I started writing this because I enjoy writing about records I’m enjoying at the time. I often don’t really know what I think about anything until I start writing it down because I can’t type as fast as I can think, and slowing down my thoughts helps me pay attention to them, because otherwise I just dart from one thing to the next. Writing helps me focus.

I’d got back into listening to You & Your Sister by This Mortal Coil, which Kim Deal sings most of, and I thought I’d try to work out why I liked it so much. And I don’t know if I really got anywhere with that beyond what I thought already, which is that Kim Deal is fantastic and under appreciated singer . It did lead me back to the other Kim Deal songs that I really like though. and that got me thinking about why I like her so much when I don’t really like all that much of the music she’s made, and it’s not because I fancy her, although I do find her really appealing in some ways. She’s not a traditional, run of the mill, empty-headed pretty girl who won’t say anything that might upset men, but she’s still appealing because of that. She looks like doesn’t give a shit, but she does really. Just not about what most people seem to. She’s an oddbod, and I like that anyway.

Anyway, what it turned into wasn’t just writing about records that she sang on – I don’t even mention them very much – what it turned into was me thinking about girls and humour, and men and humour and, particularly, Margaret Atwood’s famous quote about how men are scared of women laughing at them and how women are scared of men killing them, and how that quote – which is a great one – isn’t just about how women’s fears are more pressing and important than men’s – because you don’t recover from being dead – but also what it says about men and humour in comparison to what a large portion of society says about female humour – that women aren’t funny, and how they work together. And yes, of course I think women can be funny, the same as men can be. I just suspect that some women avoid being funny so as not to end up getting killed by men with no sense of humour about themselves. And there’s no reason for men not to be funny, but most of them still aren’t. To me, at any rate…

Kim: “There are some things I just cannot tune out. If Dirty White Boy by Foreigner comes on, I have to leave the room... Some stuff is so bad, I have to pick apart in my head to figure out “What is it that’s really irritating me right now? Is it the bass? Maybe if the snare drum wasn’t doing that then it’d be a pretty cool groove…“

“I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.” 

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

Kelley: “There’s a kind of genius that that allows her to do that…”

Kim: “That’s not weird to do.“

Kelley: “Kim, most people can’t do that. Most people don’t know how to do it, and most people can’t do it. You idiot. This is where I come into play as her sister. I just berate her until she does what I want.”

They both laugh.

“Every time we do anything, we have to go back… to family reunions and stuff…back to West Virginia? Whistle! It’s…interest… Everybody’s real nice… But…”

But what?

“People are so obese there, it’s crazy. We’re not talking “a little heavy” – everybody in the backyard is 300 pounds… Everybody.”

“It was hard – finding people who could play…(Jose) has no problem playing awkward and weird, you know? Here’s a beat – picks up drumsticks and sits down at drum kit – drummers won’t even play this beat… What we’re talking about is a rude hi hat. If I were to say to someone, play that hi-hat rude, they’d just roll their eyes and say, meh, I’m off to work on Pro Tools or something.”

“The Real Deal” Documentary on The Breeders line up, circa 2000..

“I answered the Pixies’ advert. I used to read the wanted ads in the back of the paper in Boston because I used to laugh at all the serious musos and how they’d all say things like, “Serious commitment required. Professional attitude essential”, and all that. And the only ad I ever answered was Pixies’ advert because it said, “Musicians wanted: into Peter, Paul & Mary, and Husker Du. No chops.” And I thought it was funny. Chops?! Professional attitude? God, no!”

Kim Deal, interview, 1990.

“That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
“Save them for my funeral,” I’d said.” 

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions.“

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

“So I broke into the palace with a sponge and rusty spanner.

She said, “I know you and you cannot sing.”

I said, “That’s nothing, you should hear me play piano.“

Morrissey, The Queen Is Dead.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m not an enormous fan of Pixies, although I like a few of their records. I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of The Breeders though, again, I think they’ve made some astonishing records. And I definitely wouldn’t call myself a fan of Ultra Vivid Scene although… well, you get the picture. Well, actually, maybe not because I only really like one Ultra Vivid Scene record. But I’m a big fan of laughing, and all of the quotes I’ve put up there are ones I find funny. And none of those examples are what a lot of people would consider humorous at all.

I’m kidding – except about not really thinking of myself as a fan of any of those bands and the humour – but you probably do get the picture. And I’m willing to bet that, for most of us, that picture that’s unsteaming in front of our mind’s eye right now is a picture of Kim Deal, and the light that’s preventing you from opening your mind’s eye any wider is – the light of the sun reflected from Kim Deal’s teeth from, ladies and gentlemen, the late 1980s.

And, woah! Easy, there. Let’s just pull up our horses, let the dust settle and have a little look around here before anyone starts getting any ideas, alright?

Yes, it’s a fair cop. Yes, because I am a middle aged, middle class white Englishman, and no, no, I am not insinuating for one second – in any shape, way or form – that that smile is it about Kim Deal.

For clarity’s sake? Kim Deal may not be reduced to a smile. Even if – no, especially if – it is one of the all time great – up right there with Snoopy dancing with his nose in the air to Linus & Lucy – unadulterated, unfettered expressions of unrepentant and American joy.

Because, let’s face it, it is, isn’t it? Even though she probably doesn’t even mean it half the time. And, even though we know that, it doesn’t matter. In fact, knowing that she doesn’t mean it half the time, and she can just do it when she feels like it almost makes it even better.

