This Many Boyfriends

This Many Boyfriends

"They sound like 5 people high on several bowls of sugary cereal, bouncing down a stair case on a number of bright orange spacehoppers'- Steve Lamacq, BBC 6 Music.

This week we were incredibly excited to hear that This Many Boyfriends are back making noise on the music scene. Having suffered the loss of guitarist Peter Sykes to a brain haemorrage only five days after a terrific set here at Jamm back in late September, they have announced this week that they are back touring to promote their latest EP "Getting A Life With This Many Boyfriends" 

The now four piece from the North were signed to Angular Records in August 2011 and have since released the melty surfy pop single " Young Lovers Go Pop". Named after the Beat Happening song This Many Boyfriends, they are influenced widely by PJ Harvey, The Slits, Spearmint, John Richman, Otis Redding and  Joy Division, but have earned deserved comparisons of late to indie pop royalty like The Cribs, Orange Juice, Hefner and The Smiths.

They are generating alot of attention earning support slots from a host of trendy independent bands like Allo Darlin and Tender Trap. We agree with Steve Lamacq- they protrude infectious happiness on par with the likes of The Drums. If they weren't from London you could be mistaken that they were brought up on a diet of California waves and raspberry ripple.

 I hope you enjoy them. You will find their fab and friendly music here:- http://www.thismanyboyfriends.com/

Carter USM Reunite

We hear so many comments these days of bands getting back together because they're 'strapped for cash'. I often like to think that perhaps their social relevance has crept around again. Certainly becoming reknowned for recurring themes in their music, Carter USM's  decision to put entertaining takes on issues like corrupt landlords, corrupt governments, corrupt society bear much of the charged feeling they are surrounded with today as they did in the 80's. Converting this into songs of weight in alternative pop it is perhaps more impressive to think that they happened completely by accident.

They began in 1988 after their pop group Jamie Wednesday ended. Approached to play a charity gig at the London Astoria singer and guitarist Jimbob teamed up with fellow guitarist Fruitbat and recorded some backing tracks to hurriedly get the show over and done with as a duo. An undeniable success at the gig, it pointed towards a longer future as a two piece. They renamed themselves based on Fruitbats surname and an amalgamation of the many sexual conquests they were attaining at the time. Lucky them.

They vented their anger of everything wrong with the society in which they lived and teamed with strung out guitar rhythms, palpitating dance beats and punk attitudes. They were unhappy with late 80's regimes and their approach was to make some noise about it-and that they certainly did! Capturing a Britain that was heavily brutalised by economic and political turmoil, their constant touring and revered releases such as "30 something" saw them have thier first top ten chart success. The outbreak of the Gulf War saw their single "Bloodsport For All" banned from record stores throughout the country. Their first hit single Sheriff Fatman hit the charts in 1991 and spanned a future run of Top 40 sucesses. The Love Album topped the charts in 1992 and saw Carter USM create astonishing fanbases all over the globe. 

The release of 'The Worry Bomb' sported some of their most famous singles to date such as "The Young Offenders Mum" and "Senile Delinquint", and took its place in the UK Top 10.  Now a fully fledged 6 piece band, a CARTERBREAKSAMERICA tour was scheduled on the back of their UK touring. Perhaps its best to quit while your ahead, indeed it makes way for more credible comebacks. For Jimbob and Fruity decided Carter had its day, little did they know their London and Machester dates twenty years later would sell out to fans that couldn't silence their love. Leaving many disappointed fans with no tickets, Jamm sees it fit to pay tribute to one of the most influential bands in UK chart history. 

A mere 5 minute walk from O2 Academy Brixton, Jamm will be rammed with dedicated delinqints to witness a night dedicated to Jimbob and Fruity, the worlds most unlikely popstars.  With tribute band Clinton USM set to play an incredible set, Jamm becomes a space fans can  continue to relive the last 20 years in! They left a generation with hope, if they could do it, so could you-for Carter really are the stuff that dreams are made of.

She Walks Away, The Sun Goes Down-and They Sell It for 3.50.

 On the 23rd of July 2011 at 4.30 pm, my Dad rang me to deliver me news I had always dreaded to hear. Ironic that I was now sitting in my London dream, a setting which had been much inspired in me through my biggest icon. He was ringing me from my family home in Dublin, asking me if I had heard the news. I hadn't. Amy Winehouse had been found dead.

