http://www.eminiz.com:80/out/merrychristmas.htm

My First Award

Well I am very pleased to announce that I have won my first award, and it’s a big one too - Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And I’m not joking!

The only downside is I’m not alone, as they have awarded the award to “You”. Who? You. Me? No, you. You who? Anyway us, including me. The citizens of the new digital democracy as they call it. Anyone who had written a blog, posted a video on YouTube, or who has a profile on My Space. So I’m a treble winner.

I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I'm not that happy about sharing the award with quite so many reprobates, ranging from the (as at today) 140.2 million plus profiles on my space, to the Israeli dancing girls to the newly censorial The Latte Days to whoever it was who posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1QyOQDx6w

And as I endeavour to prove on a regular basis, I am not part of a digital democracy, but a digital mediocracy.

So I say, enough power to the people; give the power to the pixies!

Gig Review: Circulus v Chrome Hoof

And as a year of strange and unique gigs draws to a close, probably the strangest gig of all…

To give it its full title: “Come closer I have something to tell you – An evening of music with Circulus and Chrome Hoof.” Purcell Room 16/12/06.

Who what when why?

Circulus describe themselves as “a gentle fist fight between a group of under nourished sixteenth century court musicians and an acid soaked bunch of hippie rockers from the early seventies.”

Chrome Hoof describe themselves as – well they go on a bit but here’s an extract: “the sound of a radio dial snatches fragments of disparate musiks, the remorseless warrior charge of doom, abstract gasses that hiss and mingle, a distant piano ripples a melancholy refrain, wind instruments hail a clarion call to arms, motorik bass and wild drums rear up to create a vortices of dust and fire And LO, The Hoof is on the Rise!” You get the picture. One of their fans describes them as a “jazz infused doom disco death knell” which is probably a bit closer to the mark, although this is metal jazz in the Norwegian style – dark heavy and malicious (reminded me a bit of Supersilent to those who know them.)

But the evening begins with Wyrewood, a boy/girl combo playing medieval instruments with samplers to create added textures. They play the sort of instruments not seen since Howard Goodall’s “How Music Works” such as those drone producing boxes you play by rotating a handle. The boy wears a very smug self-satisfied smile throughout in that Nigel Kennedy / Gary Rhodes kind of way. Some ruffians talk all the way through.

A man in a cassock comes on stage, accompanied by a boy and two girls in golden tinfoil spacepeople costumes, and begins the narration. The evening is themed around the teachings of the Aetherius Society, in particular the book “Contact With the Gods From Space” by George King and Richard Lawrence, which tells how man is the reincarnation of aliens who blew up their own planet, founded and destroyed Atlantis, and are now hell bent on destroying the earth in nuclear armageddon. A sad tale is best for winter.

Worryingly, this is not my first contact with the Aetherius Society – I attended a gong recital / guided meditation / kundalini yoga session given by the great Gongmaster Don Conreaux at the Aetherius Society’s hq off the Fulham Road early last year. It was held in a chapel like room dominated by a huge photograph of George King.

Circulus come on first in Blackadderish tunics and play a couple of jaunty numbers; then the Hoof arrive, in full length shiny silvery cloaks and face masks and a pounding ominous song called “Nordic Curse.” I fear I am about to have a panic attack.

Things settle into a kind of routine: narration, Circulus, a woodwind/string interlude with some members of both bands, Chrome Hoof, then the cycle repeats.

Factionalism emerges amongst the fan base, with swathes of Circulusties heading for the exits whilst the Hoof are on; swarms of Hoofsters chanting “Hoooofffff” heading for the bar whilst Circulus are on.

There is a kind of amateur dramatics do pantomime feel about the whole thing; the video projection pixellates and dies (but is restored for the second half); Circulus take on the role of the innocent earthlings while the Hoof become the dark alien magi; the lead singer of Circulus gets his cue wrong and is stuck on stage with two flimsy cardboard scimitars before being molested by the Hoof and made to wear a 5 foot silver hat with circular saws for eye pieces before being banished from the stage with what feels like real venom; the Hoof’s singer reads lyrics pasted on the back of a large hat.

The second half takes the feel of Man United v Chelsea. Circulus wear spangly red shirts with white details and have the flair players; at the back the superlative Parfitt Brothers stand firm under the onslaught. The Circulusties are prettier, better dressed and more sophisticated. The Hoof play the Chelsea role, loutish beery fans, they don’t play pretty but you have to admire their dogged almost brutal determination to grind out a result. Circulus take the lead with a triumphant anthemic “Power to the Pixies”. The Circulusty Pixie People go wild. The Hoof look to the bench and bring on a twenty foot silver demon with glowing green eyes. Young children and old people run screaming from the hall (quite what they were doing there is another question entirely). It has the desired effect. Scores level. Circulus’s lead man recites “Alas, will this night go on for ever?” and I know how he feels.

Decorum in the audience has now broken down gloriously under the onslaught of booze and bass. The narrator is heckled as he begins his final plea to save the earth. The Hoofsters in the audience are winning the clash of civilisations. Some hairy bloke who may or may not be called Thogdin Ripley, co-conceiver of the evening, attempts to finish the story but is too pissed to speak and is forced to concede that yes he is reading a load of bollocks. Someone hands him a popper which he sniffs with a flourish.

Injury time and the bands combine in a shambolic finale; the pixie people dance like wild things, the hoofsters hoof, and Ollie Parfitt turns up his synth to sprinkle fairy dust sine waves over the chaos.

Both sets of fans seem happy with the result and all that is left is to look at the match stats:

1. Coolness of crowd: Circulus attract a surprising number of attractive looking women in flowery dresses – 4/5; Hoof bring loutish beer boys and grungy hairies 0/5; overall 4/10.

2. Bob quotient: 3/10, you can guess which side the good hair was on.

3. Annoyment factor: 9/10 – the initial talking during Wyrewood is annoying, but the developing shambolic waves of comings and goings and hoofing and dancing badly add to the atmosphere.

4. Sound quality: 8/10 – well its certainly loud; but it all gets a bit mushy with so many musicians on stage.

5. Comfort: 7/10 – nice seats in the Purcell Room.

6. Sexytime: 4/10, courtesy of the pixies.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 8/10 for use of medieval/ Elizabethan instruments, lots of tambourine action, and some power drumming.

Overall: 43/70 – a curate’s egg, a game of at least two halves, and jolly good fun.

Merchandise: A nice if tatty souvenir programme, a Circulus LP (vinyl)

Visuals: A feast for the eyes – sparkly costumes, dancing girls, a twenty foot demon.

Gruff Rhys?: Nah.

You can watch very poor footage taken by me of the shambolic finale here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN3cFfgltY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4l94SB2-Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWM8qs9ia0s

demon days

spangled carnage

Trouble with the Neighbours

I live in a three-storey 1960s town house. It is the middle one of a block of five.

Well I have to tell you, the neighbours on the left, Tommy and Sue, they were making a terrible racket last night, singing at the top of their voices and banging around ‘til gone 3.30. Well I thought, it is Saturday night and maybe they are having an X Factor party. One has to be tolerant and all that, but they could at least have warned me.

But then I was woken up at 9 this morning and it was all going on again. A terrible commotion. I peered out of the front window, and there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. Then I noticed that on the end house, the one on the other side of Tommy’s, in their front garden had appeared one of those pub style wooden tables with attached benches, and there were four Hassids, black hats, beards, the lot, sitting at the table stuffing their faces.

I went downstairs to investigate. My hallway was packed with people and the front door was open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought. I went out the front. There was a man standing outside Tommy’s with a fluorescent sleeveless jacket, like the ones fire wardens and building site workers wear. “If you would just like to wait in there please” he said pointing at my house to a couple coming down the garden path.

“What the hell is going on?” I said to him.

“We’ve opened a sushi bar” said the man.

“What?” I said.

“We’ve opened a sushi bar.”

“But you haven’t got planning permission” I said.

The man in the yellow jacket shrugged.

“I demand to see the manager” I said.

“I am the manager” he said.

