this week was marked like a hot brand on the skin by our part in the casey and ewan (hereby to be known as raymo) directed video for CATE LE BON. it was the hottest week of the year so far, the sort of weather people leapt into wearing nothing but shorts and people in offices complained about the lack of air conditioning. our working environment was the llofft theatre space above the chapter cafe bar with blacked out windows and at least 4 500 watt hallogen bulb lights at any given time. with no fan. if this was a professional production everyone would have sued! but it was casey and ewan, top creative minds of our time and we gave our time freely and happily, because its far more fun than anything else we do normally. poor cate, she gave birth to an egg, attacked by tree people, raped by a monster and her head pulled off and then lynched by an angry mob. a friend of mine came upstairs to help at one point and said i looked completely calm and at home. i was, i love all this stuff, its what i imagined myself doing when i was a kid. things being what they were and the little twists i took to veer off this path i've ended up doing something different but its always nice being back in that atmosphere where saying things like "i think we should move her eyeball to the right a little more" seem completely normal. we did our normal work and then dashed upstairs to help out till about 11pm from monday and friday and usually got a pint in at the end of the evening. a bloody brilliant way to spend a working week.
other things i did that week that was exciting was attend lots of CHAPTER meetings. this may sound dull to some but it was to discuss moving back to the other side of the building and all that entails: very exciting indeed! our visual arts director, hannah firth, gave us a presentation on the interior design she, angela giddens and marc rees had co-designed (old school) and we saw the finalised signage (neon neon!) and we talked about all that needed to be done. as soon as we move back we have arts festivals WONDERCULTURE and MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES and then hot on their heels is SWN festival and EXPERIMENTICA. the capacity is going to be huge, a real leap from what we have now (currently at about 200 we will have capacity for 660 in the new concourse) so its important we do a lot of planning. it was revealed that we will also have far more commissioned spaces for art and the idea of what it is going to be like just made my stomach bubble with joy.
on the friday we said goodbye to the raymo team to attend the JOY COLLECTIVE benefit gig in aid of the hospice that looked after jonny's dad when he was dying. it was an opportunity to go to TJ'S and see FUTURE OF THE LEFT and jonny's new band SCIENCE BASTARD. it was very odd going into tjs again. i worked out that i hadn't been there since 1997 when we shot the catatonia video mulder and scully in the xmas break from uni. that is 12 years ago. frightening. it hadn't changed much, apart from the wall to the quiet room moving a bit and the toilets relocated, it had the same feel. i was flashbacking all over the place. NINJA NINJA were on first, they were ok. deans and steen did not like them but i thought they were all right, they seemed to need a bit more practice. SCIENCE BASTARD were full of energy and good fun but the night truly belonged to FUTURE OF THE LEFT, they really are so good live. kelson stage dived at one point and was playing his bass whilst being held up by the crowd. it was a strange contrast that the last time i'd been in there kevin allen, the director of the catatonia video staged a stage dive with cerys that took many attempts to muster into looking like the real thing.
on the sunday we had a film day, since i was ushering for the ken loach season. we saw LOOKING FOR ERIC followed by KES. it was interesting to see how much and how little his style had changed over the years. everyone's seen (and been traumatised by) kes, its up there with WATERSHIP DOWN with one of those films you saw when you were a kid that made you cry your eyes out and this wasn't even accompanied by art garfunkel crooning comfort over the credits. it was odd to look back at the 70s in a very real way, without some bouncy voiceover telling you how great spacehoppers were. some people in the older part of my generation than me had taken their tween children to watch it and it suddenly made me feel very old. i remember things looking like that, i remember that life, if a little distantly and dreamlike, but to them it must seem like how things were in victorian times. it is such a true picture of how brutal things were, the children were as wild as the animals, loach seemed to be portraying human society as a lie of civilisation. it may be my age, but it feels like everything is mapped out that children are never allowed outside on their own to play, their every moment is monitored, closing in on their imagination. LOOKING FOR ERIC was in contrast to that, quite a feelgood movie. it begins with postman eric having a panic attack. his life is at a turning point, his partner has left him and his first wife, lily is back in contact through their grandchild and the remembering of how he screwed up the first time has him reeling. added to this he has two very lazy, abusive, drug taking teenage stepsons that somehow he has ended up solely responsible for. seeking guidance in his life he takes some of the eldest's weed and tries to calm down, in the process hallucinating eric cantona. cantona gives mysterious gallic advice but as most good counsellors tend to do, he lets eric the postman work things out for himself. it was a delightful film, about being and becoming a man, from the teenage sons' maturation and veering away from false idols and how if working class men became better at expressing themselves and learning to deal with their responsibilities. it was also a relief that it was not as depressing as some loach films can be.
to get completely over the hot week we went to the BAD MOVIE CLUB to see lindsey lohan in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME. nicko warned us it was bad. she even said it was worse than THE SWARM. "pah!" i declared, "nothing is worse than the swarm". i was wrong. at least the swarm made some sort of internal sense. it was stoopid but didn't make you go "whaaa?". the plot is such: lindsey lohan is an ordinary middle class virginal teen called aubrey and in her town is a serial killer who lobs off bits of teens then leaves them for dead. one day she goes missing. we see lots of horrific footage of her limbs being frozen off, hacked into by bits of fancy sculptured blue glass and then she is found at the side of the road. when she awakes she tells the doctors and her family she is not aubrey but dakota, her twin. the only way to see this movie is in the company of the bad movie club. i was laughing my socks off. nicko and joe's gaffawing at some of the terrible terrible lines and gaping plot holes made it all worth it. the plot barely made sense and the twist at the end just made you go "no way!". a brilliant way to end the week.
