Front of our apartment

Paris makes me use the internet more.  This happened last time we were here.  I was on Friendster quite a bit.   Now I want to actually write about my experiences and observations about this place.  Perhaps that’s what is meant by “blog.”  I’ve always been afraid of that concept and word, but now I’m just going for it.

Kitchen table view

I don’t actually think that this is the most beautiful city in the world or anything.  It’s just not quite my style.  I like the ruins of Rome, how every building looks like it’s faux finished and then I’m like, oh yeah, this is what faux finish is based on.  I like that more than this orderly wrought iron.  That said, there are a lot of great things here.  I am definitely at a disadvantage because I don’t speak French, but whose fault is that?  I should have bothered to learn more.  Anyway, I spend all day exploring and here are some of the things I’ve noticed.

- There’s a subway car (Metro) pretty much every 3 minutes.  They aren’t long cars but they are very frequent.  It’s so nice to never really wait.  I have a monthly pass that cost me something like $67.  Add 30% plus exchange rate and the 1% Visa attaches to everything and that adds up to be a pretty expensive card.  But it’s so pleasant and convenient and they sell hot pain au chocolate in the station.  Not suspicious churros covered in Saran Wrap.  No, hot fresh chocolate croissants right out of the oven.  Now that’s nice.

- Cheese, fennel, the most delicious mustard in the world and Belgian endive are soooooo cheap here. That fancy grey salt you pay so much for at Whole Foods?  Two euros for a big bag. But, for some reason, baking soda is pricey.

Maille mustard display

- Check-out lines are not fast.  These cashiers are not at all concerned with speed.  They are sitting down and they are taking their sweet time.  All of them.  Not sure what I think about that.

- It’s a big city full of uneven ground.  So you gotta look where you walk.  But you don’t want to look where you walk because the contents of every dog’s bowels and every phlegmatic’s lungs are on display on the sidewalk every two inches.  It is really gross.  Grosser than NYC, even.  Certainly way grosser than Austin.

Also right outside the front door

- The coffee here is merely adequate.  But the tea is divine.  They really have their tea down! Giant leaves that plump up so nicely in the basket and impart the freshest flavor.  And for not a lot of money.  London is such a teabag town.  Paris is fantastic loose tea at a reasonable price.

- They have really cute little cars.  They even have electric cars that are somehow for rent on the street.  Like I said, I don’t understand French.  But they’ve got MG Midgets (which are so tiny) and other adorable foreign vehicles that are interesting and small.  And lots of cool motorcycles with giant windshields that come with a blanket to spread out on your lap.  As well as this citywide commuter bike rental thing where you put in a bankcard and you can unlock a cool looking bike that’s free for the first 30 minutes.  But the stinky car exhaust smell is a lot worse now than it was when we were here eight years ago.

Gorgeousness abounds

- OMG, the stationary stores!  Can we talk?!  They love their paper and their envelopes and their fountain pens here.  I never get tired of looking at the gorgeous assortment available on practically every city block.  They have tons of these envelopes I’m in love with that you just can’t get back in the States.  At least, I can never find them.  And they’re 70 cents here.  They have fountain pens, real fountain pens (plume) for 3 euros!  And the best paper for writing on with a fountain pen.  It’s such a pleasure.  In addition to using the internet a lot, I’ve been writing and drawing a lot, too.  If only Austin had just one of these stores.  They have so many of them here.  Surely Paris could spare one Gibert Jeune.

-Style-wise things have really changed since we lived here eight years ago.  The ladies have, thankfully, loosened up.  Lots more grey hair, so I don’t stand out as much.  And fewer bows on everything.  Jesus, it was so hard to just find a regular girl to look at last time.  The French women just appeared hyper feminine in a way that was too frou-frou to be interesting to me.  Now they just look normal.  Good even.

- I was walking down this garment district street the other day and right there in the middle of the day I passed three prostitutes just standing outside of shops.  I was thrown off by the first one, she had on a fur coat and some fishnets and her leg was being displayed provocatively and I really didn’t know what to make of her.  Was there just some pretty, rich lady who’d gotten lost in this district and was waiting for her ride to show up with more of her clothes or something?  Then I passed another woman who was just standing outside of a shop displaying leg.  And when I passed the third one I realized what was going on.  If these women had been playing Parisian prostitutes in a movie you would have said it was too cliché and unbelievable.  And no one was paying any attention to them.  It was amazing.