“Where’s Tommy?” I said.

“He’s in the back” said the man, looking towards Tommy’s house “trying to get some work done. He’s locked himself away.”

I went back into my house.

“Get out of my house” I said to no-one in particular, but no-one moved.

I went into the kitchen. A hole had been knocked through in the wall separating my kitchen from Tommy’s. I have to say it was a neat job, but the cheek of it; they hadn’t even given me any warning. On Tommy side I could see gleaming spotlights in the ceiling and a shiny silver counter with a couple of chefs working feverishly away.

I called the police. The woman who answered chastised me for calling 999 when it was not an emergency, and said I should ‘phone my local station. It took a while to find the number. There was a recorded message saying that they were shut - well it was a Sunday - and that out-of-hours police work had been outsourced to a private sector service provider. I called them and got another recorded message – “to help us deal with your enquiry please choose from one of the following options… for physical assault press 1, for burglary and theft press 2”. I pressed # “for any other enquiry”. There was a crackle and a hiss and a lady in a thick Indian accent asked how she could help. There was a disconcerting delay on the line. I explained what had happened and the lady told me that it was a civil matter not a police matter. She suggested that I contact the “relevant regulatory authority.” I asked her where she was based and she hung up.

I rang the local council but they were also shut.

I squeezed myself a fresh grapefruit and orange juice and went to sit down, but there were people sitting in all the chairs.

“This is my chair” I said to a young man with overly slicked hair.

“Oh is it” he said, carrying on reading my paper.

“Yes it is. Can you please get up.”

“Gonna make me?” he said.

“Yes, if needs be” I said.

He ignored me.

I pulled the chair back and lifted him up by his armpits. I landed a hard hook to his midriff with my right hand and, as he hunched forward, swung a beautiful upper hook with my left, catching him clean on the chin, following up with a right cross.

Somebody grabbed me from behind. I elbowed him, swivelled around and swung a left jab, followed by a left back hand and a quick right.

That was the last thing I remember before waking up here.

would like to meet

The Grebson Family History

I’ve been doing some research on my lineage – nothing new there, and I have discovered quite an extraordinary article on the Grebsons called “The Greystoke Lineage” By Philip Jose Farmer - http://members.aol.com/kickaha23/grebson.html. Extracts of that article are reproduced here with gratitude and a flagrant disregard for copyright.

The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.

Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.

The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.

Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.

Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.

His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.

GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.

BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.

The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).

Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.

Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.

Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?

Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.

Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.

So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.

Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…

RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)

In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.

JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.

JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.

ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.

SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.

As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…

Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).

Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.

His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."

The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.

At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.

General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.

So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:

Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.

Respect!

un-imagine-able

So there we have it. The Beeb’s flagship arts/culture/intellectual programme ‘Imagine’ (appropriately named after the weakest tritest most sentimental nursery rhyme ever recorded) delves into the world of the world wide web and tells us nothing we didn’t already know. All the usual suspects were there – blogs (c.f. girl with a one track mind doing her usual apology about how she is a post-feminist crusader for women expressing their sexual feelings, rather than what I suspect the reality is, which is mild titillation for the dirty apple mac brigade who like reading about how she likes to wank big hard cocks)), wikipedia, my space (c.f. arctic monkeys), you tube, the long tail – and it’s all lovely and wonderful.

The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.

Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.

Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.

As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.

TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?

Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.

Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.

Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.

So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.

On New Music

Watching Planet Earth last night, I was struck once again by the sonic similarities between the natural and electronic worlds. I have noticed before how some of the bleeps and whistles of electronica remind me of the clicks of whales and dolphins; how the vague and threatening booms of bass wash out of the speakers like deep sea depth charges. In last night’s programme on seasonal forests, a tough beaked bird drilled arhythmically against a tree; leaves rustled with the soft shoe shuffle of predators and prey. Listening afterwards to the Kitchen Motors Compilation, the sounds of the forest echo in my head (even though, with a lovely touch of irony, there are no trees in Iceland).

This, as yet unlabelled and indescribable new music, has for me an acute psychological effect – with Bjork and Múm you roam icy craggy aural landscapes; listening to CocoRosie is like regressing to the womb: with some electronica like Mystical Sun it feels like regressing further to a primordial world. Perhaps this electronic simulation of the natural world is connected to the mechanics of how this effect is achieved.

Of course many of my two and a half readers will be wondering what I am going on about; well if you have sound on your pc it is very easy to find out – just let your mouse roam right and down a bit and click the link to my my space site; stick a bit of mouldy cheese there if you like to tempt the mouse.

But the best description of it comes from the lovely Cibelle, and I leave you with her words (taken from her my space site)…

“on another note, music, the way i put it in the juicer or splash it on the canvas, is not about mixing this with that, or that with the other, the genre, the country where one was born or where one lives, it is not about being from this or that scene or this box or the next. If it's just me then, when that piece was done, with all i had inside of me at that second until that chapter got closed when the lights of the studio go off, taking up poems and embracing them with sounds in layers and punctuations, water, powder, bricks. Even better, is to sculpt out of a big mass of collected particles of sound, sweat, glue, lick, purple, silver, air, wood, wind, anything thats been stuck together by living life and all these and other things accumulating inside of me just like breathing and the only things remaining being the ones that match me at that moment, then letting them out, all merged inside me by osmosis, letting it all come out, all that, is that mass, that will be sculpted until it gives me goose bumps and butterflies. then i know it's ready.”

Gig Review: Jackie-O Motherfucker

Jackie-O Motherfucker at Cargo. 30/11/06

Ah yes. One of the first alt rock bands I discovered when my musical path forked sharply left a few years ago, JOMF are a low key underground outfit. Their name suggests an angry heavy rock band, but in fact they make heavily textured droney free improvised music. The name was designed to ensure they remained under the counter and far away from the temptations and challenges of the mainstream.

After support from Inca Ore (layers of stoner vocals and flutes) and Alexander Ticker (layers of viola and guitar and vocals) failed to quite do it for me – all a bit flakey and lacking depth, things immediately look better when JOMF fill the room with assortments of bells and tambourines, adding guitars and held vocal notes, until my brain starts to wobble. As always, difficult to describe what is going on exactly, but this is a heavy dubby bad cousin of ambient music; one that is tugging at the coat ends of lunacy and dreaming of running off and joining a free jazz circus. Later tracks incorporate blistering polyrhythms and stabbing percussive effects.

1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10. More weird than cool. Seems to be lots of couples, comprising blokes who want to dig the music and lasses who want to be somewhere else very quickly. Very few of them make it through the JOMF set.

2. Bob quotient: 3/10. Poor.

3. Annoyment factor: 6/10. Yes there is some talking and anxious shuffling about, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, such is the distracted and heavy nature of the music.

4. Sound quality: 8/10. Good.

5. Comfort: 7/10. A stand up gig, but as the room never gets that packed, I don’t feel locked into position.

6. Sexytime: 3/10. Just isn’t that.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 7/10. Not much by way of weird instrumentation but all the acts rely on self-sampling and processing and layering to produce their aural soup – watery with the support, heavy and potatoey with JOMF.

Overall: 40/70, perhaps reflecting that it was all a bit weird and heavy, but in a good way.

Merchandise: None. JOMF reject the commodification of the musical environment.

Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. Maybe he was too scared.

Visuals: Some low key projections.

Gig Review: Kitchen Motors

Kitchen Motors Collective at Cargo. 27 November 2006.

What the blurb says… “Deliciously hypnotic music from Reykjavik - Kitchen Motors is a Reykjavik-based artists’ collective with a reputation for cross-art chemistry and surreal charm. With members drawn from across the musical spectrum, Kitchen Motors is a creative playground, where exciting new ensembles appear by happy accident and dense and magical films entwine with thrilling new sounds.”