28 Jun 2009
25 Jun 2009
the big unsleep
this week has been hot. hot and bright. i've been waking up at about 5am wide awake then falling asleep just before i have to get up. very annoying. monday passed by quite nicely, played with the cat after work then fell asleep in the garden and almost missed the FUTURE OF THE LEFT live instore performance in SPILLERS. i felt a bit groggy when i got there and found it packed full of people and airless. i found steen who was stood just behind matt and jonny (from JOY COLLECTIVE) and charlotte and jamie were next to me, a good placing. i tried to fend off fainting by waving my photomarathon topic card for the next half hour or so. they did 6 songs i think and it was very good. i especially liked the song "mark foley was right" cos he tends to be. i'm warming to future of the left. i thought they were great the first time i saw them (i think it was their first gig too) but never seemed to be in the mood for them since, which sounds like a complete diss but i always seemed to be doing something else when they were playing. it was good to see them here to remind myself that they are actually really good. apparently my friend james is moving into a house with falkous and matt, which will be the most cynical house of disgruntled males in cardiff, i can't wait to visit!
afterwards we went and had some tea in CHAPTER and went to see SYNECDOCHE, NY, the new charlie kaufman film. i was incredibly excited about this, dismissing the cries i've vaguely heard from the press about it being indulgent. ha! he's allowed to be indulgent, he's a genius, thought i. i was wrong. it was a mess. i started off enjoying it, gleefully noting that everyone in the cast list at the beginning was amazing (dianne wiest! catherine keener! jennifer jason leigh! phillip seymore hoffman!) and halfway through was longing for it to end. its the story of a writer in an unhappy marriage who starts writing a great masterwork on his life and that is all you can describe it as really. it is a valiant effort, in a way, he's trying to redefine film language, it is as massive an opus as the play the character is writing, trying to understand himself by getting it all played out in front of him, his personal life seems out of control so he tries to take control over it by reimaginging it on stage. a good effort but it didn't work for me. it felt like unfunny woody allen and just became a big sprawl of characters and went on a bit long. i understood where he was trying to get to but i felt like he needed a filter of some kind, someone to tell him where to stop. by the umpteenth time someone new was becoming his wife / daughter / assistant i just thought it would never end. a shame, but a grand shame which is the most interesting so not a waste of time.
wednesday i met some friends lou and rich from AMBERCOUCH for an exciting business meeting, we're thinking of starting a website. i came up with an idea a couple of years ago and asked how much it is to get a website and dismissed the idea for being ridiculously expensive but now they say it may be done! wow! we're doing research on it now, a sort of cardiff version of BUY OLYMPIA, one of my all time favourite websites. finding out if we can get grants, my time won't really be wasted but lou and rich's is a bit more precious since they'll be doing the actual work.
after that i went to usher for O'HORTEN, a norweigan film about a lonely train driver who has just retired and has to find something to do with his life. it was a wonderful, beautiful film. it could have been really depressing and sad, about the uselessness of retired life but instead it gives horten the chance to forge relationships with people and live for the first time in his life. the scenery when he was driving his train around the mountains and snowscapes was breathtaking and made me determined to try and do the train journey around europe steen and i have been talking about.
i zipped off to PULSE to buy some much needed toms of maine deodorant, soap pods for the laundry, kingfisher toothpaste and all those useful hippie things i am about to run out of and saw the lovely marc roberts and rob kennedy and morgan hall in there, a proper chapter away from chapter! then zipped back to chapter to see THE BIG SLEEP. i missed the raymond chandler talk last week but was determined to see this one, a big favourite. it was amazing to see it on a big screen. i'd forgotten the script was written by william faulkner till he came up on screen in the credits and its evident in some of the scenes, the first one with the general and marlowe, any with bogey and bacall... it crackles. the villains seem genuinely sleazy, the grime reaching all the way up to the upper class in hollywood. wonderful.
thursday i was entirely lazy. i caught up on some sleep by having a proper lay in and did lots of laundry (still trying to get through stuff from when the cat had fleas last week) and stayed in my dressing gown till about 3pm. at 6pm i got picked up by rob to be taken with will to bristol to THE CUBE cinema where we were going to watch "introduction to japanese sex films". we got some food first in CAFE KINO, a co-operative place which was basically exactly what sort of business i want to run when i grow up. it had all these little touches, all very much home-made and BOOK CROSSING posters (leave a book, post in a book crossing pamphlet and then it can be tracked every time someone new reads and then leaves it). the food we had in there was amazing, i had a spicy bean burger with amazing thick cut chips and steen had falafel. we dashed over to the cube, worried we'd be late but they're so laid back there it didn't start for another half an hour. i love it in the cube, we keep saying we'll have to go more often, if it wasn't for the shite cardiff-bristol train service i think we'd go every week. everyone (staff and customers) were sat outside having an impromptu bbq and chatting and drinking, very relaxed then we went in and was introduced to the film by a nice man called jasper sharp who has written a book about PINKU EIGA, the japanese sex film industry. the perimetres are quite tight: its 1 hour, budget of £20,000, at least 1 sex scene every 20 minutes and no pubes or real genital parts but apart from that you can do anything. the first film we saw was A LONELY COW WEEPS AT DAWN, a rather sweet film about a farmer whose son has died and lives with his widowed daughter in law. he has gone a bit senile and gets up every morning to milk his favourite cow who has died so she pretends to be the cow. they love each other but feel they can't express their love and its really quite romantic. the second was SEXY BATTLE GIRLS, an altogether less sweet, more funny film about a schoolgirl whose father has installed a device in her vagina to exact revenge upon the man who stole her mother away from them. neither film was particuarly sexy, too much tit grabbing and the second film had a bit of tying up women to torture stuff in it which i found a bit uncomfortable to watch but it was more benny hill than anything else, just silly. afterwards we had a chat with jasper about how films like SHORTBUS are banned and yet art films can get away with loads of sex and how the cube got the most e-mails for showing these films than anything else recently. many famous political japanese directors got their starts on the pinku eigas as they could explore all kinds of themes without them needing to be commercial.
