cassettes: you’re a big girl now.
<p class="has-drop-cap has-normal-font-size" style="line-height:1.3" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">At some point, between pocketing the takings, locking the shop, walking the length of Station Street, bent into the breeze and shoeing wet leaves, he decides to see if she'd like a drink. And there she is, Hannah in the white pinafore over black skirt in the yellow light of the cramped coffee shop window. She is sweeping crumbs into a dustpan with an unhurried brush. Her hair is bunned. Her eyes are like pools. He stands at the dark glass. At some point, between pocketing the takings, locking the shop, walking the length of Station Street, bent into the breeze and shoeing wet leaves, he decides to see if she’d like a drink. And there she is, Hannah in the white pinafore over black skirt in the yellow light of the cramped coffee shop window. She is sweeping crumbs into a dustpan with an unhurried brush. Her hair is bunned. Her eyes are like pools. He stands at the dark glass.
{I recorded Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks album A-Z in a cupboard on a four track. Thanks, Bobby x}
Master Reeves…gorgeous × infinity.
Lyrics very cool, but the music took me back to my on the road runaway days on the roofs of San Francisco, smoking cloves, French kissing Kerouac in my head, thinking of nothing and everything in the world. amazing once again and thank you 🙂 xoxoxo
Aw, thanks, Detroit.
It’s some kind of Martin. I bought it in Rockbottom in Croydon around 1993. It’s the only one that’s gone the distance with me. I remember the sales guy saying something like it’ll get better with age. I’ve wondered from time to time about his words. Is it that the guitar gets better or the player gets better? Each, I suppose, grow into each other. This is the first time I’ve listened to that stuff since recording it really (you know what it’s like with your own stuff), but this evening I found it quite listenable – so thanks for pointing in this direction. I worked up the songs over about a year, deciding from the get-go that the only way to attempt Bob was to not try and do his voice and to make the songs my own. I recorded the whole thing over Easter week as I recall. That cupboard was a great little space – under the stairs, full of stuff that lives in the cupboard under the stairs! Couple of SM57s – I think I mic’d the guitar for most of the tracks – the old Tascam tape deck, a chair. The album was made with green tea and digestive biscuits – and that diet suits it I must say. Good times, despite actually being sad times as my marriage was all over bar the singing then.
Josh Rouse played a ‘secret’ show at The Surf Cafe just down the road when he toured the UK last (2019?). The SC is a lovely venue; on the beach, a cafe by day, a bar by night, no stage, corner bar, one toilet. The place is packed if there are more than 100 in. Anyway, I got a ticket some how and it was ace – Josh Rouse is a smart dressed short man with smiling eyes and dark hair. He has that middle age down in denim and a shirt that’s almost too much. After the show, out on the beach he walked around chatting and selling his new album out of a carrier bag. He took requests for songs that he didn’t lay at the gig; class act. Eventually, I got the nerve to say hello and thanks and blahblahblah. I said to him that his ‘Under The Cold Blue Stars’ album is the greatest split-up album ever (which I think it is). He kinda reeled backwards a bit and it was quite clear he was blushing. He said, “Surely that award goes to Blood On The Tracks?” I said, no, he was wrong. Dylan comes 2nd this time (which I think it is).
ps. x
I knew it! Its got that gorgeous sustain! A martin made it’s way out to Blighty, eh! I had my Martin for a long time. Which body type is it? Dreadnaught? Tascam do really great little recorders, I have the two track portable one at the moment. You did a really good job, production is just right, and the cupboard gives you a bit of reverb going on there. Just really well done. Blood on the Tracks is fine except for that Lilly rosemary bullshit, and Rouse’s Blue Stars have their place….but for me it has to be Joni’s Blue album – ‘constant in the darkness where’s that at, if you want me I’ll be in the bar” makes me almost sad my dating days are gone. That sounds like quite the show Rouse put on, I wish I could have seen him. I have been gifted tickets to Water’s farewell tour in SF next year. I just have to survive that long…I expect you made John’s night, Nick! What a compliment!
Spot on!
ps. I came to appreciate P. Floyd sometime around 88/9, which was sort of known here as the second summer of love, or some such nonsense. There was the emergence of warehouse parties and all that came with that, I suppose. Not so much E, of course. That reminds me more of ’95/6 of uni in Bath. But certainly acid. In many ways J. Rotten’s ‘amended’ Floyd tee shirt must have been an influence on my mind up until that year. WYWH became a go to listen those nights, as was the Live In Pompeii film. Hm, good times. The Wall is ace, though I never listen to it anymore. I liked R. Waters’ Hitchhiking album sometime around then, too. Hope you get there. x
Yeah, I have to hide my Pink Floyd fandom under my Ramones teeshirt. I never liked pills, all that fluffy love everybody shite, just not me, darling. I think Amused to Death and Hitchhiking hold their own, at least more than that marshmallow guff that Gilmour peddles under the Floyd name. I hope i make it there too. Nowadays it all seems so uncertain. What did you do at uni?
