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Långängarna naturreservat, Sandviken, Sweden.
Kiev-60, Flektogon 4/50 GDR P6, Portra 400, C41 (Fotobaren, Sandviken), Epson V600, VueScan software.
11.75" x 23.75"
Acrylic on wood panel
One of my pieces for the BLAB World No.1 show: Scenes from the Hereafter. Opening this Saturday the 11th at Copro Gallery, 8:30 - 11:00p.
BLAB World No.1 is releasing at the show, and includes my piece from last year's BLAB show, "Armageddon Flub."
For more info and a full preview of the show, visit blabshow.com
CoproGallery 310-829-2156
One of the most creative editorial I have seen in a long time. Shot by Markus Pritzi and styled by Isabelle Thiry for Sleek Magazine SS15. Merci!
Source by canva
#ShareKid
For Blab! Show
Exibithion at Copro Gallery, with:
Femke Hiemstra
Gary Baseman
D'Holbachie-Yoko
Ryan Heshka
Travis Lampe
Kris Kuksi
CJ Pyle
Ron English
Rob Sato
John Macnair
Marc Burckhardt
Shag
Fred Stonehouse
Dave Cooper
and More...
BLAB! is an annual anthology of visual art produced by Chicago-based Graphic Designer and Art Director Monte Beauchamp.
Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 60 cm.
18" x 18"
Oil & Acrylic on Wood Panel
2008
Piece for Blab! #19 and Blab! Show at Copro-Nason Gallery Los Angeles.
(Sold)
Acrylic on Canvas - 16" x 16"
A painting of HADES for the upcoming issue of BLAB ... The "AFTERLIFE" issue.
I have been following BLAB for 20 years.
Having a piece of art in BLAB is for me, a dream fulfilled!
Forbidden Fridays is hitting the grid tonight at 11:59PM SLT The new ADULT only content weekly sale is finally here! You will find items priced at 69L or less every Friday. For the inaugural round I have created the Little Fucking Pervert Backdrop available for only 69L.
Be sure to stop by and grab the backdrop and while you are it, make sure to jump in the group so you can be the first to get the shopping HUD to see who's offering what! Ive also put out a group gift for Forbidden Fridays group too ♥ And if you are running low on group space, we also have a subscriber available too! The HUD will be sent out between 6pm-11pm SLT every Thursday evenings in our group& subscriber along with designers sending it in theirs whenever its good for them.
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/HILTED/127/223/24
You can find us here on social media as well:
Forbidden Fridays Facebook Page
Forbidden Fridays Website/Blog
Forbidden Fridays Avatlife Page
Anyhow enough blabbing! Happy shopping folks ♥
Cala
xo
(Day 4)
AHHHHHHHHHHHH YAY!!! its explored!!!!!!! super excited!! thanks a whole lot to all those kind fellars who commented and such, cant wait to add this to my explore set!!!!
This is like my favorite line of a song ever. . . .its so true. People put on a show for other people but its not who they really are. I realized this while sitting in gym class while my gym teacher was blabbing on about what. . i have no clue, i pretty much zoned out. As I looked around the gym i glanced at all the girls in my class with their perfectly straightend hair and coach sneakers. Then i inspected myself, i was wearing my favorite sequined converse and my crazy curly hair was going in every other direction. and sitting on the gym floor, i couldnt have been happier, i was different, and i was being myself. . . .
These are for Leah's first birthday! I can't believe she is already ONE! I made luau cookies for her baby shower last year www.flickr.com/photos/34555769@N04/5688009127/in/set-7215...
These are extra special because they were a made by a "the dynamic duo" - Callye (Sweet Sugar Belle) and myself! How fun was it to have Callye in my kitchen rescuing me when I was so far behind on this order. We blabbed and piped, giggled and piped - soooooo fun!! If Leah only knew......
A kitten lived at my house for a few days. Dylan, Jared and I named it Blåbär the Kattunge, (Swedish for Blueberry the Kitten. We pronounce it: BLAH-BAR the CATTENGAR)
After a dreadfully cute and disastrous rabbit infestation on his carrot farm, Ol' Farmer Poggard and his sons picked up what they had left and relocated to another part of the avalonian countryside, a good 20 minutes on foot, and together constructed a wheat mill. Turns out that was teh most profitable thing that could have happened to them, they actually began making an income and the success of Poggards' wheat mill was incomparable to that of his carrot farm, because let's be honest, no one likes carrots.
CCCXII Medieval Husbandry
Ok yeah this is the real build I was going to post today, sorry for boring you with silly tablescrap thingies :p The blades of the windmill turn, and the tower itself can rotate, like they do in real life. I'd like to make a motorised one of these one day for a convention... was quite a rushed build as Im off on holiday now for the rest of the year, and just got back from another holiday before christmas, which isn't building time... enough blabbing, it was rushed but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Based of this garbage: www.flickr.com/photos/davidhensel/8124032793/, hehe and I made an effort not to look at Cesbricks' Mill that he posted the day after i started playing around with the mill idea XP
hope ye'all like it :)
David out!
18" x 18"
Oil & Acrylic on Wood Panel
2008
Piece for Blab! #19 and Blab! Show at Copro-Nason Gallery Los Angeles.
(Sold)
Martin very kindly helped me frame my exhibition prints today, with frames he made pretty much at cost price.
As I was leaving, I asked for an idea for my POTD. He suggested St Andrew and St Cuthman, the parish church of Steyning, near where he loves.
When I see that there are Commonwealth War Graves in a churchyard, I make a point of trying to find them as a mark of respect. The names are available on the CWGC website, so I knew I was looking for 9 headstones. Yet again, one was not a typical CWGC headstone, which posed a puzzle, but I knew which area of the churchyard it was in, and found the memorial for Charles Stanley Blaber. The trickier two were bottom left, Albert Edward Slaughter, whose memorial was sadly hidden in a nettle patch with overgrown shrubs hiding it, and bottom right, the one for Ronald John Sansom for which the website gave no specific location information.
R is for... Remembrance
@Fotosöndag: Förutom skolstart och allt annat som kommer igång igen efter semestervilan så är det även dags för skördetid. Trädgården känns lite försenad i år, men nu börjar äntligen blåbären att mogna.
The light bulb in this photo was made in Poland. I thought it was an interesting find, and for the simple fact that everything now days has the label “Made in China” or similar “Made for Blab-blab-blab” but assembled in Mexico. The story on the “Made in Poland” light bulb is that it came out of an antique lamp and the woman who bought the lamp didn’t want the glass bulb to break in her car while getting home, so she gave it to me to recycle. I notice the Poland stamped in the light bulb and thought it was an interesting conservation piece so took this photo of it—and voilá, a photo for you to enjoy, and contemplate on. © All rights reserved.