Bet there is a subplot here. Ah yes. The Múm subplot. Múm are, for me, the most influential and important band of the last ten years; pioneers of a new form of music combining electronica, folk, pop and contemporary classical; not just plinky plonking the elements together but fusing them at great temperature to produce a new hybrid music. Traces of the radiation emitted by this fusion can be found all over the poposphere, from Goldfrapp to Tunng to Cibelle :::::

by the way look out in 2007 for its cross fertilisation with the New York freaky folk scene – Cibelle on the bill with CocoRosie at David Byrne’s “Welcome to Dreamland” all star freaky gig – Bjork working with Anthony (without his Johnsons) – CocoRosie currently recording their new album on a boat somewhere near the Arctic – oh yes :::::

But Múm are dead; long live Múm. There was a big clue on their My Space site – “it is difficult to know who we are any more.” I feared the worst when vocalist and founder member Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir (under the name Kría Brekkan (which apparently means “to tern the slope”)) appeared on the bill with dullard psyc-rockers Animal Collective at the Astoria earlier this year. She appeared very fragile and almost not there. See for yourself at http://www.underexposed.org.uk/kriabrekkan/kria1.htm . Hear for yourself at http://www.rosmedia.se/kria.html. Then I found out that she’d only gone and married one of the Animals (Avey “Yoko” Tare) and moved to New York, and the official announcement of her departure from Múm came earlier this week, together with a sad letter which you can find here: http://www.fat-cat.co.uk/mum.pdf.

But Múm are not dead. First there is a vintage Peel Session recorded in 2002 being released in a few weeks. And the founding foundling boys, being Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, have formed a new line up and recorded a new album out early 2007. And Múm have always been something of a collective, with, from what I can gather, something of a symbiotic relationship with the Kitchen Motors collective. So anyway the subplot was that this was a chance to check out some of their new members, in particular Hildur Gudnadottir (cello and vocals) and Ólöf Arnalds (violin / viola / guitar / vocals) - actually I remember Ólöf playing with Múm at the infamous “game of two halves” double header with Cat Power at the Barbican last year.

Yeah yeah yeah that’s all very well and good, but isn’t this meant to be a gig review.

So first up was Hildur Gudnadottir with just a cello and laptop for company. After some heavyweight drones she was joined by the rest of the Skuli Sverrisson group including Ólöf Arnalds. Musically this was the post-Reich end of the contemporary classical spectrum; repeated patterns and distortions with a few touches of electronica misting in from the sea, and the ladies on vocals and guess what – both Hildur and Ólöf sing kind of like Kristín Anna: breathy girly swirly lovely.

Next up was Kira Kira and her box of electonix (more later).

Finally the Johann K Johannsson group with dreamy soundtrack stylee contemporary classical with touches of electronica in the beats and sounds.

1. Coolness of crowd: 8/10 – an odd mix of grungy students, North Europeans in layers of wool in different shades of taupe, some Japanese, some punks, some Shoreditch Twats, some classical fans in retro Geography teacher costume.

2. Bob quotient: - 8/10 – high, though tended to be of the fuzzy cut sort rather than the clean lines I prefer.

3. Annoyment factor: - 8/10 – excellent decorum, probably the all time best for a club venue. Anyone talking was poked and shushed from all sides. Get this, I didn’t even have to give anyone a hard stare! I was amongst kindred spirits. The only real sonic interference came from people knocking over beer bottles.

4. Sound quality: - 10/10 – crystal clear; especially impressive in the Kria Kria session.

5. Comfort: 5/10 – many chose to sit on the concrete floor, but it’s dirty and no good for someone with tight glutes. So I stood, and as the gig lasted for some two and a quarter hours without break, I was in some discomfort by the end.

6. Sexytime: 6/10 – maybe affected by my discomforture.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 30/10. Both the Skuli Sverrisson and Johann Johannsson groups employed sampled beats and effects and mild electronica, but the highlight was the Kira Kira set. Wow. Double Wow. She had a wooden box the size of a cigar case with knobs on and stuff inside, gravel I think, which she tilted about. A tiny music box kind of thing spewing paper spotted with chads and a tiny little handle for winding the paper back in. A long stick covered in glitter with five or so little handles each linked to the most miniscule music box imaginable, and which she would also breathe into. Plus beats and samples triggered as if by thought alone. All were miked up to an unbelievable degree of clarity and power. When she opened up the wooden box and stirred the gravel with her hand, it was like the earth had titled on its axis.

Overall: 75/70 – a good time had by all, but the highlight for me was the Kira Kira set; the others sets were more in the vein of contemporary classical that is very much of the moment but which can tend a little bit towards the sort of thing you find on Classic FM TV.

Merchandise: No T’s, but an agonisingly huge selection of cds, about 15. One of the lovely Icelandic ladies from the collective helped me to buy 5 of them as well as filling me in on the Múm subplot.

Gruff Rhys? He wasn’t there. He should have been.

Visuals: Nice. Lots of grainy black and white footage, and some nice use of a glitter ball effect. Best visuals award go to Kira Kira who performed against a blue sky and clouds backdrop, wearing a nice white frock onto which was projected an image of a colourful flying kite (the kite had polygonic blocks of colour which reminded me of Vanessa da Silva’s blocky work on the latest Tunng album / tour). I found out later that the kite was one of fifty she had miked up and flown around a lighthouse in Iceland, as you do.

thought for the day

spare a thought for melvyn prophet, age 49, from the west midlands, who i just saw on 'this morning'. mr prophet has not had an erection for 7 years. bet he didn't see that coming.

whereas what I really want is to be feeling a bit...

feeling a bit...

Perpetual Motion.

It’s just a matter of mathematics really.

There are only 24 hours in a day. That’s not going to change anytime soon. Each year, the public transport system struggles ooh just a little bit more to cope. The journeys take longer. Extrapolate - you will begin to spend more time in transit than you do at work or in bed. Soon you will be able to access your mobile ‘phone on the tube, and with that will come full wireless interconnectivity. So rather than travelling to your office, you will be travelling in your office. As we approach 2012, the tube will run 24 hours a day. The pharmaceutical companies will have perfected pills which reduce the need for sleep. Exacerbated by rising house prices, people will start to live on the tube: working, not sleeping, always travelling. A support culture will arise; tiller girls and boy walking up and down the carriages offering ice cream, beverages, smart “cereal” bars, paid for by chip and pin cards inserted in your index finger.

Portaloos will be installed on every platform. The loos will analyse your stool, and advise if for example you need more zinc or vitamin B12 in your diet. The results will be downloaded to the NHS database and shared with other governmental systems; your DNA compared with information on your ID profile; any illegal substances (steroids being the drug of choice for the professional classes by the turn of the decade) will be detected and the information passed on to police via the crime database.

For shopping, head on down to the Tesco Circle Line, a mini Metro on every platform, and a fully stocked supermarketsupertrain coming round every twenty minutes. Lack of sunlight and genetically modified supasoya ™ dinners will take their toll on your libido, but for those rare moments you will be able to pop down to an easyFUCK ™ capsule brothel located in one of the disused tunnels. All five genders catered for. Virgin Active Trains will offer gyms although most users will go just for the showers.

This isn’t about prophecy, it’s about calculating the results of the equations.

“Gig” Review – Antony and the Johnsons

Antony and the Johnsons perform Turning. Barbican 5/11/06.

Another “"gig"”? Well sort of. Part performance, part art happening. Antony sings his melancholy ballards of love death and gender confusion whilst on the side of the stage is a revolving platform onto which step a succession of thirteen New York “beauties” who are filmed and the images projected on to a giant backscreen where they are mixed live by Charles Atlas.

The Charles Atlas? Yes indeed. The. A man who has cast a long shadow over my artistic world, from the moment I first saw his nineteen eightyfourish (the year, not the Orwellian nightmare) film “Hail the New Puritans” which featured Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, and various other London nightlife bohemians and culminated in strange goings on at the legendary Taboo nightclub. As a young boy this seemed to be where I aspired to be, even though it was no place for a straight, chubby, Jewish boy with a high forehead and a wardrobe of polyester M&S flairs. Atlas has continued to design the lighting for Michael Clark; and it has always been one of the highlights of any Clark show. Austere, with much use of lighting coming from the side of the stage, it provides a particular atmosphere and ambience, very clean and magical. In Clark’s “mmm”, which I saw last week and haven’t had time to blog, there was some interesting use of blocks of more pastel shades. Anyway Atlas is primarily known for his video art rather than lighting per se, and this was the first time I had seen him in action, so to speak.

