A little snow never hurt no-one.. A LOT of snow seemed to help the UK gralt to a standstill today! I rolled out of bed at 7am this morning to find my flat mates desperately trying to get through to their bosses for the a-OK to scive off..
With all London buses suspended and pretty much every tube line (apart from, ironically, the Victoria line – which when we lived on was constanted fucked) closed too, it did seem impossible for them to get anywhere. I had nothing to do today, so I instead watched with excitement hoping I’d be in the company of a full house for the day..
Sky News was on, I was photoshopping images of friends in the snow and sending them in hoping for them to be shown (this never happened – nor did anyone fall for my prank of texting people said photos as picture messages hoping they’d think I was out in the snow at 8am with my friend Tayo) and somehow found myself with an ice cold beer in my hand.
Just the one, though. Craig had an idea of just getting pissed all day.. Although just after he’d finished his beer, his work called up and summoned him in. Which just left Leila and I to try and conjure up possibly the worst looking fry up you’ll ever encounter in your life..
I think that early morning beer made things a little impossible, what with the chips half frozen and my stomach refusing to digest most of what I was consuming, it was a complete disaster.
Still – thanks to Twitter, I followed the early morning antics of Phillip Schofield, who had been snowed in and had failed to get into London to present ‘This Morning’ on ITV1. I watched said program, laughing at the utterly shambollic nature of the show due to the fact most of the crew had failed to make it into work either.
Ironically, they were probably getting some of their highest viewing figures ever as it seemed everybody had someone convinced their bosses they were “snowed in” or just couldn’t be fucked to go out into the cold.. Watching Fern Britton speaking to Phillip Schofield on the telephone live on air was possibly one of the most surreal moments in television history..
..Until a woman came on who told her story about how she used to drink four bottles of wine before she’d pick her five kids up from school, and couldn’t even explain the extent of what the repercussions were due to “legal reasons”. Oh god..
By around midday, I was absolutely shattered. It felt like Christmas morning to me! And I don’t even get excited on Christmas morning anymore! But with all the snow, and the sciving, and the Twittering, and This Morning, and the shit breakfast, and the beer, and well, everything.. it was time to go for a quick lunchtime nap.
I slept for twelve hours. TWELVE BLOODY HOURS. I woke up at midnight, and thought I’d slept right through to 5.30am. If only! No – I was now WIDE AWAKE at midnight. With the rest of the flat fast asleep and very litle going on elsewhere..
I knew I’d still be up at 6am, an ungodly hour for anyone (I’ll hear my flatmates get up for work any moment) – so I set myself the challenge of watching all of series four of Peep Show. Cracking stuff, although I think series three is my favourite so far. Although they did actually burn a dead dog on a bonfire in series four which is possibly one of the sickest and yet funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed.
All laughs up in Highgate for us tonight, folks..
Anyway, like I promised, I said I’d start posting some old No Picasso interviews on this blog too. For anyone who’s too lazy to bother to visit our Myspace page, here’s the first ever interview No Picasso conducted live (as opposed to just being e-mailed questions). Although, when I say No Picasso – I was the only person present.
It’s for an online Canadian mag called The Only Gliterrati, and I ate a roast dinner in the Pitcher & Piano on Dean Street whilst it was conducted if my memory serves me correctly.. in late months of 2007 methinks..
I actually used to think the Pitcher & Piano was quite a posh eating establishment, until I took a girl on a date there once and she bluntly told me otherwise. Saying that, I once went to The Ivy and ordered pasta & pesto. I obviously know nothing..
Anyway, back to the interview.. some of it is quoted wrong.. for example, Steve’s band were called Objects – not Off Jerks. But in a busy Soho bar on a Sunday night combined with my incessant mumbling, the interviewer’s dictaphone did pretty well to pick up anything correctly!
Interview with The Only Gliterati.com
No Picasso is a little more brash, a lot more unapologetic and drunkenly honest. If you invited them to your flat they’d probably use your crystal as confetti and melt your silverware over the stove. They stomp. They shout. They use run on sentences. They’ll tell you when they don’t like what you’re wearing. They can see through your smiles and intentions. You can fuck off anyways. Through a jumpy sort of punk, and Ronnie’s intimidating lyrics (to whoever they’re directed at) make you hope that, please, please, this song isn’t about me. He doesn’t mean me. Please.