Thank you for your visits, comments and faving.
after trying to explain the story to my mom, i realized i was crying, and then after, i thought it'd make for a decent picture. or at least something i could type a description to
yesterday (now that it's past midnight), one of my old friend's mom passed. she had gotten shot on a regular trip to the grocery store. i know maybe i shouldn't be blabbing about it on here, but it's not like you know him or anything. and it made me really, really sad. he's so young, and to have one of his parents gone is devastating. i don't know what i would do if that ever happened to me. i'm not going to pray for him, because i don't pray, but he is definitely in my thoughts. because i guess i seem to think a lot. he's such a strong person, and i admire him for it. i wish he still went to my school so we can talk, he really is a sweet guy. i miss him
my friend and i were watching the local news channel, and they happened to do a report on it, and again, it made me really sad and uncomfortable. the things you see on the news just get a lot more sad when you actually know the people. but really, the news is so depressing. i hate watching it. i only watch it for the weather - which is also very depressing also where i live.
there are so many horrible people out there. and it makes me angry. maybe a little beyond angry. but there's nothing i can do to about it. there will be horrible people no matter what. and since this incident happened, i have been thinking. just about things in general. all the news stories i've heard throughout my life about people getting killed, murdered, abducted.. it's just all very disturbing. because those people are parents to someone, they are children to someone, or they are everything to someone. it really is a sad thing to have their lives taken away by someone who just wants money. how fucking selfish.
this is a cold, cruel world.
goodnight, i'm tired as hell
edit
and eye for an eye makes the whole world blind? well, i'd rather be blind than dead.
Blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) and Dwarf Birch (Betula nana) dominate these colorful slopes in southern Femundsmarka, Norway.
LC Verse Spider-Girl
Issue #9 "Hob-Stalker"
"Wait a minute. You haven't watched, Game of Thrones?!" Gwen asks me looking wide eyed, I laugh slightly shaking my head and we continue walking. "At first I only watched it for John Snow then was like this shows cool!" She continues to talk and I try to keep the conversation going but it's hard when you're being followed, ever since I left school to go beat down some criminals before class I felt someone watching me. They might have seen me change from my costume into ordinary clothes before I entered school again, now they're following me. I try to focus on Gwen as she continues to blab, "Yeah so that's why I think Captain America is hotter than Iron-Man. I roll my eyes then come to a halt feeling the tingling sensation of danger shudder up my spine as I lock eyes with my stalker on the rooftop. His face contorts into a snarl and I clench my teeth muttering, "Hobgoblin." Gwen stops turning to me, "What?" Hobgoblin jumps off the roof above us, my eyes widen seeing a glider soar under him. He cackles landing on it flying towards us, my heartbeat races whilst I stare at him getting closer. "Oh my God, Anya run! Gwen screams noticing him but I stand my ground activating the suit in front of Gwen, something I did not want to do.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Hobgoblin leaps off his glider with a knife raised slashing at me, I swiftly dodge the first strike then smack the blade from his grip. I land a hard kick to his chest sending him back against the wall as he grunts. Before he can regain leverage I shoot my webbing at his feet pinning them to the ground. He cries out frustrated whilst I deliver a flurry of strikes off his chest followed by a quick flip kick to the side of his face. The force of my kick knocks him to the ground tearing through the webbing on his feet, he curses in pain slowly getting up. "Who trained you?!" He hisses staggering back, I smirk under my mask advancing towards him. "Only the best." I reply cracking my knuckles preparing to knock him out until I hear a gentle voice come from behind me, "Anya?" Turning around I see Gwen standing there frightened, I'm speechless as to what to say until my skull begins to tingle alarmed. I gasp seeing Hobgoblin lob some sort of bomb out of the corner of my eye at Gwen who screams. The projectile glows ominously getting brighter and brighter until it's almost hard to look at, I sprint towards her jumping in front as it explodes against my chest.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
The agonising heat sears the surface of my suit as I'm propelled backwards bouncing off the wall behind Gwen who watches horrified. My suit splats across the wall behind me as if someone threw a bucket of black paint over it, I fall to the ground feeling my body shake violently as my suit tries to repair my wounds and cover my bare skin which is exposed from the blast. Gwens muffled panicked voice rings in my ears who encourages me to get to my feet but all I can do is lift my head up, the first thing I see is my bloodied hands and arms with patches of my suit sizzling against my skin. My vision is blurred but I can make out Gwen's blonde hair, she seems to be crouched down next to me pulling me over her shoulder causing my body to scream in agony. She holds me up hauling me away and I see a cloaked black figure with a white spider emblem printed over his black mask. The cloaked spider man seems to be engaging in combat with Hobgoblin, I turn to Gwen trying to utter a sentence but my words come out warbled from my enflamed split lip which bleeds down my chin. Gwen's voice echoes indistinctly, "Don't worry Anya I'll help you, you're secrets safe with me."
The extra-long sequel to: www.flickr.com/photos/133558185@N07/23290211525/in/dateta...
Chris Peterson’s eyes snapped open. He was in some kind of interrogation chamber, immobilized in the grasp of a wicked apparatus. Assumably he was still on board the Blabber superweapon. A dark, cloaked figure stood before him, its emotionless visor reflecting his own face back at him.
“So, you’re finally awake,” it said, in a rather disinterested voice, “I would’ve thought my neural stimulators would’ve woken you up faster, but I guess you don’t have enough brain mass for them to be effective.”
“Nice torture chamber,” said Chris, looking around with a smirk, “I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect such high-grade facilities from an Overlord of your, erm, caliber.” He smiled to himself as he surveyed the forbidding room. Doubtless this darkly arrayed being felt rather put out by his coolness, he thought, after all it’d gone through to look intimidating. Maybe it even felt a little insecure, after all…
“AH!” Chris cried, his train of thought cut short as he turned his head and found himself staring down the four barrels of an oversized laser turret.
“That… That’s big,” he added, trying not to look like he’d almost wet himself.
“I have some questions for you,” said the figure. Chris’ face hardened.
“I’ll never tell you anything, murderer. I’d sooner be smashed to subatomic particles than breathe a word to you,” he said.
“Well, then I suppose there’s no point in keeping you alive,” said the figure, turning away. Light suddenly blazed in the turret’s barrels, promising to literally blow Chris to atoms in a few seconds.
“Wait, wait, wait!” he screamed, “I’ll talk, I’ll be reasonable! I’ll say anything you want! Just turn that thing off!” The upcoming blast faded away back into the depths of turret and the figure turned to face him once more, chuckling.
“Your endurance is truly heroic.” it said, a sarcastic smile in its voice, “Now, onto the questions. First, what is this? A laser plunger?” The figure pulled out Chris’ weapon of choice, igniting its glowing conical end.
“No, no, that’s an Electromagnetic Extractor,” Chris explained, “Though, now that you mention it, it does kinda look like a toilet plunger… Aw, cummon, why’d you have to point that out? I never noticed it before!”
“Moving onto the second question—what is this?” the figure pulled out Chris’ Superdimensional Karate Assistant & Travel Evolver (SKATE) board, throwing it down on the floor. In its folded state, it rather resembled a mangled duck made of titanium, but Chris knew it was much more powerful than it looked. He thought fast. If this overlord found out that his SKATE board was an interdimensional conveyance that could go nearly anywhere in the universe in a matter of minutes, it would doubtlessly use it for its own purposes. And that would be… Bad. Really, really bad.
“Oh, uh, that’s um, uh… That’s kinda personal,” he said, wracking his brains for a conceivable lie.
“If you’d rather not tell me, I can just melt your face off and figure it out myself.” suggested the figure, glancing at the turret.
“No, no, if you really wanna know, I’ll tell you,” protested Chris, “It’s a… Mobile waste disposal system.”
