PJ in a fish suit?

[papersteven]

Hey all. First time poster here.

I read in a recent interview with PJ and John Parish that he told her once (in '95?) that he didn't feel comfortable with her wearing a mermaid / fish costume on stage. Has anyone got a picture of this that they can share?

Thanks!

Stephen

[cat on the wall]

Hey all. First time poster here.

I read in a recent interview with PJ and John Parish that he told her once (in '95?) that he didn't feel comfortable with her wearing a mermaid / fish costume on stage. Has anyone got a picture of this that they can share?

Thanks!

Stephen

Hi there! Welcome Yes, I do remember her mentioning this I think it was in a recent interview. I've never seen it but perhaps someone else has? I'll keep my eyes out but it sounds very very unlikely. Sorry can't be more helpful but maybe someone will find it or knows of it?

[DrDark]

I've never seen a photo of the fish costume, but I do recall the interview. Didn't Parish say it happened in Seattle or Vancouver or Portland? If we know the venue and the approximate date, there is a better chance a photo search could find it. Although 1995 pretty much predates the internet so it'd be a very long shot.

[Hell and High Water]

As I recall...

The story goes that yes, it was in 1995 while Polly was trying out all these outlandish costumes. She either had or was proposing a mermaid outfit, but John talked her out of it and she never performed in it. I doubt any photos ever surfaced.

[papersteven]

I could've sworn the interview said that he looked over and there she was, onstage in the outfit, and after the show was when he told her he wasn't into it. But, of course, I could be way wrong

Stephen

[Pocket Knife]

^It could read like that but from what I gather John talked her out of it before she could amuse us. Bad John!

“I’m really glad I did it; it was quite astonishing, some of the costumes I was wearing at that time. It was much more of a theatrical performance. But sometimes I do look at images and think, ‘My god, I had the nerve to go out looking like that!’ [Laughs] At the time it was great, and I look back on it quite affectionately, but in terms of completely cringing I think that was a bad idea. I can very specifically remember one time in 1995, it was in Seattle, and for some reason I decided that I wanted to go on stage dressed like mermaid and had spent about a thousand British pounds having this mermaid costume made. But I actually couldn’t move in it, because the fish tail was so tight. John Parish was in my band at the time and I remember him coming backstage and saying to me, ‘Polly, I really don’t think I can go on stage and play music behind you when you’re dressed like a fish.’ [Laughs] So I think that was probably the ultimate moment of embarrassment and feel that was a bad move.”

http://thegarden.forum5.com/viewtopic.php?t=869" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Hell and High Water]

I'm still sure I haven't seen any pictures, but I found this more recent interview, and it would appear that she really did perform in the mermaid costume!

From March 2009:

Both Harvey and Parish agree that it’s the honesty of their partnership that’s kept them coming back to each other over the years. “Halfway through the Bring You My Love tour, we were playing a show in Seattle, and Polly turned up in this mermaid costume. It was as though we’d stepped over the line from a grotesque cabaret into a pantomime. I went backstage after the show and knocked on Polly’s door: ‘I’m not entirely comfortable standing onstage with you when you’re dressed like a fish!’”

“It’s true,” Harvey remembers. “My extravagant creation that had been made months beforehand, just for that purpose—we had a good laugh about it, and then I never wore it again.”

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/03/pj.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DrDark]

From the gigography, it must've been one of these:

1995-05-22, - MOORE THEATER - SEATTLE, WA, U.S.A.
1995-09-26, - FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE - SEATTLE, WA, U.S.A.

She also played these:
1995-08-18, - GORGE AMPHITHEATRE (LIVE WITH PJ HARVEY, VERUCA SALT) - GEORGE, WA, U.S.A.
1995-08-18, - KNDD STUDIOS (KNDD-FM 107.7's "THE END's "END SESSIONS") - SEATTLE, WA, U.S.A.

There are no flickr pics for her taken between 01/01/1995 and 12/31/1995. Perhaps some straight google searches for these venues with "PJ Harvey" will turn up a photo.

[Pocket Knife]

I'm still sure I haven't seen any pictures, but I found this more recent interview, and it would appear that she really did perform in the mermaid costume!