saturday morning i was ushering for the SCREEN SCHOOL showing DICK TRACY. i was a little disappointed with the selection and i presume the children were too, from the way they dashed out of the cinema like it was on fire once i'd said they could leave. i'd not seen it before, my family didn't really go to the cinema when i was a kid so i'd not got around to seeing it before. it was too much of an ego led production and very dated. it was like warren beatty saying "look who my mates are, i can get dustin hoffman and al pacino in loads of prosthetic make up!" the acting was baaaad and the cartoon style looked terrible compared to comic book adaptations like SIN CITY. the only high spot were the madonna songs. i played the I'M BREATHLESS album over and over and over so had expectations that there would be songs all the way through and i knew all the words, but no, it didn't even show off the songs by madonna, which in those days was a big deal. madonna was predictably terrible, its funny how you forget how bad she is. she is really really bad. this film was hardly even enjoyable and it made me curious to see what they're going to be saying in their feedback session next week, can't wait for that. "sir, this is shit, can we see more buster keaton?" maybe? i only hope.
afterwards we went and had some tea in CHAPTER and went to see SYNECDOCHE, NY, the new charlie kaufman film. i was incredibly excited about this, dismissing the cries i've vaguely heard from the press about it being indulgent. ha! he's allowed to be indulgent, he's a genius, thought i. i was wrong. it was a mess. i started off enjoying it, gleefully noting that everyone in the cast list at the beginning was amazing (dianne wiest! catherine keener! jennifer jason leigh! phillip seymore hoffman!) and halfway through was longing for it to end. its the story of a writer in an unhappy marriage who starts writing a great masterwork on his life and that is all you can describe it as really. it is a valiant effort, in a way, he's trying to redefine film language, it is as massive an opus as the play the character is writing, trying to understand himself by getting it all played out in front of him, his personal life seems out of control so he tries to take control over it by reimaginging it on stage. a good effort but it didn't work for me. it felt like unfunny woody allen and just became a big sprawl of characters and went on a bit long. i understood where he was trying to get to but i felt like he needed a filter of some kind, someone to tell him where to stop. by the umpteenth time someone new was becoming his wife / daughter / assistant i just thought it would never end. a shame, but a grand shame which is the most interesting so not a waste of time.
wednesday i met some friends lou and rich from AMBERCOUCH for an exciting business meeting, we're thinking of starting a website. i came up with an idea a couple of years ago and asked how much it is to get a website and dismissed the idea for being ridiculously expensive but now they say it may be done! wow! we're doing research on it now, a sort of cardiff version of BUY OLYMPIA, one of my all time favourite websites. finding out if we can get grants, my time won't really be wasted but lou and rich's is a bit more precious since they'll be doing the actual work.
after that i went to usher for O'HORTEN, a norweigan film about a lonely train driver who has just retired and has to find something to do with his life. it was a wonderful, beautiful film. it could have been really depressing and sad, about the uselessness of retired life but instead it gives horten the chance to forge relationships with people and live for the first time in his life. the scenery when he was driving his train around the mountains and snowscapes was breathtaking and made me determined to try and do the train journey around europe steen and i have been talking about.
i zipped off to PULSE to buy some much needed toms of maine deodorant, soap pods for the laundry, kingfisher toothpaste and all those useful hippie things i am about to run out of and saw the lovely marc roberts and rob kennedy and morgan hall in there, a proper chapter away from chapter! then zipped back to chapter to see THE BIG SLEEP. i missed the raymond chandler talk last week but was determined to see this one, a big favourite. it was amazing to see it on a big screen. i'd forgotten the script was written by william faulkner till he came up on screen in the credits and its evident in some of the scenes, the first one with the general and marlowe, any with bogey and bacall... it crackles. the villains seem genuinely sleazy, the grime reaching all the way up to the upper class in hollywood. wonderful.