“It’s a what?” asked the figure.
“It’s a portable toilet,” Chris elaborated.
“Ahuh,” said the figure, glancing at SKATE with a mixture of newfound disgust and curiosity. “Moving on—why, and more importantly how, did you just walk into my Blabber and sabotage my Phlebotium Core? Do you have any idea how freakishly hard it was to get the Phlebotium to make that? Do you? Because I feel like, if you did, you would’ve thought twice before blowing the entire thing to smithereens without a thought about the trials of an Overlord.” The figure’s voice, previously apathetic and emotionless, started to betray some annoyance.
“Oh, I know how hard it was for you to get that. In fact, I was the reason it was so hard for you to get your Phlebotium whatchimidoohickey. And, if everything had gone well, you would’ve never even gotten it in the first place,” said Chris, with some pride he couldn’t conceal.
“Is that so?” asked the figure, “What great operative do I have the honour of addressing?” His voice was laden with sarcasm.
“I’m Chris Peterson,” said Chris, “And I’m not an operative. I’m a freelancer.”
“I can tell,” said the figure, eyeing the Electromagnetic Extractor with contempt. “May I ask why a freelancer would sneak into a top-security superweapon-equipped space station that belongs to an obscure overlord without a planet to his name?”
“Uh…” said Chris, trying not to cross the line between bragging and blabbing, “No reason. Or at least, not one I’m going to tell you.”
“Well, alright,” said the figure, “Send me a postcard from the afterlife.” The turret powered on once more, this time so quickly Chris could feel the heat of the forthcoming beam on his face as he shouted in panic.
“Fine, fine! I’ll tell you! Just don’t blow me up!” he cried frantically. The dangerous light in the turret’s barrels slowly backed away, but did not leave entirely this time, lingering like the gleam of insectoid eyes.
“To clarify, it wouldn’t blow you up—it’d melt you. Slowly,” explained the figure, “Now tell me why you blew up my Core.”
“Well…” said Chris, hesitantly, “You kinda used your superweapon to wipe out six billion people or so… And that’s not cool. Thankfully your Blabber thing kinda blew up when you used it, so you backed off for about twenty years. But then you came back, and with your new fancy Core you were gonna be able to hit multiple planets in a row without a hitch and scare everybody into submission. And that really wasn’t cool. So I blew up your Core.”
“Certainly you had to have a better reason than that you thought my conduct ‘wasn’t cool’. Plenty of people think what the Overlords do isn’t ‘cool’, but few have the pluck to strike back against them. Or the tech, for that matter. So why’d you do it?” asked the figure.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” said Chris, proudly.
“Oh please,” snorted the figure, rolling its eyes behind its visor, “Everyone says that. What’s the real reason? Do you have friends down on my target of choice, perhaps?” The darkly-clad being wandered towards the big screen that displayed the planet the Blabber was orbiting. Chris new it well. Very well.
“Ehm…” stuttered Chris. The fact was, it was actually his planet, and he did have a dear friend or two down on it. He didn’t feel like admitting that was a good idea, though. Revenge ran deep in the blood of the Overlords. Or at least in blood of the ones who had blood.
“That would be an interesting revelation,” the figure continued, “I wiped out everybody on this planet with my first strike, except for a couple thousand or so. It’d be rather ironic if, out of that ridiculously small tithe of people, someone managed to grow up and then acquire the tech to sabotage my second design. Ironic and annoying.”
“Heheh, it is kind of ironic,” said Chris, before he could help himself. “I mean, uh, that you were thwarted at the same planet twice; the first time because you didn’t have a powerful enough Core, and the second time by a guy like me. You just can’t catch a break, can you?”
“Seemingly not.” said the figure coldly, “I have one last question: Where’s your girlfriend?”
“My what?” asked Chris.
“That lady you were with in the Core Room. She’s not showing up on any of my scanners. Not even giving a life reading. Normally I’d just assume she’d been smashed, but my security cameras and motion sensors seem to be telling otherwise. I’ve been catching glimpses of her for about an hour now. Where’s she hiding, and how is she doing it?”
“First off, she is NOT my girlfriend,” said Chris, “She’s just… No, not that… And secondly, I have no idea where she is. Even I can’t find her most of the time.”
“What stealth tech is using?” asked the figure.
“I dunno,” said Chris, which was true. He was bad at remembering names, especially technical ones. The lights in the turret’s barrels began to get brighter, and the figure turned round again.
“Don’t try and play games with me, freelancer,” it said, “You and your not-girlfriend are much more likely to live if you surrender. Just tell me how I can detect her and I’ll spare your lives.” Chris could feel the heat of the turret’s blast on his face, getting hotter and hotter.
“I seriously don’t know!” he cried, “Honestly! If I did I’d totally betray her like a weakling, but I really don’t!”
“Then why should I keep you alive?” asked the figure. Chris’ face was beginning to burn, and the light was so bright now he could hardly see. And then, quite suddenly, the turret switched off, the light exploding in its barrels as its containment field failed. A chunk of shrapnel hit the figure over the head, knocking him across the room. One of the floor grates was pushed aside from below, and out of the hole it left leapt the very woman they’d been talking about.
“Charlotte!” cried Chris, in surprise. Without replying, she snatched his Extractor and SKATE off the ground, grabbed him by the shoulder, and switched on the latter. A giant invisible sphere deformed the world around them, the interrogation room fading away as a wormhole sucked them into another dimension.
“This isn’t the end!” cried the figure’s voice, and then the physical world vanished.
A build for the Lands of Roawia LEGO Castle game. It's based on a real medieval kitchen at Hever Castle (see the model here).
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Something wasn’t right, besides what Lord Sorely Meyrick, the Duke of Ainesford, was blabbing on about; no that cook…he was taking far too long to clean up the ale he himself had spilled. And Captain Tavish was certain he was pausing to listen to what was being said on the Speaker's Floor, strictly against the rules for “the help”. The grizzled archer nudged Baron Munro sitting next to him, but Sir Caelan barely noticed as he listened to Meyrick's speech and replied, “Can you believe what Sorely Lost here is advocating? Full compliance with Chartres! No wonder he lost the Battle of Ainesford so badly…”
Tavish shook his head in mild frustration and got up to check on that cook, but he had barely made it halfway there when the cook suddenly collected his rags and left. Now that was entirely too coincidental…
The Captain headed down the hallway to find him but was immediately accosted by the two ever-present and intellectually-challenged guards waiting there. Security at the Great Congress of Lenfald was incredibly tight; no one except the castle guards themselves were allowed any weapons whatsoever, and all the delegates and staff were sequestered inside the castle for the duration of this critical assembly. Upon seeing the archer they held out their halberds to stop him, but Tavish was way ahead of them. “Ah, there you are my good lads, I am here to report an illegal weapon, one of the delegates has a knife, I clearly saw it. Here, let me point him out.”
Excited that they finally had something real to do, the two looked like dogs waiting to go fetch a thrown stick. The Captain deliberately motioned at the middle of the delegates on the far side of the largest hall in all of Lenfald, and pointed indiscriminately, “there, that one wearing dark green.” The two were halfway across when they realized nearly every delegate there was wearing the official color of Lenfald.
