Page 36 - Phonebox Magazine April 2010

At last Spring is in the air! After all the floods, blizzards, big freezes (our truly British weather), I thought I should check to see if all my fingers and toes remain intact. The good news is they are and with this reassurance I can guarantee myself a summer of dancing to some our finest local sounds which we will feature much more in next months Buzz. In the meantime thereʼs an update on the progress of Melissa Lucas whoʼs been talking record contracts in New York and I leave you in the thought provoking company of Mr Chris Dobbs. Enjoy! Mark Stevenson
www.newport-pagnell-carnival.co.uk
Dobbsyʼs Article
Melissa Lucas
For those eager beavers that are reading this on the first of the month, itʼs April fools day. The only day of the year when we have carte blanche to play practical jokes on those we think deserve or will appreciate it. We normally donʼt though, as itʼs never that well received. Itʼs a bit of a farce as far as being a day on the calendar with special writing on it goes.
managed to speak with mum manager Nicky to get the low down. “Melissa was invited to New York to meet with major record companies and two have shown a lot of interest, both Sony and Universal.
We all have multiple roles to play in our lives and though you may be a fool for someone in particular, one personʼs fool is another personʼs master, just as one manʼs rubbish is another manʼs breakfast. We are sometimes the rake and sometimes the star. But the differing roles we play are more complex than correspondingly relative hierarchies. If you met your boss under different circumstances and he or she spoke down to you, as perhaps they do at work, you might find yourself giving them a good old fashioned whacking with the business end of your love hand, whereas the office environment just doesnʼt allow for that.
Those of you who read the Buzz regularly will be familiar with Melissa, a local MK girl who looks destined to become a star music performer. The Phonebox
We have all played the fool at one time or another though or have been somebody elseʼs fool in some perverse way. For some itʼs the foundation for a lasting marriage that offers security and stability in return for ongoing psychological torture, physical if youʼre lucky. But what your grandmother and grandfather get up to behind closed doors is thankfully nobodyʼs business but theyʼre own. Although, by the by, I hear it gets disturbingly kinky and liberal in those twilight years. At some point even Margaret Thatcher had sex and Iʼm positive she wasnʼt thinking of England. Iʼve seen pictures of her wearing a muzzle and looking overwhelmed with compromise.
THE BUZZ
Melissa has just finished her 1st track with a Sony producer and they are now in the process of adding an American Rapper!!
So with such variation on the very substance of what defines us, our social interaction, we have to consider the question: who is the real us?
If we are all but actors on the stage of life reading from the script of expectation, playing various parts, not entirely of our own devising, then where in our lives is the true expression of
Melissa also had a meeting with Chrysalis in the UK and is about to work on her first track with a producer who has written for the following artists to name but a few Beyonce, Sugababes, Jamelia, Neneh Cherry Gorillaz, Etta James, Beverley Knight, Tommy Sparks and Sean Kingston both of these tracks will be live on her site soon.
what we believe to be our selves? Do we keep our true desires and bizarre inclinations locked in a black room and expose a contrived version of ourselves for the glasshouse of the social realm? Or do we only realise our genuine humanity when interacting with others and conceal our more private persuasions because they are not who we really are?
We are then planning to go back out to the States later this year to discuss releasing her either in the UK or USA.
people have found their home in performing.
Of course you could always break character off-stage, abandon your norms and values, enter a state of anomie and deal with the world, as you will. But, as some of us have learned the hard way, you may quickly become a social pariah and be stricken from the list of non-volatile party guests and mentally penned onto one for wayfaring wild cards. Oh well.
But, as always, whether on or off the stage, you can be whoever you want to be at The Craufurd Arms Open Mic in Wolverton on
Thanks for all your support”.
www.myspace.com/melissamkuk
or
Monday nights. Chris Dobbs
www.melissamkuk.com
www.myspace.com/thekidwithcrowsfeet
36 Phonebox Magazine
If the world is just a drama in which we are performing then what of the real stages within the world? Perhaps those stages, quite paradoxically, offer us the opportunity to be who we truly are. A space where expectation and proscription are defied and ultimate licence and personal expression become available. If stepping onto a stage with no rules, past or future, to say whatever you want, and sound and look however you like affords us a reprieve from the pantomime of everyday life, it would make sense that so many