THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

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the masked man
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THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby the masked man » 08 Jan 2014, 23:09

Firstly, thanks to Sarah for supplying real good answers throughout our exchange. This really was a pleasure.

Q: OK then, here's my first questions:

What is the first music you can remember hearing? How much would you say that your early tastes were influenced by parents and/or other relatives, or indeed other factors?


A: Growing up, our house was always full of books and records. My dad was a librarian and both my parents are very liberal and ‘arty’. The earliest music I can remember listening to was Bob Dylan, The Stones, The Beatles – fairly standard. There were also more obscure albums like Kip of the Serenes by Dr Strangely Strange. But then as we got a little bit older, and people started having cassette players in the car, we’d drive down to the south of France and listen to endless Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, The Hollies, Genesis. I can still remember every word of Born in the USA and Graceland. It was all fairly canonical, middle of the road stuff I guess. My mum and dad used to take us to folk festivals, which we hated. I suppose this was probably more due to our young age and short attention spans. It put me off folk music for years, but I got back into it about ten or so years ago when I really started becoming interested in Americana.

Between the ages of about 10-13 I just got caught up in school and friends and would listen to whatever was big at the time. I had my little Walkman and would get tapes from the Co-Op. I loved Wham, Five Star, Whitney Houston and the NOW compilations. I then had a short period of being heavily into U2 and Simple Minds.

It wasn’t until I was about 14 that I really sort of became discerning and had a mind of my own. I also became far more eclectic and interested in music journalism. I’d already been buying Smash Hits religiously for years, but I switched to avidly reading Q, Select and The Face. I also enjoyed a random obsession with Jazz. I’m not sure how this developed, but it was probably a teenage angsty thing. I loved Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. I’d skip school to go and see Jazz and Classical performances in Leeds. I completely disconnected from everything my peers seemed to be listening to. It wasn’t just in terms of music but everything really. I was fascinated by British New Wave cinema and American playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams.

It wasn’t until 1994 that I really connected with a ‘scene’. Britpop was all consuming for me.

Q: Britpop was perhaps the last real mainstream 'movement' in British guitar rock. Did you take sides in the great Oasis vs Blur debate? What other memories do you have about this era?

A: did indeed take sides. I was very, very much on the Oasis side. I started university in 1994 and it was the first time I had really considered my identity as a ‘northerner’. I’d never needed to assert or defend it before, as I knew no different. I was dropped in the middle of a lot of very posh and wealthy students at Edinburgh University. For better or worse, I looked to the Gallaghers for inspiration. It was a way of coping with my accent and my naivety about the very real subtleties of class. It was the first time I felt a very real connection between music and my life. I had no need for Camden and The Good Mixer and the pseudo hipster London sensibilities; Blur meant nothing to me. I had of course loved the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, but Oasis were huge and I was away from the north for the first time. There was some kind of revelatory convergence.

Live Forever changed me. I thought it was the most exhilarating, soaring, fuck-it-all-off song I’d ever heard. Then there was Pulp. Somehow Common People comforted me. Looking back, I can see that I was largely a pain in the arse who struggled to fit in with people who had a completely unfamiliar set of social rubrics. But I was deeply into it. I was ardently buying music and reading about it. Not just Britpop. There was Nick Cave, Drum n Bass, Jeff Buckley, Triphop. I revisited the Beatles, The Jam, Love, Marvin Gaye. I mean it was a derivative era. I loved that Britpop Britgirl look. Skinny flares, adidas gazelles, the tight band t-shirts (loved the Elastica Vaseline one!), little leather and fake fur jackets, Lennon sunglasses. I knew everything about the bands. It was a hedonistic time. I remember going to a birthday party for Paul Gallagher in Manchester, my best friend’s boyfriend’s band were playing so we were on the guest list. The amount of cocaine flying around was obscene. I still rate the first two Oasis albums, although I think Noel is a terrible lyricist.

By 1996 I was over it. I was fed up of doing the ladette routine. I almost seemed to move on overnight. It’s the only time I’ve felt part of a music movement though. And I doubt I ever will again. I feel very lucky to have been that age at that time.

