Hello all you good people…

Apologies I have had to make a couple of changes to the re-issue of the Creatively Anti-Perfect album (re-issue 2015 [2000]):

1. It will be available to buy as from the 1st of December 2015

2. There will only be 100 copies made, once they are sold, that’s it!

Here is a brief description below, must go now got work to do!

The Creatively Anti-Perfect demo album was recorded in 1999 and originally released in 2000.
The album of 12 tracks was recorded on cassette at home, and is influenced by Ray Davies and Billy Childish (not to mention Dolly Parton and 1990's self-help books!).  More details on tracks here!

The idea behind the album was to record an album where spirit, content and writing songs on the spur of the moment were more important than perfectionism or technological excellence.

The original pressing of 200 CDs were sold out at gigs. Although this is a very modest album, I think it has a certain energetic enthusiasm promoting a little "joie de vivre"!

It will be sold ONLY as an entire album on CD rather and not available as individual tracks or in digital form.

You can pre-order on the store page

More details will emerge here closer to the release date!

Love and Peace and Long Live Corbyn!

Hello all you good people out there
( especially to anyone who relishes references to obscure creative music with psychedelic undertones)

I just wanted to let you know of a review written by Brian. R. Banks of my last album in
"The Rocktologist" rock magazine which can be accessed by clicking this link:
http://www.therocktologist.com/veronique-acoustique---the-psychacoustic-tapes.html
I have always loved rock music but never thought anything I wrote or recorded would ever be reviewed in a rock magazine. I am pleased at this...I managed to leap across the rock gender divide quite by accident, and doing music that was at times far too soppy and acoustic to be considered rock.
Brian R. Banks who wrote the review of my album was once upon a time Hawkwind's tour manager and was a participant in the 1980s subversive rock band, Mourneblade 
(see http://youtu.be/yxdzyLisVrU for a live performance of theirs).
Brian contacted me via the contact page on this site to ask me about my modest contribution to a Kevin Coyne tribute album called "Whispers in the Offing" (2007). The review was written for  the "Stick it in Your Ear" ezine , a music magazine for grown-ups.
http://www.siiye.co.uk/E15/PAGE_169.html
Brian Banks has also told me that another review of "The Psychacoustic Tapes" will also appear in the "Stick it in your Ear" ezine soon. This is very flattering particularly when this ezine is filled about articles of legendary artists and their albums see: www.siiye.co.uk
( I am definitely not worthy!).
Lastly I decided to knock £2 off my CD version of "The Psychacoustic Tapes" on this site. It's nearly winter and people need to pay their gas bills and it would be nice for me to be able to pay mine too.
I am presently doing a lot of learning, more learning than I have ever done in my life. Currently struggling to rapidly learn two languages, plus a very complex type of singing from Asia involving the most difficult throat acrobatics I have ever attempted, and learning to play a kacapi zither. Everyone loves the sound of the kacapi even though I am just a beginner, plus I am reading lots of books on music. I am trying to find time at the end of the day to still do my own music and when I have the energy to lurch into some kind of creative foray.
I'm going now, I always talk or write too much!

Love and Peace to you all
Veronique

Hello Good people!
I just came back from my Survivor's Poetry gig hosted by the most wonderful Razz the performance poet at Tottenham Chances and had such a great time. I love playing in Tottenham and I love the Tottenham Chances venue, I got there with such bad stage nerves but after spending a little while there, the atmosphere and the people just made me feel totally at ease like you could go on stage and do anything, as long as it wasn't boring and you were being yourself.
In the other room there were three punk bands and we could hear them fairly loudly in the background, they looked stupendous, hard core punks, one band was from Germany and I think possibly Wasted Youth were playing. Anyway in the main bar we were having our poetry and eclectic music, including a couple of South American bands and a great band called Iron Meat who reminded me of the early jazz stuff from Gong ( although Iron Meat are not psychedelic at all) and Stonehenge festival bands of the 80s.
Anyway my stage nerves disappeared from the general mayhem ( we also had a dog bouncing about the place including on the stage) and the wonderful crazy people in the audience.
But we could hear loud punk screaming in the background a lot of the time. I had prepared one of my quiet and sensitive music sets, but the atmosphere was different with the  imminent full moon and this general feeling that anything was possible, and perhaps the spirit of the recently departed Xochitl Tuck was in me, she always encouraged everyone at Survivor's to just go for it, so I decided when I went on stage to not do my quiet sensitive stuff but to do my loud songs with definite rock and punk influences, I just rocked it on the guitar and in my singing and just obliterated the punk screaming in the background by being louder.
Oh My God ( sorry that is a trite thing to say but anyway....) OMG!!! I had such a great time and it was so easy I just let the adrenaline in my system pour out through my hands and throat and rocked it.
Afterwards Madeleine another Survivor's singer-songwriter , who always says lovely things to me , commented "Don't take this the wrong way but... you play the guitar like a man, but you sing like a woman". No I didn't mind I was trying to play the guitar like Jimmy Page after all, I wasn't trying to sing like anyone else although I guess Maggie Bell from Stone The Crows has been a big influence on me.
Anyway I am now really looking forwards to my next two gigs  ( June 3rd and June 6th See concerts or my previous post)where I will do a mix of acoustic guitar songs and semi-improvised electronic material  where the other acts will all be fantabulous  and innovative both in Stoke Newington. Let me know if you want to be on my emailing list, your emails will not be passed onto other people or companies.
wishing you all love and peace and music in a crazy world
Let's help eachother out during this recession and club together not against one another.
Véronique x