I had never expected my reaction to be so strong, nor had I anticipated such news to come so soon. Those of you will recall how I had always hung her picture in my bathroom, drawings of her ladened my walls, original photos of her scattered throughout the many bedrooms I had, reminded me at all times that honesty is inspiring, its importance in our world to day is needed more than ever. My father had once presented me with a gift of a photo he had judged in a photographic competition last summer. It shows Amy immersed in performance, a cocktail umbrella protruding from her signature hair, her hand reaching out to a great white oblivion. My Dad said he had chosen it as winner because it conjured up a feeling within him-' its as if she's touching a void' I recall him saying. It was easy to brush her off as a mad and ignorant singer who got too much too young but those who have ever lived with the demons of never knowing how good you are, will know how easy it was to relate to Amy and how important her words were.

As someone who has suffered with low self esteem hidden behind a mask of performance and social circles, Amy's lyrics were the only I have ever heard from someone close to my own age that described so honestly this pain sometimes. Self esteem is something I feel is not touched upon so rawly in music today. We hear about what's wrong with world, with love, with gangs, with the economy...but how often do we hear a pop star coming out and singing about those feelings of undeservedness that many of us suffer from? Amy was a heroine addict, an alcoholic, bulemic, shocking and defiant of help throughout much of her life. But she died of low self esteem. You can hear it so plainly in her lyrics of Frank, and so hauntingly in those of Back to Black. Think of the happiest song you have ever heard Amy sing? She didn't write that.  We were relieved to hear her sing of a fictional lady called Valerie for once, in her most upbeat classic of a Zutons cover that bore none of her trademark pain and regret.

I opened the pages of Now magazine in a shop I worked in over lunch 2 years ago. I will never forget the headline 'RAT FACED AMY LOOKS A SORRY MESS'. A photo pointed to a new belly that was emerging from her anorexic frame and another pointed to suggest she had undergone surgery to reduce the size of a protruding Jewish nose. Last week I picked up an issue of the same publication which read 'THE AMY ISSUE: DEDICATED TO ONE OF THE MOST INSPIRING WOMEN OF OUR GENERATION. THE TRAGIC STORY OF AMY WINEHOUSE IN PICTURES'. I'm sorry-Are you having a laugh? The magazine that terrorized her repeatedly for her whole life in the limelight is hailing her now as this? Can someone give me any justification as to why these disgusting publications still exist and why people buy them?

I cannot promise that if I had these things written about me constantly on a public basis that I would never have gone down the same route as Amy. Can you? We need to stop these publications as fast as we have put Rupert Murdoch out of business. Please DO NOT read these magazines. They are bullies who sell people's self esteem to the wolves, who run their business on telling us how fat Martine McCutcheon is again, how close Britney is to suicide, how impotent Jennifer Anniston is, how Gaga is a freak, and how amazing Cheryl Cole's hair is looking.

We need to start looking at these publications as a form of bullying. Fame is unfortunately the price that often comes with distinct talent and luck but we cannot brush it off as something these people deserve or have asked for. People are dying and destroying themselves. Real people.

I had a funny encounter the other day. In an absolute flap running out of a studio I was working in I took a tumble over a man running out of his. When I was picked up I was apologised to profusely by a glistening man in green sequins and blue and pink eye make up. As I got to my feet I realised it was Noel Fielding and I quickly told him his apologies were accepted, smiled and ran. As I sat waiting on a bus to the Dalston Kingsland market to haggle for silk shirts, I was shocked -at how shocked I was that he was a real person. I realised that we often go about our lives and have a laugh at these people we consider 'entertainment value' but when they're knocking you down on the street and helping you to your feet, a different reality sets in. Wow they're not transparent or made of air brushing! They exist. They're real. I would never call someone a RAT in person so why is it okay that I read it in a publication and believe they deserve their fate as sparkle covered vermon?

I am not contesting that Amy's body was withdrawing from serious addiction. I am not buying into the fate of a 'Tragic singer'. I am merely asking people to stop supporting a dangerous and disgusting publication industry. Coping skills are hard to come by in life, coping skills in your twenties are even harder at times, when your trying to find your place in the world. We have seen a demise of some extremely important talent over the past few years. We need to support and nurture it rather than celebrate its laughing stock value and ask ourselves is it really just an inhonourable effort to make ourselves feel better?

NOW magazine and many others has again participated in the destroying of another person. They laughed at her uniqueness, celebrated her downfall and are glorifying her death now as tragic. Wake up. You don't need this bullshit in your life. Buy the publications that are credible, the ones that haven't lied, defied and hacked lives for our attention. You can judge a book by its cover, but the content is nothing but disrespectful tolerance of a society obsessed with downfall. Many people have described this event as 'expected' and 'not shocking'. Well let's see if we can change that next time a 27 year old dies in the limelight of public addiction? Let's not stand by and watch a public demise like we have so many, over the last few years. These publications deserve the same public downfall as we have seen happen The Daily Mail in recent weeks. People power still exists and all things are possible. Let's stop this dictatorship of celebrity trash culture by not participating in it any more.