If you know your history of London bands, you know that each one is connected to another. Somewhere in the midst of the confusing family tree is No Picasso. Formed by Ronnie Joice, a former Littl’an. A four piece band on the edge of all normal living patterns. I have a lovely conversation with Ronnie about Hedi Slimane, his past in the Littl’ans, No Picasso and tasty girls all over custard.
Explain how No Picasso started.
In a really dodgy gay strip club. I met Ben through Adam from Babyshambles. They went to college together when they were kids and stayed friends. Ben had a friend called Dan who was in a band called the Fatels and we played a gig with them once, and that was how I met Dan and we got on pretty well, I liked what he was about, you know he really cares about the world apart from being in a band for lots of sex and free alcohol…which doesn’t even happen. Yeah and from there on I had this urge inside me, though I was in the Littl’ans, to be in a band and be the singer. Littl’ans was like a really interesting learning curve because obviously I wasn’t singing but I always wanted to and I was writing lyrics and what have you. But it was interesting because I was learning how to be in a band and that’s something you can’t be taught. You know it was very stressful and hard at times, you learn some really important life lessons. You know you’re in a family with four or five people. Obviously from the experience, the contacts I made through the Littl’ans I felt it was time I tried to do something else. I met this guy, Steve who was in another band called the Off Jerks and they kind of disbanded. You know he liked what I was writing, I liked what he was playing so we kind of hooked up in rehearsals. Just before I met this guy Jo in a bar, spanish guy… a friend of mine had been seeing him at the time and he was looking for a band, so I said, oh you can play bass, you should come down and play with us. We said to Ben, “Look we need someone to drum, you don’t need to join the band, just come down and drum so we can rehearse.” Basically Xbox asked me to promote this competition on the internet, and we only had four or five rehearsals and two songs, we were like, “Shit, what are we gonna do?” We ended up recording in this posh studio at Universal studios in Kensington, got in there and recorded a song with Jamiroquai’s producer. It was the first time I had ever sung on a record. We went to Paris and things ran it course, I was about to turn twenty and I thought, it’s cute for an eighteen year old, nineteen year old boy with a tambourine going crazy. When you’re twenty you tend to be an adult and I just felt the time was right and the boat for me had sailed away.when we got back from Paris I just said to Andrew it was kind of time for me and Ben agreed and we left the same day. Ben said to me, I like this band we’re doing, let’s concentrate on that, so we started rehearsing and last November Steve decided that he wasn’t really up for being in the band, and that he was more of a business man than a musician, that’s when Dan stepped in.
what’s your plan for this year?
obviously now we’ve had this nine month period of playing live shows together, and the recordings we’ve posted on the internet have all been under weird circumstances. We had only played, Monet and Money a few times and then Roberto Cavalli called and said “Hey I want you to do a track for us, we need it in two days”, the track that we did for the runway show, although he was happy with it, as a band we weren’t, and we could have done a lot better. This year I think we’re going to just get some of our songs down. The songs we are writing now are a lot better than the songs we originally wrote. It’s always like your best work is your most recent. As well the way we were writing songs was quite detached, Steve would take my lyrics and write music for it. Now we are all writing as a band. Just keep doing what we’re doing. Till we all get bored or fall out, it should be alright. January is always a shit month because you can’t plan, you can be optimistic and say yeah this is what you’re going to do and when, or you can just laze around and see what summer brings, when the important stuff happens.
What would you say your main influences are?
I think our main influence is frustration. We’re frustrated, we’re living on the breadline, none of us are wealthy, none of us come from backgrounds where we can afford to do things that would help the band. Some bands I know in London are so fortunate and they’ve got famous parents who want them to go rehearse everyday and play in a recording studio. When they’ve written a song they can go out and demo it, we can’t do that. If we did have that money, like fifty grand that would be great. We could rent out a rehearsal room for a year, pack in our jobs, (not that I have a job but the rest of the band does), and really kind of fine tune. That’s what makes the promising bands at the moment, yeah there are a lot of great bands but the ones that are being held back are the ones that don’t have time to unroll their talent. It’s a shame really. Like the Littl’ans, to get them all in the same place, is hard because they’re all doing things and working. You know to get everyone in the same place, when everyone is free, some can’t afford it. Some bands rehearse every day and others are kind of fucked because they can only afford to rehearse once a week.
I feel like people who have that ability to go into a recording studio at anytime, there just becomes less to want to write about.