The archer entered the Great Kitchen impatiently as he searched for the man, to no avail; he wasn’t there. It was incredibly busy in the hot room, but there was one cook removing the entrails from a goose who he grabbed by the arm after the man objected to his presence. “Did a cook just rush through here?”
“Oh no, I haven’t seen a cook all day!" he spit out sarcastically. "Look about you mate, you’re in a kit…” he didn’t get any farther as he was suddenly and violently shaken.
“Tall, thin, muscular, with a goatee and a deep tan like he has been in the…” a sinking feeling hit Captain Tavish as he finished his own sentence, “…desert.”
“Oh, the new bloke,” the cook muttered resentfully. “Yeah, he’s in the side kitchen over there.”
“New bloke? But the staff has been sequestered!”
“Aye but we ran short a’ help and contracted from outside…”
Now Tavish’s stomach was turning, and not from the sight of the goose’s entrails. He shot down the side hall and found the door to the secondary kitchen locked from the inside. He was not a slight man however and he burst through it after four body slams, only to face an arrow shot at him. Quickly turning to present a smaller target the shot barely missed, and he then plunged into the small kitchen. It had two ovens, one to his left and another to his right with a window facing the outer ward of the castle. A massive pot of some concoction was bubbling away in that fireplace, and two cooks were to his left, down and bleeding in front of the other oven. To his right across a table full of foodstuffs and dishes stood the dubious cook, now smoothly knocking another arrow. As Tavish reached for a large pot to try and deflect the shot, the cook instead leveled the shot at the window and fired the arrow out of it.
Instantly Tavish knew he had just lost, for two things came to his eye; the arrow had a note tied to it — the spy had just successfully gotten the word out as to whatever he had heard. And the other thing was personally alarming; the cook had an Areani tattoo on the inside of his arm—this was going to be one bloody fight, perhaps the Captain's last.
So he didn’t wait, and threw the pot at him as hard as he could, catching the spy in the ribs. That should have doubled him over, but the darker man barely noticed it. He produced a curved Loreesi dagger from inside his shirt and a second knife and attacked with both, while Tavish grabbed a kitchen knife and jar of seeds, and the two went at each other with full force. The jar wound up shattered as it absorbed a crushing blow from the dagger, and Tavish gave him a brutal slash across the shoulder, which again the Areani barely seemed to notice. In the flurry, the archer had sustained four bloody cuts from the spy and knew he wouldn’t last long against this seemingly inhuman opponent.
Then the Areani reacted to something over Tavish’s shoulder and a jar came flying out of nowhere and hit the spy in the head, shooting flour everywhere, clouding up the air. Sir Caelan then dashed by the Captain and attacked the cook with a meat cleaver, a sight that would have been hilarious if it weren't for the circumstances of their opponent being a deadly Loreesi agent.
Even dazed the Areani fought like a lion until Tavish grabbed a small iron pot and slammed it into the side of his head. Still the spy stood, but wavered. The temporary lull in the action allowed the sound of the bubbling pot to come through, and both Sir Caelan and Tavish simultaneously had the same idea, grabbing the spy by the arms and shoving him toward the fire. They forcefully pushed the Areani's head down into what turned out to be a lovely pea soup, now at full boil. The spy struggled mightily as he burned, but both his opponents held on until he went limp.
“We need to question him, I think,” Caelan barely managed and finally Tavish relented, letting the man fall to the floor with horrendous second-degree burns now all over his head and face, also covered in a slimy green.
The two friends stood huffing from their exertion until Baron Munro finally blurted, “You left just when the Duke was getting interesting…”
"I doubt that very much." Tavish stumbled to the window and cursed. “The blighter must have shot right over the outer wall. Jig’s up now; whatever was on that note is surely gone.”
Just then the same two guards who had stopped the Captain earlier now slammed into the kitchen. They took in the Areani, the mess, and the two hurt cooks to their right and looked furiously at them. Sir Caelan only waved at the spy on the floor and by way of explanation stated indignantly, “He ruined the soup.”
Two days later, a man dressed in fine red clothing stood on a tower of the King’s Castle, and held out his arm expectantly. A bird came down swiftly and alighted on his arm, and he gently caressed the falcon. He then unfastened the message tied to its leg and began reading carefully. His brow furrowed slightly after reading a few lines; then a calmness came over him. He looked towards the vast horizon and paused to consider everything that had taken place in the last few weeks. Prince Jarius then tucked the message into his pocket and, carrying the bird with him, walked purposely towards the stairs of the tower.
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This was a build to advance the Global Storyline in the Lands of Roawia LEGO Castle game. Hope you like it! 100% LEGO.
Пара интервью с вокалистом Felt.
• их главный хит Primitive Painters спродюсировал Робин Гатри из Cocteau Twins, и на бэк-вокале с его подачи там спела Elizabeth Fraser;
• сингл Primitive Painters попал на вершину UK Independent Singles Chart, чего не удалось достичь ни The Smiths, ни Cocteau Twins;
• когда песня взлетела в топы МакГи из Creation и Cherry Red решили снять видео на этот сингл, но МакГи (был на мели) не заплатил ребятам (Cherry и Creation изначально договаривали разделить расходы пополам), поэтому они смогли снять только полклипа (!), из-за этого Lawrence собирался уничтожить видео, к счастью копия была не только у него (группа как раз перешла из Cherry на Creation);
• Робин очень любил эту группу и старался им помочь по мере сил, но для сведения альбома они заставили их вокалиста (по имени Lawrence Hayward) подписать бумажку, что он никаким образом не будет вмешиваться в сведение записи, потому что были наслышаны о его характере, он очень страдал что не может повлиять;
• видео сняли спустя пару лет после выхода альбома, в доме Фила Кинга (в будущем басиста Lush и The Jesus and Mary Chain) в Hammersmith, он тогда играл в Felt; штатным басистом Felt был Marco Thomas, так что Phil King даже не отмечен ни на одной их пластинке, хотя и снялся в их самом популярном видео;
• Martin Duffy сыграл на клавишах на этой пластинке, когда ему было всего 18 (а пришёл он в группу вообще в 16 лет), после распада Felt он примкнет к Primal Scream (на днях скончался /RIP);
Felt discography
1982.01 — Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty (Cherry Red)
1984.02 — The Splendour of Fear (Cherry Red)
1984.10 — The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories (Cherry Red)
1985.09 — Ignite the Seven Cannons (Cherry Red) - Primitive Painters отсюда
1986.06 — Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death (Creation)
1986.09 — Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (Creation)
1987.06 — Poem of the River (Creation)
1988.05 — The Pictorial Jackson Review (Creation)
1988.07 — Train Above the City (Creation)
1989.11 — Me and a Monkey on the Moon (Creation)
compilation
1987.09 — Gold Mine Trash [Cherry Red]
1990.04 — Bubblegum Perfume [Creation]
1992.04 — Absolute Classic Masterpieces [Cherry Red]
1993.10 — Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. II [Creation]
1993.10 — Felt Box [Cherry Red]
2003.05 — Stains on a Decade [Cherry Red]
singles
1979 — Index
1981 — Something Sends Me to Sleep
1982 — My Face Is on Fire / Trails of Colour Dissolve
1983 — Penelope Tree
1984 — Mexican Bandits / The World Is as Soft as Lace
1984 — Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow
1985 — Primitive Painters
1986 — Ballad of the Band
1986 — Rain of Crystal Spires
1987 — The Final Resting of the Ark
1988 — Space Blues
• Уникальный саунд Felt — заслуга гитариста Maurice Deebank (Lawrence его друг детства) и он покинет группу сразу после альбома «Ignite the Seven Cannons», 1985, он говорил в другом интервью, что на первых альбомах учил всех играть на инструментах, там все самоучки кроме него (и даже после его ухода, они играли так как он их научил), Maurice признавал что Lawrence великий поэт, но они разошлись т.к. парни перестали слушать его советы по поводу саунда, плюс им вскружил голову успех Primitive Painters — Джон Пил и все остальные там подпрыгивали от радости когда её включали и они реально остановились в полушаге от глобальной популярности, но эта же песня стала их последним большим хитом;
Phil King играл в группах:
The Servants (1986)
Felt (1986-1987)
Apple Boutique (1987)
Hangman's Beautiful Daughters (1987)
Biff Bang Pow! (1988-1989)
See See Rider (1989-1992)
Lush (1992-1997, 2015-2016)
The Jesus & Mary Chain (1997-1998, 2017-)
(удивительно конечно, что я посмотрел живьём и Lush и JAMC хотя даже и не мечтал о таком!)
