making beautiful music

after climbing the work mountain last week i was exhausted, too exhausted for lovely rose's birthday so just sleeped sleeped sleeeeeped. monday i had a horrible day in work but made up for it by having a great time at the HALFWAY PUB QUIZ. it was benny's last night in town and so we let him win (well, they won fairly but only by half a point). we were on a team with the very lovely patti ladies who usefully knows their sports but didn't know the top 5 vehicle users in the country. drat! we did come second...

tuesday we went to see THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. what a waste of an opportunity that film is. it was 2 and 3/4 hours long, 3 times as long as it takes to read the F SCOTT FITZGERALD short story it is based on. the funny, surreal short story is turned into an achingly dull tale about one man's journey to overcome his "disability". steen and i left saying "wastn't that just like forest gump!" and learnt the next day that it had the same screenwriter. the similarities were uncanny: he starts off "different" (born an old man ageing in reverse) and can't walk due to severe arthritis; has a on-off romance with a childhood sweetheart that gives his life meaning; develops an unlikely friendship with a ship captain turned navy man; he takes off on a long journey by himself... i could go on. rubbish. i've seen gump many many times (and written essays on it as had to study it in an american studies class at uni) and it is more entertaining and funny than this. poor brad pitt probably thought it was an oscar shoe-in and cate blanchett was quite good, it was nice to see julia ormond again but they were in a very boring, uninspired adaptation.

wednesday's film choice was far more entertaining: ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL! it is only 81 minutes long, half BEN BUTTON but many times a better story. robb reiner and his bandmate lips have been in the rock band anvil since they were at school and they are now in their 50s still hoping for the big time. they do boring ordinary day jobs in toronto, canada and once a year try and tour the current version of their band. robb reiner was hailed as an amazing influential drummer by many and guns and roses, metallica and twisted sister all said they were a huge influence on them but they fell by the wayside, wrong time wrong place. it was interesting to take in comparisons with kiss, whom they had lot in common with, who are expertly managed and have enough of a business head that they even marketed kiss coffins a couple of years ago but anvil barely have 5 people coming to watch their shows. as one person said, they should be playing to hundreds every time they get on stage. they were clearly really nice blokes and the power of their self belief has kept them together all this time. it was billed as "the real spinal tap" but it was more heartwarming than that, more hilarious than that. we watched them get lost in prague during a disasterous tour of europe and get rejected by every record company having paid out $12000 to get a decent producer to do their album but then they played japan at a terrible 11.30am slot and have a packed out stadium. it was heartwarming and made me very happy.

thursday i had a terrible choice to make: go with steen to a joy collective gig in newport or go to a LOOSE gig in buffalo. i chose loose. i wanted steen to get to know the boys he works with without me muscling in and the loose night sounded great anyway. i went with anwen and anne cakebread and we had a great pretty night. i reviewed it for the JOY COLLECTIVE and so will cut and paste my review here

a myriad of gigs to choose from tonight: i could be hot footing it to the 'port for le reno amps; clopping down to clwb for dent may; but instead i've chosen an ever-reliable LOOSE gig. of course, the trouble with so many great things to do in one night is that the supply of music lovers is spread thin, buffalo's offensive sign a little too visible for the lack of people. a rave review of midori hirano's new album from the national 'bloided broadsheets is not enough to get this room packed but the night is still young and y'all are missing out cos first up is the excellent canadian band MUARENA HELENA, relocated to london and with a local lass amy on recorder and sax. they play dreamy little lullabies about the afterlife and sausage restaurants and their songs sound like a soundtrack to running through the streets high on adventure. i'm quite stunned that they are on first, they could easily headline, bloody good start.

whilst the ed plays some records a lady in an amazing ramshackle outfit is surrounding herself with a bunch of her familiars in puppet and soft toy form, swiftly joined by a man in a nice hat. this turns out to be GNU AND THE SHREW. after the last band anticipation is high, perhaps too high as the lady's singing voice splits the crowd into lovers and haters. the haters go to the bar and continue to babble and bray whilst we try to stick with it, that's as far as our love goes. the songs are all right, twee little ditties about dead ducks wearing trousers but her affected voice sounds like "absolutely" regular morwenna bands doing an impression of joanna newsom and it does grate. her set is saved by some witty little lines about being conned by big business "the gas board is such a fraud" and the beautiful accompanying voice of gnu himself.

quietly, shyly, MIDORI HIRANO sets up her laptop and keyboard. she is japanese, having relocated to berlin only 5 months ago and unneccessarily apologises for her poor english. what she lacks in stage banter she makes up for in the glacial beauty of the music she plays. on the laptop is a list of effects that she picks at random, plays her keyboard through and loops them around whilst playing the melody in "piano" mode. the effect is like impressively delicate, intricate like a spiderweb or lace. she explains that she has no setlist, but improvises two songs. the first is like the melting of an icicle onto water and the second artfully wraps up this image by looping the sound backwards, the secrets it has revealed being sucked back up into the glacier, quietly lying in wait for its next reveal. wonderful. i think i made the right choice, what a fantastic night and another beautiful loose night.