And, among all the other great interviews either with Kim Deal, or about her, there’s a Dutch one on YouTube – the one I quoted from in the opening quote – and Kim and Kelley Deal are being interviewed about growing up in Dayton, Ohio and Kelley’s explaining how Dayton Ohio was this great big square-o-rama festival of traditional masculinity, recently dragged out of a seventeenth century hillbilly life, and remarkable only in terms of its twin predilections for overeating and enthusiastic championing of chest-beating, 1980s, day-glo spandex, hair rock. That was Dayton, Ohio, where the Deal identical twins just didn’t fit in.

But then, in that way that only the closest of sisters can seem capable of conversing: simultaneously opposing, yet somehow also diametrically affirming the same thing at the same time, and that also manages to be so clearly surprising to at least one of them, Kim Deal says, “I fitted in.“

“Yeah, right!” and Kelley swats Kim’s interjection away with disdain. Not even disdain. Less than disdain because disdain has connotations of belief associated with it, and Kelley Deal doesn’t even entertain the notion that maybe Kim did believe it because that would be ludicrous. But even so, Kim won’t leave it.

“I fitted in. I was a cheerleader.“

“Yeah, the cheerleader from Hell! You were the cheerleader from Hell!”

And, with a conversation like that, you either know where you’re at, or you don’t. And, I’ll be honest with you: part of me would like to think that I do know where that conversation’s at. Exactly where it’s at. And yet, there’s another part of me – that part that tries to cling onto life at its most fragile and precarious moments – that tells the other part that now is the time to keep its trap shut, because whoever you are – you don’t want to be getting in the middle of that. And that’s the extent to which I know where I am with conversations like that between sisters.

But the main thing you realise when you watch an interview with the Deal sisters is how funny and engaging they both are. Until they’re not funny. And then it’s scary. And then they’re funny again. It’s good to watch, but you wouldn’t want to get the idea that you could join in, because you couldn’t.

The Beatles were funny, but it was more obvious, signposted humour most of the time. The Stone Roses were funny, and theirs was less obvious to some people because a lot of it was northern sarcasm – not the lowest form of wit because that’s practical jokes. The Smiths weren’t funny in interviews. Morrissey, in interviews, suffered from sounding a bit smug and holier-than-thou. Pithy, I suppose, but not really that funny very often. But the Deals are dead funny, and it comes easily to them. And that’s really attractive.

Diversion – Black

The very first night I went to Spiders, I knew it was going to be alright for all sorts of reasons. Having written that sentence now, over thirty years after I actually first walked in, the first thought was that it was because they were playing Inspiral Carpets on the big dance floor downstairs, and that was part of it, but not really because there was just an overwhelming feeling that nobody was about to get their head kicked in over nothing. I didn’t mind Inspiral Carpets – I thought they were alright in that workmanlike, second-division-grafters-but-for-uggos-really way of theirs, and I was pleased I recognised it as them, but let’s not kid ourselves: Spiders was the alternative nightclub and nobody was going to leave bleeding and minus a couple of teeth. And I can’t tell you what a relief I found that to be.

Downstairs was the main room, I suppose, and sometimes I enjoyed what was played there, although it depended who was DJing at the time. Whoever it was would still be playing a certain type of record that they wouldn’t play upstairs, which was where I spent most of my time. Upstairs was 60s, basically. Not just 60s, but indie pop records that were obviously in thrall to the 1960s. The Stone Roses were played upstairs and downstairs, but more often upstairs. The Mission and Spear of Destiny wouldn’t be played upstairs, but the more poppy moments of The Cure might have been – Love Cats, Friday I’m In Love a few years later, that sort of thing. Happy Mondays would be played upstairs but probably not downstairs. The Wedding Present were more likely to be played downstairs. Primal Scream would go down well upstairs, but downstairs not at all. And I mean Loaded, eventually, but also Velocity Girl and Ivy, Ivy, Ivy.

You could always ask for requests, upstairs and down, but asking downstairs was a bigger pain in the arse because you had to climb up the outside of this structure and shout over the balcony, so having a chat with the DJ didn’t really happen there. Upstairs, though, upstairs the DJ sat on the back row, parallel with the bar and you could sit and chat to them, if they’d put up with you.

And, God love ’em, they did. Well, a couple of them would. Some of the DJs considered upstairs to be a bit beneath them, so they’d play a Motown Chartbusters LP while sulking and refusing to let you have a rifle through their record box.

Mandy was enormously indie. She showed me how to work the decks, change records, cue them up, get them going, all that in about ten minutes. She was lovely. Once she realised the sort of thing that my little gang of floppy haired, suede jacketed, psychedelic Ning-nangs were into, she’d bring things in that she knew we’d like, even though we didn’t even know they existed. Things like The Razorcuts, especially Flowers For Abigail, featuring the groovy, proto-baggy Hammond organ freak out at the end of it. Things like The James Taylor Quartet’s EP of cover versions of Goldfinger, Mrs Robinson, and Blow Up! She knew all about indie, C86, mop top, shambling and how to give us a groovy soundtrack to chew dextrosol tablets up to. Ruth ploughed a similar furrow to Mandy, and she was lovely too, but really it was mainly about Mandy and Sonya upstairs.