I have this whole idea that I’m going to live my life and when it fucks up I’m just going to write a script about it. Because I’ve lived it and I’ve experienced it. Recently I’ve been really prolific about my writings and my lyrics. But yeah, bands need the lifestyle. I saw Jarvis Cocker out last night, and you know Pulp…he’s so clever and have you noticed with his solo album since he spent his holiday with his family in Paris and it all went really well, he doesn’t know what to write about. He can’t write about himself and he can’t write about a strife he has because it just isn’t true anymore. Generally I don’t really write about happy things. Whenever I’m fed up with a girl and we start breaking up and I write all these songs. They always ask, “Why don’t you ever write anything happy about me?” It’s because when you’re happy you never stop and reflect. When you start to analyze things, that’s when you stop seeing things right. I remember when I was sixteen, seventeen and I used to analyze things, analyze girls, relationships. I thought Shit, if I just took a step back and stopped I’m going to be much happier. You’ve got your wits about you, but you sit there and kind of shove it off.
Where does the name come from? the saying?
Uh no… I wasn’t aware of that. Basically when it came to thinking of a band name, I had this revelation in my dreams to call ourselves Razorlight. I typed it into google and there was already a band called Razorlight. Which really pissed me off. The thing is I’m really into razors and I love having a shave, and I’m really into lightness, so shaving and lightness, you can be really enlightened when you shave. Razorlight would have been great…but apparently they’re doing pretty well for themselves. No Picasso was just one of the second runners to that. Obviously Razorlight beat us to it… Old Borrell. We were left with a bit of a dilemma. So yeah, it does come from the phrase.
What do you think about the relationship between bands and style?
It’s quite nice for us because I think we have good fashion sense. I’m really into clothes and I really like my appearance, I’ve done modeling and so has Jo as well. He’s doing particularly well at the moment. You’ve got to care about the way you look because that’s how you’re presenting yourself to somebody. If you look at someone and they don’t really give a shit about the way they look, you know their appearance…why should you give a shit about them anyways? You know that kind of thing. I can’t really escape it. If i was to go back and avoid the whole Hedi Slimane thing, I would probably be a mess on stage He’s one of the most inspirational people you could ever meet. He’s amazing. If I could list my heroes, he would be one of my heroes. For me never having any aspirations in the fashion world and for him to be one of my heroes proves how inspirational he is. To have known nothing about him and then him just come into my life and you know follow me around and make a film about me. It’s quite strange because not a lot of people know about that film, it was shown in Paris. He was besotted with me. You know it was perversion, he kind of followed me around. It wasn’t lust… he was just besotted. I think he wanted to get into my mind and figure out what makes this tambourine dancer tick. I had never been abroad before when he asked for me to come to Paris. It’s quite funny because I think his obsession came to turn when he met Andrew (Aveling). He really liked the relationship that me and Andrew had. Andrew was the man and I was the boy. There were certain times where we would all go to lunch together or to even Hampstead Heath, just sit there and eat ice cream. He’d sit there and just watch me and Andrew would interact. As a band, the frontman, Andrew was very shy and introverted and there was me who was like the youth of Andrew that was very confrontational. He really liked that. That kind of fashion world, when Littl’ans did the music for the show…it’s a kind of time I always want to remind people of because it was such a happy time in my life. No Picasso does Roberto Cavalli, you know different, year different designer. Fashion and music are so alike these days.
How do you think it’s different with younger bands with older bands?
It depends if they’re good or not. There was some band that was shit at this show we were playing and they were about fifteen. This kid with braces came up to me had thought that we were just going to refuse to go on, he comes up to me and says, “Oi you! Get on the fucking stage.” I was just like, “Hold on a second, who are you? Calm down. How old are you? Why are you talking to me like this?” So I was just patting him on his head like, “We’re going to go on stage when we’re told so shut the fuck up and go away from me.” If a band’s good, than yeah. If you start early, you’re four years ahead to get better, then if it fucks up you can just go back and get a job. As long as they’re not cunts or they’re not shit. If they’re talented than yeah. It must be nice for older bands to have someone looking up to you. I think it’s when people snub their elders, when you’re on tour with a band who’s done the business and you don’t give them the respect, that’s when there’s trouble. It also happens to older people about younger kids.
The worst is when people believe they’re own hype.
Well we don’t have any hype so there’s nothing to believe.
What do you write about songs now? What’s No Picasso’s general outlook lyrically?
