les pwe blo

Here’s something pretty funny.

When I was in sixth form, I had a band with my best mate Guillaume, and my sister, Kim. We were called les pwe blo, and were kind of named after the Pavement track Pueblo, but a bit more French. I think we started a band because my friend’s sister’s boyfriend of the time gave me a massive Tascam Four track and because Gui and I were really pissed off with guys at our school who didn’t have horrific acne and would have girls swoon at them while they played Jeff Buckley covers ALL FUCKING LUNCH TIME IN THE COMMON ROOM!!

Obviously, starting some shitty acoustic pop band with my little sister was no antidote to this, but it passed the time, and being able to say “my band…” was pretty good currency in those times. Look how good my hair was:

We played about 6 gigs, all at Midsomer Norton’s Wunderbar pub. We recorded about 8 songs and then forgot how to use the 4-track and ended up not recording any of the half-decent songs we learned how to write. We’d play some covers and generally not mention they were covers. Didn’t really matter, nobody was watching. We had no real clue how to use the 4-track. When we wanted to double track guitars, we played a recording of the song through speakers and mic-d up the speakers. Sounded like shit. Innocent times.

This song is about a girl I liked who went through a kind of obsession with collective nouns for birds. I still find that fascinating actually. I wrote this song about her, and probably never mentioned it, because I was a pussy. I’d walk to the newsagents and put £10 on my phone credit, then we’d talk on the phone, listening to the Shipping Forecast until one of us fell asleep. Innocent times.

Oiseau

I don’t by any means think this song is good. I guess it just represents a lot of happy times and I think it’s a pretty honest thing to put it out there. I like honesty.