June: The Moldy Peaches

& The Roundhouse & old flames & full circles & a very special birthday

Good morning!

Last month I wrote about the first show I played since the before-times.

Today I want to write about the first show I attended since the before-times.

And the overwhelming landslide of memories and joy it filled me with.

Was it the adrenaline rush of being an audience member again?

The overwhelming sense of time elapsed? How much we’ve all lived?

Was it the venue that got me, The Roundhouse, my history there?

Or the band themselves? The Moldy Peaches! So nostalgic but oh so fresh…

Whatever it was, I’m still giddy.

The Moldy Peaches play The Roundhouse! 29.05.2023

Do you love The Moldy Peaches? You may love them without knowing you love them. From the Juno soundtrack maybe, remember that film? Or the Meet Me In The Bathroom documentary, did you watch it? Anyway you should love them, they’re the best! Though honestly it doesn’t really matter if you love them. What matters is that I love them. And I got to go to their reunion show last week. Like a night out with an old flame. Older, wiser, boozy, risky. The show was at The Roundhouse in London. Do you know it? Near Camden? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is I could walk there from my house. And be back in 10 minutes if the baby woke up. What matters is I felt at home. At home with 3000 strangers in a huge round building originally designed to service locomotives.

My love for that building is deep. As well as the mythological venue — Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Ramones, et al — The Roundhouse also houses a creative centre for young people. I trained there in my year out. Learnt how to lead vocal workshops. Helped create a six-school-strong choir. Made amazing friends. The building was undergoing a huge redevelopment at the time so we rehearsed at the Salvation Army down the road. I was also on the Youth Advisory Board. Rock’n’roll. Seriously though, I’m proud to have been a very tiny part of what grew up to be the most incredible arts facilities, music studios, circus spaces — and just last week they launched an entire new building! The largest creative centre for young people in Europe, ready to welcome 15000 through the doors each year, mainly from disadvantaged, underserved communities. I promise I’m not just copy-pasting the press release. It’s a phenomenal place.

The Roundhouse and the moon.

About a decade after my youth advisory days my father created a wonderful installation for The Roundhouse. Curtain Call, it was called. A 360 degree curtain made of silicon rods with double sided projections you could watch and walk through — he’s probably going to tell me I’m explaining it all wrong. It was an amazing summer of video art and live performances and members of the public hanging out on the floor for hours and hours. David Shrigley, Christian Marclay, Steven Isserlis, Eska (who, along with Mpho Skeef, was one of my tutors in that long-ago Roundhouse programme!) I performed too… A one-woman show about nepotism. Go figure. The opening night was one for the books. I met Ray Davies from The Kinks and almost melted. Then a few moments later the London Riots kicked off. Right there in front of the big glass windows. The bike shop across the road, the pizza parlour next door, smashed, looted… We were all ushered upstairs, locked into the main space with the huge silicon curtain for a long, tense time. Until someone scrolling twitter saw strong words flying back and forth between the rioters: Don’t touch The Roundhouse. That’s what I call karma.

Performing a one-woman show about nepotism inside my father Ron Arad’s Curtain Call installation at The Roundhouse in 2011.

All this came flooding back to me last week looking up at the beautiful beams and lighting rigs. That and all the other incredible shows I’ve been lucky enough to see at The Roundhouse over the years. Patti Smith, Ezra Furman, Fleet Foxes, Beth Orton, Pharrell Williams! I used to see a lot of shows. I used to go to shows with friends, alone, make friends. It was live music, all the time, and if anyone told me I wouldn’t be going to a gig for over three years… Anyway. The Moldy Peaches were on stage, playing a reunion show, and I was there. I didn’t think too much about it beforehand, but as soon as the music began I was transported. I had forgotten so much! I’d forgotten ticket touts patrolling the queue; I’d forgotten sticky floors and the smell of beer; I’d forgotten how I used to be that girl who acrobatically manoeuvred her way through the crowd to the front; I’d forgotten that I always used to carry earplugs in my pocket; I’d forgotten singing along and bluffing my way through lines I couldn’t remember; I’d forgotten how strange it is when everyone else is singing along too — having to share your secrets with strangers! Mainly though, I’d forgotten how music can remind you of so much.