Hey! Ho! You Crazy Diamond!
ps. Eng. Lit & (some) E! It must’ve worked for me somehow back then as I got a grant to stay on for an MA
ps …so, of course, I still cut hair! 🙂
Ah…I did the same thing! Lol! English lit, BA.. I ended up teaching English and now…well…surviving Cutting hair is a great job. I wish I could pay you to come cut mine, it is depressing the heck out of me! It still skunk stripe ugly.
Nice. Where did you study? (he almost cringed as he wrote these words, but his fingers tapped and he thought, with a smile, aw, fuck it!). Any favourite authors come out of that for you, dear?
Yeah, it’s what I signed up for I suppose. I like it. I know my S. Plath fringes and do a neat G. Orwell cut (but with more semi colons)!
Ahhh….I can’t tell you without out-ing myself! One day when things are safer, if that is alright….? I ended up detesting reading, hating anything worthy or good, and spent years determinedly either not reading or else nothing greater than Dan Brown. It totally burnt me out. I hated tearing apart things I used to love. I spent my time getting a 2.1 without going to lectures and being …well…not very well behaved at all. Total waste. You didn’t want to teach? I expect Plath had terf-bangs, huh….
I just clipper the sides, scissor cut the top, and look at the hugely expensive salon prices to color hair – not worth it when it is so so short. Who would have though it, sobriety means not being able to color my own hair! Allergic to ppd, so Im stuck with bright colors only.
I believe that like is attracted to like. I have always accrued many teachers as clients over the years. Enough to realise that it could be a possibility. But, before the century turned over, the sparkle seemed to be lost in the teachers’ chat. It had been reduced, to these ears, to being merely an office job; a box ticking, no catch-up, thankless job. So, I guess I knew long before uni finished that though I toyed with the idea, I didn’t pursue it. I had been cutting hair for a long time by then anyway and still liked it.
ps. I like a corduroy jacket, a roll-up, a chipped mug of tea, a knitted tie, a desert boot, leaky pens, chalk, looking out the window, so I could have fitted into, oh, any school staff room…circa 1975!
ps. i found, on arrival, that i was actually fairly well read. i enjoyed uni, but it struck me as mostly a piece of piss until the third year and the MA – which was far more intimate. I’d do it again. Maybe one day. Art history, something worthwhile like that.
I just taught English as a foreign language as a means to bum around the world. I had zero ambition, no desire or ability to have a normal life, a mortgage and a career. I was never very sensible. I can dig the whole cord jacket, knitted tie, desert creepers deal, could be cool! I have no interest in academics, it all seems so useless. …You are a writer, Nick, and a musician..and I bet you do a mean pixie cut.
nickreeves 
Sweet; that’s how it strikes me.
Nice Nick
Ken
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Straight off the bat. Thanks Ken. Peace.
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Thank you for the lovely rendition of Dylan’s song at the end of a very rough day.
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Thanks for listening xo
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Sweet, yes, interlude
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Master Reeves…gorgeous × infinity.
Lyrics very cool, but the music took me back to my on the road runaway days on the roofs of San Francisco, smoking cloves, French kissing Kerouac in my head, thinking of nothing and everything in the world. amazing once again and thank you 🙂 xoxoxo
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Bless you, Grady xoxo
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Love this! Well done Nick!!!
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Really? Ha!
Thanks Bob!
Appreciated!
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Well done, Nick! I so enjoyed this!
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Thank you, MM.
This means a lot!
xoxo
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I love the sparse language yet you somehow fill it with edge
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You and I are both edgetarians
🙂
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I enjoyed this read very much. The photo at the top is a perfect match.
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Tag! 🙂
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Really lovely cover of Big Girl Now, Nick. What guitar are you playing?
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Aw, thanks, Detroit.
It’s some kind of Martin. I bought it in Rockbottom in Croydon around 1993. It’s the only one that’s gone the distance with me. I remember the sales guy saying something like it’ll get better with age. I’ve wondered from time to time about his words. Is it that the guitar gets better or the player gets better? Each, I suppose, grow into each other. This is the first time I’ve listened to that stuff since recording it really (you know what it’s like with your own stuff), but this evening I found it quite listenable – so thanks for pointing in this direction. I worked up the songs over about a year, deciding from the get-go that the only way to attempt Bob was to not try and do his voice and to make the songs my own. I recorded the whole thing over Easter week as I recall. That cupboard was a great little space – under the stairs, full of stuff that lives in the cupboard under the stairs! Couple of SM57s – I think I mic’d the guitar for most of the tracks – the old Tascam tape deck, a chair. The album was made with green tea and digestive biscuits – and that diet suits it I must say. Good times, despite actually being sad times as my marriage was all over bar the singing then.
