I love the song, I love Paris, I love the band, I love Zach and I love Zach's nerdy jumper. Perfection? Possibly.
The place its filmed is just around the corner from the friends house where I stay when I'm in Paris, and on my last visit I walked past those bins so many times, pausing to look at them dreamily and pretend I was in the video.
Sigh.
Anyway, the video is part of a series called the Take-Away Shows by La Blogotheque. It was started in 2006 by Chryde as a new way to share music. Every week they invite a different artist to play in the streets, in a bar, in a park or even in a flat or elevator whilst they film it. They post the videos without editing them, catching all the small imperfections and oddities that make them personal and lovely. Its a great way to strip away the bullshit and just enjoy the music and the band.
The Beirut session is my favorite so far, but they have so many great other ones. Theres Amanda Palmer on a broken foot in a phonebox, and the one with the Kooks where they end up in a school full of adoring girls. All together, it's definitely an inspiring and cool creative movement that makes me feel happy when I watch it. Take-Away Shows, this is how I feel about you today :)
Extensive research has informed me that often this is the result of some exposure to magic, or possibly a sign that you're genetically inclined towards awesome.
I need to stop taking hairspiration from X-Men characters. First Jean Gray, now Rogue.
I wonder if I keep this up will I get superpowers? I'd like to be able to fly, and make peoples dreams come true. Is there a hairstyle for that?
This is a great shot of Daphne Guinness taken from Vogue. She's famous for her skunk stripe and being the wearer of unwearable shoes including the aforementioned Alexander McQueen spacehooves.
At first, I really didn't like this lady. She's the definition of androgonous and the brashy blonde vibe wasn't really my thing. However, lately when I've seen pictures of Agyness Dean, I've come to respect that she is exactly what a model should be. She's tall, thin, versatile and has a great face in terms of expression and emotion. The picture that began to change my mind about her was The Sartorialist's portrait outside Alexander Wangs show during New York Fashion Week.
It was probably the fact that it wasn't so much A Picture Of Agyness Dean than just a picture of a cool looking girl on a cold night. Also, she was totally gracefull whilst falling (twice) during
Naomi Campbell's Fashion for Relief Haiti event.
And yes, I am jealous that she manages not to tear a millon ligaments and end up with something that looks like 'a cartoon foot' (thanks ciara).
I've been away from the blogosphere for a few different reasons, the main one being that I once again am injured! I'm starting to think I could be cursed. No, seriously, I am so accident prone its ridiculous. When I googled 'accident prone' I got a terrible song by a band called Jawbreaker, an obituary, and a pdf on curses. Very, very weird.
I don't want to sacrifice any animals so I can stop getting my A&E loyalty card stamped.
Last Wednesday I went to see Jamie T (and the Pacemakers) play at The Academy. Those who know me well know that I've loved Jamie T since my friend Niall dragged me to see him in the grotty room that is Whelans back in 2006, about a year before his debut album Panic Prevention was even released. The next time I saw him was in The Village, where I bummed a cigarette from the guitarist afterwards and we got chatting to the great man himself and his band, and they were sweethearts. At that stage, Jamie was a skinny baby-faced white boy in a polo shirt kicking up a fuss with his cockney accent and odd acoustic bass guitar/rap sound. I saw them play again at Oxegen in '07 when there were literally thousands of people packed into the tent, and I felt really proud like I actually knew them...which is kind of sad, right? Three years and a new album (Kings and Queens) later, Jamie is still a skinny white boy but he's definitely grown up. He slid around the beer soaked stage in his skinny jeans, flicking he quif out his eyes and rocking his new bigger sound, and the crowd were loving it. He's more rough around the edges, but the combination of boy-next-door and london hardcore is charming as ever.
I was really enjoying the gig (standing at the corner of the stage by myself, with my friend the security guard who protected me from drunken youths) but it was when Jamie played 'Emily's Heart' that I was reminded why I love him. It's totally different than anything I'd heard from him before but its very Jamie all the same: gritty but lovely.
Bruised and bloodied, I'm lying on the ground,
And I am aware I let the poor girl down,
Now I'm dying as a message to the town,
This is what happens if you fuck around,
So meddle if you want trouble, trouble then you should meddle,
But don't ever meddle with Emily's heart...
