phrase…

Now I’m thinking I should cover one of their songs for my dissertation… Sing a song actually written for a female voice for once.

I meant to write this post almost a week ago, but I’ve been lazy, pure and simple.

We now have a venue! At least I’m pretty sure we do… The guy from the Roadhouse let me know we could have the 11th of May on Friday, I needed to double check that it still worked for everyone and said I’d get back to him the next day, forgot about it, and e-mailed him at 2 am. Haven’t heard back yet, but I expect I will today.

So, yes, this is what’s happened. Aiden and Chris have teamed up with me for a venue. We tried the Actress and Bishop, but they couldn’t do that date, and so I e-mailed the Roadhouse, who said they didn’t know because they might be starting a Battle of the Bands thing on Wednesdays and Sundays in May. They were having a meeting about it Thursday, and asked me to e-mail them again on Friday when they knew more. I guess the Battle thing didn’t happen.

So, I have a date and a venue! Now I just need to complete my set. Interim task is next week. I’ve been rehearsing well with the band, and we’re running through the songs one more time next Wednesday before the interim task, so I think we should be fine.

I’m helping out Aiden with his interim task, too. His singer couldn’t be there that day, so he asked if I could fill in (or, I heard him talking about it and offered, and then he asked me later). Yesterday, I took a train out to Coventry and Aiden picked me up. Then we drove to his place, in some quite small town I can’t remember the name of, parked the car, and were picked up by his bassist who drove us to a very drafty rehearsal space in Nuneaton. They had a good PA, though, and in our break we were served tea (as in the drink, not the meal), which was nice. I completely wore out my voice doing one of the songs an octave higher than the original at the top of my lungs, but it was great fun! I’m looking forward to Aiden’s interim task. It’s the day before mine, so it should be good “warm-up”.

Oh, also yesterday, Renee won silver in her jitsu tournament! She would have won the gold if it weren’t for her asthma, I’m sure of it, she was absolutely awesome!

Today I am going HOME!!! I’ll be back on Sunday, but I’m just so excited to be spending some time with Morten, and I’ll be seeing KayKay, too, my “wee sis” whose been in Japan, so I haven’t seen her since August! I’m taking her to lunch this Wednesday.

I have a lecture today at 11. The Employability & Enterprise lectures are mandatory, so I’m going to that. As soon as the main portion of the lecture is over, though, I’m heading off to get a train out to Birmingham International for my flight. I’ll be stopping in Amsterdam again. They have crazy security there, so I’m glad I’ll have two hours to get through it all…

Now I need to make sure I’ve finished packing.

I think I’ve got another existential crisis brewing. You know the deal. “Am I really good enough?” “Can I manage all this on my own?” “Will I get there in the end?” And then, also, “What am I doing here??”

I don’t like myself very much when I’m here… I feel like this shut-in, just hanging out in my room most of the time, playing computer games when I’m not working. Sometimes I make up excuses to go to the kitchen when I hear voices, just so I’ll see other people. Then I get all whiny, feeling like no one wants to hang out with me, when it’s me who’s hiding out in here. No one ever asks if I want to go out, but I never ask if they want to go out, either.

It’s probably hard for people to understand how scared I really am, all the time, of social situations, and talking to people, because once I get past an initial barrier you really can’t tell. Thing is, the barrier has a way of building itself up again, so if I don’t know someone very well I might not be able to approach them even though we spoke freely the previous day.

Maybe it’s foolish of me to think that I can make it in the big, scary world of music when I can’t even pick up the phone and talk to someone I speak to every time we meet by chance.

Really, really hard work when there are so many things to be taken into account…

For my dissertation, I need to find two other people who want to play the same night as me, book a venue, and make sure my whole band is free that night. Sounds simple enough… Really, really isn’t.

5th May is a free slot. But I can’t play 5th of May, because my guitarist already has a gig that day.

11th May is a free slot, but also the day of the Music Department concert. Why on Earth they couldn’t have that after the solo performances are over is beyond me. Don’t yet know if any of my band will be playing at the Music Department concert. Also my birthday.