Sonya, while no less accommodating than Mandy, seemed a bit more grown up in some ways. Unlike most of the Spiders DJs, Sonya had her own club night at Silhouette – Helter Skelter on Tuesdays – and she knew some of the stuff Mandy played for us, but really she was prepared to tolerate atonality to a far greater degree than most of us upstairs would.

Still, it was interesting talking to Sonya too because she obviously knew about things that I had absolutely no idea about at all. Sonya was going out with another DJ from Spiders whose name escapes me – no, it was Stuart – but I’m sure that regular readers here will have a fairly good idea of how highly I prized other gentlemen’s relationships with girls, and – sort of – where this is heading. The usual? With hindsight, it’s all rather drearily predictable, isn’t it?

I didn’t get off with Sonya. I liked her, but she was exactly like you’d want your big sister to be. Or she was exactly how I’d want my big sister to be, if I had one. And, I’m certain, the feeling was mutual. I was like her kid brother. I always really liked Sonya, and she was good looking too, but it was never going to happen, and that was great. In fact, it was better than that because it meant that I could stay at her flat, eat pizza with her housemates in front of Eastern Cinema at 4 in the morning, and wake up, breakfast on the remnants of cold pizza from the night before, get dressed, go in town, buy more books and records, nip back for a quick shower before doing it again the next night.

See? It is different, actually. I didn’t make a point of ruining anyone’s relationship that already existed in case I wanted something different, and nobody got a crateful of records thrown at them in the back garden outside a party that Stuart was DJing at. Well, not yet they didn’t. Naturally, it’s coming. You might want to look out for that. I didn’t, naturally.

That came later because Stuart dumped Sonya and started going out with Elaine instead. I knew Elaine a bit though Janine, who didn’t really go upstairs, but was into The Bunnymen and The Wonder Stuff, which I thought an appalling lapse of taste on her part – not her last appalling lapse of taste, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out in which direction that particular lapse of taste came from – anyway. I knew Janine pretty well. She was funny and she was sharp. No flies on Janine. Elaine was tiny. Her thing was sort of Gothy, but not really. Other girls didn’t really dress like Elaine, and maybe it was because you need to weigh about six stone wet through to pull off the flapper look in the way that she did. The lot. I kid you not: sparkly little sequinned dresses with tassels, headband, long bead necklaces, sharp – fucking sharp – bob. Elaine had moments of being a bit on the bitchy side, according to Janine, but I put that down to probably low blood sugar levels. I liked the thin, flat chested, pretty androgynous girl as a type, but Elaine was, as I say, tiny.

As a person who regularly dossed downstairs on a sofa, or possibly in a recently vacated bed, given half the chance, I had a sort of relationship with Stuart. He was a bit cool for Christmas, in the way that Sonya and Mandy weren’t. Still, as the boyfriend of my de-facto big sister, he assumed that meant he was also my big bother, and I wasn’t interested in that relationship – at least not in the way he thought I should be. He wasn’t ever horrible to me, but – ironically – yes, actually, a bit like a smug older brother looking down his nose at you. So yes, I wasn’t a big fan. Plus, I was mainly Sonya’s mate and when he dumped her for Elaine, I was on her side – Sonya’s. Sonya didn’t even sound that arsed about it. Maybe she was, I don’t know, but she hid it well if she was hurt by it. She’d sort of had a thing with the singer out of Kingmaker, and that was always on the cards, but I don’t think it ever really happened in the end. Anyway, that’s getting ahead of myself, because she started going out with Black.

You heard. Black. Like the colour. Or the absence of light, depending on the medium you’re working in. Naturally, I assumed that he wasn’t really called Black, it was just a nickname or something, or his surname was Black. But it wasn’t, he’d changed his name by deed poll to Black.

Why? Well, like many young people, Black – formerly known as, I think – another Stuart – was very much into his indie rock, and particularly, Pixies. Whose singer was then known as Black Francis. As far as I know, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV hasn’t actually changed his name legally to Black, or Frank Black, but maybe that just goes to show that the Black who went to Spiders was prepared to go that little bit further than Black Francis who, as far as I knew, didn’t go to Spiders.

Sonya seemed like Black’s big sister too. He’d get absolutely plastered and Sonya would have to look after him and shake her head with benevolent compassion at his daftness. I didn’t envy him, and I definitely didn’t envy Sonya.

Meanwhile, Stuart was enjoying a new lease of life going out with the elfin flapper Elaine. Well, he was until he found out what Elaine and I were doing in the back garden of that house party he was DJing at and then he really did chuck a crate of records at my head, swearing like a navvy as he did. He was quite upset. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? Well, you’d have thought not, really, wouldn’t you? I didn’t.

Anyway, the point isn’t that I had no respect for anybody else’s relationships, the real point is that Pixies were a big deal to some people in late 1988 – early 1989. That, and that Black’s surname was Smith, for Christ’s sake, but that made it even funnier, really.

But, mainly, yes. Pixies were becoming a big deal. Like Kim Deal – ahh! And Kim Deal, as Sonya explained to me, was fucking cool.

End Of Diversion

Kim Deal, apart from being the girl bass player in Pixies – not The Pixies, which I found irritating, but went along with, which was big of me, wasn’t it? – anyway, apart from bass playing and a bit of backup singing, she also sang Gigantic, which they played downstairs a bit.