Josh Rouse played a ‘secret’ show at The Surf Cafe just down the road when he toured the UK last (2019?). The SC is a lovely venue; on the beach, a cafe by day, a bar by night, no stage, corner bar, one toilet. The place is packed if there are more than 100 in. Anyway, I got a ticket some how and it was ace – Josh Rouse is a smart dressed short man with smiling eyes and dark hair. He has that middle age down in denim and a shirt that’s almost too much. After the show, out on the beach he walked around chatting and selling his new album out of a carrier bag. He took requests for songs that he didn’t lay at the gig; class act. Eventually, I got the nerve to say hello and thanks and blahblahblah. I said to him that his ‘Under The Cold Blue Stars’ album is the greatest split-up album ever (which I think it is). He kinda reeled backwards a bit and it was quite clear he was blushing. He said, “Surely that award goes to Blood On The Tracks?” I said, no, he was wrong. Dylan comes 2nd this time (which I think it is).
ps. x
LikeLiked by 1 person
I knew it! Its got that gorgeous sustain! A martin made it’s way out to Blighty, eh! I had my Martin for a long time. Which body type is it? Dreadnaught? Tascam do really great little recorders, I have the two track portable one at the moment. You did a really good job, production is just right, and the cupboard gives you a bit of reverb going on there. Just really well done. Blood on the Tracks is fine except for that Lilly rosemary bullshit, and Rouse’s Blue Stars have their place….but for me it has to be Joni’s Blue album – ‘constant in the darkness where’s that at, if you want me I’ll be in the bar” makes me almost sad my dating days are gone. That sounds like quite the show Rouse put on, I wish I could have seen him. I have been gifted tickets to Water’s farewell tour in SF next year. I just have to survive that long…I expect you made John’s night, Nick! What a compliment!
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Spot on!
ps. I came to appreciate P. Floyd sometime around 88/9, which was sort of known here as the second summer of love, or some such nonsense. There was the emergence of warehouse parties and all that came with that, I suppose. Not so much E, of course. That reminds me more of ’95/6 of uni in Bath. But certainly acid. In many ways J. Rotten’s ‘amended’ Floyd tee shirt must have been an influence on my mind up until that year. WYWH became a go to listen those nights, as was the Live In Pompeii film. Hm, good times. The Wall is ace, though I never listen to it anymore. I liked R. Waters’ Hitchhiking album sometime around then, too. Hope you get there. x
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I have to hide my Pink Floyd fandom under my Ramones teeshirt. I never liked pills, all that fluffy love everybody shite, just not me, darling. I think Amused to Death and Hitchhiking hold their own, at least more than that marshmallow guff that Gilmour peddles under the Floyd name. I hope i make it there too. Nowadays it all seems so uncertain. What did you do at uni?
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Hey! Ho! You Crazy Diamond!
ps. Eng. Lit & (some) E! It must’ve worked for me somehow back then as I got a grant to stay on for an MA
ps …so, of course, I still cut hair! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah…I did the same thing! Lol! English lit, BA.. I ended up teaching English and now…well…surviving Cutting hair is a great job. I wish I could pay you to come cut mine, it is depressing the heck out of me! It still skunk stripe ugly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice. Where did you study? (he almost cringed as he wrote these words, but his fingers tapped and he thought, with a smile, aw, fuck it!). Any favourite authors come out of that for you, dear?
Yeah, it’s what I signed up for I suppose. I like it. I know my S. Plath fringes and do a neat G. Orwell cut (but with more semi colons)!
I’m sure you rock the heck out of skunk rock.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ahhh….I can’t tell you without out-ing myself! One day when things are safer, if that is alright….? I ended up detesting reading, hating anything worthy or good, and spent years determinedly either not reading or else nothing greater than Dan Brown. It totally burnt me out. I hated tearing apart things I used to love. I spent my time getting a 2.1 without going to lectures and being …well…not very well behaved at all. Total waste. You didn’t want to teach? I expect Plath had terf-bangs, huh….
I just clipper the sides, scissor cut the top, and look at the hugely expensive salon prices to color hair – not worth it when it is so so short. Who would have though it, sobriety means not being able to color my own hair! Allergic to ppd, so Im stuck with bright colors only.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I believe that like is attracted to like. I have always accrued many teachers as clients over the years. Enough to realise that it could be a possibility. But, before the century turned over, the sparkle seemed to be lost in the teachers’ chat. It had been reduced, to these ears, to being merely an office job; a box ticking, no catch-up, thankless job. So, I guess I knew long before uni finished that though I toyed with the idea, I didn’t pursue it. I had been cutting hair for a long time by then anyway and still liked it.
ps. I like a corduroy jacket, a roll-up, a chipped mug of tea, a knitted tie, a desert boot, leaky pens, chalk, looking out the window, so I could have fitted into, oh, any school staff room…circa 1975!
ps. i found, on arrival, that i was actually fairly well read. i enjoyed uni, but it struck me as mostly a piece of piss until the third year and the MA – which was far more intimate. I’d do it again. Maybe one day. Art history, something worthwhile like that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just taught English as a foreign language as a means to bum around the world. I had zero ambition, no desire or ability to have a normal life, a mortgage and a career. I was never very sensible. I can dig the whole cord jacket, knitted tie, desert creepers deal, could be cool! I have no interest in academics, it all seems so useless. …You are a writer, Nick, and a musician..and I bet you do a mean pixie cut.
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Sounds very laudable. Well done. Keep on keeping on.
ps. I do actually!
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