So tell me about the lovely ladies. Hmmm. Well I am pretty sure that four of them really were women. And I’m pretty sure that five of them were born men. Thereafter, everything is not so very illuminated. As to the degree of transgender transformation I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess, but they probably ranged from straightforward drag queen all the way to post-op. Des Lynam would have been in his element.

So, “Turning”. Yes that’s what it was called. Revolution not evolution. A reference to the rotating platform, but also I thought to the process of feminisation, of turning into a woman. Also of turning as in on the turn, and as in the ageing process, as the big screen brutally revealed every skin blemish, wrinkle, divot, crevice, crater, eruption; the beauties came in all ages and sizes. And the turning of live flesh to screen projection; so often the projected face looked completely different from the real.

Perhaps it should be said that Antony sings like an angel.

1. Coolness of crowd: 10/10. Yes very. All sorts, as you might imagine. And yes there were some people getting in a pickle about which toilets they should be going into, although I suspect this was less a question of gender politics than the size of the queue.

2. Bob quotient: 8/10. Very high. All colours and shapes. Very bobby indeed.

3. Annoyment factor: 10/10. You could hear a pin drop, though Antony does tend to have that effect on people (when he performed at (and won) the 2005 Mercury Music Prize, he silenced a room full of boozed and coked up music executives)

4. Sound quality: 9/10. As always at the Barbican, top notch.

5. Comfort: 7/10. I had a slight bobble in my seat. Also I foolishly had drunk 1 litre of water before going in, and as soon as Antony started singing, the urge was growing. Remember that Shakespeare quote from the last review.

6. Sexytime: 7/10, but I would have to be very very drunk, and not find out until its too late, and then think what the hell, expand your horizons, if it’s good enough for Des Lynam and Alan Partridge…

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 6/10. Well it all sounded lovely, and for once there was no need for extra augmentation (should that be orgmentation?).

Overall: 57/70. Yet another extraordinary and unique event culminates in a rapturous standing ovation.

Merchandise: Two t shirts with ambiguous designs, A glossy brochure. CDs. All top notch stuff.

Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. As you will have gathered, I was bursting for Gruff from the moment of the first note.

Visuals: - yeah well, amazing; haven’t you been paying attention?

"Gig" Review: The Photophonic Experiment

The Photophonic Experiment – An Evening of Electro-Spectral Musical Phenomena. Featuring Pram. Blissbody and Project Dark. QEH 31/10/06

““Gig”” in inverted commas? Yeah well I’m not sure if this was a gig, or more of a sound art performance, or even an experiment (as they described it, due to the unpredictability of the “various electrical apparatus” being used.)

What? Yes well the thing here was the conversion of electricity and light into sound. The stage looked like the den of a mad boffin – think Dr Frankenstein. There were all sorts of glass tubes and vessels and bizarre instruments which produced crackling sizzling sparks. It was kind of like Halloween and Guy Fawkes night wrapped into one. There was even a touch of Chanukah when they used those spinning tops which light up as they spin, in combination with a device called a photo-synth which transformed the colours into sound.

To be honest, when I saw the stage, dimly lit, with a menacing thud of deep throbs of sound circulating in the theatre, I was a little scared. I was in the front row. Some of these devices carry 10,000 vaults. They are unpredictable. Some bass frequencies can be so powerful as to loosen the bowels. Did I say I was in the front row? Knowing what I by then knew, I was even more scared by the time of the second half.

Did Shakespeare having anything to say about this sort of thing? Funny you should ask. “Some men there are … when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose, cannot contain their urine” Merchant of Venice Act IV Scene I.

1. Coolness of crowd: 10/10 – well yes probably the oddest assortment of people I have ever seen gathered under one roof. My particular favourite was a guy who looked like he was in a fetish movie directed by LS Lowry. Stick thin, black coat, a small black formal hat on his head, huge ring with bauble through his septum. He carried a black cane, and a small medicine bag, about 6 inches deep, 14 inches wide. I can only imagine the bag contained instruments of the most deviant sexual torture imaginable. I am quite sure he has a basement styled like a mental hospital clinic, all white floors and walls, where nurses in white pvc uniforms inject large quantities of water into his testicles until they are blown up like watermelons.

2. Bob quotient: 8/10 – high. Although as you will see, a bob is no guarantee of good behaviour.

3. Annoyment factor: 3/10 – disastrous. The two bobbed women behind me talked loudly throughout the second half, and yes one was wearing and shaking bangles, and even at one point took out her keys and started rattling them about. Fucking unbelievable. I tried a polite plea for them to be quiet, but I think this only made them more determined. Someone a few seats along loudly shushed them towards the end and I think this had more effect. Did I say anything to them at the end? I couldn’t call myself a mate of Dickie Silverfish if I hadn’t. I said to the glum looking woman behind me “it’s a pity you had to talk so loudly. You really spoiled it for me”. She didn’t react except to look a little bit more glum.

However a couple of factors saved it from being a complete white-out. Firstly the sonic assault from the stage was really powerful. I don’t mean loud, although in part it was. There was a purity and intensity to the sine waves which gave the whole thing a synaesthetic feel – these were sound waves you felt rather than heard. Big bass rumbles that shook your ribs. Throbbing pitches that made your arms tingle. And a screeching finale that left me barely able to walk for a good five minutes. Secondly, although the sounds would coalesce into something approximate to tunes at various stages, this was hardly beautiful music. The softer moments were more like a sorbet intercourse, refreshing the aural palette before the next onslaught.

What I resented about the people behind me was that their yabbering served as an artificial and irritating interface between me and the sound performance, preventing full emersion, and anchoring my brain to the physical surroundings, so that it couldn’t go awandering too far. Mind you, this might just have prevented my brain from wandering off so far that it got lost and couldn’t find its way home again.

4. Sound quality: 9/10 – superb. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the sampled sounds. The virtual drummer sounded so authentic, and so precisely placed in the mix, that I searched the stage to try and see where he was hiding. Live sampling and processing of a trombone was also astonishing, the live and the sampled were indistinguishable, producing a very weird ear/mind disconnect (cos like the movements of the trombonist and the sound produced were out of sync – keep up!)

5. Comfort: 6/10 - nice comfy seats, good view, couple of marks deducted to reflect the fact that some of the sounds had the effect of making me feel quite uncomfortable.

6. Sexytime: - 7/10 – yes, but in only in the most perverted sense.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: - 25/10. Where to begin? They had a Theremin – that’s a bonus 10 marks straightaway. And other similar instruments played by waving fingers over the instrument. A vast array of knobs, gadgets, things to twiddle, boxes with flickering green lines like hospital monitors. Then there were the home built electric light instruments: a Jacobs Ladder, an Aquaphon, a Spark-o-phone, and the Jar of Charge. Plus the photo-synths mentioned earlier. Strange objects being played by tv remote controls; things being plucked or bowed; things bursting into flames as they were played.

Overall: 68/70 – a strange difficult and certainly unique night out. Probably won’t be appearing at the Arts Depot anytime soon.

Optional categories:

Merchandise: - nice free brochure, some cds from one of the performers, nowt to get too excited about.

Gruff Rhys?: - He wasn’t there.

Visuals: - yeah well the whole thing was visually extreme anyway, but they also had a screen which showed close ups of the instruments or very weird retro Victorian style horror films. Also two large white half-globes either side of the stage, like the device from the Prisoner, which glowed or showed films distorted in the curves. And a great moment when they faked an explosion – loud flash and bang, lots of smoke, everything gone black. The women behind me nearly wet themselves. Shame they didn’t.

Re Tale

It is the first day of November and it still warm enough for the people of South Central Finchley to dine al fresco in the many cafes that line Temple Fortune. After a skinny latte and white chocolate muffin, I take a stroll to the site of the last pub in this part of Finchley, now divided into two retail units.