The idea was that Gigantic was about a woman watching another woman have sex with a black man who had a gigantic willy. So that was a bit weird, but in an empowering way, so Sonya told me, which was important. Sonya knew better than me about everything, and she was always really kind to me, so I was looking towards my big sis to point important things out to me, and she obliged. I was grateful – which was unusual in itself, but I’m pleased to have had at least one relationship with a woman that I haven’t made a total arse of due to sex, even though it should have been more than one, but probably wasn’t. I didn’t love Gigantic as a song, or as a record particularly, but I did quite like her singing voice.

Edit: Sonya died last summer. I was really upset about it. We’d sort of lost touch, although she was Facebook friends with my wife – I don’t have Facebook – and she always asked after me. I’d bump into her now and then, and she was as lovely as she always was. The thing about Sonya dying was that, on the social media, everyone said how great she was, which was right, but it made me think – everyone’s nice about everyone who dies, and I get it, but it almost cheapens it when people who spend their entire lives being kind and encouraging die, because they actually were and the “loveable rogues” often aren’t. Someone ought to do something about that. So yeah, Sonya died, and it was terrible because she was genuinely one of the loveliest people I’ve met. No side to her at all.

Anyway, Pixies had appeared on my radar and Kim Deal seemed important. Then, while I was more excited by Elephant Stone and Made Of Stone, and by Bummed by Happy Mondays, Pixies released a couple of singles that were pretty groovy. Monkey Gone To Heaven was, as we know, busy inventing Nirvana as well as getting on the proper charts here, even if only about number 60, it was good going for then.

Then, Here Comes Your Man, which was even poppier and did slightly better in the proper charts. Not by much, but still.

Both of those songs were played downstairs at Spiders and they were obviously happening, Pixies. They were getting more plays, more kids were throwing themselves about more violently, but only in an abstract sort of way. So, that was happening. Simultaneously, baggy was happening too. It looked like The House of Love or The Darling Buds might have properly happened in 1989, but their moment had been and gone – even though they both put out some interesting records on the slow descent from bring The-Next-Smiths that NME and Melody Maker were constantly looking for. But, as I’ve said, 1989 meant baggy and Madchester, and if it didn’t mean that, and if you were an indie kid, it meant Pixies.

But it didn’t only mean Pixies because they were on tour with another American college rock band called Throwing Muses, who were interesting for a number of reasons. First, the songs were all written by one of two girls, who were sort of sisters, but not related to one another – Kristen Hersch and Tanya Donelly. Second, Kristen Hersh had some sort of mental heath issues that meant she looked permanently on the brink of either being sick or possessed by Jesus whilst singing and playing the guitar – take your pick. Third, Tanya Donelly was sometimes really good looking – on film at least – and sometimes not – which I’ll get to in a minute.

Throwing Muses – Not Too Soon.

Even though mainly this is about Kim Deal, I put Throwing Muses in the same bracket as Pixies, and consequently The Breeders, and I thought this was great at the time, although it wasn’t a big Spiders record, being a bit upstairs for downstairs and a bit too downstairs for upstairs. So, I didn’t know anybody else who was into Throwing Muses – and I wasn’t either, really. This song was the exception.

It’s more or less a late sixties, Lou Reed three chord trick. It’s Sweet Jane without any frills. It’s more or less the version of Sweet Jane you might learn if you’d only been playing the guitar for six months. The melody’s obviously been tacked onto the top of the chords, rather than the other way round, but that’s being picky because it’s not a simply phrased set of lyrics either.

With hindsight, Not Too Soon is a set of lyrics shoehorned onto a pretty basic chord pattern, and it’s the sound of someone learning how to write songs as they learn to play the guitar. And it’s great. Yeah, it’s not anywhere near the level of The Stone Roses, musically, and lyrically it’s trying a little bit too hard to be clever and worldly weary at, what? 24 years old? But you’re not the finished article at 24, and if you’re writing college rock – that’s what the audience is looking for. Anyway, she wrote this when she was 18, so even more fair dos, really. And the chorus is great. There aren’t many better examples of a woman illustrating how pissed off she is about another person in the chorus by imitating the peculiar, whammy pedal noises that she’s making on her electric guitar three or four years prior to Rage Against The Machine doing it. Give it a listen and tell me you don’t dig at least the chorus.

It’s awkward and it’s gawky, and it sounds awkward and gawky, but that’s what it’s supposed to sound like, isn’t it? If ever a band existed to portray American college gaucheness in the late 80s-early 90s, it was Throwing Muses, and that’s what it is. It’s like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye – you can’t imagine why everybody doesn’t think he’s great and noble when you’re that sort of age, and you read it as an adult and are struck by how much he shows you while he’s trying so hard to suggest he’s something else. And he’s the biggest hypocrite and phoney in the book, but he doesn’t see that. And it doesn’t make it a bad representation of the holier than thou nature of the mid-teenager – it makes it a fantastic representation of them – and Not Too Soon is the same sort of thing, albeit far less elegantly done than The Catcher In The Rye – but it would be, wouldn’t it? It’s overtly awkward and gawky. Tanya Donelly said that when she met Kim Deal during Throwing Muses’ tour with them, she was the first girlfriend she’d had who was remotely like that. She’d been an alternative girl at high school, and Kim Deal had been a cheerleader. “I’m going to braid your hair! I’d never been around that kind of thing before.“

This video was also, for me, the beginning of the eventually definitively answered as far as I’m concerned question – is Tanya Donelly good looking, or is she just funny looking?

