Mista Feminista...

That's about all I have at the moment. A title. Vague inklings: an inchoate sense of working in a different, less bullish, more sensitive way and an idea for a unisex cover image that will probably be typically embarrassing. So I may well go back to plan A on that one. The cover artwork I originally wanted to use was based on a photo of my maternal grandmother (i.e. my grandmother on my mother's side - she doesn't look very maternal in the picture, I can assure you!) She's 17, flaxen haired, indomitable and wielding a rifle. It's a great photo, but I can't find it anywhere. I'm starting to wonder if I ever had a copy of it in the first place or whether it's just such an entrenched piece of family history that I've assumed I have the thing in my keeping. I may never even have seen it, just been so entranced by the description that I've convinced myself that I have. The mind, it starts doing funny things to you as you get older. Anyway, I like the perversity of starting where most people finish - with the cover design - so I'll keep doing that. Maybe things will come into sharper relief once I have an image or two to bounce off.

But yes, I digress in typically Ronnie Corbett style. I have the title - or maybe it will morph into a 'brand name' or whatever. Mista Feminista sounds about right. And I know I want this to be a very stridently feminist piece - because that's the overarching thing I feel at the moment; stridently feminist. Yes, there are loads of other things to rile and perplex one, but there seems to be a disturbingly deep misogyny threaded through all of these contemporary news stories. In Gaza, it's the terrible numbers of women and children who are being hurt and killed and - how could we have forgotten this? - violence against women is *always* violence against children; the present and the future. UK gangs now target the girlfriends and sisters of their rivals - sexual violence dished out with the same senseless disregard as rival gangs just a few days ago blasted away a poor young woman who had the temerity to be out celebrating her birthday while they were out imposing their mutual deathwishes upon the streets of Kilburn. This is what men do; they kill each other; they wreck the present; they destroy their own futures.

So, there's the theme - nice easy one this time.

But how to go about it? I'm clueless right now, but that's nothing new and can be a good place to start. Mista Feminista - I think that's what's needed. Because men need to change - (that will probably become a song as it's my mantra at the moment. Might even be a better title in the end. We'll see). So the plan is to try to document the creative process on this one - jot down the inspirations, the mechanics, the twists and turns of the strange mental incarceration and lunacy that descends upon me when I try to get some music together. I think (I hope!) that this one will be easier to follow than some of the others. But there's been so much misunderstanding of motive and execution with previous efforts that I wanted to guide you through this one a bit more. It will probably be more interesting than the finished work - I always found that with the others; the journey was always more exciting than the destination. So hopefully you will find these accompanying notes valuable, if only in relation to 'end product'.

OK, just so we're all starting on the same page, here are some almost finished versions of most of the songs on the last one. I haven't kept any notes on that one, so I'm afraid you're on your own. But it's sort of urban - ey..:

Urbane