12th May is a free slot, but also the day of the student-led Ensemble concert. I know that the other three members of my band play in ensembles, but don’t yet know if any of them are playing this concert. My guess is yes. Again, why they couldn’t have this after the solo performances are over is completely beyond me.

9th and 10th May there are slots booked at the Newhampton Arts Centre, where we did our Improv gig. I really don’t want to play there, because I don’t think I’ll be able to get people to come, and I don’t know if all these slots are already booked. For all I know, they might be. Last resort for me, if all else fails.

For the latter two, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding people who want to play the same night as me. For the former, I will. I really want to book the Actress and Bishop in Birmingham. Steve Cooper thinks they’ll be just right for the kind of music I’ll be playing, and I think it would be a good idea. But I can’t play there if I can’t find other people who also want to play there.

And now the interim task is starting to loom. Plus, we’re doing our Employability & Enterprise gig on the 16th of March.

I was planning on singing today, finding an empty piano room and doing some exercises. Not gonna happen now. I’m too stressed. Couldn’t sing if I wanted to. I feel like everything’s going to hell and I’m all on my own, I have to manage it all by myself and I just haven’t got the courage or the stamina. I’m gonna need a miracle to get this all to work out…

Well, it’s been a bit more since my last post, but I’ll be covering about a week in this one. I was considering splitting it up into several posts and then posting retroactively, but that would just have been weird… So one supermegahuge post for you!

On Monday I had Employability and Enterprise again, and I feel just that little bit more unhappy with my group than I did last week. We’ve got a couple new members who weren’t there the previous week, so now we’re a very big group, 10 members. I feel like our meeting was very rushed, and we never really took the time to discuss exactly what it is we’re gonna do. It seems like this was just collectively decided without anyone really thinking much about it. We’ll be playing one pop song, and then our two flute players will be playing one classical piece, and then we’ll do a Disney song where we bring the flute players into the mix. This bit, I suppose, is alright, but the rest of the time we’re just kind of gonna be talking, and I don’t even quite get what we’re gonna be talking about…

It feels like it’s gonna be very dull and not even that educational. I was going to suggest the idea of doing some older music, maybe introducing these kids to some genres they’ve never heard before, broadening their minds a bit. But I never got the time to make that suggestion, couldn’t really get in a word before the rest had somehow decided that they wanted to do this particular thing, and that was it.

I’m not complaining. If they let me sing, I’m pretty much fine with anything we do, and it’s how we organise this thing that matters for our marks, not the actual result. Still, it would have been fun if I could have brought something into it that is uniquely me. I AM a performer, after all.

On Wednesday, my friend Paul came to visit from Derbyshire. We went to a pub in town, The Black Country Arms, and drank cider. Then we went to the Student Village and had some dinner, before he headed back to the train. I’ve never actually met Paul before, we’ve only chatted online, our common interest in sci-fi being what got us acquainted in the first place. Interestingly, we barely touched on Doctor Who when we finally met in real life, having much more fun discussing politics, religion and our best memories of being stupendeously drunk.

Dick Decent (my vocal tutor) was back on Wednesday, and I left Paul alone for half an hour to go have my lesson. Dick’s been ill, so I haven’t seen him since before Christmas, but he thinks he’ll be okay for the rest of the year now. I hope so, because we get along quite well, and he has a lot of good pointers as far as repertoire is concerned. He seemed impressed with the leadsheets I’d made for the band, which I brought and showed him, and the arrangement for All Along the Watchtower I’d made.

He suggested I record my rehearsal the following day, which I did. Thursdays 11-1 seems to be the only time we’re all free at once, so that will have to be our regular rehearsal time. Actually, it turns our Steven isn’t really free then, as he has bass lesson at 12:30, but he’s gonna try to get it switched around. I thought we had a massively productive rehearsal. We only focused on two songs, Chronophobia and All Along the Watchtower, but I think they both went remarkably well for a first rehearsal. Everyone got into it very quickly, and I’m optimistic. I was especially impressed with my drummer, who seemed genuinely enthusiastic about an arrangement that I would have thought would have been a bit boring for a drummer, and who had good ideas for both songs and caught onto my not entirely fully formed ideas very quickly and easily.

