So here I am once again submerging my unconscious self on a whatever-the-neverwalked-before-neighbor I’m going through, on a windy rainy full midnight dark 4pm afternoon.
It’s Christmas season and all the houses surrounding me are depressively decorated with giant inflatable Santas and this makes me feel I’m transiting some sort of Harmony Korine’s Xmas film set.
I’m walking in circles for about 40 minutes. I can’t find the house of Ghost Car. This makes me feel I’m going to the Ghost House of the Ghost Girls. After calling the girls about 3 or 4 times and texting them and everything I’m starting to feel like in one way or another I’d traveled to another dimension and I am a human body wandering around a Ghost Neighbour. Everyone is out there having fun, talking about Christmas and stuff, and I am invisible to them, to the ghosts.
My phone rings, “I’m safe” I say to myself. It’s Maria, the bass player and lead singer from Ghost Car, she says her phone was dead and apologises and gives me the correct address.
Maria is super hangover. Yesterday she went blind by alcohol in this Xmas dinner party she had with her colleagues from work. ‘I was dancing like this” she says and she starts moving the body like a Daddy Yankee dancer, doing the perreo, and I can see she has bruises all over her legs and arms. She says she doesn’t remember how it happened and what exactly happened yesterday. Moon Duo is sounding through the portable turntable and I can smell something really tasty coming from the kitchen. Clara, the keyboard player from Ghost Car, is cooking a spanish paella. ‘Now is my turn. Tonight I have my work’s Xmas dinner party and we’ve been told to bring some typical regional food of the country we are from’ and all I can think when she speaks in tongues is in trying that spanish paella, oh my gosh, it looks so good.
‘And you know what Tia? This morning I saw Bob at the station’ says Maria, ‘after watching his documentary twice I find him at the station’ she says this full of excitement. I ask her ‘Bob who? the Twin Peaks one?’ and suddenly I take a look at the room: it has a grey carpet, two red velvet sofas, a small table with a half played chess game on top, the room is full of dvd’s and vinyl records, there is a remote control helicopter close to a super 8 camera, but what frightened me most is the massive red velvet curtain. Suddenly I feel cold and the tea I’m drinking goes cold. Maria continues talking about Bob and I feel I’m inside the Black Lodge. Who the fuck is Bob?
‘He is a (…)’
The girls are talking about Bob with such an amazement and instead of being afraid they feel completely fine with the idea of having him sleeping in the living room. So I ask them if they are afraid of anything at all, like ghosts or cars.
‘I am afraid of cars’ Clara says, ‘I’m afraid of accidents and death but, ghost? I’m completely fine with them, I wish I can meet a ghost, that would be cool.
Which car would be the Ghost Car?’
‘The 4CV from the 60s’ says Clara.
Maybe the Ghost Car comes in 2016, and talking about the new plans, the girls say they are working on some new songs, they want to release an EP with the new line up. The former guitarist has been replaced not so long ago with this new girl called Maeve, who has given a more punky sound to the band, and they want to project that new energy into their studio material.
The girls start talking about how the band is now being more twinned than ever. Together they go to car boot sales and to punk gigs and I ask them how do they see the current music scene in London, if there is some kind of brotherhood in between bands like in the past or if it is more like random bands sharing stage, and, a bit sadly, with disappointment, they say ‘we don’t feel there is like a brotherhood in the music scene, it is more like bands playing together and that’s it.’ GC released their music through Flexi Discos (a Spanish record label) and so I ask them if they have friend bands over there, like what about if the band would be based in Spain, if this kind of things would be different, ‘no’ says Clara, ‘we have friends that have bands in Spain but we don’t really feel a musical connection with them, for our type of music London is the place to be, and, I think, sooner or later things are going to change for good. Valencia is really small and you get to know everyone and that’s it more or less, but London is really big, so you constantly get to know new people, like the other day we played at the Windmill in Brixton and we were staring at the dancing crowd full of faces we never saw before, and you are like ‘that guy, who is not my friend from school, is singing my songs’ that feeling is pure happiness.
‘Yes’ says Maria ‘my favourite feeling is to see all this people singing my songs and moshing around. All I want in life is to provoke that.’
People say a band is like a marriage, I can’t stop thinking about how a marriage between 4 girls would be like.
‘I love the idea of having an all girls band’ says Clara, ‘I’ve always been fascinated with the all girls band from the sixties and I always wanted to play in one. Actually, to have an all girls band, is really cool because you have that girl connection, I can write a lyric about having a crush on someone and the rest of the band immediately understand my lyrics. Or for example when we watch the tv one of those awful news about female abuse we all feel the same and we grab a pen and start writing a lyric. We are not feminists’ Clara answer when I ask her, ‘we are not extreme feminists, maybe just enough.’
I really feel like smoking some grass and it feels like Maria reads my mind because suddenly she asks me if I want to smoke and we move to the kitchen and Clara remembers she needs to finish the paella so she goes back to work and oh, that paella looks so so good and I find myself completely high and I’m surrounded by Xmas lights and I ask Clara what is she going to give to Maria for Xmas. ‘I think a record, and a photograph. I don’t have much money, so I can’t afford anything else, but I like doing photos and besides I think its a nice present. Have you seen the cover art of our EP? I took that picture.’
Once we are high and the paella is cooked we go back to the living room, and Maria changes the record. Intro Goth from Wavves starts sounding. ‘I really like this record’ I say, while I’m lighting a Marlboro Light. ‘What’s your let’s-have-sex sountrack?’ I ask the girls. ‘Definitely is Jesus And Mary Chain’ both of them agree. ‘You should do a cover of Jesus And Mary Chain and have an orgasm on stage’ we all laugh, Clara says ‘that would be really cool’. I agree and I wonder if I’m ever going to quit smoking, lately Marlboro tastes so bad, the room is full of smoke, and Nathan sings ‘I know I’m a loser’. I hope one of these days I write a song as hot as I Hate Rock & Roll.
But who needs old-fashioned rockstars when you can hang out with the modern lovers?. I want Ghost Car sounding through my stereo while I’m making love to my girl.
Advice from me, advice to your younger sister, advice to the world: “Do whatever you feel like doing and you are going to be alright.’ This girls have left Spain and they came to England, alone, in search of adventures, and after listening to their music, after spending an afternoon at the Ghost House, I can tell they found what they where looking for, or at least they are in the right direction. ‘Keep on moving, trust yourself, don’t let the ‘buts’ interfere with your plans and follow your heart, and you will get what you want.’
Clara and Maria in the shadows no more.
Listen to Ghost Car above:
Text and photos by Nico Wussy.