Years later, some point in the mid-2000s, I met Tanya Donnelly backstage at the sort of venue where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see her – London somewhere, I can’t remember where because it was in the middle of the magic mushroom years. I tipped my hat, smiled at her and said, “Hello,” and that I was pleased to meet her and continued on my way to wherever it was I was going. As I went, she looked up at me, gave me a gigantic smile, and said she was pleased to meet me too, and held her hand out for me to shake – and I realised that she was tiny – I mean, nobody was ever going to make Elaine look like a big girl, but if anyone stood a chance, it was going to be Tanya Donelly. Like a little bird with an enormous head that still comfortably expanded to make room for that enormous smile of hers. I did my usual flaccid handshake thing, which she commented on – like I hope people will – and I gave her the explanation that I give to everyone whose hand I limply shake: “I don’t want to create an excellent first impression that I’m never going to live up to.” And she thought that was hilarious. I mean, like meeting to someone from outer space who tells you that, in space, there are monkeys made of jam who speak French, or something, and all you can do is laugh at the ludicrousness of it all. I’m not saying she was flirting with me because she wasn’t: she was laughing at me. Because I’m stupid.

I meant it though. I mean, I cleared off sharpish. The concept of the limp, dead fish handshake is to made an excellent first impression while you’re pretending to be making a bad first impression on purpose in order to make girls laugh, because girls with a sense of humour are the best, but they don’t always volunteer that they’ve got one because men sometimes have fragile egos that can’t handle a bit of teasing. The limp handshake thing is just casting your bread on the water, so to speak, to find out if the person you’re meeting is open to humour. Plenty aren’t, but maybe I’ve got a limited and specific definition of humour. I wouldn’t rule it out.

Anyway, the problem is that I’m not going to live up to the secretly good first impression that I pretend I’m not making. I’m being honest, but only inadvertently. Anyway, she was dead good looking in the flesh, so the camera can’t tell the truth all the time, that’s all I’m saying. Unless I only caught her on one of her good looking days in the flesh. Oh, I don’t know. Like I can talk.

This Mortal Coil – You And Your Sister

As both Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly were both in bands that were signed to the 4AD label and due to both of them not being the main writer in their bands, they formed The Breeders as an outlet for their songs and voices. Donelly didn’t last as, perhaps inevitably, Kim Deal was always going to be the more dominant voice in a band with Tanya Donelly. She went off and founded Belly. Before that though, they sang together on this, a cover of a Chris Bell song that he never really released properly. It’s a perfect fit for both Deal and Donelly because Chris Bell, like them, was under appreciated in Big Star, like they both were in their bands. Perhaps if there’d been an indie scene in the early 1970s, then Big Star would have been, erm, Bigger Stars than they were. In a similar way to Black Francis’ domination of the Pixies, and Kristen Herst’s domination of Throwing Muses, Alex Chilton dominated Big Star. Chris Bell went off after their first album and recorded an album that wasn’t released until around 1992 – I Am The Cosmos, the best song on it is You And Your Sister.

Bell’s original is, vocally at least, a bit see how I suffer, and Deal & Donelly’s isn’t like that at all and is infinitely better for it. The only element of Bell’s version that is better than this cover is the guitar playing, and that’s because the guitar on this version probably isn’t even a real guitar. It’s probably a digital emulation of one because it’s as stiff as a post. It’s horrible. The only good thing about the instrumentation is the string arrangement that wends its way around the gorgeous melody as it progresses.

But it’s the singing that makes it. It’s vulnerable without wallowing. Bell’s pleads, but this one makes his lyrical suggestions sound winsome. This one doesn’t prostrate itself at its target’s feet and wail like Bell’s does. Perhaps because Deal and Donelly are girls, they sound more like they’re sad but hopeful about the situation, which is that the “You” of the title’s sister doesn’t approve of the singer, who wants the relationship to go on despite the (over) protective sister.

Mainly it’s Deal singing, with Donelly harmonising. Her voice is, as it can be, vulnerable but smiling through it. That smile again, eh? Well, yeah. Kim Deal’s a smiley singer who often sings songs that you wouldn’t expect anyone to smile through. Her backing vocals on Debaser give the impression that debasing isn’t about degradation so much as maybe looking forward to going on a nice holiday somewhere, with some wholesome family activities planned for when you get there. On You And Your Sister, the lyrics sound fairly hopeless. “They say my love for you ain’t real / But you don’t know how real it feels…”, “Your sister says that I’m no good / I’d reassure her if I could…”, “Plans fail every day / I want to hear you say / Your love won’t be leaving (Run run, run run)…“. It’s not too optimistic on paper, and when Chris Bell sings it. Naturally, he emphasises the hopelessness of the situation – nobody believes that he loves the sister’s sibling, some people take that idea a step further and says he’s a bad person full stop. Even the backing vocalist, who’s supposed to be supporting the singer – Alex Chilton in this case – suggests that the object of the affections should run away – perhaps he’s singing what the sister said.. On the Deal/Donelly version, the “run, run, run, run...” line sounds more like “woah, woah, woah, woah…” like people say to try to slow down horses. Which would work equally well.

