Ruth PO!

At an indiepop festival, a friend asked me,  'Is that the theme? Do all indiepop bands have to have females in them?' My answer? 'No, you don't have to have females for a band to be indiepop; it often just seems to happen like that.' Getting to basics, indiepop has three core elements: The punk ethic that anyone can form a band and be listened to. A joy and wonder in the world reflected in tuneful, often simple songs. Small-scale media publicity via word of mouth, fanzines, blogs, podcasts and mixtapes. The toy industry's idea of an 'indie-girl' Being male or female has nothing to do with these; it's just that indiepop doesn't set itself up as a boy's club. Women and girls may feel more willing to have a go within this genre, feeling that their ideas are welcomed. I guess that the child-like joy and wonder thing often correlates with middle-class decency and romanticism, which is why so many indiepop bands look like a bunch o...

This is a ridiculous question. How could there be a female guitar style? People are people. There's no female way of eating, or sleeping, or going to the toilet.... hang on a minute. The proportion of female to male guitarists is tiny; there are very few females whose playing is considered noteworthy. I think there's two issues going on. 1. Confidence 2. Lack of ownership I'll start with lack of ownership. Modern guitarring is usually about churning out lightning-speed blues runs. It needs a lot of practice and a strong wrist. Boys are often more dedicated to putting in the time with this kind of activity. The hobby/collector/trainspotter mentality runs through guitarring, too. The memorising of names that could be lorries or amplifiers ACs and JCs, the discussions about the merits of digital, analogue, diesel. I find that my memory doesn't tend to hold these numbers and letters easily. BUT I DO KNOW WHAT I LIKE. I won't even mention the guitar as penis...

My blogging history of PO! got stuck around 1989. That's when 'Little Stones' was made. I'm hoping to re-release it soon, so here's a little information about it.  PO!'s first album, Little Stones, was recorded by Terri Lowe of The Originals on his  Tascam 1/4" reel to reel 4-track machine at a cost of £20. Members of The Originals played the backing tracks, recorded at Leicester's Chatham Street basement. This was because the former members of PO! had left me with with no musicians. The vocals, extra guitars and other instruments were recorded at the Originals' house on Aylestone Road (on the corner of Rutland Avenue) over a number of weekends when there were no Leicester City home matches. (Terri Lowe went to the home games).  I had written most of the songs over a period of a few months. Usually I composed on acoustic guitar with a pad and pen to write down chords and vocal melodies down before evolving the lyrics. I can remember livin...

This post is written for anyone attending Indietracks festival this weekend 29-31st July 2016. It always seems a shame when there's so much choice of what to go and see and you might miss something good if you haven't got your schedule totally organised. But then again, there's the serendipity of discovering something worthwhile - and hopefully that will happen for me.  Back in 1986, the must-read music paper of the day, the NME, printed a number of editions with free cassette compilations. The start of the indie-pop movement is often attributed to C86, which was one of these cassettes.  The following year, I formed the band PO! My motivations were largely feminist anger at a harsh world, but there was no Riot Grrrl then and I was probably too nice. I also did like singable tunes and wordsmithery so indie-pop was the genre that fitted best of all. If you didn't listen to the lyrics, you might be cheered by the soaring and jangly tunes, but the words are often mo...

I'm just about to put together a website and make PO! songs available in a digital and physical way again. It might take me a few months, but I'm determined to do it. In the days when letters came through the post and I parceled up cardboard on a daily basis, it was fun to run a record label, but I guess it can be just as fun with instant downloady technology, analytics and 'likes'. Just got to get used to it, that's all.  In the meantime, here are links to all the tracks I can find online at present:  A Page A Day  Northern Wonder Danny's Girl Your Shout Appleseed Alley  I Took My Head on a Date Sunday Never Comes Around   Treasure Haunt You Fay  Good Behaviour  Jacqueline's House Things That Might      https://soundcloud.com/user-795124448/things-that-might Bus Shelter .... in the Rain   https://soundcloud.com/user-795124448/bus-shelter-in-the-...

Before I had cancer treatment, I had retired from music. I wrote in my blog that it would be unlikely that I would ever play with  PO! again; I was too old, nobody would want it and it just seemed a crappy thing to do.  But after having a whole body and hair reboot, the idea of making music with friends just seems like a fantastic idea, because making music IS fantastic. If nobody wants to listen then they don't have to, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, because I could have died and not had this opportunity.  Strangely though, my interest seems to be coinciding with other people's interest in PO! Some are old fans whose names I know from the old mail order business; others are much younger people who have grown up with Japanese fanzines and Spanish vinyl and somehow know that PO! are part of the indie-pop furniture. 2016 got off to a good start when Mark Hibbett emailed and asked me to play a gig at Totally Acoustic in London. A few weeks later, Mari...

My first experience of seeing a band rehearse was in Newark, Nottinghamshire when I was about 15. Before that, I had never considered that a group might need to play their songs over and over again with a bit of arguing, blaming and shouting in between. At the end of the '70s, there were two significant rock bands in Newark: Paralex and Overlord. Although I was too much of a punk to admire the hard rock of these bands, the different youth cultures tended to mix together in such a small town. Paralex were the first band I ever saw rehearsing. They went on to join New Wave of British Heavy Metal One Sunday afternoon in the late 1970s, someone took me and a friend to see one of these bands rehearse - I tend to think it was Paralex. The rehearsal took place in a small detached bungalow. Each member of the band was in a different room, with cables running down the hallway. The noise was unbearably loud, even as we walked up the road, but worse still inside. Looking back,...