Q: Yes, Britpop's moment passed rather quickly, ultimately. I've heard OK Computer and Urban Hymns, the two big 'indie' albums of 1997, described as 'comedown albums' released during Britpop's hangover. Was this the music you turned to, or perhaps you turned to some of the music that inspired Britpop in the first place? In other words, what happened next?


A: A couple of things happened next. Firstly, I became very good friends with our own Roddy RcL. We shared a couple of flats in Edinburgh and I was introduced to his music collection. He made me a mix tape in about 1996 and that was me hooked on The Blue Nile, Steely Dan, Big Star, Nick Drake, Tindersticks and The Durutti Column. Although I certainly did get OK Computer and Urban Hymns, I was enjoying a more stripped back sound: singer song writers, the fey Scots, the louche Americans.

Well, then it all turned a bit bizarre. I got a goth flatmate! Anyway, in the interests of ‘bonding’, I went along to an Industrial club with her: The Mission in Edinburgh. It was all very odd and lurid and yet another alien aesthetic. But I ended up hooking up with a lad who was my boyfriend for about a year. I’d go along to clubs now and again, but it was one of those relationships where I look back now and wonder why it ever happened.

But what it did lead to, was meeting my future husband; I was with him for the best part of a decade and this is when my relationship with music changed fundamentally. He’s an incredibly intelligent, articulate and funny person. But he’s also tremendously fastidious and analytical and obsessive. (His job is making electronic equipment for NASA). So there was this whole different perspective on how someone can listen to music. Our flat was filled with not just CDs, but books about music, carefully labelled cassette recordings going back decades, radio clips, a music room jam-packed with synthesisers and keyboards and drum machines and all sorts of stuff. He taught me, or rather I picked up through communication, about the sort of ‘meta’ qualities of songs. He’d buy an album just for a few seconds of drumming or baseline that he loved. We’d spend hours listening to fairground calliope tunes or something as ridiculous as a particular chord sequence from a Gareth Gates single! He deconstructed music. In terms of artists this was when I really got into Wire, Devo, Bill Nelson, Suicide, Blaine L. Reininger, Dead Can Dance, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, J.S.Bach. I also grew to love electronic dance music.

Q: Interesting developments; new friends mean new horizons, and you seemed to settle on territory such as post-punk and art-rock plus modern classical. The goth experiment was, however, less successful. Which gets me thinking: of all the new music you were discovering, what didn't connect with you at all? Are there genres you don't think you'll ever understand or enjoy? Also, are there any other genres or artists you feel like you want to get into in the future?


A: I never connected with really 'hardcore' music, like Napalm Death. I really didn't and don't like Sisters of Mercy and that ilk. I just don't get them. Nor do they resonate. If I'm honest, I don't really get Punk either. Of the two big Ps of BCB, I'm definitely a Prog girl. I do however, love Garagey rock. But the one genre I know I will never enjoy or get anything from is Ska. I absolutely loathe it. I know there's a lot of love on here for Madness, for instance. But I can't bear listening to them. It just seems like daft noise and trumpets and blokey rubbish. I don't like reggae either. All sounds the same to me. It's no doubt a fault in my discernment, but I can't be arsed to persevere.

The music I've most become interested in over the last decade or so is folk, country, Americana. I suppose it's because I'm naturally very emotional and sentimental. It's also because I'm fascinated by America. I love bands like Richmond Fontaine, Wilco and singers such as Ryan Adams, Jesse Malin and Josh Ritter.

I'd like to explore rap and hip hop. This has been a fairly recent thing and has really surprised me. I'm interested in the history and how and why certain artists are rated, the peer assessments in particular. There are artists like Kanye West, Eminem and 50 Cent, who I just assume are completely irrelevant to me but they command this massive respect and I'd like to see if I can understand why.

Q: OK, one last question: you've mentioned your religious beliefs before; is there any music that you think reflects this? If so, what music is this?

That's something I've never thought about really. I'm not interested in 'Christian' music or overtly worshipful stuff. I guess the closest I get is I find a lot of resonance in Nick Cave's music. There seem to be a few grand themes such as feelings of abandonment by God and a questioning. It's quite baroque. I like that. I suppose it allows for wallowing in the swathes of Catholicism. Other than that I don't project too much.