One remains a bare concrete shell; the only sign of pending life a bright yellow banner announcing “Fireworks 4 U !!” For such a seasonal business they are cutting it mighty fine.

The other unit is open, but it has no sign up. The inside is fitted out in Ben Nicholson tones of brown, from thick gluey tar to soft fudge. In the centre of the shop are three large leather cubes. Along each wall runs a single shelf. On each shelf there are five similar looking objects, each placed rhythmically apart from the next object.

“Can I help you?”

The voice comes from the far end of the shop. I suppose I had not noticed her before because her hair and clothes and complexion were co-ordinated with the tones of the décor.

“Just looking.”

I pick up one of the objects. It is brown and shaped like a large seashell with five ridges running lengthways. The object is solid but soft.

“Those are the ladies'. The men’s are on the other side.”

“Thank you” I say. The shop assistant is leaning in a languid manner against the back wall. Perhaps from embarrassment, or self-consciousness, I glance down. Her feet hover just above the floor; no more than an inch or an inch and a half.

I can see no discernible difference between the men’s and the women’s products. I can feel the woman’s stare on the back of my neck.

“You know what they are?” she says.

“Of course” I say studying the object. There is an opening at the narrower end of the object.

“Would you like to try one on?”

“Erm” I say. “Actually what are they?”

She glides over to me, smiling.

“Hand shoes” she says.

“Oh, of course” I say.

“We import them from Italy. They are hand made by an old cobbler in Venice. His family have been making hand shoes for over three hundred years. He is the last.”

“Do you know your size?”

I shake my head. She grabs my hand and examines it, pressing her fingers hard into my flesh. She lets out an indecipherable “hmmm” as she studies my hand. “Maybe a 5.”

“OK” I say, “although my hands are quite broad.”

“Which style?” she asks.

I look along the row. I think I can discern subtle variations in colour and style.

“How about this one?” she says.

“No” I say.

“How about this one?”

“No” I say.

“How about this one?”

“Ok” I say.

She glides to the back of the shop and disappears through a door. I don’t remember seeing the door before.

She returns with a white box. The hand shoes are wrapped in layers of soft white paper. “Rice paper” she says. She pulls open the aperture and I push my hand in, but it is too tight.

“Try a 6” she says, “but I do recommend buying them on the tight side because they will loosen up.”

“I know” I say “but I have a rule, learnt from many years of bitter experience, that if it doesn’t fit right in the shop, it will never be comfortable.”

The size 6 is too loose.

“Do you do half sizes?”

The woman shakes her head.

“What a shame” I say.

“I think I’d better leave it” I say.

The shop assistant smiles.

That thing

THE THING

The thing is, what is the thing? Is this the thing, or is this simply the route to the thing? Or maybe just a red herring?

Will the thing live outside this thing, or will it be part and parcel of the same thing?

Can this thing be the thing, and if so what kind of thing can it be?

Can I think the thing into being, or will the thing just be?

Can I be the king of thing, or just a fucking nothing?

Nothing can come from nothing, but a thing can come from another thing.

One thing leads to another.

Wouldn’t that be something?

The thing is the thing the thing is.

The thing is, the thing is the thing.

Vanessa da Silva

As you will have gathered from the gig review, I'm an enormous fan of Tunng's artwork, especially the image on the left which has numerous animals embedded in it. Perfectly suits the Tunng aesthetic, bucolic, nostalgic, slightly sinister, and at the same time bursting with energy and form.

Well I have tracked down the artist responsible.

She is Vanessa da Silva, and her website is http://www.vanessadasilva.com - go check out her illustrations!

Gig Review - Tunng

Tunng. The Scala. 25/10/06

Who: Tunng – one of the most interesting bands in England right now.

What do they sound like: The Wicker Man soundtrack meets Múm with a touch of the Books thrown in for good measure. Bizarrely rated as one of the Jewish Chronicle’s upcoming bands of 2006 due to the presence of Becky “I’ve got a Bar Mitzvah to go to” Jacobs on vocals, but Tunng are very much a Klezmer free zone.

Another gig Robin? Yes, three in five days. Also my third slice (lashing?) of Tunng in under a year. I’m just a bit evangelical about them and keeping dragging people off to see them. But yes aural fatigue was setting in.

Don’t forget the review criteria can be found a few posts below this one.

1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10 – Not very. All a bit studenty. Disappointing lack of facial hair in the audience.

2. Bob quotient: 3/10 – Generally a bit lame in the ladies hair department.

3. Annoyment factor: 3/10 – Much loud talking in my vicinity about, inter alia, accountancy, upcoming exams and where shall we go to play pool. Much smoking of particularly smelly fags. I seem to have received some stick for this category, but then was delighted to pick up a flyer for the Luminaire (my favourite stand up gig venue in London after the Scala) and noticed it says at the bottom “if you like to talk when the bands are on you’re not welcome here”. Bravo!

4. Sound quality: 7/10 – bit fuzzy in the vocals.

5. Comfort: 5/10 – there are some alcoves to sit in, but then you can’t see anything and the sound is not so great. I guess because I have seen Tunng so often, I was less fussed than normal about securing a good spot, and consequently didn’t have a great view of the right hand part of the stage.

6. Sexytime: 6/10 – a touch of free hippy love in the air.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 10/10 – Tunng have it all. An electronics man wizzing off beats and samples and clicks and grunts. In truth he was a bit off his game/face, and mucked up some of his trigger points. A drummer with an array of obscure olde English percussive instruments, including what I believe is called a faggot. Plus drummer and Becky Jacobs both sported those little keyboard thingies with plastic tubes you put in your mouth.

Overall: 40/70 – perhaps a little low, but I think this reflects my theory that getting stuck in a noisy and unappreciative part of the crowd can really spoil one’s enjoyment. The gig was filmed for Channel 4 – I might review the “at home gig” if I can be bothered and compare the scores.

Optional categories

Merchandise: tremendous. Full range of cds for Tunng and supporting acts (who weren’t very good as it turned out). Tunng have the best range of T shirts of any band anywhere (see visuals below). Three different designs in multiple styles.

Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there

Visuals: fantastic. Seemless integration of cover art, t shirts, visuals, website. I have tracked down the artist responsible and will be reporting to you separately about her.

Gruff Rhys in Pinter Hat Shock

Thought for the day

Before you speak, ask yourself:

is it kind ?

is it necessary ?

is it true ?

does it improve on the silence ?

Shirdi Sai Baba 1856 - 1918

Gig Review - J Spaceman

Acoustic Mainlines Tour - J Spaceman plays the music of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized. QEH 23/10/06.

What? J Spaceman, aka Jason Pierce, in a kind of chamber pop meets gospel meets Unplugged melange. Mr Spaceman plus a man on electric piano, a string quartet, and 3 gospel singers.

1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10 - not very, nor was it particularly studenty or hairy. Just kind of normal I guess. But warm and supportive for the band.

2. Bob quotient: 4/10 - very poor, score would have been worse had it not been for a Regina Spektor look alike in a beret and curly ringlet combo picking up a few marks for general "nice hair".

3. Annoyment factor: 7/10 - an appreciative audience let down by consuming too much booze before the gig, leading to constant comings and going to the loo - not very sociable in a seated concert hall.

4. Sound quality: 9/10 - excellent, crystal clear.

5. Comfort: 7/10 - the seats at the QEH are fine, nicely padded, but just a little bit short, leading to extra strain on the hamstrings. Leg room aint great either.

6. Sexytime: 2/10 - songs about Jesus and death. Not really conducive.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 4/10 - none. Not even a drummer. Mr Spaceman did however sport this season's other essential accessory, a string quartet (this being the 4th string quartet I have seen in 3 gigs, and that's not including the full orchestra at the JCV gig).

Overall: 39/70. A poor score. But see below.

Merchandise: About 7 copies of the last Spiritualized album. A T shirt stall that only opened after the gig. But the T shirts were quite cool.

Gruff Rhys?: He wasn't there. But there were plenting of people throughout the night going off for a Gruff, much to my annoyance (see above).

