I want matches in case I have to suddenly burn

Do you remember way back when I was lamenting my lack of knowledge of what Nicole Blackman was up to? And then she replied to the post, resulting my great blog-joy?

Well, at the time she replied she pointed us to her story, “Dumped”, in Brooklyn Noir, and mentioned the current performances of the Courtesan Tales. While I didn’t manage to figure out how to attend any of the Courtesan Tales performances…although I did find lots of stuff on the web about it, like this page, this review, this review, etc. I did get a copy of Brooklyn Noir and check out Nicole’s story. My capsule review is that it reads like a cross between the character behind Breath Control and the kind of twist-at-the-end thriller shorts that used to show up in those “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” stories. Well worth reading, and dark, but not heavy, if you know what I mean.

I should also probably have pointed out the story Nicole wrote about her response to 9/11, which was already a few years old even back then. It’s still worth reading. Very much so.

Anyway, that was a couple of years ago, and I hadn’t really heard anything for a while. I mean, I did eventually manage to track down that Pet Shop Boys tribute album with a Nicole track on it–which wasn’t new either–but no new news, as ’twere.

However, just the other day, something brought my mind back to her, and I found that the intervening years have brought a bunch of Nicole-related things to the web.

So, here’s what I found in my recent check:

• First, Nicole’s web site is back up. That should simplify keeping track of when any new things happen.
• Second, she has a Wikipedia entry, which links to lots of other stuff as well.
• Third, she appears to have an official Myspace page. This is worthy of note, since there are three streamable tracks there. One is the “In The Movie Now” track that’s been on Salon for a million years (along with two others). One, “Dogma”, is the track Nicole did with KMFDM on the XTORT album. And one is totally new (and freely downloadable) piece that Nicole did as part of Bernadette Louise‘s phone call project “Only A Phone Call Away“.
• That last piece was something Nicole did for the Fierce Festival in Birmingham England this year. She apparently also did something called Beloved. But, more importantly for us, she also did something for them in past years called Stay Away From Lonely Places–it’s a kind of self-guided walking tour, with map, of Birmingham’s DigBeth area (download MP3 and map here), but you know it’s not your garden variety walking tour. “With stories about the Hell’s Angels, a lost ring, tea smugglers, and a drowned little boy, Stay Away From Lonely Places is an evocative and sensory tour exploring the secret histories hidden in some of Birmingham’s most overlooked architectural spaces and places.”
• Here’s a little promotional or news video on the Fierce Festival performances of the Courtesan Tales. You get to hear a bit of one of the stories and see participant reactions.
• Nicole as a vampire geisha in a music video.

So that’s lots of new stuff, including almost an hour of new audio. And the promise of more to come. I look upon this and see that it is good.

Finally, since it amuses me, I should point out how I came to Nicole’s work. The first time I heard her was on the Golden Palominos album Dead Inside, and the voice + the lyrics pretty much locked me down, but I had tracked down a copy of that CD with the intent of hearing Nicole. Why had I done that? Well, the answer is very geeky–a million years ago (in web time) font-master Chank did a series of free fonts based on the handwriting of various rock types. One of those free fonts was ‘Darling Nikki‘ (which you can’t–officially–get for free anymore, but which Chank still sells) and something Chank said in his write-up on the original release made me curious about this Nicole Blackman person. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but whatever it was, it was enough to make me seek out the CD that made me a fan, and that lead to my seeking out quite a few other things as well. Yes, it’s because of a font.