Vintage Peter Pan

According to one of my students I look like peter pan in this outfit. I like the challenge of gender, but I'm feeling more Captain Cook (with my frilly sleeves and pirate skirt) than Pan. 

I wore this outfit to a button collective gig, and then to school the next day. I've not worn the blouse for a while, and I actually felt fresh and inspired by the outfit (instead of feeling like I was wearing a uniform) 

So the gig I played with the Button Collective wasn't just ye olde run of the mill mid week gig. It was actually a live stream (Which you can watch here!) Being live streamed is really strange. We had a physical audience sitting in front of us, and joining that audience was a bunch of cameras, which created a digital audience as well, but one that we weren't aware of until after the event had passed. 

Lets leave the life stuff for a bit and talk about tights for a second. Specifically sheer tights (This little rant may have been spurred on by Annika Victoria's latest Video). As you've probably noticed I wear a lot of tights. I have many different patterns, colours and textures in my collection and all of my tights that aren't sheer last forever. 

Sheer tights however rarely survive more than two or three wears before they become holy and ascend to heaven. I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but my tights alway start their ladders at the toes, specifically my big toe. Now, it may be longer than my other toes, but there's nothing especially sharp about my big toe that would cause tights to ladder. 

Shirt: Thrifted, Skirt Home Made, Belt: Thrifted, Tights: Coles, Shoes: so soft

So anyway, after the first wear of a new pair of sheer tights, there's a small ladder and hole by my big toe (which has usually cut off a little bit of circulation my this time) Upon the removal of my shoes I study the ladder, and deem it small enough for the "clear nailpolish trick" (Basically you attack the ladder with clear nailpolish in an attempt to stop it from getting any worse) Usually this lets me wear the tights a couple more times before the ladders spread up the rest of my legs and it's time to mourn the loss. 

Despite this I keep coming back! Probably because of all the pretty awesome unique styles of sheer tights. 

Second Chance Sunflowers

Panic! at the Disco are one of the few bands that I still love from my teenage years. A Fever You Can't Sweat Out introduced me to "heavy" music. (I know Panic's not heavy, but for a tiny classically trained Jen, it was super heavy) 

I remember when their second album came out. I was super excited for more of their baroque influenced rock/ whatever blend, but was quite disappointed when instead I was presented with the beetles-esque  orchestrated rock. I tried so very hard to like that album, but ultimately I gave up on it after a few months of it not quenching my thirst for their previous vibe. 

I've not listened to Pretty. Odd. since I was 16. It was in my thoughts after the release of the new Panic! at the disco album (which is a little hit and miss in my opinion) My music tastes have matured quite a bit since I was 16, so I decided to give Pretty. Odd another shot. 

I am so very glad I did. It's such a beautiful album. I particularly love the orchestration (although I wish they'd used real flutes/piccolo's/clarinets/oboes instead of synthesised ones).  My favourite track (which was one of my least favourite back in the day) is From a Mountain in the Middle of The Cabins. The details in the orchestration are superb, and are pretty similar to a lot of the music I've been getting into lately (Artists like Punch Brothers, My Brightest Diamond and Joanna Newsom that sit on the line between contemporary music, art music and folk) . 

Pretty. Odd. isn't the only album I revisited recently, and ended up loving all over again. About 4 months ago I started listening to Life in Cartoon Motion by Mika again. I originally liked this album well enough, but got sick of it. Again, I completely understand why. It wasn't the sound I was in love with at the time (and when you've only got 4 gigs of iPod space to work with, stuff gets culled regularly and mercilessly.) 

Something I've been thinking about putting together is a list of what's on my ipod with descriptions of the artists/links so you can hear what they sound like. I've got a rather eclectic collection of music, ranging from super well know peeps to those with less that 300 likes on facebook. So yeah, let me know if you'd be interested in this! 

Shirt: Revival, Pinafore: Home Made, Skirt: Home made, Socks: don't remember, Shoes: Store in Sydney near Max Brennar Wynyard.  

Deviating from the music I've been listening to - This is the outfit I wore tuesday. Originally when I put it together, I wasn't intending to have the second skirt underneath the pinafore. When I added the socks to the outfit, it looked unbalanced, so I popped the skirt underneath. It made everything super flouncy, as well as adding much needed colour balance. 