What have we learnt? Well, only the second gig since I established the marking system and my methodology is in doubt. I think the system is essentially sound, but there will be some exceptional occasions when it breaks down and this was one of them. On paper at least, there was much scope for cynicism. Another string quartet. Acoustic guitars and gospel singers. Songs mostly about Jesus and the death of loved ones and the battle with the devil. White boy rips gospel and sells it back to a 99.9% pissed up white atheist audience. Oh Happy Day. And yet. And yet. Though the ingredients are familiar, their combination here was unique. After all, the key to great cooking is good ingredients, correct assemblage and the right seasoning. The strings carried much of the tune, rising above being mere garnish. Does Spaceman believe all the Jesus stuff? Who knows, he doesn't say much, apart from "thanks" at the end. Let the music do the talking.

And yet...there was real beauty and power in the songs. Spaceman's virtuoso performance was intense and it was an evening that will linger long in the limbic system where memory lies.

Final thought - J Spaceman has taken rock n roll back to the very moment of its conception, when Robert Johnson stood at the crossroads wrestling with selling his soul to the devil in return for immortality. Spaceman has reimagined a different outcome to that struggle, one where Jesus wins, and the blues and rock n roll lie down with gospel and country.

Gig Review : Jean Claude Vannier.

Jean Claude Vannier : L’Enfant Assassins Des Mouches and Histoire de Melody Nelson – Barbican 21/10/2006.

What? First and probably only ever live rendition of two classic soundtrack albums made by JCV and Serge Gainsbourg in the early 1970s. Featuring full orchestra, choir, band, a child string quartet, special guest stars, and a boy on stage. Conducted by JCV.

1. Coolness of crowd: 7/10 – remarkably high. I could easily have worn the Agnes B Hat in this company, but I couldn’t risk it in the rain.

2. Bob quotient: 8/10 – particularly fine slinky shiny black bob next door but one to me.

3. Annoyment factor: 8/10 – the chap next to me (not Oli) was doing a head bop thing in an annoying way, and also seemed to be in some sort of a relationship with the girl with the slinky bob. Minor rustling behind me which stopped when the concert began.

4. Sound quality: 9/10 – lush and creamy.

5. Comfort: 8/10 - nice seats, perhaps a tad too springy. Because the stage was extended forward and we were in the front row, I was looking up a lot which led to slight neck stiffening.

6. Sexytime: 8/10 - it was very French.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: 10/10 - this is what I’m talkin’ about. Bravo Michel Musseau. Instruments included electric whisk on hung sauté pans, sewing machine, coffee grinder, slamming door, and Monsieur Musseau marching in a box filled with gravel. All performed with a stern, uniquely French face, even when he nearly fell over during the marching part. Other sound effects performed by the rest of the orchestra included the chorus spraying aerosols, the whole orchestra waving white handkerchiefs, and a young boy lighting giant matches, tearing up pieces of paper, and shutting a giant pair of silver scissors.

Overall: 58/70 - a triumph.

Optional categories:

8. Merchandise: signed posters and a choice of two t shirts. Also a free booklet with lots of useful stuff, including lyrics in English and French. Not bad given this was a one off event. Picked up a T shirt bearing the imprint “l’enfant assassins des mouches” (literally ‘the child killers of the moustache’). Should confuse them on the promenade in Eilat.

9. Gruff Rhys factor: He was there. Singing in Breton. Other notables included a gloriously fucked Brigitte Fontaine, Jarvis “son of Joe” Cocker, Badly Sung Boy, Mick Harvey out of the Bad Seeds and Laetitia Sadier of Sterolab, who I thought looked very dirty (in a good way). The band included Vick Flick who did the original James Bond theme (dang de-dang dang, dang dang dang - dang dedang dang - that one) and Herbie Flowers who played the bass on Walk on the Wild Side.

Gig Reviews - marking system

Having been to many gigs in recent months, I have devised a unique system for scoring/reviewing purposes.

In almost all cases, the quality of the performers and my interest in their music is a given; I have realised that what really affects my enjoyment of a gig, and elevates one to the status of supergig (CocoRosie at the Scala late last year) and another to that of a turkey (Stereolab at Koko a few months back) are factors to do with the venue and the crowd.

I have included one performance related category; the sound effects performer. Almost every great act I have seen in recent times has featured a table laden with bizarre items or unusual percussion instruments or some electronic sound production box, which greatly enhance the vibe, the depth of sound and the visual spectacle. If the percussionist can bring a touch or Tommy Cooper / Eric Morecambe to proceedings then so much the better.

The system is as follows:

1. Coolness of crowd.

2. Bob quotient – important enough to warrant a category of its own. Needless to say the more bebobbed girls, the better. I don't want to open up a whole Pandora's Box about hair colour, but without doubt when it comes to the bob, black is best. Similarly the sharpness of the cut, and the shape of the wearer's neck, are key ingredients.

3. Annoyment factor – coughing, rustling, camera activity, phone activity, generally annoying behaviour (sitting on the floor, talking rubbish, smoking, smelliness). In this category, marks are deducted for annoyance - 10/10 is a stress free evening, 0/10 is an evening at the Hampstead Theatre.

4. Sound quality.

5. Comfort.

6. Sexytime – an entirely subjective vibeometer reading.

7. Percussion / sound effect function.

I will also include a number of optional categories which may or not be appropriate on any given occasion. These will not bear a score for the sake of consistency. They might include:

8. Merchandise – its nice to take home a souvenir.

9 Gruff Rhys - any portmanteau concert at the Barbican where an obscure non- English language album is recreated for the first and only time would not be complete without a guest appearance from Super Furry Animals lead singer Gruff Rhys, preferably singing in a tongue other then Welsh or English (eg Portugese, as he did at the Tropicalia gig earlier this year). Also rhyming slang, as in “I’m bursting for a Gruff”. Not to be confused with Griff Rhys Jones.

Tubano Bop

Quite why over 10 million people have tuned in to see this vid of two Israeli (her left eye is lazy) girls dancing is a little beyond me, but at least it's nice to have some positivity for a change : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_CSo1gOd48

Personally the following clip does it for me much more : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXs6Sh0DKs

Secret Squirrel

I'm sorry to have to report a major security breach.

An intruder managed to evade tight security and make it all the way into the grounds of the Finchley Love Palace.

I mean what if the little fucker had had a gun?

A full investigation is under way.

Meanwhile here are stills taken from the FLP close circuit surveillance camera network.

I'm just a Chi Machine

After my pilates session, they kindly let me have a go on their latest gizmo, the Zen Chi Machine. It looks like a little cushion perched on top of an upside down washing up bowl – I found a picture on the net, but in the one I tried the leg supports were covered by the cushion. You lie on your back with your feet in the slots and the contraption then vibrates. Quite strongly. It feels a bit like when you give your duvet a good shake in the morning – here you are the duvet and the motion is lateral rather than vertical.

Anyway it was set to give me five minutes of shaking all over. When it stopped I was advised not to try moving for a bit. I felt a buzzy tingling on my skin over the whole of my body. My pilates instructor said something about my aura but I was astral travelling at the time and so unable to comprehend what she said.

I was certainly spaced out and feeling quite mellow and happy. My sinuses seemed particularly clear. The good feeling lasted all the way home and after dinner I fell into a deep sleep in front of the telly, although this might have been something to do with the tedium of the Chelsea – Barcelona game.

The science: – according to one website selling it, “the Zen Chi Machine is a unique non-impact exercise movement that stimulates venous and lymphatic return, as well as the digestive tract, all whilst lying down. Making it the easiest exercise routine. Just 15 minutes exercise a day will improve energy levels, body appearance and create an overwhelming sensation of well being.”

Chi of course is “life force energy” and as William Blake said (and something of a new motto for me) Energy is Delight.

Not sure I would buy one (at £150) but would certainly try it again.

17th October 2006.