thursday i was entirely lazy. i caught up on some sleep by having a proper lay in and did lots of laundry (still trying to get through stuff from when the cat had fleas last week) and stayed in my dressing gown till about 3pm. at 6pm i got picked up by rob to be taken with will to bristol to THE CUBE cinema where we were going to watch "introduction to japanese sex films". we got some food first in CAFE KINO, a co-operative place which was basically exactly what sort of business i want to run when i grow up. it had all these little touches, all very much home-made and BOOK CROSSING posters (leave a book, post in a book crossing pamphlet and then it can be tracked every time someone new reads and then leaves it). the food we had in there was amazing, i had a spicy bean burger with amazing thick cut chips and steen had falafel. we dashed over to the cube, worried we'd be late but they're so laid back there it didn't start for another half an hour. i love it in the cube, we keep saying we'll have to go more often, if it wasn't for the shite cardiff-bristol train service i think we'd go every week. everyone (staff and customers) were sat outside having an impromptu bbq and chatting and drinking, very relaxed then we went in and was introduced to the film by a nice man called jasper sharp who has written a book about PINKU EIGA, the japanese sex film industry. the perimetres are quite tight: its 1 hour, budget of £20,000, at least 1 sex scene every 20 minutes and no pubes or real genital parts but apart from that you can do anything. the first film we saw was A LONELY COW WEEPS AT DAWN, a rather sweet film about a farmer whose son has died and lives with his widowed daughter in law. he has gone a bit senile and gets up every morning to milk his favourite cow who has died so she pretends to be the cow. they love each other but feel they can't express their love and its really quite romantic. the second was SEXY BATTLE GIRLS, an altogether less sweet, more funny film about a schoolgirl whose father has installed a device in her vagina to exact revenge upon the man who stole her mother away from them. neither film was particuarly sexy, too much tit grabbing and the second film had a bit of tying up women to torture stuff in it which i found a bit uncomfortable to watch but it was more benny hill than anything else, just silly. afterwards we had a chat with jasper about how films like SHORTBUS are banned and yet art films can get away with loads of sex and how the cube got the most e-mails for showing these films than anything else recently. many famous political japanese directors got their starts on the pinku eigas as they could explore all kinds of themes without them needing to be commercial.
saturday morning i was ushering for the SCREEN SCHOOL showing DICK TRACY. i was a little disappointed with the selection and i presume the children were too, from the way they dashed out of the cinema like it was on fire once i'd said they could leave. i'd not seen it before, my family didn't really go to the cinema when i was a kid so i'd not got around to seeing it before. it was too much of an ego led production and very dated. it was like warren beatty saying "look who my mates are, i can get dustin hoffman and al pacino in loads of prosthetic make up!" the acting was baaaad and the cartoon style looked terrible compared to comic book adaptations like SIN CITY. the only high spot were the madonna songs. i played the I'M BREATHLESS album over and over and over so had expectations that there would be songs all the way through and i knew all the words, but no, it didn't even show off the songs by madonna, which in those days was a big deal. madonna was predictably terrible, its funny how you forget how bad she is. she is really really bad. this film was hardly even enjoyable and it made me curious to see what they're going to be saying in their feedback session next week, can't wait for that. "sir, this is shit, can we see more buster keaton?" maybe? i only hope.
moshing in buffalo and other delights
getting back from the holiday we had a nice lay in and a massive fry up in the morning before i headed for work and then dashed straight over to HASSAN HAJJAJAN's SOUK space in CHAPTER. there were 4 artists doing soundscapes: jon ruddick, matt cook and odysseus constantinou (and the fourth i don't know the name of, i'm sorry. i think its duncan... but i really don't know) over middle eastern silent films. i missed the first two short films but stayed for the final one which was of burning oil fields just after the kuwait - iraq battles in the early 90s. there was a helicoptor going over the dessert and the landscape looked incredible, like another planet. when we got to the oilfields burning it looked like hell. knowing that the burning of these oil fields meant that the world lost hundreds of years worth of energy in times where we're looking at the loss of all oil energy in the next 100 years was heartbreaking. the music the set it to took us on this otherworldly journey and was just beautiful. afterwards jon and i had a big party in our house where the musician richard james broke a dining chair. the only other place i've lived where a chair was broken was also by a musician: ringo starr's son zac starkey when he came to visit my friend stef in barcelona. this is a random fact that isn't entirely relevant but i found it quite funny at the time. poor rich, he was embarrassed and very apologetic. it was quite a nice party from what i can remember. steen had the record player going and many people saw my appalling collection of 80s hits. goodbye, sweet credibility!
on monday we went to see BLUE EYELIDS at chapter. i picked this merely for the poster, which was a gorgeous drawing of the girl in the film in blue on a pink background. maybe more choices of films should be based on the poster, cos this was a good 'un. it was an offbeat romance like a fairytale, but much darker than that makes it sound. shy marina, who seems almost not there in some scenes, wins a trip for two to a beach resort. after her sister lets her down she realises she has no-one to take so pretty much takes the first person she finds: victor, who claims to know her from school (but she seems to remember scant details of this time). they getting to know each other better and its here the story really takes off. its scenes of quiet, awkward first dates are quite wonderful. it could be bleak and heartbreaking but stayed with me as a beautiful little film.
the next day was the SLEEP FURIOUSLY night at CHAPTER with a Q&A with GIDDEON KOPPEL. the film was slow and beautiful, focussing on the little yellow library van going around the surrounding villages and meeting people, such as koppel's sculptor mother and children at the school which is due for closure. it sounds really crass but i kept thinking of postman pat and his van afterwards, it had the same dreamlike quality that the first scene in postman pat used to make me feel when i was watching it as a child, the little village where things were stuck in time and would just go on tomorrow whether we were watching or not. i don't think koppel would like my childish comparison though, he didn't seem to like any of the other comments on his film that viewers made in the q&a very much. he was an arrogant pompous man and almost made me dislike the film. i don't like being so harsh with people but he seemed to want to alienate the audience talking about academic film language when people wanted to tell him how beautiful they found it and it made me a little angry. i know who john berger is and i've read his books but i don't think name dropping in that manner helps with film education, i believe that if you try and keep it simple you can explain difficult concepts to people and make them happier and enlightened rather than make them feel stupid and not clever enough to understand your masterwork.