friday night i'd booked off work to go to the arnolfini to see MOUNTAIN OF 8, a QU JUNCTIONS gig. it had 8 bands playing over 2 spaces in the arts centre, the auditorium and the dark space, which is titchy. the first lady played upstairs and was an almost shamanic ritual, singing over an indian-style drone sound that she played on the violin. i quite liked her, if a little uncharismatic. i felt like falling asleep. downstairs we caught SILVER PYRE, a great little find. they had some great visuals projected behind them and a great drummer who made a great array of percussion sounds with bells danging from drumsticks, he was accompanied by a great accordianist. we bought these beautiful little home made eps from them sealed with wax. next up was a bloke making sounds like the plate teutonics of the earth expelling a machine coming out of his guitar. sorry, again i didn't catch his name. i was quite enjoying it but we both needed a pee break and some sun so we didn't stay long. next up was the reason for our visit: WILDBIRDS AND PEACEDRUMS. having seen them at GREEN MAN last year and listening a lot to the album we bought there the anticipation was palpable. it paid off. they were feral, sexy, stomping. she had a great outfit and i really liked the way the drummer kept on looking up in a worshipful way and grinning at her whilst playing complicated and hypnotic beats. this sort of music is a religious experience. we dashed upstairs again to see a man singing quite delicately over a double bass but again, i didn't catch his name. i'll have to get them from steen and update this later. steen carried the magic paper, i was just happy that there was somewhere else to run to and that they'd put so much on. then POLAR BEAR in the auditorium! owen got me listening to them a couple of years ago and on record they sound much more relaxed than they were on stage but none the worse for that. it was great, the drummer's amazing 12 inch (at least) afro and two saxaphonists carrying a fairly standard cool jazz sound and expanding it through to some fusion. the double bassist had a "miles smiles" era miles davis t-shirt which made me happy and anticipate a bit more of a freak out than they got to but never mind because that was made up for by a modernisation in the form of a little guy with a laptop programming in some beats with a games consol joystick and making great sample noises by playing a guitar with a paintbrush and "playing" a balloon. yes, a balloon. he blew it up, drummed on it, let the air out near the mic... astoundingly inventive: whatever will they think of next?!

i fell asleep on the train and that's pretty much been the story for the rest of the weekend. saturday night instead of going out and doing anything we cooked food and i fell asleep on steen as we watched THE INCONVIENIENT TRUTH. shame, cos i was really enjoying it. i think they made more of AL GORE's lifestory to break up the lecture and lengthen the movie. i missed the last half hour when it told you what you can do to save the planet so fell asleep in despair and subsequently had a dream about the end of the world.

speaking of dreams, i did have a humdinger of a set of dreams this week. it began on monday night. my friend CASEY and i were hanging out one evening in a bar in the northwest and suddenly realised something was up. i tried to get hold of will but the phone lines were down. it was evening and people were running past, people from chapter (including dark mavis, amusingly enough) so we went back to my house. it became apparent that the world was being taken over by zombies. these zombies manifested themselves by singing advertising jingles a you, a bit like the way the aliens in INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS in the 1970s did. we were in the kitchen (of my old house in clive road) and realised my housemate had turned into a zombie because he was singing a pepsi jingle at us so we hid in the cupboard under the stairs and he was about to get in when we realised it had a secret tunnel / slide so we went down there and it led to a series of underground bunkers where a CHAPTER BOARD MEETING was going on. casey and i hid behind some boxes and tried to listen but then i woke up. i remember we weren't really scared, more amused. casey knows how to handle these situations.

my other dream was that i was visiting erin but she was in florida for some reason so i had to travel by myself for a bit, which was quite nice. i stayed somewhere that looked like oregon or north bend, a big hotel / hostel with a communal kitchen. i chatted to the other travellers and then as a touristy thing we went to a court case for something similar to the fritzl crime. i didn't really want to go and started distancing myself from the people that did. i decided to go off by myself and visit the olympic national park, that i'd not manage to get to when i lived there before. the dream became very surreal at this point. in the olympic park were these pink cloud-like things that looked like clouds in the sky but they were ground level. suddenly they would explode and all these colours would puff out and an explosion of colour coming out of the ground like a geyser. there were floating houses around this area and i remember thinking how wonderful it would be to live there. i was on a bus and it got nearer the destination and we were getting to this place that looked like mount fiji but with day-glo coloured trees and erin was waiting for me there and we were going mountain climbing. what a magical dream. it made me miss everyone terribly though. i miss my wife and i don't know when i'm going to have enough money to go visit. i'd want to take will too, show him the mountains! i don't think olympic park looks like my dream but the mountains are so jagged and majestic, it would be wonderful to see them up close. ahhh, dream dream dream.