I read in the newspaper that History Matters, a quango comprising a load of other quangos like English Heritage and the National Trust, were running a "blog in" at www.historymatters.org.uk, the intention being to collect as many blogs as possible for the day of 17th October 2006, which then would be stored at the British Library. Well I couldn't resist, and inspired partly by a nostalgia that has arisen from hours of fiddling about on my space tracking down artists I haven't heard of for years, and partly by a growing existential dispair at the world we live in, I decided to write a serious piece. Not like me I know, but it happens sometimes.

This is what I wrote:

"“We need to get the balance right between integration and multi-culturalism” said Prime Minister Tony Blair today. Multi-culturalism is the word du jour.

I remember when I first heard the phrase back in the 1980s. Actually what I first heard was “Multi-Kulti”, the name of an album by Jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Back then multi-culturalism meant something completely different. It was all about sharing and exploring people’s identities, roots and culture. England was drab and grey in the 1970. To be young in the 1980s gave you the hope that the future would be better. Music, clubs, magazines, nightlife, food – everyone seemed to be exploring and mixing it up. Going to clubs like Dingwalls on a Sunday afternoon, you would see old white jazz beards mixing with sharp suited young black jazz dancers, united in a love of music. “Youth” culture was specialised – you chose your clubs, your clothes, your diet, according to which tribe you aspired to, but you were free to choose any you wanted, and to chop and change. In the late 1980s came the “acid house scene”. Again all sorts of unlikely people united in revelry. The music itself was an extraordinary hybrid; growing out of a US scene which was largely black and for the most part gay, it fused with the British working class “scally” culture of the terrace “casuals” to become something new, something for everyone, even for nice middle class educated white boys like me. That was multi-culturalism; a pick and mix and remix culture. Everyone getting along just fine. I’ll swap you some jerk chicken for a slice of kugel. It may seem superficial, but actually what makes us human more than food and music?

We thought we would grow up like this, and that our fundamental belief that everyone was equal, and that diversity was a good thing and a thing to be shared, would change the world.

Fast forward to 17th October 2006 and the world is a very different place and multi-culturalism has a very different meaning. In the age of spin, there is nothing that the media and politicians like better than to adopt slogans and phrases whose meaning is apparently indisputable, thereby avoiding any real discussion of the issue. But the words and phrases come ready loaded with emotion and prejudgment. “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” “Disproportionate.” “Islamic.” “Militant.” “Insurgent.” “Apartheid.” “George W Bush.” “Zionist.” They are designed to stifle debate and to hide underlying meaning; often you can best define their meaning by asking yourself what word the user is seeking to avoid using.

So today’s word is multi-culturalism. It is used to mean the opposite of integration, even its enemy. That it means nothing of the sort will not worry the media or the MPs. What they want it to mean is uni-culturalism, or isolationism, in the specific context of Muslims in Britain. But they will not say this. To use clear and specific language in this day and age is a dangerous and unfashionable thing."

Well, try as I may, the site just wouldn't accept my entry. I was well within the character count limit, but I reduced the piece to a single paragraph, took out contentious words like "Muslim" but still no joy. I tried different, how might I put it, more authentic identities, but still no joy. The speed of rejection was quite something. I began to suspect foul play. Some censorship bug or other.

Out of despair, I tried a different tact. I submitted this:

"Had a lazy day."

And it sailed through, no problem.

So there it is. That is my contribution to history. Had a lazy day.

If you want to post, you have until 1st November.

Scanner

Ever since I was a young boy, I could hear sounds in my head. The crackling of static. Drones. Pure sine waves. Dull thuds.

Over time, I came to realise that in the density of the hum, I could make out voices. Voices of my ancestors. Voices of my future. Voices of my past. Random voices. Voices without names or faces. Voices of me.

“Destroy -nothing -the most important thing.”

I felt that there was a compass in my head, and it always pointed north.

The colder the better. The air is pure. The ice clean. The sound of glaciers cracking mirrored my internal frenzy, but out there, on the tundra, I felt able to think, to attune to the landscape.

Amplification.

The sun on the ice; the frozen blood glistening like a jam-red gemstone.

The smell of carcass skins. Fat sizzling and jumping on the wood fire. Dogs howling, shaking off coats of ice. A lone black bird swooping on the horizon.

Around the camp, we have erected wind chimes made of ice. The husky wind pants as it rushes around the chimes.

In the centre of the clearing, we have dug a well, and a channel to let the meltwater drain into an underground chamber, which we have lined with thin metal strips and spikes. The top of the chamber is covered with grit and debris from the lip of the glacier, and a large ice trumpet looms out, projecting and distorting the sound of the water as it drips into the chamber and freezes.

A little distance away from the camp, we have made a large dish – it must be twenty foot in diameter – again from pure ice. The compacted ice has been polished to pure smooth perfection. In the centre of the dish is a large spike, pointing towards the sky. The spike is designed to focus the dish.

The purpose of the dish is simple, but the task is hard.

To capture the sound of the aurora.


100 million solar particles sizzle into the Earth’s atmosphere. Born in eruption on the surface of the sun, clouds of plasma travel at speeds of over a million kilometres an hour. Hooked in by the Earth’s magnetic field, they collide with our atmospheric gases. Energy is released by the collisions in the form of dancing photons; particles of light, pellets of love. Energy is delight.

The electrically charged particles excite the atmospheric gases; the excited particle is unstable and gives up its excess energy by emitting light. This is the aurora. Energy as delight.

The aurora occurs at altitudes between 80 and 500 kilometres, where there is a near-vacuum. Scientists will tell you that it is not possible for sound waves to propagate in such conditions.

I am no scientist. But I have heard the sound of the vacuum.

The Naked Lady

My my that Wikipedia is a marvellous thing. I've always wanted to get closer to the Naked Lady; well here is what Wikipedia has to say:

"La Delivrance locally known as The Naked Lady.

La Delivrance is a 16-foot statue in bronze of a naked women holding a sword aloft, and is the work of the French sculptor Emile Guillaume. It is located at the southern edge of Finchley at Henley’s Corner, at the bottom of Regents Park Road.

The statue has a number of local names including “Dirty Gertie”, “The Wicked Woman”, and most popular (to the exclusion of its real name) “The Naked Lady”.

The statue was created as a celebration of the First Battle of the Marne when the German army was stopped from capturing Paris in August 1914. In 1920 Emile Guillaume exhibited the statue at the Paris Salon, where it was bought by Lord Rothermere (Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere). Lord Rothermere presented the statue to the Urban District of Finchley. However Finchley Council needed a war memorial, and intended placing the new statue at the main entrance of Finchley’s recreation ground Victoria Park. Lord Rothermere, incensed by this, informed Finchley that the statue was to be placed at its present location, so that he might see it when driving to see his mother, who lived at Totteridge, or the council couldn’t have it at all. The statue was unveiled on October 20, 1927, in front of a crowd, believed to have been around 8,000 people, by the then Prime Minister Lloyd George (picture).

It is considered to be one of the most interesting pieces of public art in England."

Vive La Delivrance!

Product Review: Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream.

It was alright.

What, I have to say more than that? OK then.

Smell: Nice and clean.

Texture: Smooth. Not too oily, but viscous enough to get a good spread.

Initial thoughts: Not bad, definitely a winter and not a summer product.

I accompanied the application with a light spray of Decleor Original eu de toilette. I was concerned that any heavier scent might interact with the smell of the cream in a way that would produce something a little bit too funky (not in the good sense of the word).

Final thoughts: You know, not bad at all. Skin felt soft and happy. Not sure I would buy it myself, althoughI may revisit this later in the winter. Could be useful as an emergency 'comfort cream'; it reminded me of a lighter version of Decleor's "Keep Comfort Calming Nourishing Cream". One to put on my chanukah wish list.

7/10

Ultra Facile Cream

So I got this flyer in the post today from Kiehl's, launching their new ULTRA FACIAL CREAM.