will and i had a day off together on thursday so we had a nice breakfast and lunch then headed off to see the DIANE ARBUS EXHIBITION at the national gallery. as we were running short on time (partly due to me stopping off in the bike shed for a new bell for my increasingly amazing looking spruced up bike) we didn't stop at any of the other bits but just headed straight for arbus. it was a good comprehensive showing of her work, nestled quite appropriately next to the bacon and modern art section. it had a few of the old favourites there, the boy with the granade, the christmas tree, the mixed race couple as well as a few i'd not seen bigger than in my a4 sized book at home, which was a real treat. it reminded me to show steen the FUR film that they made a couple of years ago based on arbus' introduction to photography.
later that evening it was the LOOSE night. liz and ryan again outdid themselves with an amazing line up. ISLET, only their 3rd gig, i think they said were amazing, lots of instrument swapping and funky bass post rock stuff. i was grinning throughout. the grinning did not stop there, however for next on was THE LOVELY EGGS, who were very much fun. they sounded better live than they do on tape, the tongue in cheek-ness fully present and brilliant banter. when SHONEN KNIFE came on no-one could believe that it was the same band that have been gigging since the early 80s, they were full of energy and kept up a marathon set that got loads of people moshing at the front (and in buffalo!) this is the second time i've witnessed "atmosphere" created at the direst of wanker venues, buffalo and both times its been a loose night. no coincidence there, i think. liz puts on amazing gigs. afterwards we went out to celebrate 3 birthdays: john, lovely ben and noel (who was proudly showing off a sabrina "boys boys boys (summertime love)" single amongst his presents). i ended up getting much more drunk than i expected and staying out much too late.
on friday we went to my friend KATY'S WEDDING PARTY. they'd been together for 20 years but decided to suddenly go to registry office and become official, it was at the yacht club in cardiff bay and had lovely views and was a lovely do. we sat talking to our friend chris fowler most of the night and i danced a bit with my friend rachel. we went home fairly early but still pretty tired after a beautiful day.
unfortunately for me i got a bit drunk at the wedding party and even more unfortunately i had to get up at 6am. fortunately though, this was to help out at the PHOTOMARATHON! matt and betina had asked me to be on a radio programme at 7am. matt picked me up just before 7am and there was nary time to finish my cup of bbc tea before we were in the studio. i thought i'd be really nervous but it was absolutely fine and i felt quite relaxed. we talked about the photomarathon between the expenses scandal and the lions game (i don't know what this refers to but someone said it was rugby later). it was fine. we then went down to the millennium centre and met the press officer, ruth, who helped us set up the tables ready for the big day. it all went by in a bit of a blur. photomarathon baseball caps handed out, hundreds of people queueing for their film and registration card and then the topics were announced. i was as much in the dark as anyone else, keen to start and by 10.30am i finally saw the topics and went off with rich, rhian, darren, ian and mike and steen to go off and shoot!
topics
1. topic number / colourful
2. contained
3. roll with it
4. chip
1. i did a bunch of sweets on a green table, pleased with it i was. steen did a brilliant bit of shoelace work that pissed on my first entry.
2. i did a shut-up building down the bay only to be again trumped by steen's amazing gravestone in the centre of town
3. i made steen do a forward roll for me (not sure if this came out properly or not unfortunately) and steen got me to take a picture of him on a bin like a sort of failed superman
4. i wrote "c" on steen's hip. lame. steen cut a chip size out of a potato and photographed the potato, which i liked
2pm next topics released
5. age
6. crunch
7. black and white
8. social network
5. i took a picture of some mould on a piece of wood that i liked. at this point steen and i had to split up, i was due in work at 5.30pm and getting a bit tired and grumpy to boot. we had time to take a great picture of the park behind the law courts for his age entry.
6. i took a bite out of a crunchy biscuit (again, a bit lame, not sure about that)
7. i found an expenses claim for lembit opik, a summons for his council tax (so we paid an extra £50 to him for forgetting to pay it!) and took a photo of that
8. i went into chapter bar and saw uncle simon et al. i said "don't move". that was my photo done!
steen texted me the last 4 entries due to my being at work
9. spillage
10. missing
11. dressed to impress
12. winner
9. in chapter i was limited about what i could do but i found a mug and filled it with box office paperclips for spillage
10. made a little paper saddle for the ceramic horse in the gallery display cabinet with "shurgar" on for missing
then ran home to get a prop for steen and dressed up the cat in a shimmery sequinned top for 11. and then photographed rhys with his fake trophies (he found them) for winner.
ace! done! i cycled like a bandit to get to the millennium centre in time to hand them in before 10pm and saw the gang all there, including pedro. we had a nice long chat and then headed home defeated. it was close to midnight and the lack of sleep was unreal.
the next day i began my new life as free of backpackers! i started in the cafe at a relatively decadent 9am and had a lovely shift of "getting jobs done" before ushering in the cinema for PRINCES QUEST, a french animation telling the story of two brothers from the middle east who have to work together to free the djin fairy. i'd seen it before and really enjoyed it again the second time around, some of the set pieces are beautiful, with the middle eastern patterns and layering of colours.
