Drinking Songs for Dirty Blondes – introduction #1
Drinking Songs for Dirty Blondes by Sandy Shore and Mrs. F***
It all started on a Tuesday night, when Tuesday Knight saw the first light of day. What colour her hair was, (or if she had any hair at all at that time), is not known. But at the age of three, she had a mass of fair curls surrounding her little baby face. As the years went by, her hair grew steadily darker, until one day, she had become – a dirty blonde. So dirty, that some might even call her a brunette.
During these years she developed a taste for drinking beer and listening to rock & roll. She bought her first bass guitar – a Rickenbacker – and formed The Blind Bats with her close friends. Mind you, this wasn’t a rock band, but more of a jingly jangly indie pop band. It became evident that there was a poetic mind under those dirty blonde curls, so Tuesday started writing lyrics.
In the studio, The Blind Bats recorded some lovely and quite imaginative tunes with lyrics that gave them an extensive fanbase, and fan mail started pouring in from all over the world. At one point, The Blind Bats were the top selling band on Perfect Pop, outselling both Astroburger and The Time Lodgers. They even played a gig with Television Personalities at Last Train! It was an unforgettable night…at least for them. Unfortunately, their gigs didn’t always go as planned, resulting in an unfair amount of criticism. Sure, being in the band was fun and all, but it was also a pain to play gig after gig not hearing a damn thing of what you were doing. This, along with a lot of other screw-ups on stage caused the band to break up – like so many bands before them. It was a Spinal Tap moment to be sure…
Years passed, and Tuesday was still without a band. This was a drag for her, because she felt the need to unleash her creativity and play the songs and lyrics she had written over the years. So finally, after all this time in a limbo of frustration, she formed her next band, The Vacuum Dreamers. Rehearsing and recording albums was all that mattered now – playing live was completely out of the question. The Vacuum Dreamers gave Tuesday the chance to show how her songwriting had evolved from jingle pop into beautiful songs intertwined with her ethereal voice. The Vacuum Dreamers lasted a few years, but in the end they broke up due to irreconcilable differences – another Spinal Tap moment…
Again, not actively playing music, Tuesday was bored out of her mind without a band. So she started the duo Frequency TV with The Vacuum Dreamers’ faithful technician Vidar Osmundsen, formerly of The Chairs. Finally, Tuesday could once again go on singing her lyrics and writing songs, while Vidar provided the instrumental background.
Through all these years in different bands, Tuesday has produced lyrics about joy, disappointment and everything in between, written with humour – or sometimes written with a vengeance.
Here’s a small selection of these lyrics, with drawings by the talented and award-winning illustrator Ronny Haugeland – Drinking Songs for Dirty Blondes. Cheers!