pipas for the people / blog

the birthday weekend.

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:27:13 -0800

hi! hopefully you have noticed by now that there are two songs up on the site. it is very exciting to share them with you and we hope that this is just the first of many more. happy birthdays to us! and you on yours. xo pipas

a cupboard bestiary

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:00:00 -0700

here's a silly quasi oulipian game for you. if you had to reduce it to 5 things, what are the foods you actually live on.........? my brother's genius and honest list is the actual inspiration for this blog. and so here's mine as of march 2010. in case anyone was wondering, it is lunchtime and i'm hungry!

5. fruit (too hard to choose)
4. jumbo oats
3. ripe tomatoes
2. brown rice
1. tahini!!!! and Marmite. one love.

though some weeks it's more like

5. deep fried chunks of tofu
4. pickled chilis
3. coffee
2. limes
1. rye bread with olive oil.

and even stretches to

5. groundnut stew
4. sourdough bread
3. lava hummus
2. potato pizza
1. frozen leftover chocolate and orange birthday cake

pidg, what about you man? And the baby in the house?? xolupe

la silueta

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0700

I first saw Ana Mendieta's work in Santiago de Compostela, during a visit maybe 14 years ago? i remember i'd just sprained both of my ankles during the running of the bulls in Pamplona (not running, but jumping off a wall) and was wearing orthopedic clogs over all of Galicia at the end of the summer, dipping my feet in the icy water to try to bring down the swelling and walking very very slowly up and down the streets.

I didn't really know what to make of many of the images in front of me at the museum, of her figures etched on the ground, drawn out of sticks, marked by currents of water and rising in flames, of the ritual and animism, of performing and becoming in feathers and in blood; of stereotypes and personal experience, of death and rebirth, all mixed into one.. Despite the more conceptual works, or the graphic content of others, one image really stuck in my mind: Mendieta masked in her own shampooed hair, patterned all over her face leaving gaps for her eyes nose and mouth, all facing the viewer almost.. nonchalantly.

i took the poster of it and placed it next to a postcard photo of Rosalia de Castro (you know, Padron's most famous writer, next to Camilo Jose Cela). We'd gone to Rosalia's home, and i remember feeling the sadness and the strangeness of the yellowed sheets on the beds, the everydayness of the writer's own quiet spaces, and wishing my ankles would heal quickly.

One face seemed to answer the other. They became companions to me that summer; I still find their work completely inspiring, more mysterious and compelling now even.

If you're in London you can see some of Ana Mendieta's works (including the video from which the picture above is taken, and others, hard to find on youtube) at the Alison Jacques Gallery, but just til this next Saturday (here's a link to the show)

The Archaic Lonely Star Blues

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:26:00 -0800

when will i see you again?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:14:21 -0800

everywhere i turn it seems people are very glad that 2009 is over. not to be a naysayer but i don't have such bad memories of it. in fact it seems like one of the best years this decade, color me a simpleton optimist. see, we made it through! some of us with some new found (little and old) ones to care for and laugh with! new and old songs to love and hum and ... ten years of memories, which keep trickling back in such curious ways (stacks of cdr's, unfinished plum wine bottles, cut out pictures stuck on the walls, etc).

but yes i don't mind leaving 2009 behind. and looking forward to the new. 2010 is a big anniversary for pipas, how could i not want to start it already! stay tuned for some things to mark our ripe old age, you know we couldn't have done it without you.

in the meantime, i advise you dear readers to go get your goodly 12 grapes before midnight, and focus on chewing them properly, calmly, in synch with the bells, for the best of the best years yet to come! xolupe

el cielo está enladrillado..

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

you know the Spanish rhyme about the sky, looking as if it is bricked up? tonight waiting for a train to take me back home from Gatwick i looked up and thought that was precisely what had happened, wondering when a good unbricker would appear.. it looked like the wall across the platform, gray and completely smooth like a plane of plaster reaching up to the end of the sky. But it was only fog. An illusion of pasty flatness which now.. makes a blurry sphere around every object in everyone's gardens. even around the moon, this fog is very clingy!

stone love.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bluestonehenge. 'I think we have found incontrovertible proof that the river was very important to the people who used Stonehenge. I believe that the river formed a conduit between the living and the dead and this is the point where you leave the realm of the living at the river and enter the one of the dead at Stonehenge.' Prof. M. Pearson on today's Guardian. A younger more archaeo-inclined me gets excited when i read such headlines. I'll keep looking for standing stones in Dulwich, quite ok finding the fallen tree trunks everywhere of course.. xolupe

octobergirl

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Hey peeps, happy Autumn. There are leaves everywhere. The birds still have some of their harvest to come, but it's time to start thinking of buying your bulk peanuts and balls of sueeeeet. Come late October, early November, they'll be coming around, specially the squirrelbirds. I was down in Madrid last week and loaded up on pipas-related snacks for the birdhouse. Summer was great, don't get me wrong, but there's something about this autumn i'm really excited about. Apart from staying up with coffee, baking the NYT no-knead whole-wheat bread and reading this hypnotic book on Shaker communities and architecture. Yes, even more exciting..

Could be to do with that Billy Mahonie reunion show on Thursday ... oh man, can't wait!

Could be that amazing 'October Girl' by the coolest Estonian band ever, Pia Fraus. Oooh. It's that pace, it says it all. Slow for dancing, slow for running. Beautiful words. To me it says, if you run, you will find mud. But that's what one wants right now. To run with October Girl. Has it been three years since we saw them..? A many band reunion. One of my wishes for the new year.

Also my favorite band has a new record out and it's put me into a kind of heath spell, a good thing! I can't wait to hear their all-acoustic set at the Hangover Lounge (6 December, i hope they bring fruitcake), and their album launch at the Luminaire before that (19 November).

One last thing, slightly pipas related.. Two amor de dias shows next week: on Sunday playing a few songs as part of a special 'revue' at the HL (freeee! maybe some covers and special guests..) and on Friday 16th, opening for Liam Hayes/Plush at the King's Head in Crouch End. touring London in our flintstonemobile, that's right.

ok, something else, also pipas-related: i think there might be a few familiar songs out there soon. a re-mix. something that never got released. i just don't know when, but they're coming. and so is the new record :) ok, all for now... over to you pidg! xolupe

Amor de Días in concert

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

If anywhere near these cities you MUST (italic & bold - very insistent!) attend these concerts! i have heard some songs now and, oh my, wow, they are amazing as you could well imagine. as per usual, do it for me, the pipas member who is disadvantaged in ability to attend such long distance musical events. have fun, mark

Amor de Días = Alasdair MacLean (The Clientele) and Lupe Núñez-Fernández (Pipas), plus a handful of friends.

03 Sep 09 Dulcimer Manchester UK
with Damon & Naomi. Tickets

04 Sep 09 Cafe Oto London UK
with Damon & Naomi, The Left Outsides. Tickets

for Autumn

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

"Leave your classroom on some trifling pretext, and engage a hackney carriage. Stop in the lane where no one in my house can see you." from The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda (Chapter 4. My interrupted flight toward the Himalayas).