Thanks so much, Andrew. It's been a pleasure! Sx


Thank you, too! I've enjoyed this exchange very much.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Jimbly » 08 Jan 2014, 23:53

Great stuff, stopped too soon though.
So Long Kid, Take A Bow.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby kath » 09 Jan 2014, 02:35

excellent. questions and answers.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Hugh » 09 Jan 2014, 07:13

I am enjoying all of these but this one was particularly good.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby The Slider » 09 Jan 2014, 07:23

I'd not been bothered to read one up till now.
Are the others anywhere near as interesting?
Suppose I'd better go look
Complete Ramones Mp3 set on its way

The Modernist

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby The Modernist » 09 Jan 2014, 07:34

Didn't know Sarah was a jazz cat. Good stuff!

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Huw » 09 Jan 2014, 07:45

The Slider wrote:I'd not been bothered to read one up till now.
Are the others anywhere near as interesting?
Suppose I'd better go look


Same here.Backtracking now!

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman » 09 Jan 2014, 07:57

Again, very good!

Cheers to the both of you, and this really has turned out to be one of the finest ideas in the history of BCB.
On the whole, I'd rather be in Wallenpaupack.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby The Slider » 09 Jan 2014, 08:38

I want to see Coan interview Matt Wilson next
Complete Ramones Mp3 set on its way

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby The Slider » 09 Jan 2014, 08:39

or Markus interview DD
Complete Ramones Mp3 set on its way

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby funky_nomad » 09 Jan 2014, 08:58

Great stuff again.

Betty Denim wrote:The Mission in Edinburgh.

Fucking, hell, I spent many a drunken student night in The Mission, although this was probably 5 or 6 years before your time.

Working your way down the floors could be like descending through the 7 Circles Of Hell at times, until ending up on the Cowgate wondering just how you'd managed to find a way out...
Just a penitent man

Betty Denim

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Betty Denim » 09 Jan 2014, 09:46

funky_nomad wrote:Great stuff again.

Betty Denim wrote:The Mission in Edinburgh.

Fucking, hell, I spent many a drunken student night in The Mission, although this was probably 5 or 6 years before your time.

Working your way down the floors could be like descending through the 7 Circles Of Hell at times, until ending up on the Cowgate wondering just how you'd managed to find a way out...


:) Oh God yes! I never used to know where I was.

I worked there for one night on the door taking the entry fee and then in the cloakroom. I couldn't bear to do it again. I was useless.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Quaco » 09 Jan 2014, 10:09

Genesis eh? Hey baby, what's up?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Betty Denim

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Betty Denim » 09 Jan 2014, 22:48

Quaco wrote:Genesis eh? Hey baby, what's up?


:)

I love Genesis!

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Goat Boy » 09 Jan 2014, 23:18

Betty Denim wrote:
Quaco wrote:Genesis eh? Hey baby, what's up?


:)

I love Genesis!


This actually makes me angry
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.


Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism

Betty Denim

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Betty Denim » 09 Jan 2014, 23:20

Goat Boy wrote:
Betty Denim wrote:
Quaco wrote:Genesis eh? Hey baby, what's up?


:)

I love Genesis!


This actually makes me angry


No it doesn't.

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Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Goat Boy » 09 Jan 2014, 23:26

:x
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.


Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism

Betty Denim

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Betty Denim » 09 Jan 2014, 23:38

:twisted:

Bungo the Mungo

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 10 Jan 2014, 00:33

Goat Boy wrote:
Betty Denim wrote:
Quaco wrote:Genesis eh? Hey baby, what's up?


:)

I love Genesis!


This actually makes me angry


You do right! I am LIVID

The Modernist

Re: THE BCB INTERVIEWS - Betty Denim

Postby The Modernist » 10 Jan 2014, 00:36

In fairness I think she's talking about the good Genesis of "I Can't Dance" and "Easy Lover".

Get a suit and roll up those sleeves to the elbow..oh yes!


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