But Kim Deal sounds largely happy, or at least optimistic about the situation, singing exactly the same lines as Bell, but she’s not doing a Peter Noone sings David Bowie‘s Nietzschian influenced lyrics on Oh, You Pretty Things, where he just doesn’t really understand what he’s singing about, she’s bringing something new – and better – to it. It’s not like she’s doing a little dance about the situation, but she’s trying to persuade her soon-to-be-ex partner that she can fix it, even as her voice cracks beautifully in exactly the right places to indicate that she knows it’s not going to happen. It’s still sad, but there’s more to it than that, and that’s clever. It’s not funny, but you don’t want someone who doesn’t take anything seriously, do you? You want someone with timing. Meaning – the right time to drop in humour, and it has to be unexpected for it to work, and that means you need to take some things seriously.

Her singing smile here isn’t there to indicate how confident she is, it’s there to reassure the object of her affection that she can make everything alright. And it doesn’t stop there. She wants her partner to believe that she can do it because if she can’t, that’s it for them, isn’t it? And her partner’s confidence will give her the confidence to try. It’s a brave performance, and one that adds to the basic song, which is pretty enough to start with. The song is sung by a singer who understands people’s relationships, even if hers don’t necessarily all work out too beautifully in the end.

You And Your Sister is my favourite Kim Deal sung song. Tanya Donelly’s harmony is important, but really, it’s all about Kim’s singing. I suspect that this record might have sealed Donelly’s decision to not work with Deal in The Breeders – if she hadn’t already – because she was never going to be anything other than second banana when their voices combined like they do on this. And that’s a pity, because they’re a great match.

And, of course, both Deal and Donelly are – musically and otherwise – closely associated with their own sisters. They could be singing to one another on this.

Obviously, I don’t have any experience of having a sister, or being female. Not personally, although my wife has two sisters; she’s the oldest one – and what I’ve learned is that being on her side – when necessary – is important, but I’m not putting myself between them when sparks start to fly. It wouldn’t help, and it would result in my death. It wouldn’t result in my death, because disagreements aren’t physical, but verbally it can get a bit hectic. And then suddenly not be hectic. It’s alright for them to do it but different rules apply to me as an outsider.

Do you two (Kim and Kelley) ever get competitive with each other?

Kelley, “I think as sisters… generally…you know?”

Kim, “I’m not competitive.”

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What would be your biggest difference, do you think?

Kim, “I’m cool, she’s not. I’m prettier. And younger.”

Kelley, “Yeah, she’s the baby of the family… she’s spoiled to death. I’m the middle child, even though it’s only by eleven minutes, I don’t think it matters that I only had eleven minutes of being the youngest child, I’m still the middle child.”

And, bearing in mind these regular little exchanges between the Deal twins that I keep quoting from, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that the sister-sister relationships that I’ve been familiar with aren’t necessarily that unusual.

Ultra Vivid Scene – Special One

Snub TV – which was a great weekly programme on BBC that had up-and-coming alternative bands playing live, being interviewed, and sometimes made videos of songs that didn’t have one otherwise, one teatime a week in the late 80s – filmed this. As usual with Kim Deal, I wasn’t a big fan of the bands she was in, but I was a big fan of her. This is from 1990, so in between Doolittle and You And Your Sister.

Have a watch of that. Kurt Ralske’s miming playing his indie-tastic Jaguar guitar, with his Birdland haircut, sitting on a high stool next to Kim Deal, who looks like she’s having a wonderful time doing nothing but grinning and wiping her hair out of her face for the first couple of minutes as he plays and sings. I taped this and I watched it a lot, and what I liked about it was Kim Deal looking happy. Wouldn’t you?

Anyway, it degenerates slightly because it turns out Kim Deal’s smoking a fag – and she’s not one of the world’s great smokers I’m sad to say, although you can’t have everything, can you? And then it takes a sudden upturn when she shoves him off his singer-songwriter high stool and takes his place on it to sing her part – the chorus – that consists of, “How do you think it feels?” And the impression you get from her smiling singing voice – and face – is that it probably feels really nice. But it doesn’t, does it? She’s not a whining, sensitive indie-kid who enjoys complaining because she’s all about vitality and joy, especially when you’ve just had your heart broken.

Towards the very end of the video, Kurt comes back and she turns to sing the chorus to him, with her face-splitting grin giving no warning at all of the slap across the chops she suddenly gives him, knocking him off his (mercy – cheers) seat for a second time – and the grin never lets up. A five million megawatt smile. It’s lovely, and her backing vocals do her usual trick – sad words delivered with joy. Kim Deal, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is a girl with a sense of humour.

It’s a bit of a nunty song – not the greatest thing in the world, but pretty enough in a late 80s never-going-to-set-the-world-on-fire-but-there’ll-always-be-five-kids-on-a-dancefloor-in-every-alternative-nightclub-in-Britain-shambling-behind-their-fringes-in-1990-indie-schmindie sort of way.

What’s all that about? I’ll tell you what I think it’s about. It’s about Kim Deal having a sense of humour.

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(To Kelley) Would you like to be in a band with a group of men?

“God, no. Men are boring.“

The Real Deal Documentary.