We are all sentimental, i’m sensitive…But I think it’s interesting how I portray myself on stage… Like i’m a bastard. If you sit to listen to the lyrics, i’m not really a bastard i’m just hard up. They’re all generally songs about doing stupid things, getting your heart broken, getting your heart broken because you didn’t do any stupid things. Lust. Generally love is a popular thing to write about. It’s either you’re in or out of it really. Love is a big part of my life. If i’m not in love, I want to be in love. Generally i’m drowning and fuck it up. Obviously that doesn’t set us apart from any other band. Love is a really easy topic to write about. Love and Lust.
Maybe it’s the way you portray love?
Yeah, it’s not like i’m going to sing, “You’re Beautiful”. If you ever come to a show of ours i’ll never be able to dedicate a song to you because all our songs are really nasty! Monet was about a girl who is beautiful, who’s a model…I’d see her at parties and go wow, she’s beautiful. I started chatting to her and she was so bland and dull, you could tell there wasn’t anything in her head. So it was just like fuck off. Obviously in relation to the painter, from far away the paintings are beautiful but up close it gets very disjointed. That’s a song about Lust. But not in the same way. There’s an angle to it. Paprr Bag is all about, I had an argument with a girlfriend and we were in a park and she just left and I stayed and wrote. Paper bag, you know when you’re hyperventilating, you blow in this bag. But what if you took the paper bag and just popped it. It’s a lot of anger. I guess that’s why on stage it’s all released. I’m not really aggressive so onstage it’s like my outlook for all of it. I have this audience where I can say what I mean. Love, Lust and Frustration are all three big main themes. There’s this song we have called “She’s Alive” which is a song about this girl I know who lives her life, being friends with famous people. One week she will be going out with so-and-so, it’s such a shit life to lead. Because you’re not living you’re own life, one day they’re going to drop you and what are you going to do then? The lyrics are all pretty nasty like, “Such a shame she’s still alive” like her life is pretty useless. She’s living somebody else’s life.
Do you think being in London compared to living in any other place affects you in the way things sound?
Good question. It does. We record in London. It’s our home, it’s domesticated. If we were in L.A. having a good time i’m sure the tracks would be played a little bit faster and with a little less conviction. Everything comes through in the music. It’s important for me to be in London because that’s where I feel the most comfortable. It’s just where all my friends are, it’s where I created my life. Three years ago I wasn’t in London…it’s a life you build. You can pave your own destiny. If you want to be a write, be a writer and hang out with writers. Everyone comes to London to hide their skeletons, I like that about it. Everyone’s perfect…no, everyone’s a fuck up. They’re all here for a reason. They’re all here to escape. They’re all here to create a new and different life.
A lot of people go to New York to start their own life, but it seems that it is easier for people to do that in London, why do you think?
It’s weird because I didn’t really get a chance to see New York. You’re just taken to people’s houses and told, “Look, that’s where you’re living.” London I would just come in, met more people… realized that I could come into London and not even live here. London is quite easier to do that. Everyone gets one chance here. I’ve obviously gone past that stage of being a whippersnapper, it all was bright eyed to me. You know when the night is over. London is pretty easy to adapt.
Is London your favourite city?
Yeah
What do you think makes a good party?
Where people leave their minds at the door. Where people are smoking indoors… I don’t smoke but I think it’s quite important. Good music, good people. No police to come and shut you down, no psychotic neighbours coming round. It should never be classy, it should always be messy.
Choice of drink?
Strong alcoholic drinks. I like cider, I like beer, I like vodka… I don’t like tequila, I like whiskey but not straight. I like Southern Comfort, I like Kahlua, I like cocktails, I like mohitos, I like white russians. I like having triples instead of singles, I like to be drunk…that’s good. I don’t like shots too much. I think i’m a good drinker.
What makes a beautiful girl?
Quite a lot really, there’s a criteria…her taste…it might sound really perverted, I know a girl is bad news, when I kiss her it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You might think that’s really strange, but it’s happened to me. It’s always the taste. Her smile, she’s gotta laugh, she’s got to know how to make me feel happy, she’s got to be funny as well. She can’t be dull, she can’t just let me say all the jokes. She’s got to be pretty, it kind of goes without saying but most people don’t admit it. She’s got to have pretty hair, pretty eyes, nice clothes, she would have to take care of herself and smell nice. For me beauty doesn’t come in a package. It’s not something I can put my finger on. When they make you comfortable. They can’t make you nervous, or maybe they can and you just can’t love them.
Style is… Stylish?…to your own interpretation
No Picasso… YOU AIN’T no picasso.
Right.
Sleep now.