Felt одна из самых недооценённых британских групп, как и McCarthy.
...
An interview with Lawrence: “‘Primitive Painters’ was this great big statement, Felt were going to be massive.”
— Michael Bonner @ Uncut, 24.07.2015
www.uncut.co.uk/features/an-interview-with-lawrence-primi...
— Where were Felt just prior to Ignite the Seven Cannons?
— Honestly there’s so much. I don’t want to blab on and on. Originally I wanted to continue with John Leckie after The Strange Idols Pattern. He didn’t want to do it. I was writing these trademark pop songs at the time, short 3-minute things. Leckie said, “They’re all the same, they just seem to start and then stop, there’s no beginning.” Things like that. He was reluctant to get involved. But I said, “These are just a few rough demos that you’re listening to, the songs are nothing like that really. They’re quite expansive, there’s a lot going on.” But he wouldn’t give it a chance. So he passed on it anyway. We were trying to get Tom Verlaine as well.
— Did you approach Verlaine?
— We did, yeah. He said – oh God, his quote was classic – he said he didn’t want to get involved himself because he felt the guitars were playing all the way through the songs. That’s the gist of it. They would start and continue, like a long solo. The songs, they weren’t arranged. Like most would start and then continue all the way through the song. That’s a lot to do with me, because Maurice [Deebank] is such a great guitarist that I encouraged him to play from beginning to end, especially on my songs. That’s something Tom Verlaine picked up on. It was a good criticism, I suppose, in a way, if you were trying to write conventional songs. But we weren’t. At the beginning of this chat my point would be that these people didn’t give us a chance to see what could happen in the studio with this.
— How did Robin Guthrie become involved?
— Cocteau Twins had approached us to play with them live because we were Robin’s favourite band. We didn’t know them, they got in touch with us, and Robin said they were doing a small UK tour – well, for them it was a massive tour. It was 5 days on the trot I think, or 6 days. They took us with them in their mini bus and they paid for everything. They were very kind to us, and we became great friends on this tour. So, I thought, “Maybe I’ll ask Robin because he seems to know what he’s doing in the studio.” He wasn’t known as a producer then, he’d only produced Cocteau Twins. Now he’s known as more of a producer. I wanted to work with a musician. Robin liked us a lot, and he agreed to do it as long as I wasn’t at the mixing. I had to sign a contract to say that I wasn’t allowed to be at the mixing, because he thought my presence was too overpowering. There could only be one person mixing the record, and that would be him.
— Is that just how he works or was that about you personally?
— That was about me personally, absolutely. Because I was in control of every asset of the band. I had a comment on everything, even a shoelace, for example. I was in to everything, and I was completely obsessed. I think he thought, if he was going to produce, he’d want to produce it his way. He’d probably heard stories of me in the studio before anyway.
— What sort of stories?
— I don’t know, the usual. You always hear stories about people in the studio that are kind blown up out of all proportion. I don’t know what he could have heard, there are so many. He’d probably heard that it’s very hard to work with me. I signed this piece of paper anyway. There was a production contract and there was an extra contract for me to sign saying that I wouldn’t be there at the mixing. I can’t go into the whole thing, we’d need a whole book. But, what happened was, as we were recording the album, I was more and more reluctant to go along with this. I wasn’t sure that I shouldn’t be there. It got to the point where we had 11 days to record and five or six days to mix. We did it in Palladium studios in Edinburgh. Robin knew the engineer, the guy who owned it. Jon Turner I think his name was.
— Do you remember when this was?
— Let’s remember the weather… I reckon it was spring. It was coldish but there wasn’t any snow or rain. I’d say spring we did it. Definitely spring, yeah. Loads of Eighties bands went to Palladium, especially Scottish bands. Paul Haig and people.
— What was it like?
— It was residential which is the first time I’ve done that, and I didn’t like that at all, being away from my own surroundings, and sharing a room, we were all sharing a room. Like a dormitory it was.
— Who did you share with?
— I had my own room. I think that was part of it. I had to have my own room. I think we threw someone else in together, three of them together, so that I could have my own room. I think that was my one diva moment. It was awful for me, it was in the middle of nowhere. About a 45 minute bus ride into Edinburgh. It was awful, in a country lane, there was like a tiny little village down the lane. I got attacked by a dog, had to go to hospital. Like a wolf it was. It attacked me one day.
— Why did it attack you?
— I don’t know, just saw I was scared. It didn’t attack anybody else. I was on my own. Had to go to hospital. I hated it. And also I hated the food, and the whole day was geared up to “Is he going to eat or not tonight?” It’s all like that.
— What kind of food did they serve, if you don’t mind me asking?
— I can’t remember. But I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t like any meals, it was always a big deal. His wife was cooking the meals for us, of course, and you tend to be polite in those situations, but I couldn’t eat the food. Robin, he thought it was wonderful that all this was going on, and he’d make a big show of it to the wife, “He’s not eating it again, he doesn’t like your food.” All this kind of stuff. He’s quite the joker, Robin is. Everything’s based around a joke and japes with him. He sort of revelled in my idiosyncrasies.
— I want to talk more about Robin in a minute. But this is Duffy’s first record. How did he come into the picture?
— He joined late ‘84, straight from school. When we did Ignite… he was probably 16.
— How did you find him?
— I put an advert in Virgin for a guitarist. This was during one of the periods where Maurice left. This guy who worked there came up to me and said, “Look, you’re in Felt aren’t you? I know this great keyboard player.” That was Martin. I rang him and it was as simple as that. That was it really. Very lucky. I was thinking about a keyboard player anyway, because Maurice is so hard to replace. I got Martin in, we worked on all songs that were on Ignite the Seven Cannons – apart from “Primitive Painters” and Maurice’s solo song. In between then and starting the album, Maurice rejoined. He’d always leave, then he’d rejoin. Me and Gary [Ainge] would carry on on our own for a few months, and then we’d come to a low point, go round to Maurice’s house and beg him. We’d stay up all night with him and plead with him to come back. He took a lot of persuading, he wasn’t bothered about being in a group at all. So anyway, the next time we got Maurice back, Martin was with us. One of the reasons Maurice was quite happy to come back was the fact that we had a keyboard player. He thought it would be better for the arrangements.