I might be wrong about this, but I don’t think Kelley Deal thinks that all men are boring, or humourless – which is what she’s getting at in the context of that exchange – but a lot of men in bands are pretty boring. Not all of them, of course, some of them are great. But there’s something about being in a band that seems to attract some extremely earnest young men to the idea. A lot of them take themselves enormously seriously. You know, they have zero humour about what they’re doing in a band. It’s extremely important. Or you’ll end up like Bono or someone. Maybe even worse.

And then, after a while, they realise what po-faced finger-wagging admonishers they’ve become and start being ironic, but it makes no difference because, by then, even the irony tends to be really important as well.

Sometimes you get comedy bands – also mainly comprising men – and they’re even worse than the most serious of bands because you need everything, really. I don’t mind a humorous song, but I only want to hear the odd one, every now and then. And once you’ve heard it once, you don’t want to hear it again, do you? Well, I don’t. I’m hard to please, I do realise. I like funny lines in songs – they’re great, or at least they can be great – but comedy songs in general? Not so much.

I’ve had a great laugh with some of the people I’ve been in bands with, but I’ve also been told off quite a lot for spoiling the image by arsing about, or by drinking tea onstage, instead of slugging Jack Daniels from a bottle. Or having a rubber chicken hanging from my guitar’s headstock even though I said it was a “personal tribute to Jimmy Page“, which it wasn’t because I don’t even like Jimmy Page. I did that for the same reason as I had a pink guitar: because people hated it. I say “people“, but mainly it was men who hated it. Certainly the people I was in a band with at the time hated it, which made me do it more on account of being pretty immature.Most people probably didn’t care one way or another, but of those who commented on it favourably, they were all women. I’m not saying rubber chickens are the funniest thing in the world, because they’re not, it was just being stupid.

The men who hated it, hated it because lead guitar players are supposed to be a bit mysterious and, especially, take themselves quite seriously. I was taking the piss, but only out of myself. Maybe they thought I was being wacky or something, in which case, fair dos because it was a bit. I’d spent quite a lot of time taking myself quite seriously when I was younger, and I’d realised I was too much of a moron – or perhaps not enough of a moron – to get away with that. And a lot of people can’t get their heads around why you’d do that. Which just makes me want to do it more. Because I’m a twat, probably.

Girls in bands can be provide some well-needed irreverence – not all of them, some of them are just as humourless as your average over-earnest indie bass player – but a lot of the girls I’ve played with in bands have been dead funny when the boys were taking themselves ever so seriously.

Margaret Atwood’s famous comment on the relative fears of men and women – “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” is, I think, pretty spot on. And though it’s the second half of it that’s usually taken as the most important part – because it is, really – the first half of it is under appreciated as far as I’m concerned.

If women are laughing, it’s because they’ve got a sense of humour, isn’t it? I’m always hearing how women don’t have a sense of humour, usually from men who don’t either. But I’ve never found that to be true as a stereotype. My mother’s got no sense of humour, and Clare didn’t either, but I’ve found women to be at least as funny as men in general. But, as Atwood says, men fear women with a sense of humour – at least if they’re laughing at them. And what that means is that women probably restrain themselves from expressing a sense of humour in case they get killed for it.

It’s not women who have no sense of humour is what Atwood’s saying: it’s men. And she’s right. Again, it’s a sweeping generalisation, but I broadly agree with it. And Kim and Kelley Deal are funny, and that’s one of the best things about them.

The same thing goes for Germans. A lot of people in England seem to think that Germans have no sense of humour. I don’t know many German people, but I used to work with a German woman – she was an MFL teacher – and she was dead funny. Imagine that. A woman who was German and she was still funny. And a teacher at that. I know. I don’t mean she was always pranking people – which is a far lower form of humour than sarcasm in my book – she was as dry as a bone. Which a lot of people don’t recognise as being humour, do they? A lot of people want humour to be telegraphed so they know when to laugh. I talked to this German teacher about it – German humour and how a lot of people seem to think it doesn’t exist, and she told me the same thing I’ve just told you: it’s too dry for a lot of people to get. What’s the most popular humorous television programme at the moment? Mrs Brown’s Boys, or something like that. Top Gear. Is that even still on? I knew Freddie Flintoff was presenting it because I’m into cricket, but I still didn’t watch it. You can tell that this was written a long time ago because I’ve a feeling it was taken off the air a while ago after he nearly killed himself in a crash, and I’m only just publishing this because someone asked for more if my dribbling on here. Anyway, they’re just shite. I assume, having never watched either of them. But if that’s what most people consider to be really funny, no wonder they don’t get German humour. Or female humour. What they want is slapstick. Which is only funny if the people involved actually get hurt. And even then, only if they’re really hurt. And when that did happen, I don’t think it was funny at all.

My daughter’s just come into the living room, where I’m writing this, asking if I have a load of books she’s been encouraged to read in preparation for doing English Literature A Level (she’s now just finished her second year at university doing English Lit, so I must have written most of this four years ago), and one of them was The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. We got talking about it – I gave her my copy – and I said that I didn’t know if I’d just got the wrong end of the stick about it, but I found a lot of The Bell Jar really funny. I read The End Of The Affair, by Graham Greene recently and I thought that was really funny too, but I don’t know if it was meant that way. Bits of it aren’t funny at all, but some of it cracked me right up. Catch-22 is piss funny, but not all of it. Some of it’s not funny in the slightest because it’s quite upsetting. Gallows humour, maybe. Bleak humour. That’s what I like chuckling at, I suppose.