The following recordings were the last attempts at the songs. Very raw, but it might give an idea of what I’m trying to do:

All Along the Watchtower

Chronophobia

Following my rehearsal, I went to my lecture for Untold Stories. I have a slightly clearer idea now of what I’d like to do for this module. We’re supposed to research something within popular music history that’s unexplored or undocumented and make a podcast about it. I think what I want to do is do one about my dad. As far as I’m aware, no one’s written anything about my dad. I can draw a general link to the folk movement in Fenno-Scandia in the 70s and 80s as well, draw in other important, perhaps more well known people, but with my main focus on dad. That’s my idea, anyway.

Then I went and picked up Morten in town. It was so good to see him again! We went shopping and made bolognese from scratch for dinner. Then we just sat around drinking wine, talked to Abi and enjoyed each other’s company. On Friday we went shopping again, and I bought a new coat (woot!). That evening we had dinner with Abi and Jodi. I made chicken green curry, and much to everyone’s amazement Jodi absolutely loved it. I felt very proud about that. We tried to play Cluedo, but failed as we all thought we had the answer way before we really did due to a slight slip-up. So we played team scrabble instead.

Last night we were on our own, as Abi and Jodi were off celebrating their anniversary (congrats, btw!), though we did have the occasional visit in the kitchen by Annette and her friend Paige who’s here to visit. Morten and I made tacos (we had enough food for five people, probably) and drank wine and watched The Princess and the Frog. Afterwards, we sat around comparing bad music taste. I think I won, with Manowar, Blind Guardian and Judas Priest. We also listened a bit to a band called Hellsongs, who play metal songs in friendly, happy folk versions. You probably haven’t lived until you’ve heard Blackened sung by a sweet sounding, smiling Swedish girl to a light acoustic guitar accompaniment. Now that I think about it, that was probably what brought us onto the topic of bad heavy metal in the first place.

Today was grey and rainy and best described by this song:

Keller Williams – Rainy Day

If you haven’t got Spotify, look it up elsewhere, because it’s a great song. We spent the morning, after breakfast, just listening to music and snuggling and doing nothing at all, until we had to head off for the airport. Leaving Morten there, I wished so much he could have stayed longer, and even more that I could get on the plane with him and go home. But I have stuff to do here, a degree to earn, otherwise what have the past few months’ hard work been all about? I’ve never been so homesick before in my life, but I don’t regret coming here, and I wouldn’t trade these experiences. I need to keep my eye on the ball, so to speak, remember why I’m here and that every day is one day closer to going home for good.

So, now I’m eating leftover green curry and wondering if I should push myself to be productive or just fuck it and play The Sims. The latter feels more tempting. I think I’ve earned it.

Musicians, eh? I mean, seriously. What are we like? The ones who wouldn’t forget their heads at home if they weren’t attached to their necks are so busy it’s impossible to get them together for two hours.

I’m trying to arrange a rehearsal with my dissertation band, and it’s not going very well. I’ve just switched drummers, because the old one was very hard to get hold of most of the time (he forgets to answer e-mails, and forgot to turn up for rehearsals before Christmas; good guy, good drummer, just not all that reliable – I don’t hold that against him, it’s just not the sort of person you want in a band). The new one seems to have his head screwed on, and he’s friends with the bassist, so that can only be a good thing. A reliable rhythm section who play well together is important in any rock band.

So, I was planning one for Tuesday. Tuesdays there are no rooms available at uni, so I was gonna book one at JJM where I rehearsed a couple of times with the improv band. I think they open at 2 or 3. Bassist has lecture from 3-5, which supposedly means drummer does too as they’re both second years. Guitarist and keyboard player/accoustic guitarist are available after 1. So I was thinking rehearsal from 6, but drummer and bassist can’t do that. So I was thinking maybe Friday, even though Morten’s gonna be here then. I can’t do evening, because Abi and I were discussing going out then, and either way I don’t want to leave Morten alone a whole evening. Drummer and bassist have lecture from 9-11:30, OR from 9-1:30. 9-11:30 would work, we could do rehearsal from noon if I can get a room at uni. But they don’t know yet, and then there’s an ensemble from 2-4. Could possibly do JJM from 4-6… But don’t know when we’d be going out.