I remembered it was my first boyfriend who got me into The Moldy Peaches. We loved listening to them together, on his CD player, singing along under the skylight in his bedroom in the attic. We thought they were genius. In retrospect I think we loved them from different directions — him from a gamer, stoner, light-relief from all that heavy metal direction — me from a studious, lyrical, light-relief from all that lofty Joni and jazz direction. If I drew a Venn diagram of our cultural crushes The Moldy Peaches would be smack bang in the middle. A meeting point for our puppy love. I don’t think either of us had much context for the band at the time — I certainly didn’t know anything about New York City, the anti-folk scene, the open mic at the SideWalk Cafe — I discovered all that much later.

And it was long after we broke up that I went to see Adam Green (of The Moldy Peaches) play solo at Union Chapel. It was there I first heard his song about Jessica Simpson and was inspired to write my own song… about Adam Green. I’m not sure if the song was pretty witty or absolutely terrible, but it surfed the waves of YouTube very nicely for a while. It was that early YouTube/Myspace era. The heyday of digital music discovery, when you could write directly to Mark Ronson and he would answer. And it was while getting lost down those inviting Top Friend avenues that I stumbled upon the wonders of Herman Dune, Regina Spector, Jeffrey Lewis — actually if I remember correctly it was my mother who first heard Jeffrey’s song about Will Oldham and sent it to me as ‘another example of a songwriter singing about another songwriter’… Do these names mean anything to you? It kind of doesn’t matter, it all meant so much to me. It was impossibly important and influential at that particular juncture of my musical trajectory. My mind blew open with possibilities. Wow! You can write lines that never end and don’t rhyme and are basically like conversations with a close friend!

A few days after listening to everything Jeffrey Lewis had ever written I tried out these new-found lyrical liberties in a song called Winter. One of my first songs which survived. Literally a few days after that I went to see Devendra Banhart play at The Forum. At some point in the show he asked if anyone in the audience had written a song they’d never shared before. My hand shot up and somehow I ended up on stage. I say somehow, because I’m not sure how I physically got up there. Adrenaline and a leg-up, probably. Devendra handed me his electric guitar. I’d never held an electric before. I’d only just started playing acoustic. I hoped it worked in the same way. I took his request very literally and played my song Winter, which I’d barely finished writing and had certainly never shared with anyone before. I was brave! The audience was wild! A reviewer in the Independent suggested it was a set-up! Someone captured it on video and put it up on YouTube. A lovely Spanish woman, Neith, who still comes to my shows. I’ll post the video below because I still blush at what Devendra says at the end, but please be warned this was 2007, I was wearing a grey tutu ballgown and was ridiculously nervous… Someone who’d been at the show tracked down the video and got in touch. Italian this time, Valentina. She ended up making my first music video. She also became one of my closest friends. And falling in love with my treasured musical collaborator, Roi Erez. They now have a child together. Who happens to have the same name as my first boyfriend, but that’s beside the point. I do feel we all have a lot to thank Devendra for though.

Imagine this girl on stage knew that a decade or so later she’d play a show at Francesco Clemente’s art studio in NYC — and Adam Green would attend! Imagine she knew her relationship to Jeffrey Lewis would transform over time from superfan to true friend. That they’d walk together to play the open mic at The SideWalk Cafe (RIP)… I’ve lost the chronology a little, but the punchline to all this might be that some years ago I was opening a tour Jeffrey was doing with Peter Stampfel of the legendary Holy Modal Rounders. And some years after that Peter posted my song Milo on Facebook, which had overtaken YouTube as the place to be. A Canadian songwriter called JF Robitaille heard the song and the rest is history, including our son — Milo — who, if you’re reading this on Sunday 4th June 2023, turned two today.

Dear Milo, happy birthday! The moral of this story is that life twists and turns in ways you can’t predict and a lot of it has to do with crushes on musicians. I hope you grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer, but maybe keep on practicing your harmonica just in case…

p.s. I realise I haven’t said too much about the show itself. It was triumphant. Just to hear the whole sold out Roundhouse singing “Who mistook these baths for showers? Who fucked up that leaning tower?” was pretty life affirming.

Playing Morten Feldman’s piano in one of my favourite ever shows at Francesco Clemente’s art studio in NYC 2016. Look closely…