— This was Maurice’s final record, though?
— Every record he came in and left really. That’s why he’s never in a lot of interviews, because he’d left straight after recording. But what happened this time was he’d got married to a girlfriend, and what should have been his honeymoon was spent recording Ignite the Seven Cannons. When we delivered him back to his flat in Birmingham, he got out the van and said “I’m finished now, yeah that’s it, I’m finished.” I knew he meant it that time. He left soon as we’d finished recording.
— When did you start writing “Primitive Painters”?
— When Maurice rejoined, he bought the music for “Primitive Painters”. It wasn’t like a fully formed song, it was like a cyclical riff. We arranged it together, and I put the verses in so it was a joint collaboration. But he wrote all the music to that and he brought his instrumental track, “Elegance of an Only Dream”. I wanted there to be lots of Maurice songs on that record. But he wasn’t interested, or he just found it too hard to work on his own, I think. When we wrote the songs together, we would sit opposite each other, parallel to each other, in my bedroom or flats that we subsequently got, and we’d just sit there and work on them. I’d play the chord sequence while he’d work out his guitar parts. I think he liked the camaraderie of that better than sitting on his own in a cold room trying to come up with songs, which I didn’t have a problem with. The poet in the garret was made for me. I was quite happy to be on my own composing and writing the words and writing the music, just waiting for fame. I was very prolific, but Maurice wasn’t. He wrote I think one on the first album, “I Worship The Sun”, and he wrote a song called “Spanish House” on the third album, and “Primitive Painters” and the “Elegance…” song. I was quite happy for him to present a whole album worth of stuff. We were partners and it didn’t matter who wrote what bits. We were songwriters’ together, joint songwriters. And of course, he came up with the best song, “Primitive Painters”.
— Where did the lyrics come in, do you have books of lyrics?
— I was sitting in my kitchen in Moseley doing it. The lyrics, I don’t know how they come about. That would’ve been the last song on Ignite the Seven Cannons, because I had all the others written. So that would’ve been the last lyric I wrote. I can’t say there was any special moment that made me come up with it.
— Can you explain the song?
— “Dragons blow fire, angels fly, Spirits wither in the air/It’s just me I can’t deny I’m neither here, there nor anywhere”. It’s about wanting to be in a select group. “Primitive painters are ships floating on an empty sea, gathering in galleries”. Imagine groups of really cool kids hanging out in galleries, not pubs. That was my sort of conception.
— Was that you?
— Yeah, that’s me. I’d always find myself in a gallery on my own, y’know.
— Can you talk us through how you worked on the song in the studio?
— We’d work them up in a practise room. There was no improvising going on, so we knew exactly what we were doing. Then we set up like a band in the studio. They were layered afterwards. They were very simple, very traditional big group concepts, just like everyone did. You’d set up live and you’d get the bass and the drums and the keyboards down, and the rhythm guitar, and you’d layer it from there, adding lead guitar and vocals afterwards. It’s quite boring, that aspect of it. But it was done really quickly because we didn’t have enough time to ponder, so we just did them all live.
— What was Robin like in the studio as a producer?
— While I was there, he was capturing it all with the engineer. He didn’t make any arrangement suggestions because it was all set in stone before we got there. I was very pedantic like that. But he put effects to tape, which is something you don’t do.
— Could you explain what you mean?
— You should record everything dry, and then you decide what effects to put on afterwards so you have the choice. That’s why that album sounds so impenetrable and dense because all the effects went down, so by the time of the mixing there was nothing to change. I suppose that was the way he recorded the Cocteau Twins. It was a massive mistake, and I’m sure he would never do that now. Over the years I’ve collected some of the master tapes and on the reissues that are coming out, I’ve tried to extract the Cocteau Twins from my record. You can’t really hear Maurice’s guitar leads. Okay, skip forward to the end of the mixing when I finally got my tape. I was horrified, I would never have made a record like that. I was like beside myself with anguish. The thing was in those days, you couldn’t remix an album. But Robin quite rightly said “Primitive Painters” has to be the single. He went on and on about it, and he went to Cherry Red and he told them, he persuaded everyone. I didn’t think it was a single, I thought it was too long. I went with him to a studio in London and we remixed it together. And that’s why that’s the best song, ‘cause I was there in that mixing. I went with him to Barry Blue’s studio in Camden. Remember that guy Barry Blue? He had some hits in the ‘70’s? He was like a teenybopper. His studio in Camden was by the Roundhouse. We spent an afternoon there and we remixed “Primitive Painters”. I think we should’ve done an EP with Robin; that would’ve been the best outcome. It would’ve been a different story. But, anyway, we were lumbered with a whole album. And it was 11 tracks as well. That’s something I could never get my head around because I like everything symmetrical. That hurt me a bit, straight away, before I’d even listened to it.
— How did Liz Fraser come to be on the record?
— Liz came with Robin to work on her own lyrics and songs and that, so she’d be upstairs in the bedroom, in their room, working on her lyrics. She had a bed full of books that she was poring though, reading and writing. Anyway, when we’d recorded “Primitive Painters” and we listened back, Robin said “I’ve got a good idea.” He ran upstairs and he said to Liz, “I want you to sing this song.” He just played her the end section. I wrote the lyrics out for her on a piece of paper, she went in, listened to it once on headphones, and then just improvised around it. It was as real as that. It was a remarkable moment. When you listen back to something like that, we knew we’d got it.
— It was on the cusp between the 7-inch culture of the late ‘70’s and the 12-inch culture of the Eighties.
— Yeah, I wanted it to be a stand alone release like Wild Swans’ “Revolutionary Spirit” and Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” which were 12-inches. “Atmosphere” was on 7-inch, but that was that French label so it didn’t count. Songs that were too big to hold on 7-inch, they were big. Cherry Red wanted to do a 7-inch edit of “Primitive Painters”, but I wouldn’t let them.
— Talking of Cherry Red, what was your relationship like with them at that point?
— Michael Alway was the A&R guy who signed us to Cherry Red. He formed a new label with Geoff Travis and they went to Warners and they started Blanco Y Negro. He always promised that he’d take us with him. He took most of the Cherry Red rock stuff, and he left us behind, because Warners just wouldn’t entertain the idea of having Felt. So we were on a label that we didn’t want to be on. But we all made friends and we had two albums left to deliver so we did Strange Idols Pattern, and then Ignite the Seven Cannons. I’d been speaking to Alan McGee at this point so I knew we were going to Creation after this last album. There was no animosity there, we were all friends and I’ve never fallen out with them, we’d been friends for years and it was just business.
— You made a video with Phil King a couple of years later. How did that come about?