that evening was marc robert's gig upstairs in chapter with ZEUK followed by SHELLEYAN ORPHAN. they hadn't gigged for 16 years and it was a bit shambolic but i did love it. they were at their best when they just relaxed into it and let their dreamlike songs surround you. her voice sounded very much like the lady from the SUNDAYS and they did a great nick drake cover.
what a great week to come back to!
on monday we went to see BLUE EYELIDS at chapter. i picked this merely for the poster, which was a gorgeous drawing of the girl in the film in blue on a pink background. maybe more choices of films should be based on the poster, cos this was a good 'un. it was an offbeat romance like a fairytale, but much darker than that makes it sound. shy marina, who seems almost not there in some scenes, wins a trip for two to a beach resort. after her sister lets her down she realises she has no-one to take so pretty much takes the first person she finds: victor, who claims to know her from school (but she seems to remember scant details of this time). they getting to know each other better and its here the story really takes off. its scenes of quiet, awkward first dates are quite wonderful. it could be bleak and heartbreaking but stayed with me as a beautiful little film.
the next day was the SLEEP FURIOUSLY night at CHAPTER with a Q&A with GIDDEON KOPPEL. the film was slow and beautiful, focussing on the little yellow library van going around the surrounding villages and meeting people, such as koppel's sculptor mother and children at the school which is due for closure. it sounds really crass but i kept thinking of postman pat and his van afterwards, it had the same dreamlike quality that the first scene in postman pat used to make me feel when i was watching it as a child, the little village where things were stuck in time and would just go on tomorrow whether we were watching or not. i don't think koppel would like my childish comparison though, he didn't seem to like any of the other comments on his film that viewers made in the q&a very much. he was an arrogant pompous man and almost made me dislike the film. i don't like being so harsh with people but he seemed to want to alienate the audience talking about academic film language when people wanted to tell him how beautiful they found it and it made me a little angry. i know who john berger is and i've read his books but i don't think name dropping in that manner helps with film education, i believe that if you try and keep it simple you can explain difficult concepts to people and make them happier and enlightened rather than make them feel stupid and not clever enough to understand your masterwork.
will and i had a day off together on thursday so we had a nice breakfast and lunch then headed off to see the DIANE ARBUS EXHIBITION at the national gallery. as we were running short on time (partly due to me stopping off in the bike shed for a new bell for my increasingly amazing looking spruced up bike) we didn't stop at any of the other bits but just headed straight for arbus. it was a good comprehensive showing of her work, nestled quite appropriately next to the bacon and modern art section. it had a few of the old favourites there, the boy with the granade, the christmas tree, the mixed race couple as well as a few i'd not seen bigger than in my a4 sized book at home, which was a real treat. it reminded me to show steen the FUR film that they made a couple of years ago based on arbus' introduction to photography.
later that evening it was the LOOSE night. liz and ryan again outdid themselves with an amazing line up. ISLET, only their 3rd gig, i think they said were amazing, lots of instrument swapping and funky bass post rock stuff. i was grinning throughout. the grinning did not stop there, however for next on was THE LOVELY EGGS, who were very much fun. they sounded better live than they do on tape, the tongue in cheek-ness fully present and brilliant banter. when SHONEN KNIFE came on no-one could believe that it was the same band that have been gigging since the early 80s, they were full of energy and kept up a marathon set that got loads of people moshing at the front (and in buffalo!) this is the second time i've witnessed "atmosphere" created at the direst of wanker venues, buffalo and both times its been a loose night. no coincidence there, i think. liz puts on amazing gigs. afterwards we went out to celebrate 3 birthdays: john, lovely ben and noel (who was proudly showing off a sabrina "boys boys boys (summertime love)" single amongst his presents). i ended up getting much more drunk than i expected and staying out much too late.
on friday we went to my friend KATY'S WEDDING PARTY. they'd been together for 20 years but decided to suddenly go to registry office and become official, it was at the yacht club in cardiff bay and had lovely views and was a lovely do. we sat talking to our friend chris fowler most of the night and i danced a bit with my friend rachel. we went home fairly early but still pretty tired after a beautiful day.
unfortunately for me i got a bit drunk at the wedding party and even more unfortunately i had to get up at 6am. fortunately though, this was to help out at the PHOTOMARATHON! matt and betina had asked me to be on a radio programme at 7am. matt picked me up just before 7am and there was nary time to finish my cup of bbc tea before we were in the studio. i thought i'd be really nervous but it was absolutely fine and i felt quite relaxed. we talked about the photomarathon between the expenses scandal and the lions game (i don't know what this refers to but someone said it was rugby later). it was fine. we then went down to the millennium centre and met the press officer, ruth, who helped us set up the tables ready for the big day. it all went by in a bit of a blur. photomarathon baseball caps handed out, hundreds of people queueing for their film and registration card and then the topics were announced. i was as much in the dark as anyone else, keen to start and by 10.30am i finally saw the topics and went off with rich, rhian, darren, ian and mike and steen to go off and shoot!
topics
1. topic number / colourful
2. contained
3. roll with it
4. chip
1. i did a bunch of sweets on a green table, pleased with it i was. steen did a brilliant bit of shoelace work that pissed on my first entry.
