{"id":948,"date":"2007-07-19T15:13:11","date_gmt":"2007-07-19T19:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/19\/i-want-matches-in-case-i-have-to-suddenly-burn\/"},"modified":"2007-07-26T00:39:03","modified_gmt":"2007-07-26T04:39:03","slug":"i-want-matches-in-case-i-have-to-suddenly-burn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/19\/i-want-matches-in-case-i-have-to-suddenly-burn\/","title":{"rendered":"I want matches in case I have to suddenly burn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/07\/nb.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"224\" alt=\"Nicole Blackman\" title=\"Nicole Blackman\" class=\"alignright\"\/>Do you remember <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/16\/nicole-blackman\/\">way back<\/a> when I was lamenting my lack of knowledge of what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicoleblackman.com\/\">Nicole Blackman<\/a> was up to? And then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/16\/nicole-blackman\/#comment-278\">she replied<\/a> to the post, resulting my great blog-joy?<\/p>\n<p>Well, at the time she replied she pointed us to her story, &#8220;Dumped&#8221;, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Brooklyn-Noir-Pete-Hamill\/dp\/1888451580\">Brooklyn Noir<\/a>, and mentioned the current performances of the Courtesan Tales. While I didn&#8217;t manage to figure out how to attend any of the Courtesan Tales performances<footnote>&#8230;although I did find lots of stuff on the web about it, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aksioma.org\/blackman\/index.html\">this page<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corporatemofo.com\/stories\/031019courtesan.htm\">this review<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/theater\/0342,sellar,47834,11.html\">this review<\/a>, etc.<\/footnote> I did get a copy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Brooklyn-Noir-Pete-Hamill\/dp\/1888451580\">Brooklyn Noir<\/a> and check out Nicole&#8217;s story. My capsule review is that it reads like a cross between the character behind <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hotlyrics.net\/lyrics\/R\/Recoil\/Breath_Control.html\">Breath Control<\/a> and the kind of twist-at-the-end thriller shorts that used to show up in those &#8220;Alfred Hitchcock Presents&#8221; stories. Well worth reading, and dark, but not heavy, if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n<p>I should also probably have pointed out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lapetitezine.org\/NicoleBlackman.htm\">the story Nicole wrote about her response to 9\/11<\/a>, which was already a few years old even back then. It&#8217;s still worth reading. Very much so.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, that was a couple of years ago, and I hadn&#8217;t really heard anything for a while. I mean, I did eventually manage to track down that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Very-Introspective-Actually-Shop-Tribute\/dp\/B00005JDCC\">Pet Shop Boys tribute album<\/a> with a Nicole track on it&#8211;which wasn&#8217;t new either&#8211;but no new news, as &#8217;twere.<\/p>\n<p>However, just the other day, something brought my mind back to her, and I found that the intervening years have brought a bunch of Nicole-related things to the web.<\/p>\n<p>So, here&#8217;s what I found in my recent check:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicoleblackman.com\/\">Nicole&#8217;s web site<\/a> is back up. That should simplify keeping track of when any new things happen.<\/li>\n<li>Second, she has <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nicole_Blackman\">a Wikipedia entry<\/a>, which links to lots of other stuff as well.<\/li>\n<li>Third, she appears to have an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/nicoleblackman\">official Myspace page<\/a>. This is worthy of note, since there are three streamable tracks there. One is the &#8220;In The Movie Now&#8221; track that&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.salon.com\/audio\/2000\/10\/05\/blackman\/\">on Salon<\/a> for a million years (along with two others). One, &#8220;Dogma&#8221;, is the track Nicole did with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmfdm.net\/\">KMFDM<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/XTORT-KMFDM\/dp\/B000003RHH\/\">XTORT<\/a> album. And one is totally new (and freely downloadable) piece that Nicole did as part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/rosemaryfoul  \">Bernadette Louise<\/a>&#8216;s phone call project &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/i175.photobucket.com\/albums\/w137\/bernadettelouise\/eFlyerUK.jpg\" title=\"Only A Phone Call Away Flyer\" rel=\"lightbox\">Only A Phone Call Away<\/a>&#8220;.<\/li>\n<li>That last piece was something Nicole did for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiercetv.co.uk\/\">Fierce Festival<\/a> in Birmingham England this year. She apparently also did something called <a href=\"http:\/\/fiercetv.co.uk\/index.php?controller=event&#038;mm_action=view&#038;id=97\">Beloved<\/a>. But, more importantly for us, she also did something for them in past years called  <a href=\"http:\/\/fiercetv.co.uk\/index.php?controller=event&#038;mm_action=view&#038;id=78\">Stay Away From Lonely Places<\/a>&#8211;it&#8217;s a kind of self-guided walking tour, with map, of Birmingham&#8217;s DigBeth area (<a href=\"http:\/\/fiercetv.co.uk\/downloads\/stay_away.zip\">download MP3 and map here<\/a>), but you know it&#8217;s not your garden variety walking tour. &#8220;With stories about the Hell&#8217;s Angels, a lost ring, tea smugglers, and a drowned little boy, Stay Away From Lonely Places is an evocative and sensory tour exploring the secret histories hidden in some of Birmingham&#8217;s most overlooked architectural spaces and places.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s a little <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nPnA0lB5WNo\">promotional or news video<\/a> on the Fierce Festival performances of the Courtesan Tales. You get to hear a bit of one of the stories and see participant reactions.<\/li>\n<li>Nicole as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=X7jLYm7xlc0\">vampire geisha<\/a> in a music video.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So that&#8217;s lots of new stuff, including almost an hour of new audio. And the promise of more to come. I look upon this and see that it is good.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, since it amuses me, I should point out how I came to Nicole&#8217;s work. The first time I heard her was on the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Golden_Palominos\">Golden Palominos<\/a> album <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Dead-Inside-Golden-Palominos\/dp\/B000003BKX\">Dead Inside<\/a>, and the voice + the lyrics pretty much locked me down, but I had tracked down a copy of that CD with the intent of hearing Nicole. Why had I done that? Well, the answer is very geeky&#8211;a million years ago (in web time) font-master <a href=\"http:\/\/chank.com\/\">Chank<\/a> did a series of free fonts based on the handwriting of various rock types. One of those free fonts was &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/chank.com\/font_detail.php?sku=5623\">Darling Nikki<\/a>&#8216; (which you can&#8217;t&#8211;officially&#8211;get for free anymore, but which <a href=\"http:\/\/chank.com\/font_detail.php?sku=5623\">Chank still sells<\/a>) and something Chank said in his write-up on the original release made me curious about this Nicole Blackman person. I can&#8217;t remember exactly what it was, but whatever it was, it was enough to make me seek out the CD that made me a fan, and that lead to my seeking out quite a few other things as well. Yes, it&#8217;s because of a font.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Do you remember way back when I was lamenting my lack of knowledge of what Nicole Blackman was up to? And then she replied to the post, resulting my great blog-joy? Well, at the time she replied she pointed us to her story, &#8220;Dumped&#8221;, in Brooklyn Noir, and mentioned the current performances of the Courtesan Tales. While I didn&#8217;t manage&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/19\/i-want-matches-in-case-i-have-to-suddenly-burn\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-music","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-fi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}