These are my observations thus far.  It’s literally freezing here and I bought new boots that squeeze my feet to death.  But still, I’m out there pounding the pavement every day to soak up all that Paris has to offer that I can take.  I will, perhaps, keep you posted.

Eiffel tower at sunset

And here is the best news, we put this baby out on vinyl.  Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, purple vinyl.  It’s kindof lavender, but also really more like purple.  But you get the picture.  Now actually hold the precious object in your hands!  Every LP comes with a download card, so you don’t have to digitalize each track, we’ve done that for you.  You can just put this baby onto your turntable and get your gay (or gay friendly) party started.  I love this record.  Big shout-out to Aimee Norwich who brilliantly produced it.  She put the flesh and the muscle and the hair onto the bare bones.  And another huge shout-out to Scott Anthony at the Viewing Room who mastered it.  This is my third project with Scott and I really love working with him.

So, how do you go about getting this release, you may ask?  It’s available on iTunes, Amazon, via my eStore at TheConnextion, all of the usual suspects for downloading music.  And if you want to buy the gorgeous vinyl you can hold in your hand and treasure for a lifetime, that is available thru my eStore at TheConnextion.  And people, this thing is not an expensive purchase.  It’s ridiculously affordable.  Why?  Because I’m nostalgic.  When I was young I tended to spend about $6 on new vinyl and sometimes I went way out on a limb and bought it for $10.  I have never gotten over those prices.  That’s how much this stuff costs in my mind.  So, due to the fact that I’m living in the past, you don’t actually have to pay current prices today.  $10 for the LP.  On purple vinyl.  Gorgeous art by Dave.  Here’s the inspiration:

So, what are you waiting for?  You don’t even have to move from this very device that you’re using to read this blog.  Technology today is incredible.  You used to have to drive to the record store.  Now you can just sit on your ass and download this puppy, or order the LP and start dancing and singing along.  We want you to enjoy our original disco anthems.  We’re very pleased with what we have to offer you this holiday season.

Guess what?  I’ve cooked up a merchandise deal!  I have never done this before, but I really like it.  You know how I have been making merchandise of various forms for a super long time?  Like for decades?  And that a whole lot of it is out-of-print and inaccessible?  Well, I decided to reissue one of my favorite T-shirt designs ever: the Two Nice Girls Heavy Meddle shirt that was all but unwearable back in the early ’90s due to the bullet-proof sheet of plastic silkscreen that made up the design.  It was uncomfortable and it made your chest sweat.

But chests will sweat no longer!  Now this shirt is super soft and the image is pliable.  And let’s talk about the image for a minute, shall we?  I asked Meg Hentges to please design a female skull on a sheet of flames and she did.  We know that the skull is female because of her eyelashes, lipstick and beauty mark.  Pure genius, Meg.  Plus there’s nothing like that crazy font that says, “I’m all doom and gloom and going to get Medieval on your ass.”  No, Two Nice Girls was not just a pretty folk band, ok?  People, I’m super psyched that this shirt is available again in a new and improved form.

You can buy one for $10, (which is $5 cheaper than it was in 1991.)  Or, you can buy two $10 CDs and get this shirt for free.  Yes, you heard me right.  And I have a bunch of sizes, including XXXL, so no one should be left out of this amazing offer.  Hmmmm, so which ones are the $10 CDs you may ask?  Gretchen Phillips Ministries Seitan Is Real, Phillips&Driver Togetherness, and my most recent solo release I Was Just Comforting Her. Excellent choices, all.

Here’s a merch deal that would make a mighty fine gift idea.  Just saying.

My dad, Paul Phillips

Thank you so much, Chepo Pena, my beloved webmaster!  And all-round good guy and rockstar/artist.  I needed an update on this puppy and once again he delivered the goods.  Let’s see how this plays itself out now.