2. i did a shut-up building down the bay only to be again trumped by steen's amazing gravestone in the centre of town
3. i made steen do a forward roll for me (not sure if this came out properly or not unfortunately) and steen got me to take a picture of him on a bin like a sort of failed superman
4. i wrote "c" on steen's hip. lame. steen cut a chip size out of a potato and photographed the potato, which i liked
2pm next topics released
5. age
6. crunch
7. black and white
8. social network
5. i took a picture of some mould on a piece of wood that i liked. at this point steen and i had to split up, i was due in work at 5.30pm and getting a bit tired and grumpy to boot. we had time to take a great picture of the park behind the law courts for his age entry.
6. i took a bite out of a crunchy biscuit (again, a bit lame, not sure about that)
7. i found an expenses claim for lembit opik, a summons for his council tax (so we paid an extra £50 to him for forgetting to pay it!) and took a photo of that
8. i went into chapter bar and saw uncle simon et al. i said "don't move". that was my photo done!
steen texted me the last 4 entries due to my being at work
9. spillage
10. missing
11. dressed to impress
12. winner
9. in chapter i was limited about what i could do but i found a mug and filled it with box office paperclips for spillage
10. made a little paper saddle for the ceramic horse in the gallery display cabinet with "shurgar" on for missing
then ran home to get a prop for steen and dressed up the cat in a shimmery sequinned top for 11. and then photographed rhys with his fake trophies (he found them) for winner.
ace! done! i cycled like a bandit to get to the millennium centre in time to hand them in before 10pm and saw the gang all there, including pedro. we had a nice long chat and then headed home defeated. it was close to midnight and the lack of sleep was unreal.
the next day i began my new life as free of backpackers! i started in the cafe at a relatively decadent 9am and had a lovely shift of "getting jobs done" before ushering in the cinema for PRINCES QUEST, a french animation telling the story of two brothers from the middle east who have to work together to free the djin fairy. i'd seen it before and really enjoyed it again the second time around, some of the set pieces are beautiful, with the middle eastern patterns and layering of colours.
that evening was marc robert's gig upstairs in chapter with ZEUK followed by SHELLEYAN ORPHAN. they hadn't gigged for 16 years and it was a bit shambolic but i did love it. they were at their best when they just relaxed into it and let their dreamlike songs surround you. her voice sounded very much like the lady from the SUNDAYS and they did a great nick drake cover.
what a great week to come back to!
19 Jun 2009
never again is what you swore the time before
family holidays have hazy memories of being at the beach, visiting attractions and being bored and irritated by each member of my family in turn. this one was no different, apart from the fact that at the age of 30 and with my boyfriend and cat in tow, you'd think i'd have a little more control on the situation. in fact this (almost) smashed away at every happy family holiday memory with a sledgehammer. i don't want to sound ungrateful, my parents paid for us to go, got us our own separate caravan and very very nice it was too (the poshest caravan i've ever stayed in or even contemplated existing) and it was nice getting away from everything for a bit, not even mobile phone reception worked down there. however, it was difficult trying to have a holiday with my boyfriend and a family holiday all at once. my nan, who has always cheerfully come along to every holiday and enjoyed herself seemed to have entered this new state of old age grumpiness that made her not want to enjoy anything, just smoke fags and get pushed around in a wheelchair and wind my dad up. it is not very difficult to wind my dad up these days, all sorts of small things seem to make him angry. my mum's favourite thing is to go on walks with the dog but that was hindered by the fact that the old lad hasn't been very well of late so can't go too far. my auntie was there for the ride too.
the car journeys were the worst part, the number one thing to guarantee my dad at a high stress level is driving and traffic. the looong 4 hours there and 4 hours back was a challenge to say the least. we have discovered that the cat does not like travelling. at all. although he did LOVE the holiday, far more than any of the humans, he was like a different cat playing in the garden and chasing butterflies. the best days for travelling were when the weather looked ok and when my dad knew where he was going. the days when we would stop somewhere pretty (such as mousehole) my nan would remark that she wanted to "stay in the car" prompting my dad to drive on somewhere she might like (such as an out of town marks and spencer) were the worst. dealing with my family can be a bit of a strain, their little eccentricities are at least understood by me, but having will there made me painfully aware of how difficult they can be at times. i think the bottom line was that we wanted different holidays. will and i wanted to hang around with the cat and go on walks and eat ice cream and get up late and my parents wanted us at their house by 8am to go on a drive and find something to do.
some of their choices were great though, most of them the same as they ever were in that part of cornwall. the GWEEK SEAL SANCTUARY had expanded and unfortunately lost the old welsh dude who showed us around when i was 9, it was nice to know that he sold up his business to begin it and forced it into life. its now quite massive, with about 4 areas, where i'm sure it just had a couple when we were there but he sold it off shortly before he died a couple of years ago. we were told some juicy gossip from a fruity type driving the "train" (a landrover with some trailers) that he would have hated it cos he hated his daughter's husband and now he's got all the money. they're still doing excellent work though and we got introduced to ray the brain damaged seal and sally, the massively antisocial seal who hates everyone there. the performing seals were like the two old actreses in CORALINE, hamming it up for the audience. it was an ace day out.