— We were on Creation when we did it. What happened was, I don’t know why but it was mooted that we should do a video for “Primitive Painters”. It got half made. Cherry Red and Creation were meant to pay for it together, pay half each. Cherry Red came up with their half because they initiated the project, and McGee didn’t pay his half. So we did half a video with Phil’s friend Danny. What you see on YouTube is half a video. We were meant to do another half and join it together, have stuff superimposed over the top, have extra scenes. But all you can see really is me and Phil in Phil’s house in Hammersmith, just standing around. It’s ridiculous. I was so embarrassed when it leaked out. So we put it to bed, and it lay there until somebody scooped it up and put it on YouTube or leaked it on a VHS probably first, it was probably a leaked VHS first.
— Yeah, it’s got that slight tracking wobble you get every now and again on VHS…
— I should’ve been more attentive and got hold of it and cut it up or something. I was very meticulous about ‘there’s no extra tracks’ and things like that, no demos or extra tracks hanging around. But with this for some reason it went wrong. I can’t remember why it was resurrected I’d say about a year and a half later. Maybe together McGee and Cherry Red were going to do something.
— Where do you think now the song fits into your body of work? Is it a song you still feel proud of?
— Oh yeah, oh wow. It was great that we went back – at that time you never went back and revisited anything – and we spent an extra afternoon getting it right and perfecting it. It was this great big statement, Felt were going to be massive. I was prone to short pop songs. My thing was, I’m going to break in to the mainstream by doing a short pop song. I was totally off the mark. We nearly had a hit single with a six-minute track that was not a traditional pop song, let’s put it that way. I reckon that if it would’ve been in the ’90s, it would’ve been a Top 10 song – because the independent movement was ready to promote songs like that. In 1985, there was no apparatus for a song like that, to take it to the mainstream. Even The Smiths would only get to 23, and the Cocteaus would only get to 38. I’m really proud of the song, I’m really proud that Maurice got his moment. I’m proud of the fact the Cocteaus are on it. I suppose it was the high point of the first days of Felt wasn’t it?
...
Trash ascetic. The minimally-monikered Lawrence - driving force behind Felt, Denim, and now Go-Kart Mozart - lives like a monk but dreams of pop stardom, drawing inspiration from the 'middle-of-the-road underground'
• The Guardian, 8 Jul 2005
www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jul/08/1
When the cult pop star Lawrence was 12, he saw a film of Gary Glitter disposing of his old life as Paul Gadd by putting all of his possessions on to a boat on the river Thames and floating them downstream. "I said to myself, 'I'm going to do that one day,'" says Lawrence, who began the process by disposing of his surname. "I'm going to put one life away in a box and start a new one."
Although he hasn't quite reached Glitter's levels of fame or infamy, Lawrence has succeeded in reinventing himself several times. For most of the 1980s, he was the sensitive leader of the influential indie band Felt. Then he re-emerged in the 1990s with Denim, whose wry wit and celebration of 1970s pop culture proved too far ahead of its time for commercial success. Now he is back with Go-Kart Mozart, and a roster of perfectly formed pop songs that he hopes will be recorded by some of the biggest stars of the day. He's setting his sights on Charlotte Church, but whether she will add Um Bongo (about the Rwanda genocide), and Transgressions (about a trend for spraying Lynx body lotion on to your tongue for a cheap high) to her repertoire remains to be seen.
"I got a letter from a fan the other day who said that I was the only true talent left, now that Stephen Duffy is writing for Robbie Williams," says Lawrence, who lives in near poverty in a featureless flat in Victoria. "But I'd love to write for Robbie Williams! I think I write hit singles anyway; it's just taken me a long time to master them because I'm a slow learner. I couldn't tie my own shoelaces until I was 12."
Lawrence manages the unlikely feat of existing as both pop star and monkish hermit. He eats as little as possible because he believes that creativity comes from being hungry - if pushed, he will admit to pigging out on the occasional sausage roll from a stall on Victoria station - yet he is in love with glamour. He likes the Norwegian singer Annie because "she's a gorgeous girl and I'm into beauty. I could never listen to that big fat oaf from Pop Idol [Michelle McManus] because she's over-indulged herself. My whole thing is about not doing things, about being as thin and as minimal as possible. Ideally I'd like to wear brown robes, eat a bowl of rice a day, and go into a trance as I stare at beautiful album covers."
Then there are the records. In the corridor of the tiny flat Lawrence has a shelving unit with his French pop and 1970s glam albums. He's heavily into what he calls the underground middle-of-the-road scene. He has two copies of his favourite ones in mint condition "just in case", and visitors are only allowed to touch them once they have donned special protective gloves. "I don't want fingerprints on the laminated covers," he explains. Asked about his prized albums, he presents the solo debut by the 1960s/70s Israeli pop star Abi and 1973's Aquashow by obscure glam rocker Elliot Murphy.
Lawrence plays an emotional version of David Bowie's Life on Mars by British choral group the King's Singers and follows it with 1973's Dee Doo Dah by the actress and singer Jane Birkin. "And get ready for this," he says, unsheathing a poster of Michel Polnareff depicting the flamboyant French star proudly displaying his bottom. The poster was banned in 1972 and Polnareff was fined 10 francs for every copy printed. "I go mad on Polnareff. In the 1970s, he moved to the penthouse suite of a hotel in Los Angeles and as far as I know he's still there."
His only other significant possession is a book collection, shelved under a durable polythene dust cover and containing true-life accounts by heroin addicts, a few cult novels like Hunger by Knut Hamsun and Ask the Dust by John Fante, and an entire set of the Skinhead novels; the violent pulp books written by Richard Allen in the early 1970s. "I would say that real accounts by junkies are my favourites, and I'm not into fiction. I have everything by Jack Kerouac but his novels are about real life anyway."
Lawrence does dream of riches, despite currently living as an ascetic. "I love prison cells - if I had the money I would definitely build one of those cement beds that extend from a wall - but I'd really love a circular penthouse flat in Mayfair," he says. "I have a jewel case full of hits ready for ransacking, but I'm also in the market for a rich wife. She can be late 20s to early 30s and if her dad's in Who's Who, that's a bonus."
...
‘I’d rather be a tramp than reform my old bands’: Lawrence on life as British music’s greatest also-ran
• The Guardian, 27 Jul 2022
www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/27/lawrence-interview-...
His fans range from Charlie Brooker to Jarvis Cocker, yet the auteur behind Felt, Denim and Mozart Estate never found fame. He explains why it was all Princess Diana’s fault
The most uncompromising figure in British pop has an urgent question: “Do you need the loo?” This is Lawrence (no surnames, please), the mastermind responsible for the coruscating beauty of Felt, the knowing glam-rock of Denim and the bargain-bin ear-worms of Go-Kart Mozart, now renamed Mozart Estate. As we walk to his high-rise council flat in east London, I promise him that my bladder is empty. “Are you sure?” he persists in his Midlands lilt. “Do you want to try going in the cafe?” No one is allowed near his toilet. “A workman was round the other day, and he used it without asking. Oh God, it was ’orrible!”
Lawrence is wearing his trademark baseball cap with its blue plastic visor and a vintage-style blue Adidas jumper. His skin is pale and papery, his eyes small but vivid. He is 60 now and has been dreaming of pop stardom since he was a child. “I used to sit in the bath and pretend I was being interviewed: ‘So what’s it like to have your third No 1 on the trot?’”