From March 2009:

Both Harvey and Parish agree that it’s the honesty of their partnership that’s kept them coming back to each other over the years. “Halfway through the Bring You My Love tour, we were playing a show in Seattle, and Polly turned up in this mermaid costume. It was as though we’d stepped over the line from a grotesque cabaret into a pantomime. I went backstage after the show and knocked on Polly’s door: ‘I’m not entirely comfortable standing onstage with you when you’re dressed like a fish!’”

“It’s true,” Harvey remembers. “My extravagant creation that had been made months beforehand, just for that purpose—we had a good laugh about it, and then I never wore it again.”

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/03/pj.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ok, now that makes it even sadder that she did it and we don't have any pictures.

[Pollyphoniac]

as I try to copy & paste this article (from its website into my word processor) I get the message "Out of memory". I know there must be some way around this, could somebody advise me how?

[Hell and High Water]

The article I posted? It isn't very large, I don't know what the problem might be. You could save it in pieces?

I'm saving it, I'll convert to pdf and post it later.

[Hell and High Water]

A JPEG:

Spoiler! :

The text:

Spoiler! :

TRUE GRIT: PJ HARVEY AND JOHN PARISH TEAM UP (AGAIN) FOR A ROUGH NEW RECORD
By Corey Dubrowa on March 31, 2009 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's been more than a dozen years since the release of Dance Hall at Louise Point, Polly Jean (a.k.a. PJ) Harvey and multi-instrumentalist John Parish's last co-authored musical venture. But to hear them tell it, hardly a day goes by without the two of them trading ideas, input or recorded material.
“Both Polly and I were surprised by how long it had actually been [since that album], because we consider everything we do musically a collaboration to some degree,” Parish says about the release of their new album, A Woman A Man Walked By. “Even if we’re not officially working on records together, we’re sending each other the demos of the new material we’re writing. We use each other as touchstones constantly.”

For her part, Harvey agrees that she and Parish have formed something of a permanent—if sporadic—creative bond. “It is an unusual partnership, and the relationship we have is very rare,” she concurs. “From the first time I met him when I was 18, John’s always been someone I respected enormously; I trust him implicitly. He has an extraordinarily good ear for judging what’s good and bad with music. But beyond that, I value his opinion on the stuff of life, really. Even when I’m not working with him on a particular project, he’s one of the first people I’ll send my new songs to in order to get feedback and help me gauge what’s good—and what isn’t. I need people like that, someone who’ll talk straight with me.”

A Woman A Man Walked By is indeed an album of straight talk: 10 tracks of bracing, experimental music that travel the full distance of everything Harvey and Parish are capable of delivering on their own, or as a pair. The duo has collaborated in any number of ways over the last two decades—Parish produced 1995’s To Bring You My Love and served as a band member on that tour; he played on Harvey’s 1998 release Is This Desire?; and was co-producer on her more contemplative, piano-laced 2007 album, White Chalk. This new release finds them bouncing from jarring, arrhythmic guitar rock (a musical ode to Baudelaire’s The Rebel, “Pig Will Not”) and radio-ready pop (“Black Hearted Love,” the track Harvey found in her outtakes pile two years ago that set the project in motion) to aqueous Verve-like space rock and even mellotron-sampling tone poetry. “We’ve covered a lot of ground, that’s for sure,” Parish laughs. “We had no manifesto when we started writing this record, other than one rule: not to repeat ourselves.”

Both Harvey and Parish agree that it’s the honesty of their partnership that’s kept them coming back to each other over the years. “Halfway through the Bring You My Love tour, we were playing a show in Seattle, and Polly turned up in this mermaid costume. It was as though we’d stepped over the line from a grotesque cabaret into a pantomime. I went backstage after the show and knocked on Polly’s door: ‘I’m not entirely comfortable standing onstage with you when you’re dressed like a fish!’”

“It’s true,” Harvey remembers. “My extravagant creation that had been made months beforehand, just for that purpose—we had a good laugh about it, and then I never wore it again.”
Tags: a woman a man walked by, dance hall at house point, issue 51, john parish, pj harvey
Categories: Features, Mixed Media, Music

[bluesman]

Someone somewhere must have taken a picture!

[cat on the wall]

Aw,cool! Yeah, it's most likely out there somewhere but finding it's another matter.

[Me and my Marshall]

Coud any of these outfits start the confusion? Same era.





Just talking while thinking...