Kate Nash - Caroline's A Victim Video

Kate Nash
Caroline's A Victim
Video

You could say that fate has played a big part in directing 19-year-old Kate Nash towards music and the growing buzz around her: "Until this February 2006 I was auditioning on the reserve list of the Bristol Old Vic theatre as an actor - I got a rejection and the same day I went to the cinema to watch Broke Back Mountain on my own feeling really depressed. Same day I fell down some stairs and broke my foot. My Mum and Dad bought me a guitar to perk me up because I couldn't do anything so I spent three weeks writing and recording with it on my laptop, I was itching to do something creative." And so she did.

Instead of falling down stairs Kate decided to throw herself into live gigs. With typical zeal she went for it, playing at open mic nights, an anti-folk festival in Brighton, spoken word evenings in the East End and helping out spoken word poets Aisle 16. Her first headline gig was at raucous underground night Potty Mouth.

All pretty daunting stuff without the invincibility of youth and a sack full of attitude but influenced by old punk like The Clash and The Negatives, current bands such as Kings of Leon and The Strokes, with a nod and wink to people's poets John Cooper Clarke, Brendan McCloud and Saul Williams. To seal the mix there was "Janis Joplin, Carole King and Irish folk music that my mum made me listen to on long car journeys" - Kate's live performances were spiked into a potent spell.