So I suggested Thursday during the day as an alternative, but then I’m once again dependent on uni rehearsal rooms, since Morten’s supposed to be in town around 3 and I’ll at least have to meet him at the train station. I’d have to skip a lecture for that.

Wednesday my guitarist is unavailable, and anyway, a friend of mine might be coming to visit. Otherwise Wednesday morning would be great. Looking at the time table, the first years have lectures from noon, but 10-12 would be awesome, if it could be done. I’ll suggest Wednesday for next week’s rehearsal.

Anyways, in addition to trying to sort this all out, I woke up today with a splitting headache. The headache is gone now, as I took ibuprofen and paracetamol, but I’ve still got this feeling in my whole body like when you’re slightly hungover… You know, jittery and anxious. And I felt this way before I started stressing out about the rehearsal stuff, too. This is not my day. Or my week. Or my year, really, it seems.

How did things get so complicated? I just wanted to sing!

They’ve just been in to fix my shower! Yay!

Tomorrow morning I’m having one of those long, warm, comfortable showers I’ve so sorely missed. Woot! I’m so happy!

I stopped procrastinating today (at least temporarily) and sent out an e-mail to my dissertation band. Hopefully they’ll get back to me soon, and hopefully they’ll all be available next Tuesday… I found out today that if I want to play at the Jamhouse I need to send in a video from a rehearsal by the 11th of February, which sucks as I doubt we’ll have anything ready by then, but we can give it a go… If we do well enough at the rehearsal, maybe we can squeeze in a short one before the 11th and film a song. Here’s to hoping!

We were divided into groups for Employability & Enterprise today. Mine seems okay. I notice that I miss my old group, though… Greg, Mat and Bren are all in a group together, and I can’t help but wish a little bit that their group had picked me, too… But Joe picked me. Joe is nice, and a good drummer, so at least I know I have decent musicians in my group. Keyboard-Mat is in my group too, and Eliza, who’s a singer as well and seems very friendly. She’s Polish. Then there’s a guitarist I’ve never met before called Mel, and a flute player named Jess, and a sound engineer named Chantal, which is cool, cause female sound engineers always seem to work extra hard as it’s such a male dominated field.

Anyway, we’re gonna do a school gig, and Mat has loads of contacts at schools around Walsall, so that’s all good. It’ll be all right, I should think.

Need to buy toothpaste and soap… and some other things. I have an urge to make veggie lasagna today, but it’s such a waste to make it for just one person… Maybe Abi will want some, or Annette, or, for that matter, all of them. I’ll figure it out. Will take the next shuttle bus to town and go shopping.

Mundane, boring blog. Oh, well…

The best thing about Facebook (almost the only good thing about Facebook, really) is when you stumble across people you haven’t seen or spoken to in ages. I haven’t seen Sebastian the Tuba Player (now turned 3D modeler/animator person, apparently, check it out) in, wow, what must be nearly three years? Time seriously flies!

I’m not sure why, exactly, I looked him up today. I know he didn’t use to have Facebook, so I hadn’t really tried looking him up, but I figured, what’s the harm? And there he was. First try, despite the fact that we had no Facebook friends in common that I could see.

Now, here comes the freaky part: Sebastian is currently living in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire. What are the freaking odds? (Pretty high, I admit, since LOADS of people in Norway go to Britain to study or just work; I mean I know loads of other people who are here right now, too, but still.)

Anyway, this awesome revelation made me so happy I actually forgot to be nervous about my dissertation for a full half hour and managed to eat my risotto is peace. What a fantastic conclusion to an otherwise dismal day!

Because I’ve been stressing out about my dissertation and the need to rehearse (though not enough to actually contact anyone in the band about it, except Adam, who happened to be online when I last thought about it), I’ve kind of written a skills audit for tomorrow, though I have no idea if it’s good enough or even what they’re looking for and so I’m worried about that, and what sort of group I’m gonna end up in for Employability & Enterprise and all that, and then we discovered that there’s a leak from mine and Clayson’s boiler cupboard, which is just really bad news and I hope it’s not gonna start leaking into my room.