Bringing in the New Year!

Merry 2016 (for 9 days ago!). It's been a whirlwind fortnight since I last posted. My blog broke (TLDR I failed at running my server correctly, and would have had to spend more cash than I would have liked to keep it self hosted, so I jumped ship to squarespace. I still have a few things to do to clean my new blog home up, but it won't be crashing anymore!), then The Button Collective (a band what I play flute in) performed at Falls Festival, and had an EP launch in Lismore (You can stream the EP here. There will be a digital release next month, which I'll link to in the future)

Because Button Collective have been away for so long, I had to pack (what I like to call) a "tour pack" which is basically light weight comfy dresses ( usually 5 or 6 which can be worn multiple times), safety tights (i.e tights which some may wear as pants) a jacket, and a performance outfit. Mostly my outfits over the fortnight were utilitarian, the exception being when we had a gig. I only managed to get one photograph of my performance gear (thanks to Brodie <3) as we were busy when I was dressed well, and felt too daggy when we were free.

There are 3 Falls Festival locations in Australia - Somewhere in Victoria, somewhere in Tasmania, and Byron Bay (which is the one we played) The festival was open for four days, from the 30th of December, to the 2nd of January (although, the main stages were only active for 3). We played 2 gigs a day for all 4 days, which was equal parts awesome and exhausting (we also managed to picked up an incredibly lovely and supportive group of young men who came to all of the main gigs)

Although I spent most of my time in the camp grounds, and the village area (which was the place we were gigging in) I did manage to catch a few of the main stage acts I was interested in seeing: Weird Al Yankovic (Who performed fabulously, but was drenched in nostalgia and gimmicks) Hiatus Kaiyote (These guys were interesting. I really appreciated there musicality, but they're not my cup of tea) and Birds of Tokyo ( I was really into them when I was 15/16, before they released March Fires. There performance at Falls was stiff and overly rehearsed, and all of their newer material was pretty boring.)

The musical highlights for me were all contained in the village area. There was Vardos, a trio of strong brilliant women performing eastern European virtuosic folk music,  Merryn Jeann
a wistful songwriter and beautiful guitar player (I was lucky enough to jam with her at one of her gigs.) and a female DJ (who I didn't get the name of). I came across her on the last evening, just before the last band of the festival finished up. She started her set with an empty dance floor, but completely owned the emptiness, dancing to the music she was playing and altering. Lastly there was Liam Power, who isn't actually a musician (but was a highlight none the less). He's magician, and performed small, but wickedly clever tricks.

This was the only decent photo I took at falls (I felt a bit self conscious with my camera, and my lenses weren't suitable for the situations I would have been shooting in anyway).

After falls we retreated to Brodie's parents house, where we pretty much remained until the Lismore EP launch.

The rooftop in the daylight before all the people came.

We had the gig on a friends rooftop, which fitted a large number of people for such a tiny space. The gig commenced at 7, which at the moment is just before sunset, making for a spectacular backdrop to the opening musicians. 

This is Ben Wilson and Jake Pembar, who make up part of Ben Wilson and the Job Seekers (these fabulous people also play Bass and Banjo in the Button Collective). They opened the night with Ben's awesome music (which is kind of folky, kind of Americana. IDK, I suck at describing music, and my descriptions definitely don't do Ben's music justice).

Two of Four Scrimshaw boys music-ing it up

Scrimshaw Four were the Jazzy/ Jugband-y middle to the folk sandwich. They're a 5ish piece Melbourne based band. I thoroughly enjoyed their set. All of there originals were well composed and flawless, and all of their covers were brilliantly arranged (particularly their jazz standards).

Buttons finished the evening. The boys were a tad tipsy, and the set was quite loose, but we had a bunch of fun, and an absolutely brilliant crowd. For anyone who's in sydney over the coming months, and enjoys our music, I suggest you take a peek at our facebook as we've got quite a few gigs in the area.

I also have a ton of other photo's from the EP launch, which you can find on my own facebook page (if you're interested!)