Hello people, welcome to my world.  A hell of a lot has been happening in my life.  Changes big and small, glad and sad.  My father, Paul Phillips, died in November.  Dad taught me how to play stringed instruments.  He was always totally encouraging of my musical pursuits and he was very proud of me, even when he didn’t really understand the relentless lesbianism of my work.  Phillips&Driver’s Togetherness was his favorite album of mine.  He told me that there was nothing that he would change on it, high praise indeed coming from him.

My sister and I helped him go thru his chemo in 2010 and then we helped him go into hospice and then we helped him die.  It was amazing.  I’ve never really been afraid of dying before, but now I’m really not afraid.  I feel very lucky that I was there to witness it.  And it was also very exhausting.  And then in January I cleaned out his whole house which was super-filled with interesting stuff.  And that was also exhausting.

Phillips&Driver's New One!

In the midst of all of this David Driver and I have been putting the finishing touches on our new album, Disco Dance Party 2000. We are going to release it on colored vinyl!  And on download cards made out of recycled paper and sunflower seeds that you can plant in the ground once you’ve downloaded this awesome new baby!  And I am working on reissuing the next batch of out-of-print gems, like the first Girls in the Nose cassette.  But this time it won’t be on cassette.  It will be on one of the new forms of media.

I just returned to Austin from a month in NYC.  That was a lot of fun.  I had the immense pleasure of playing with Kay Turner again, ably assisted by the amazing Viva DeConcini in Brooklyn, NY.  That was a blast.  And damnit, people need to be able to hear that music again, or even for the first time.  I saw some people’s minds blown as we launched into Meat, Bite Me, and Starpower.  Kay Turner never gives less than 1,000,000%.

While in NY I went to an Alexander McQueen show (amazing), Louise Bourgeois, Normal Heart, Thurston Moore, Our Hit Parade, Justin Vivian Bond, Erin McKeown, Printed Matter, Uniqlo, Burlington Coat Factory, DJ Rekha on the pier in Brooklyn, Jennifer Miller’s newest crazy-thing, Holly Hughes and more stuff than I’ll be able to remember.  What a great town.  But noisy.  Oh so noisy.  It made living by the freeway in Austin seem quiet in comparison to all of the drunken revelers who haunt every single street in NY.

Now I’m back in Austin and it’s good to be here, even tho it’s one million degrees.

Had a fantastic show in College Station last night with my disco improv band Gretchen’s Disco Plague (It’s Infectious!).  One of the funnest shows I’ve ever had in my life.  I was grinning my head off.  We played for a group of media professors and they just got down and danced and sang and had a great time.  We created a moment, or several moments, really.  Then it was time for the bus to take them back to their conference hotel and they just soul trained out of the room.  Perfect.  I love professors so much.  You know that great thing that Jane Gallup said when asked her sexual preference?  She said, “Grad students.”  I’d say that my answer is professors.

We have some more Gretchen’s Disco Plague (It’s Infectious!) shows coming up and I couldn’t be happier.  It’ll be my first time playing at Cheer Up Charlie’s and my third time playing at the mighty Elysium.  A famous Austin venue that has changed hands many times since I’ve been here, but which once housed the club wherein I saw Sonic Youth on their amazing Sister tour.

I’m going back and forth to Houston all the time this Fall.  Because my dad is very sick.  OK, there, I’ve shared it.  With all the people of the world wide web.  My dad is sick and in hospice and I go hang out with him every week and we have fun and are close.  It’s pretty amazing to get to do this.  But it’s also hard.  It has taken a bite out of my furniture making and my job at IF+D.  But I’m doing really important work and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I’m actually quite psyched about it.  But it’s a lot of work.  On many levels.

But what I really want to say is that the new Phillips & Driver album – Disco Dance Party 2000 – has been mastered and is close to hitting stores.  Except it won’t really hit stores, it will most likely hit the world wide web world of downloads with perhaps a very few actual copies of a document that you can hold in your hands being manufactured.  Oh, for the times they are a’changing.  Anywho, (I’ve never used that phrase before, but I did just really enjoy it), I’ll allegedly keep you posted about the progress of this magnificent new release that will hopefully get you dancing and will, in fact, actually change your life.

That’s it for now.  Gotta go get some sort of exercise.