What they say:

"Inspired by our original, beloved Ultra Facial Moisturizer, this 24-hour, light-textured daily hydrator leaves skin comfortable and visibly well-balanced, particularly in harsh weather conditions. Our formula is made is Antarcticine–a Glycoprotein extracted from microorganisms sourced from sea glaciers and notable for an ability to protect skin from cold temperatures–as well as Imperata Cylindrica, a plant indigenous to the Australian desert which possesses superb water retention properties in dry conditions. Our unique combination of ingredients helps reduce moisture loss while drawing and absorbing moisture from the air. With continuous water replenishment throughout the day, skin is smooth, healthy-looking, and "moisture-even.""

It came with a nice map of Greenland and a statement that Kiehl's were supporting efforts to stem the effect of global warming on Greenland.

Now let's look at this in more detail.

A glycoprotein extracted from...sea glaciers. Now pardon me, but aren't glaciers made from erm water? And pretty much nowt else. I know, I've been to the Arctic, I've drunk glacial meltwater, it's about as pure as pure can be.

So I googled Antarticine and found that [apparently] it is derived from a new bacterial strain, Pseudoalteromonas antarctica NF, isolated from a sample collected at the bottom of a glacier in the region of Inlet Admiralty Bay (King George Island, South Shetland Island, Antarctica). So it was some gunk at the bottom of the glacier?

And isn't the problem with global warming like that the glaciers are melting? So is it really such a good idea to be using glaciers for cosmetic products, I ask you? Maybe having discovered the bacteria they now grow it in the lab, although does it then count as "sourced" from sea glaciers?

Next I googled Imperata cylindrica. Also known as cogongrass. In the US it is classified as a "noxious weed". Nice. And it possesses "superb water retention properties". I don't know, but lady friends of mine are always complaining about too much water retention.

Kiehl's tell me that their product is an "extraordinary moisturizer...particularly effective in very cold and dry conditions." Well I'm off for dinner in my neighbour's succah, which should provide the requisite cold and dryness, so I'll be testing the sample they gave me and letting you know.

Atomic Dawg

Not So Illuminated

When the Family left to go to the Hampstead Theatre, were they already late? At what time did they realise that they were going to be late? Are they the sort of people who are always late for everything? Does it bother them that they are late?

When did the Family realise that they were going to be sitting in the second row, and that therefore their arrival, some ten minutes after the play had begun, would be disturbing for the rest of the audience?

At what point during the Grandmother’s preparations for the evening did she decide to adorn her arms with large clanking metallic bangles? Does she always wear these bangles, or did she wear them especially because they were going to the theatre?

Does the Grandmother hear the noise of the bangles? Is it like when you go into a room where there is an unexpected noxious smell, and before long you no longer smell the smell?

Did the Mother remember to pack lots of sweets for her children to suck on during the play? Were they the kind of sweets that have crinkly wrappers and which are difficult to open?

Did the Mother know anything about Everything is Illuminated, the play she was going to see, based on the book of the same name? Did she attempt to ascertain whether the play was suitable for children?

How long has the Grandmother owned her handbag? What creature donated its skin to make her handbag? Is that creature dead yet? If the creature is dead, then why does the handbag groan and rumble every time the Grandmother touches it?

What does the Grandmother keep in the bag?

Does the Mother decide during the interval to buy her children cokes? Are the cokes poured into large plastic cups filled with ice? After they have drunk the coke, do the children discard the cups, or do they continue to hold onto them, rattling the ice, sucking at the cold icewater, biting into the plastic, crushing and crinkling the plastic in their hands?

Is the Grandmother surgically attached to the handbag? Are the children surgically attached to the plastic cups? Is there some form of genetic predisposition to surgical attachment that has been passed down from Grandmother to Grandchild? Does this mirror any of the themes of the play?

What is the Grandmother’s reaction when the nasty man sitting in front of her thanks her for almost ruining the play for him? Is her argument, that she was disturbed by a man who kept falling asleep and waking himself up with a snore, a valid defence?

Is the man who fell asleep the same man who kept felling asleep during a performance of the Rubinstein Kiss at the Hampstead Theatre earlier that year, and who would wake himself up with a snore, and would then mumble to himself until he realised where he was?

Are Jewish people more or less likely then any other social group to fall asleep at the theatre? Does this answer depend on whether or not there is any Jewish theme associated with the play?

Is the Mother aware of the disturbance caused to the other people in the audience when one of her children cries out “oh no” several times during a scene at the climax of the play where an old lady chastely kissed the hero on the mouth? Or when the child giggles and shuffles nervously during a rape scene?

If she is not, is it because she is concentrating hard on the play, because she is blinded by her love for her children, or because she herself spends most of the play talking to the children?

Did the Family learn anything from their visit to the theatre? Were they uplifted, or moved by the play? In a week’s time, will they remember that they went to see the play? The next time they go to see a play, will any of them behave in a way that is different?

eye eye

Tabernackered

When it rains like this, all night and all day, you wonder if it is ever going to stop. The damp gets into your bones, into your vulnerable spots; legs, back, neck. In such weather you can believe in the supernatural.

Looking out of my window at the neat rows of back gardens meandering into the near distance, every second or so house has a temporary appendage. A little hut. Some of the booths are made in the traditional style, from sections of wood nailed together. Most now are made from plastic sheeting drawn across metal frames.

The wind lashes the tarpaulin, tugs at the guy ropes. Plastic fruit - apples, oranges, bananas, lemons - dance on the end of tattered lengths of string. Children’s drawings of fruit and tress and flowers turn to slush in the wet, the colours seeping down the translucent paper.

The roofs are made from a chaotic array of plant life thrown over the top of the hut. The winds catch the branches, tossing them over the side, where they swirl in the storm.

The hut attached to the house about 5 or 6 down from mine is the first to go. The ropes give way, the nails come loose, and the whole thing flies into the air and circles above like a plane waiting to land.

Another hut joins it, the tarpaulin dangling below the main structure like a long dress on a headless body.

Soon there are a dozen or so huts in the sky, circling and rising and falling in the ebb and flow of the currents.

From the top floor of my house, I have a good view over the rooftops of Golders Green and Finchley, even Hendon in the distance. As I watch, the sky fills up with these strange flying creatures. There must be hundreds now, a bizarre migration of exotic and frenetic birds, like a plague, almost, you might say.

One comes in close over head, and I see a little figure clutching to one of the ropes. Is it a silhouette, or an illusion? A little man, clutching to one of the ropes. His long black coat flaps around him, rising like a Dervish’s frock coat, carries on upwards, slapping him around his face. He kicks and jerks his body to try and force the coat down. I can see his long beard, grey-white; the same tones as the clouds above him.

The wind swings him closer to my window and I can see that his eyes are tight shut, his lips moving, echoing the incantations that he is reciting inside his mind.

Before I can do anything, not that I can think of what I might do, a powerful gust pushes him, and the other huts, higher into the sky. Up and up they go, until they are just tiny spots.
Far away birds, flying far far away.


The little man clings on for dear life. He is up with the clouds now, looking down on creation. He never stops praying. He finds himself beginning to enjoy the experience. Maybe enjoy is not the right word. Appreciate. He never ceases to surprise himself; how much there is to be thankful for.

Art!

Here's a lovely drawing that my pal Big Ol did, in Hungary if I'm not mistaken.

Alas!

when passion is both meek and wild!

John Keats

on boredom

He really didn’t feel all that well. He felt as though he’d been shot, no, yes, shot, by a poison dart. He was weakened but not out. It was the boredom he told himself. Boredom was the enemy. He had to find a way to embrace the boredom; take its energy and use it back against the enemy. Yes that sounded like a plan.

Would collapsing on the bed be a start?

The sun appears below the clouds. I slip on my sandals and step into the garden.

The air is still and thin, until broken by a glass bottle falling over and rolling. A squirrel starts, jumps onto the fence, then runs along it, up the bramble, onto the neighbour’s drainpipe and away. The squirrel must have strong paws; it was traversing sharp terrain. A police siren cries, then another. A man shouts. Someone fires up a drill. The wind distorts the sound; to something more like the throaty rattle of a mechanical frog. I feel jumpy. I retreat indoors. Brakes squeal and lorries rumble.