This is a happy song about being a loser. ‘A Feast in Time of Plague’ kind.
The emotion, I bet, the most of unsigned musicians are familiar with. You put on your stage costume in a crappy toilet cabin at some bar, and play in front of five people, and you have to raise your voice to shout them down, and you have to pretend you are ok.
A professional. A true artist.
And as you seem to be the only person who enjoys this show, you start thinking you’ve probably turned the wrong way a couple of times in this life, but you are not going back, because, for some perverted reason, you love this life.
Bourbon Street Bar is a real bar in the center of Moscow, and there’s a tiny stage I learned how to perform on. There used to be blues jams every Tuesday many years ago, and when it was -25c outside, I could be the only participant, so I had a chance to sing two proper sets.
When I was 18, I watched Queen VHS video tapes every day. And those biographies! A guy from an exotic country comes to the UK, and his fellow student takes him to rehearsals of his band, with Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums… Doesn’t it sound like it was meant to be? I don’t believe in destiny anymore.
In music things never go the way I plan. And when I went to the UK at the age of 21, I ended up sleeping rough, and had to go back to Moscow, and everyone I knew told me how stupid I was. They were right. And, believe me, if somewhere, in the far tine corner of my brain I had a vague concept of myself doing something else but music, I would be doing something else.
I make music with my husband Denis. Actually, it’s better than having a band, we don’t have to look up to anyone’s bizarre opinion.
We went to London to record this song. We are still paying back the money we borrowed to do it, but during those two trips to the UK in 2017, we tasted blood, and we want more.
We were living the lives of real musicians during several weeks, and were only doing what musicians do – we were playing gigs and making records.
We still receive emails from promoters, offering us to come and play. If only we could come.
What we want is to live and work in Europe. This is all we want. In the West, in a broad sense. Europe is close, but to this day I grin every time I think about how we’re going to achieve this.
You all know how hard it is to succeed as a musician. Add rate of the Russian ruble, distance, language, visas, and you’ll get hopelessness.
But we’ll give it a try, Bourbon Street Bar is still where it was.
LINKS
WEBSITE: https://www.julianastrangelove.com/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/weloveyoujools
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/joolslools/