Amy Winehouse inspired me growing up as a girl 3 years her junior. She presented me at seventeen with a new genre of music that I had never given consideration to before. She sang about everything I honestly felt when Girls Aloud were telling me about Something Kinda Ooh, Something Kinda Ooh Ooh Yeah. Amy told me how she struggled with liking herself too, about how she knew she was too hard on herself, how she didn't believe she deserved any of the good things . Her death envoked a sense of dread in me I had never experienced before. She had represented to me a young girl that wasn't afraid to tell us how she really felt about the world rather than merely selling us candy floss and a catchy chorus line. We had perhaps coped with it differently, but none the less experienced the issues she sang about wrapped in that cadence of jazz. Hearing it being described so beautifully gave me comfort that I wasn't alone, that many girls struggle with these feelings, our worries about the future, our pain of losing the ones we love, our regret for never having the confidence in telling that person how you really felt, our hopes, the moonlight, the simple things it all comes down to in life. I was truly inspired and became reliant on her music to comfort me. I grew more and more in denial of the seriousness of her condition as the years went on, always believing in a turning point when the music would flood through her veins again.

I realised for the first time in her death that this honesty found in her music is also fallible and any participation in its ruin should not be supported. I encourage all journalists, editors and photographers to realise the responsibility they have to me. I encourage all women to ask themselves do they really care about Sarah Harding's new secret diet? I encourage them to put a friend on Amy's face and ask themselves would they feel the same way about blood protruding from her heroin injected ballet pumps?

 Celebrities are people who exist. Liam Gallagher passed me on the street last week getting head butted by cameras and foul jeering from the paps, Vivienne Westwood sits on a towel in Clapham Common on a Sunday with her husband, Damon Hill stands behind me in the queue at Tesco's with his eggs and bacon, Noel Fielding helps me to my feet when he clumsily dashes to his car to turn off the headlights he left on by mistake. Trash journalism is a form of bullying that needs to be cornered. We are feeding off negativity that has gone beyond our control.

I'm sorry you've gone Amy. I really miss you. Thank you for your beautiful lyrics, your haunting voice,  for all the feelings and fears you told me you had too. You made me feel like a real person and I'm sad to think that maybe we forgot sometimes that you were too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0wDr3Uqj8

The Sideline Sanctuary...Therese vs. Eco Warriors and the American Dream

Eco Warriors. They love a good protest, living in trees, letting creatures live in their hair and not using tampons? I remember being wildly fascinated as a child when my Dad took me to visit some hanging out of the trees at the Glen of the Downs bypass. They looked like aliens but talked like people. One man had massive snakes growing out of his head, another tried to make me drink seaweed juice and I thought in that second-this wasn't going to be the life for me. Fanta tastes better.

When I look back now and realise the gusto it takes someone to physically shed everything they are surrounded and sheltered by in the world to go live in a forrest to prove a point, I can't help but be astonished. For a while I dabbled with protests myself. At 13 I started up an unsuccessful petition against a certain millennium spike that would appear on O'Connell Street. Having collected 1,400 signatures against it in one area alone I thought I'd at least get some kind of an official letter telling me my anger had been registered with the Taoiseach. I really believed I could stop it.

At 15 I was on the front lines of every march against the Iraq war. I was too cool to walk with my family so I donned the latest cringeable 'Bush Sucks' tee shirt and walked with my long haired boyfriend to go rage war on American foreign policy. This went on to transform itself into my Leaving Cert Art painting,the same year (I had just turned 16 leaving school). I painted an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib P.O.W camp, head covered with a sack, tied to a crucifix and dangling on an electricution death aid, a form of torture they were using against prisoners at the time. American soldiers had recently been forcing Iraqi prisoners to burn copies of the Koran upon punishment of death. They had also been safeguarding the many oil refineries of Iraq as we waited for them to dig up the Weapons of Mass Destruction. My painting depicted this as American soldiers pulling a wooden horse of Troy towards a burning oil field. Following the Leaving Cert I got my art projects rechecked. I had been awarded a C on the grounds that my painting was 'too politically challenging'. Free thinking apparently does not get you points in Leaving Cert Art. I had written letters upon letters of protest against the War on Iraq to everyone I thought would listen. I really believed I could stop it.

As a 23 year old living in 2011 I can't help notice the conflicted states I find myself in all the time. It's frustrating to remember the politically active naive little lady that fancied herself as the next Aung San Suu against the sexually active vodka bemused fan of Meet The Kardashians and American Apparell I am faced with today.