Seriously, this place is falling apart. On Friday the heating went out in most of the building, and several others (I went out and bought an electric heater, even though it’s against the rules, just because I didn’t want to be cold, though they did fix the heat the following morning so when I woke up I had heat again), the showers are still way over-pressurised, our extractor fan in the kitchen makes a loud, high pitched noise when you try turning it on and one of our cooker hobs is still constantly on, which is very, very bad.

I’m considering suing.

After a full five weeks away (from Walsall, not England), I returned on Sunday evening. Morten and his dad drove me out to the airport (it was a good opportunity for Morten to practice a bit of motorway driving at the same time), I checked in and got through security without any issues and my plane arrived at Gatwick ahead of schedule. There were no real delays until I was on the train to Birmingham, when we had to wait for half an hour at Watford Junction because one of the passengers needed medical attention.

Then they decided to terminate the train at Birmingham International, since it was so delayed anyway, and I got the next train to New Street. Following this minor adventure, I made it to Walsall with no further delays. Had some dinner, played The Sims, chatted with Morten and went to bed.

My last week before leaving home again was very pleasant. Monday I got my flu-shot and we spent a quiet night in. Tuesday we went to a pub quiz. Wednesday we went to dinner at my parents’ place, where we ate stroganoff. It’s been really nice seeing my step brother, Lars Erik, again. He’s studying psychology in Australia, but was of course home for Christmas (I think he’s still home; they have summer holidays there now), and was thankfully not around for the flood, as his house is in Brisbane and, incidentally, one of the few that didn’t get flooded because it was on pretty high ground. Lars Erik and I used to play a lot as children, before our parents moved in together and got married. Sadly, we drifted apart a bit in our teens… It’s so nice to see him now because it’s like that stuff doesn’t matter anymore and we can be friends again. I think Australia has done him a lot of good, too. Seems he’s found a place to belong and that’s really nice.

Thursday I hung out with Jen and Chris. We went over to Jen’s and watched Despicable Me, which I very much enjoyed. Chris had to leave a bit early as she had work the next day, but I stayed quite late and we just sat talking, mostly. It’s been a while, and was very nice. On Friday I bought a new MacBook, 15 inch. Oh my God, it’s so nice to be able to play The Sims without that infernal lagging all the time! Simply excellent computer, I’m so happy with it! Of course, it’s too big to bring about the place, so I’m gonna have to think about whether to get an iPad or wait a while and get a MacBook Air or something. I’m not made of money, so we’ll have to see…

After I’d set it up and begun to transfer everything from my old MacBook (never done that before, but it really transferred everything from settings and documents to the applications themselves; everything is exactly the same except for the upgraded iLife programmes) we went out for beers at Kristiania. Had a decent turn-out and a very good time. Missing everyone already!

Saturday, I had lunch at my mum’s. Then Morten and I went out to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I have to say is my favourite of the Narnia films so far (of course, it is also my favourite book of the series, with the possible exception of The Magician’s Nephew, so I’m probably biased) and I really cannot understand what the critics are talking about. What a fantastic adaptation! After the movie we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant, and then we went home and I packed all my stuff.

Which brings us to Sunday morning, and I’ve already told you all about that. I had a lecture yesterday, in the module Employability and Enterprise in Music, which was fairly interesting, though I’m still not quite sure I understand the module… Still, I’ll probably get it eventually. After my lecture I went shopping at Asda as I had NO food at all. Now I have loads of food. So all is well.

Today I have done nothing constructive at all. Good day.

EDIT: A quick note about Humac employees. I asked in the shop when I bought my new mac if I’d be able to transfer everything between my old mac and my new one using Migration Assistant wirelessly, or if I’d need a cable to connect the two. The guy in the shop told me that the only way to transfer all settings and applications was via a Time Capsule with a Time Machine back-up. What utter nonsense! Don’t answer a question if you haven’t got a clue! In reality, there turned out to be three ways of transferring everything from my old computer: Firewire, ethernet and airport (aka wireless). I used an ethernet cable, and it took roughly two hours.