Only one of his songs has ever charted: Denim’s It Fell Off the Back of a Lorry, straight in at No 79 in 1996. Summer Smash, a BBC Radio 1 single of the week, might have made good on its lyrics (“I think I’m gonna come / Straight in at No 1”) if its release in September 1997 had not been scrapped following a certain Parisian car crash. As Lawrence shows me around his ramshackle flat, which he has been decorating for the past 12 years or so, I spot a grotesquely bad portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales stowed in one corner. “My story is pinned to hers forever,” he says glumly.
We perch on wooden stools in the cluttered, dimly lit living room. Around us are piles of books and vinyl, assorted knick-knacks (feather duster, magnifying glass) and a mustard-coloured Togo chair – a rare extravagance – still in its plastic wrapping. The white blinds are pulled down; a leak has stained them urine-yellow like a child’s mattress. “I don’t think anyone’s had as much bad luck as me,” he says. “It just goes from one disaster to another.”
And yet Lawrence of Belgravia, the 2011 documentary about him which is now being released on Blu-ray, remains stubbornly inspiring. It’s the story of a born maverick who refuses either to abandon his dreams of success or lower his standards to make them a reality. “You see so many musicians reforming their old bands,” he says. “I can’t do that. You’ve got to move forward.” He knows what it’s like to be disappointed by your idols – “I couldn’t get over it in the 1980s when Lou Reed had a mullet” – and is determined never to sully his own legacy, no matter how much cash he is offered. “I’d rather be a tramp than reform Felt or play my old songs,” he says.
He has put his lack of money where his mouth is. “There came a point where I learned to live on nothing. I’d have two pence in my pocket, and I’d find a bench on the King’s Road hoping someone would sit next to me so I could ask for a cigarette. No one ever did because I looked so rough.”
Lawrence of Belgravia alludes to addiction issues and legal woes: we glimpse bottles of methadone and piles of court letters. At the start of the film, he is evicted from his previous flat. But it is still a fond and hopeful study of someone for whom fame – as symbolised by limousines, helicopters and Kate Moss – has never lost its allure. “It’s such a shame it hasn’t happened to me,” he says. “I’d love to try fame on for size, see what it’s like.” How close has he come? “There was a period in the 1990s when I could get a taxi. That was as good as it got. There’s a fame ladder and I’m near the bottom. I always have been, and I accept that.”
The documentary has helped a bit. “It’s a proper film, and that took me up a couple of rungs,” he says. “It legitimised me.” He has rarely wanted for respect: he counts Jarvis Cocker and Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch among his fans; Charlie Brooker chose Denim’s The New Potatoes, with its Pinky & Perky vocals, as one of his Desert Island Discs. He has also started being recognised in the street – “which shows you’re getting somewhere”. But he has a little grumble: “The people who come up to me are all listening to my stuff on Spotify. I tell them: ‘Buy a bloody record!’ Some of them haven’t got a turntable, so I say, ‘Put it on the wall.’”
His hard-luck story began when Felt failed to win favour with the DJ John Peel. “If you were an indie band in the 1980s, you couldn’t make it without Peel’s support,” he says. When Lawrence formed Denim in the early 1990s, he seemed ideally placed to ride the incipient Britpop wave. “Except I made one super error,” he points out. “I thought live music was over, so we didn’t play live at first.’” He believed it would add mystique if fans couldn’t see Denim in the flesh. “I wanted to be a cartoon band. But it turned out to be the beginning of the live boom. Indie suddenly went mainstream. I didn’t spot that coming.”
If the hard-gigging likes of Blur stole a march on Lawrence, it was another Damon Albarn outfit that pipped him to the post with the “cartoon band” idea. “I couldn’t believe it when Gorillaz happened,” he splutters. “I was like, ‘That’s what I wanted to do!’”
Soon after the Summer Smash debacle, Denim were dropped by EMI. “We had to go down to making records for nothing, getting favours from friends.” Go-Kart Mozart was intended as a stop-gap but the songs, many of them musically upbeat and lyrically harsh (When You’re Depressed, Relative Poverty, We’re Selfish and Lazy and Greedy), have kept on coming for more than two decades. The name-change to Mozart Estate reflects, says Lawrence, “the tougher times we live in”.
Even he was taken aback while checking the lyric sheet for the new Mozart Estate album Pop-Up, Ker-Ching and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping, which is to be released in January. “Every song has something ’orrible,” he says. One track features the line, “London is a dustbin full of human trash.” Another is called I Wanna Murder You. “I’m never going to get any PRS money for that,” he says. “Still, it’s very catchy. Breaks into a lovely chorus.”
It’s all too much for some people. When the first Go-Kart Mozart album came out, he received a call from Alan McGee, his Creation boss from the Felt days. “Alan said, ‘What’s this song Sailor Boy, then? Jean Genet going down on you? I don’t get it, Lawrence. I don’t get what the fuck you’re doing!’” He looks pleased as punch.
Paul Kelly, the director of Lawrence of Belgravia, thinks the singer is in a healthier and more optimistic state now than during the making of the film. Production took eight years, largely because Lawrence kept disappearing for months on end. “First I’d be frustrated, then I’d worry,” says Kelly. “When he finally turned up, he’d act as though nothing had happened. He has that disarming personality so you always forgive him. I think he had a fear that when we were finished, there’d be nothing else. He didn’t want to let the film go.”
These days, Lawrence has fingers in umpteen pies (Felt reissues, a limited-edition folder of collectible bits-and-pieces and a 10-inch EP, all ahead of the new album). He is bubbling with ideas: he wants to write a play for the Royal Court, collaborate with Charli XCX, be directed by Andrea Arnold. “Do you know her?” he asks hopefully. “I want to be in one of her films and write a song for it.”
His greatest enthusiasm is reserved for the larger-than-life-sized pink marble bust which the sculptor Corin Johnson is making of him: “He came up to me at a gig and said, ‘I’d like to do a statue of you.’” A month’s worth of sittings later – including one spent with straws in his nostrils while his head was encased in plaster of Paris – and it’s almost ready. Nick Cave, one of Lawrence’s heroes, has been working in the same yard on a ceramics project about the devil. “He keeps saying, ‘When are you going to bloody finish that?’”
Even on Lawrence’s rinky-dink, old-school mobile phone, which is no bigger than a Matchbox car, the pictures of the bust look imposing. A hood is yanked up over his baseball cap, sunglasses are clamped to his face, his expression is surly and defiant: it’s a literal monument to his artistic purity. “This should push me a few rungs up the fame ladder,” he says, marvelling at his marble doppelganger. I think he’s in love.
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📼 Felt - Primitive Painters [feat Elizabeth Fraser] (1985)
Producer: Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins)
video 1987 - Lawrence Hayward & Phil King (in Phil’s house in Hammersmith)
Well, here's my entry for BLaB's Ma.K Like a Boss building contest! I couldn't really think of what to build, until I saw my Batman minifig sitting on my shelf. Then it clicked. I would build a mecha Batmobile. So, here is the product of my labor!
Features include:
-Poseable legs
-Adjustable bat fins
-Smoke bomb cannon (Batman don't use guns buddy)
-Opening cockpit
-Extendable ladder
-A Bat-SAFS (why not?)
You can check out the other views of the MOC here!
Check out the BLaB contest here!