She’s into The Smiths – I got her Louder Than Bombs so she’d have something in common with all the other women I ever met who listen to The Smiths – I’ve said before that I’ve never had a male friend who digs The Smiths, bizarrely enough – and there have been a few girls I’ve taught recently who’ve talked to me about being into them, so it’s still happening among adolescent girls in England in 2021. There you go, four years. I’ve got a bit of a backlog. It’s The Boys In Company B’s fault. That’s one shitty film, and I’ve been trying to make myself write about it. I’m a moron.

Anyway, I said that I thought Sylvia Plath was a bit like Morrissey, in that there was a lot of humour – albeit pretty bleak – there, but most people seemed to miss it and just think it was wall to wall misery. Maybe Morrissey’s as good an example of what I’m getting at as anything: he was dead funny in The Smiths, and every lad I knew just thought he was a moaner, whereas all the girls I knew who were into him thought he was funny. There you go – that’s what I’m getting at. Girls can be more open to humour that a lot of men find a bit too close to home. And too near the bone, more than you’ll ever know, as Morrissey sang on That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore. Has he cracked a lyrical funny recently? I wouldn’t know. I’ve long since given up on him.

One of the best bosses I ever had was a girl who was about twenty years younger than I was, and we were in school, moderating coursework, but also chatting away – a few of us, all women. They’d started talking about what men were like in bed – I was an honorary girl in that situation, I guess, I was no threat to anyone because I was just daft Middlerabbit – and I said, “I’m fantastic in bed.“

And they looked at me, dubiously – as well they might have because I’m more a self-deprecator than a bragger, and it’s not the best thing to say to a group of women because it’s creepy. But it’s meant to be because it’s very much like the limp handshake set up I mentioned earlier.

“Good to know,” my boss said, meaning that it wasn’t good to know at all. And it was a bit creepy.

“Oh aye,” I went on, “I can go to sleep like that.“

She laughed and said, “I wish I was funny.” And she wasn’t funny particularly, although she was extremely good looking. and I said, “Well, you don’t have to be, do you?” And she looked at me, a bit confused. But I didn’t clarify.

Some really good looking people are funny – some people have it all, don’t they? But for most of us, we only really develop what we need to develop in order to get what we want. I’m not the world’s best looking man – I’m sort of alright. Children don’t run away screaming when I take the bag off my head or anything. Which means that to attract people, I had to develop something else and humour – especially self-deprecating humour – is appealing. Kim Deal’s probably similar to me. She’s relatively good looking, but she’s not like some indie dolly bird who flashed her legs off in pretty dresses on the cover of Melody Maker. She’s funny and she’s talented. Everybody needs something, don’t they? Less good-looking people are better off if they develop a sense of humour about themselves, for all sorts of reasons. And if you’re dead good looking? It won’t do any harm, but people’d talk to you anyway. Francoise Hardy: the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s not funny, is she? She takes herself quite seriously, and why wouldn’t she? I’d give her my limp handshake, but I’m not convinced that she’d be into it. Another one who died in between my beginning and ending this flannel.

The Breeders – Cannonball

Cannonball was everywhere in the summer of 1993. Continually playing on MTV, in all the indie clubs in town, and everybody loved it. The Pixies had been popular, but this was another level. It was weird too. The Pixies were weird too, of course. This Mortal Coil were weird. Ultra Vivid Scene would have loved to have been weird instead of run-of-the-mill nunty nineties indie. But they were all a bit much for the mainstream, and even though this had the benefit of coming after Nirvana broke into the mainstream and being noisy was fine, Nirvana were always pretty straight despite the noisy exterior.

There’s no singing for the first minute – which doesn’t happen on pop records very often. There’s no guitar solo. The words are largely incomprehensible, except for “This is not a gay song” and “Cannonball“.

I thought it was great, and I was especially pleased that Kim Deal was getting to sing her own song, in her own band all the way through, and it was doing really well. Because she’d be pleased about it, go on telly and be funny and give us a glimpse of that ear-to-ear smile about things that shouldn’t have been all that funny, but were.

So, that’s about the long and short of it for me. I could happily listen to Kim Deal being interviewed all day long because she’s a normal human being, except she’s a lot more creative than most people – especially most musicians – and she’s a lot funnier than most people too. I don’t want to listen to all that many bands she’s been involved in because I’m too much of a delicate flower in that way – I don’t like it that noisy – but I think she’s just great. She doesn’t sing like Mariah Carey or anything, but I don’t believe Mariah Carey when she sings, and I believe Kim Deal. I can’t imagine Mariah Carey’s got much of a sense of humour either, but maybe she’s dead witty on the sly.

Oh, and she’s – Kim Deal, not Mariah Carey – got a great smile too. Did I mention that? And the reason she’s got a great smile because she’s funny, and she’s set up for that because life’s full of misery and suffering and you might as well laugh as cry about it. But laughing and crying are just the extremes of how we feel about the world, aren’t they? “Cool” people don’t laugh or cry, because being cool – in that way – is about not really feeling it, whatever it is. And I don’t want that. I’d rather be crying than feeling nothing, but ideally, I’d rather be laughing. And that’s why I’d take Kim Deal, Sylvia Plath, and Margaret Atwood over any over-earnest, mysteriously deep guitar slinger any day of the week. Because they’re funny in the way that some girls are. And it gets no better than that when you’re an idiot like I am.