I’m totally in love with my disco improv band: Gretchen’s Disco Plague (It’s Infectious!).  I have a great rotating cast of co-horts from way back in the day to only just yesterday, and we wear stylish outfits and make up songs on the spot.  I’ve long wanted to have this band and now that I do have it, um yeah….I did always want to have this.  It’s just so awesome to be inside of the creation of the music in this way.  Edgy.  I like that.  Does “edgy” not have an “e?”  Hmmmm, why not?  English is hard.

I actually tutored a 10 year old in long division today.  If only my parents could have seen that one, they wouldn’t have believed it.  I thought I did a great job, personally.  I was surprised.

I’ve been making furniture like crazy.  It’s just so awesome, people.  Talk about infectious.  I dream about sanding and making mortises and tenons and furniture design and just being in the middle of the process, I dream about it all of the time.  Of course, when I was a dishwasher I dreamt of washing dishes all the time.  So maybe it’s like that.  But whatever.  It’s super fun, super great.  I’ll post some more stuff as I complete it.  I can tend to be a bit of an 85% completer person instead of doing it all the way.  I’m working on that, tho.

I recorded a Sara Hickman song for the new Sara Hickman tribute album that she commissioned.  Why didn’t I think of that?  Oh yeah, I did.  Anyway I got to work with my beloved Rob Halverson again, the guy I made I Was Just Comforting Her with.  What a pleasure it was to be back in the studio with him.  Really reminded me of what I love about getting the chance to make music.

School is about to end and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m ready to have my life back.  School really takes up time, no one reminded me of that fact.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.  I’m sleepy.  I’m going to post this so I don’t feel like such a loser about never updating my website.  I do love this website, it’s not like I don’t.  I guess I’ve just been busy.

And you?  How are you?

Is it a good idea to put up a photo where I look that geeky?  The answer is “yes” if the geekiness is due to my vicinity to Leslie Hall.  Where I’m in one of her costumes.  Because I just performed with her, malfunctioning costume and all.  Yes.  It was as awsome as you could imagine.

Say, do you like Amy Ray?  Do you like Sia?  Do you like Patrice Pike?  I ask because I performed with them, too.  Take my word for it, this Michigan it was very good to be Gretchen Phillips.

Then, it was time to return to Austin and start school.  You know, I never went to college.  I just formed successful bands right out of high school and didn’t take the time out to continue my institutional studies.  I’m more of an autodidact.  But the last couple of years have found me really hankering to learn woodworking, specifically as applied to furniture making.  So I’ve been going to the community college and studying up.  I love it.  This semester I’m in two classes: Welding Using Multiple Processes and Intermediate Woodworking.  Both are fantastic.  Thus far I am terrible at welding and being terrible at stuff is actually pretty great for me.  There’s so much to learn inside of not being proficient yet.  I don’t want to just do stuff I’m good at for the rest of my life.  I want to learn new things, too.  And apparently I’m not instantly great at welding just because I want to be.  There’s a learning curve and I’m in the middle of it.  But I’m really enjoying it.  It’s humbling.  I probably need that.

I also got a day job, which is not something that I often do.  I’m enjoying this one so much more than most of my day jobs.  I work at my favorite furniture store in Austin,IF+D.  And I’m also about to begin an apprenticeship at my favorite woodworking shop.  But I don’t want to potentially jinx it by giving too much away before I start, so I’ll just leave it at that.  Oh, and I’ll show you a picture of something that I’ve made already:

I worked on the table with my buddy, Thor.  He’s in Shearwater.  We’re also in A Joy Division Cover Band together.  He knows alot about a whole lot of things.  So, I modeled this table after one I saw in New Zealand.  The top is recycled oak flooring and the apron and legs are oak, mesquite, cedar and maple.  Ann and I eat on this table all of the time.  I have lots of designs in my head that I want to produce once I gain the skills and access to tools.  Making stuff is fun.  And I’m also in the midst of editing the Manlove show in order to send it out to various performance spaces. I very much look forward to presenting this show again.  Somewhere other than Austin.  And I’m also in the beginning stages of creating my publishing empire.  Stay tuned.

The other big news is that I feel fully recovered from my hysterectomy and am working out a lot and feeling better than I have in years.  I like to bike, do yoga and Pilates and not drink beer all of the time.  Who knew?