She said I'm a user and she's a loser with a gun,
I said if you choose to it becomes hard to include anyone.
So if I stay, put it away, or should I run?
She said Jay I think you know the answer to your question.
A very sad thing that happened this week is the death of Alexander McQueen. He was a seriously talented designer and I love his work.
I think its safe to say that despite his death at such a young age, McQueen has definitely left his permanent mark on the way we view fashion. Just look at the amazing spacehooves. Who knew those two words could ever be combined to describe something so cool looking? Thank you Alexander McQueen, and R.I.P.
Ok, thats enough Jamie T love and McQueen saddness for now. Hope everyone has a nice weekend and a not-awful Valentines Day.
These are the opening words on Shelley Jacksons website, http://www.ineradicablestain.com/ . She is majorly weird and fascinating. She studied art at Standford and did an M.A. in Creative Writing at Brown (which makes me hopeful that M.A.'s do encourage experimental development in form and content). She's published a novel with Harper Collins, Half Life, and a successfull hypertext novel Patchwork Girl which, as far as I can figure out from the internet, is a re-working of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, butthe work that really blows my mind is Skin. It's a story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers. Basically, you write to her telling her why you want to be a part of Skin and she sends you a word that you then get tattoed on the place of your choice. The only rules are that you only get one word and if its a bodypart you can't get it published on said part. So it becomes a mortal story that dies out slowly but is incredibly permanent for the time it is alive. She definitely has a fascination with what it means to be alive.
'From this time on, participants will be known as "words" . As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.'
I know its insane, but its oddly beautiful too.
I'm kind of considering getting a word of my own...
p.s. I cant take credit for finding ms. Jackson myself, she was introduced to me by my much missed amigo Anto over the weird and wonderful communication device of Skype last night. He is writing a hypertext novel himself, which I won't pretend to understand at all but is pretty cool anyway.
I wanted to write a bit about Marina and The Diamonds, because despite being unable to decide wether her music rocks my socks like Florence does, she is definitely cool, has a weird-in-a-good-way voice and is rapidly becoming the next it girl of the indie music scene. And, lets face it, she has awesome hair and style.
Marina hails from 'Wales and Ancient Greece' and trained in West London Music school, but her wikipedia bio suggests she wasn't a big fan of school and college. Watch out for her when her album drops at the end of February because I have a feeling she's gonna be big. Some of her lyrics I like :)
You are so magnetic, you pick up all the pins- 'I Am Not a Robot'
Never fell down like a princess, but at least I picked myself up as a queen- 'Seventeen'
I'll leave my Marina rant with this video for her song Mowgli's Road which The Guardian review described as 'think Gary Glitter, but if he kept pictures of the Wicker Man on his hard drive'.
Another thing I'm liking today is the Chanel temporary tattoos that Garance Dore wrote about on her blog. I love Chanel and its fabulousness, as well as the way its constantly changing and evolving with fashion and never allows itself to go stale but manages to maintain a distinctive Chanel vibe.
Last but not least, the demons :) I am currently quite guiltily absorbed in City of Ashes, book 2 in the 'Mortal Instruments' series by Cassandra Clare. I never read fantasy but a fellow Twilight lover lent them to me and I have to say I am enjoying them (despite the fact that they are giving me awful nightmares!). Theres vampires, werewolves and dangerously attractive demonhunters. Seeing as its dull and grey outside and real life is being placidly monotonous, whats not to love?
Also, the series takes place in New York City, and since my visit to NYC and Sarah Lawrence in November where it suddenly became reality that I may well be living in the most amazing and mental city in the world this time next year, I have been devouring any piece of literature I can find that takes place in the Big Apple in the hope that it will provide helpful insights and make me feel less lost once I'm actually there. So far this collection of books has included What I Loved by Suri Hustvedt and a Marian Keyes book I picked up in a charity shop for 1 euro which will provide as a usefull manual if I ever have a make up crisis in Manhattan.
Anyway, thats enough snapshots of my current mind. Good afternoon.