I am not always very good at telling people about gigs I have one tonight and need to go off and rehearse. See the concerts page for some recent gigs...am having difficulties adding future gigs to that page so I'll put them here and will try to keep you posted .Love and Peace Veronique

Furture concerts:

Tonight 28th of February at Tottenham Chances ( 399 Tottenham High Road - Seven Sisters tube)
Bunjies Reunion night run by Razz
8pm ( free)

17th of March 2013

"Unfinished Revolution"
Peter Cadle memorial concert
Pentameter's Theatre (28 Heath Street- Hampstead tube)
8pm (free)
I'll be doing a short spot accompanied by Alison Carpenter, there will also be many old songwriter friends of mine performing from our days at the Bunjies folk club

Leipzig , Germany
Dates in April to be confirmed at the Klangkombinat (see Facebook) and the Green Fields studio
http://studiogreenfields.wordpress.com/

Hello Good People who read this blog,

So much has changed in the past five years in the world but most particularly in the UK and will continue to change in 2013. By this summer I believe there will be social unrest because of the massive changes about to hit the poorest people in society, myself included. Even though I am well-educated and have many privileges, having more money than I need to survive on is not one of my advantages in life. By this summer, I may be in the situation of having less money than I need to survive on in order to pay my rent and council tax.
So what do you do when financial disaster strikes?
It's obvious! Write a Jane Eyre "Opera".
OK, maybe it's not obvious, but for me it is psychologically if not fiscally sensible. Writing music and performing it makes me feel powerful, alive, on top of the world even if my life has fallen to pieces, more than that, writing songs and music expels my demons, heals me from bereavements and worries, it has some kind of magic or spiritual power even beyond this.
Whenever I write a lot of music, songs or a lot of prose and stories, my life transforms itself and I end up in situations that are stranger than any fiction, more bizarre than any coincidence you could imagine, usually linked to the creative material I worked on previously. I know it sounds crazy but that's OK, some people reading this will understand and the majority will be sensible and will not.
The idea behind my Jane Eyre project is this :
I have started to write a series of guitar-based acoustic songs based on the themes contained in the novel Jane Eyre.
Some parts I have been forced to skip for now because through writing lyrics and singing them I find I become engulfed in the emotions of the book. That's what I want, not to write a series of superficial songs that tell a story third hand but to actually feel and reinterpret the emotions, thoughts and ideas of the book. It is an amazing novel which I became drawn to from an early age and from which I have found many parallels in my life. However getting into the heart of Jane Eyre’s childhood is at times traumatic.

I also had the notion to write the songs so that they could be performed as bounded entities without the context of Jane Eyre. I hope to perform some at acoustic or folk clubs and recently started working again with Steve Clear who is now playing Celtic harp.

I get bored very easily and also need money, so perhaps my plans will go awry. I can certainly see myself doing some of the numbers in a totally different way, perhaps as Javanese, Japanese, Indian, electronic, psychedelic experimentations with a bit of folk, funk, classic rock and blues added for good measure.

Either I will dither and divert my music or have composed the skeleton for an "opera" or a musical in the next few weeks.

Please leave a comment and if you have difficulty leaving a comment please email me to say hello.

If anyone out there knows of composer’s funds I can apply for I would be most grateful.

Hoping for Love and Peace in 2013 for all of us, as well as enough money to survive on!

Veronique

P.S. Maybe a politicised version of Robin Hood would make a better opera right now.