At what point do we decide not to stand up anymore? Have we grown weary? Did we never care in the first place? Or are we happy in our sanctuary watching abismal fates dealt out to our fellow citizens of earth from the comfort of our Sky Box? I would like to think I care. But when does it become more to me than the newspaper I'll buy the next day? It was lovely to spend the day recovering from my latest hangover watching the Japanese Earthquake unfold before me on Friday. When I'd had enough humanity kicks to the stomach, I monged out infront of a re run of America's Next Top Model and made another Annadin on the rocks.

It's easy to argue about what bitches America can be, I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next sucker...but at what point are we willing to give up the lives we  know and want and go do something about it? When I hit back down to earth I'm always faced with the reality that half of the jobs I work at and seek are for American companies, my favourite designer is Calvin Klein, and someday I hope to outrage my kids with explaining that in my day Lil Wayne was actually pretty ghetto for a rapper. I shall put them to sleep with these tales I hope, from the relief of my New York City sky liner that I screwed alot of myself over to attain.

Life is just too peachy on the sidelines? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread? Its hard to stand up for what you believe. It's harder to give it up altogether. The enemy has become alot bigger and closer to home now, do we fight for what we want?  Or fight against it?

The Aftermath of College and such advice....

You study, survive on a diet of coffee and coke and any other warped energy drinks, study some more, get the grades, don't go out, study, form opinions, form questins, get your essays published, study some more, dump your boyfriend, fight with your family, keep the head down and finally come out top of your class...Boom! Success. Right?

College is a bubble too important and great to burst. It acquaints us with many things we never knew about and gives us the opportunity to really get to know what we are all about...so why do I feel more disillusioned than ever?

No one ever told me that I'd still be surviving from a job I didn't need to go to college for 4 years later, no one told me the economies of the world would crash and leave me picking up the pieces, no one told me that underneath a deep concern for human nature lay a liquor liver soaked Paris Hilton screaming to be set free.

When I take my degree apart (a B.A. in Drama Performance) and begin to break it down into acquired skills, the pessimist in me is often faced with the harsh reality that I am 4 years on, exceptionally good at a sustained humming noise and balancing on one foot.

I often think back on exams, one which I was made hold my breath for two minutes, another where I pretended to be a cheese grater for an hour, and think...well frankly, what was I thinking? How did I imagine this would get me anywhere elegant in life? Perhaps that I deserve my fate as a bemused 23 year old working a full time capitalist slogger? Surely at 19 some hazard light was shining its way into the future?

Recently, as I continued another one of my prolonged searches into the quirks and fascinations of life I came across an interesting take on the fear of heights. Half of people who suffer from this fear are infact not afraid of falling but...jumping. When I think back on my time in college I recall my fearless belief in everything I was learning. I was soaking it all up and jumping with it. Perhaps I will never stand in front of a board room now and show them what a mean impression I can do of a panther giving birth, but I sure as hell know that whatever about the lo's that ensued in the aftermath of college, I render a fearless belief in expressing and listening to opinion, acting on impulse and jumping into the unknown. College gave me the courage to imagine without limits or boundaries and indeed to know myself in this way too.

I am currently faced with the horrifying reality of not knowing what is to become of me?  At one time it all seemed so certain and backed up by a piece of paper framed on my wall. But I have grown so weary of thinking about how life will never work out how I planned it to that I have decided to give up in a sense. I cant overthink how shocking it is that I am self trainig as a costume designer rather than playing Ophelia at the RSC any longer. I can't overthink any longer how every day I loathe reading reports on figures and consumer fascinations so jarring with a distant belief that I would some day play Maggie in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Donmar Warehouse. I can't overthink anymore what an injustice has been done to those of us who worked hard to graduate and got slapped in the face with a country who told us it had no need for us anymore. I refuse to, so I've decided to dim the headlights and take a leap of faith if you will. I do not know what will happen us, but I hope in the times when we are giving ourselves a leathering with the WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR whip, that we remember how fearless we once were and how experience with dark times can, combined, make us champions of our futures.

An exercise in movement claass one dreary Monday afternoon is something I believe I shall take with me on every giant leap I come to in life. Our lecturer entrusted us to close our eyes and run to the end of the room, an exercise wich ultimately put your own safety at the hands of your peers. It was up to them to shot STOP! before you collided with death. Nobody got hurt, all survived withot scratch nor smack. I hope I jump. I hope we all do. I am scratched, I know we all are. Someday I hope to look back on life and be content with giving it all my best shot. Being young is not the party I had in my head. After the nightclubs, its sometimes such a challenge to go along with all the amalgamations that shape us but I am faced with the reality of who I once proved I was, and who I still am. She is there to remind me how much harder I will just have to work to take the necessary jumps. Hopefully we can learn to trust ourselves. I know what I'm doing, though it takes courage to admit.