Ghetto Warriors - Minority Boxers in Britain - The Jewish Museum

A small but perfectly formed exhibition about “minority” boxers at the small but perfectly formed Jewish Museum in Camden. To my shame, I hadn’t been there before, and they had some great stuff in their permanent exhibition, including a Pesach moustache cup – a cup with an internal strip of ceramic I guess intended to keep one’s ‘tache dry. But I was there for the boxing.

The exhibition began with some of the great Jewish pugilists of the 18th Century like Daniel Mendoza (who wrote the first boxing manual) and “Dutch Sam” who invented the upper cut, and featured some amazing prints and souvenirs from this period.

The second period covered was pre WWII where many Jewish boxers from the East End came to prominence - I particularly enjoyed the display of cigarette cards from these times, and Elliot [of Yabbok – see March 07] Tucker’s film featuring various cigar chomping old timers (did you know Mickey Duff’s grandfather was the Belzer Rabbi?).

Finally the exhibition covered the rise of Black and Asian boxers after the war, including a great picture of Chris Eubank in all his pomp.

A must see.

The museum is normally only open in the day, but I went at night as part of a talk given by Professor Sander Gilman on “Imagining Jewish Bodies”, a disconcerting rollercoaster ride through 2000 years plus of anti-Semitic stereotyping, deconstructing the physical characteristics associated with “the jew” through the ages. For example, “the jew” was often portrayed as having flat feet, signifying his unsuitability for military service, thus his inability to serve his [adopted] country, hence highlighting his innate disloyalty. I will be raising this issue with my podiatrist when I next see him about my collapsed arches. Prof Gilman was as stimulating a speaker as I’ve had the pleasure to come across in recent years.

Carlos Acosta - The Lowry, Manchester

And so to Manchester, to the Lowry indeed, for Carlos Acosta and friends as part of the Manchester International Festival. I was taking Mama Grebson as a birthday treat and boy did she enjoy it.

Carlos Acosta is by repute the world’s best male ballet dancer. What never occurred to me before hand is that, for thinking ladies of a certain age and disposition, he is their equivalent of a night at the Chippendales. There were so many hysterical screaming women, it was like Barry White all over again.

The first half featured two Acosta-less pieces from Danza Contemporanea de Cuba , and a brief but powerful appearance from the main man dancing the pas de deux from Le Corsaire (that really does sound like a euphemism for something unspeakable). He was accompanied by Yiensgay Valdes, Prima Ballerina of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.

The second half was edited extracts of a piece by Acosta called Tocororo: A Cuban Tale, to a live Cuban band. It was supposedly his life story but in reality more of a Fame-style dance off between geeky classical boy (Acosta) and a Huggy Bear style cigar smoking pimp-rollin’ cat (dunno who played him). Acosta won of course, and the two traded hand shakes rather than fists as the girls on stage and off watched on adoringly.

It was all great fun. Ballet really isn’t my sort of thing, but I could appreciate Acosta’s physical and athletic approach that made most European dancers look a bit feeble and listless in comparison. Anyway who cares what I thought, this was very much ladies night.

rainy day, dream away

I received this greeting from my friends at japanesepottery.com:

"Greetings from Mishima, As mid-summer greets us, we'd like to extend a traditional Japanese shochu mimai greetings to all (a summer greeting inquiring about how one's getting along in the summer heat) and hope some coolness in harmony with nature---cold barley tea!--will find its way to you."

Oh if only they knew. Won’t it ever stop raining?

Cornelius - RFH - 1/7/07

I was slightly unprepared for the sonic onslaught of Cornelius, or the Cornelius Group as they were styled, and their Synchronsied Sensuous Show. Known to some as the Japanese Beck, and to me as a DJ, remixer / producer, this show was alchemy of a different kind to Matmos’, a thick and heavy fusion at high temperature of many prefixes to the word rock – surf, punk, angular, funk, noise and post being just a few.

The four piece band, dressed in grey shirts with white collar and tight black jeans, were effortlessly cool, as were the lightshow and visuals. And it was all ever so tight. The synchronisation with the visuals was quite amazing, particularly given the speed of some of the playing. In the best number for this, a magical stop-animation scene set in a kitchen matched every pulse of the band, every vocal click coordinating with a sugar lump defying gravity and rolling across a table.

I preferred the more mellow numbers, although this was all relative, as even the slow tunes were heavy and the quiet ones loud. But for a finale, the band swapped position, the lady drummer who had been bashing nine bells of hell pout of her kit all evening took centre stage with a flute, and they lullabied us into the night with a lovely rendition of the old Dean Martin croon, Sleep Warm.



Which I did.

Matmos - RFH - 1/7/07

A gig this disparate can really only be reviewed in two parts…

First up were sonic alchemists Matmos.

When I saw them a few years ago, they were generating sound from the most unlikely sources, notably the spanking of a bare bottom and the pouring of beer onto a metal sheet.

For this gig they were augmented by an extra guitarist (though this being Matmos guitars aren’t played as such, they are bowed, or played directly into the hardware to be processed and manipulated) and by a member of New York’s So Percussion ensemble, here playing timpani, marimba, tubular bells, plant pots and bird whistles).




They’ve expanded their musical palette too: less driving beats, an infusion of latin rhythms, touches of contemporary classical, and generally more mellow. They were just back from Verona where they had been commissioned to produce an electronic version of Aida, and treated us to a couple of tracks.



For the finale we had a brilliant reading of a story from the libretto to Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives opera (from googling him today, I learn that Ashley is an avant garde American electronic / contemporary classical composer).

All in all this was a wonderful set, with moments of real imagination, touching on the sublime.