GOONHILLY EARTH STATION was pretty good too. it was fantastic getting a glimpse into the past when telstar beamed down to goonhilly and that was our first taste of the future. its amazing to think that now facebook and twitter allow people to connect all over the world, it really boggles my mind. so quickly we've learnt to adapt all this technology and i have no idea how it really works, to me its still all magic.
one day we went down to ST IVES via HAYLE estuary, which was very beautiful in that bleak cornish way. we got a park and ride train to st ives which made me and steen very happy. my nan commented how she hadn't been on a train since the 1980s. for shame. i do get frustrated when there is a train station about 5 minutes walk from where she lives, she's just afraid to go anywhere on her own. she's always been aghast at how i travelled to american (and back!) on my own but she's even similarly shocked when i said i went to the cinema on my own. people just didn't do that when she was young. st ives was pretty as i'd remembered it (vague plans made with steen to go back there on our own and stay in one of the b&bs on the sea front on the cobbled streets) but it was packed with tourists. happily dad said for us to go off on our own for a bit and we ran around the sea front and tried to get into the TATE ST IVES but it was expensive. i've been before and although it is interesting its not as worth the money as an exhibition in TATE MODERN and the same sort of price.
a couple of ruined days of trying to go places we went before but had changed: the amazing model train museum, a much loved memory for me and my family (my dad loves model trains, my brother loved the fact that they all had moving bits and bobs, i love small scale bits and bobs, i have a bit of a thing for things out of scale). we went to a crappy "craft centre" instead which was notable for the fact that they made their own chocolate (ok) had a horrid gallery assistant who told us off the moment we got in there and a very nice knitting lady who i had a chat to about STITCH AND BITCH and YARN AND YARN. good! helston town centre was not the most amazing place to go to on a very wet monday morning, although i did find some brilliant cat birthday cards (cats dressed up in a number of different situations). we also had some of the best pasties of our lives in a great bakery in a little alleyway.
now is the time to address pasties. i love pasties, as does my family. when we left cornwall i would admonish anyone for eating pasties that were not baked IN CORNWALL (just one of my many demonstrations of nationalist leanings in primary school). it is good, hardy food and also great fast food. i like any type of pasty but if a choice is there a traditional meat and apple is best. steen does not see the appeal of pasties and turned down many a pasty on this holiday. idiot.
the best thing about the holiday was the location. praa sands is a nice little beach and i have great memories of being there as a child (terrifying memories of being caught in the undertow when i was a kid and being sick all night due to the sea water notwithstanding). it was lovely to walk on the beach at the end of the day and even nicer to sit and have a pint of rattler (cornish cider) in the SANDS bar and play air hockey with steen (and win, despite him claiming that he was the air hockey king in the 6th form). we had some great evenings down there. playing with frankie and exploring the garden was also quite magic, he loved it.
the final day was a good one. we went on a drive out to porthcurno and stopped at the NATIONAL TELEGRAPH MUSEUM. after being at goonhilly this was even more of a tech fest. it was the sort of technology i can actually understand with wires and buzzers and suchlike. we had a brilliant talk from one of the former engineers that put it all into context. i learnt things like that the mid atlantic ridge, the mountains under the sea was found by the hms challenger. these men thought that they would just take 2000 miles of cable and lay it on the sea bed, not knowing anything about the sea bed previously and discovered that it had mountain ranges and was incredibly deep and suchlike. he also told me that those cables are mostly still under ground today. we also heard how the original french - british cable to connect up europe that began at dover was dug up by a french fisherman in calais because he thought he'd found an amazing form of seaweed that had gold in the middle! amazing! i love stuff like this.
anyway, it was a lovely way to end the holiday, it was a shame it wasn't as hazily golden as i had hoped but we did have fun and it was nice to get away from cardiff for a bit. but i was happy to come back to our own house and a bit of a lie in the next day was very welcome.
the car journeys were the worst part, the number one thing to guarantee my dad at a high stress level is driving and traffic. the looong 4 hours there and 4 hours back was a challenge to say the least. we have discovered that the cat does not like travelling. at all. although he did LOVE the holiday, far more than any of the humans, he was like a different cat playing in the garden and chasing butterflies. the best days for travelling were when the weather looked ok and when my dad knew where he was going. the days when we would stop somewhere pretty (such as mousehole) my nan would remark that she wanted to "stay in the car" prompting my dad to drive on somewhere she might like (such as an out of town marks and spencer) were the worst. dealing with my family can be a bit of a strain, their little eccentricities are at least understood by me, but having will there made me painfully aware of how difficult they can be at times. i think the bottom line was that we wanted different holidays. will and i wanted to hang around with the cat and go on walks and eat ice cream and get up late and my parents wanted us at their house by 8am to go on a drive and find something to do.
some of their choices were great though, most of them the same as they ever were in that part of cornwall. the GWEEK SEAL SANCTUARY had expanded and unfortunately lost the old welsh dude who showed us around when i was 9, it was nice to know that he sold up his business to begin it and forced it into life. its now quite massive, with about 4 areas, where i'm sure it just had a couple when we were there but he sold it off shortly before he died a couple of years ago. we were told some juicy gossip from a fruity type driving the "train" (a landrover with some trailers) that he would have hated it cos he hated his daughter's husband and now he's got all the money. they're still doing excellent work though and we got introduced to ray the brain damaged seal and sally, the massively antisocial seal who hates everyone there. the performing seals were like the two old actreses in CORALINE, hamming it up for the audience. it was an ace day out.
GOONHILLY EARTH STATION was pretty good too. it was fantastic getting a glimpse into the past when telstar beamed down to goonhilly and that was our first taste of the future. its amazing to think that now facebook and twitter allow people to connect all over the world, it really boggles my mind. so quickly we've learnt to adapt all this technology and i have no idea how it really works, to me its still all magic.
one day we went down to ST IVES via HAYLE estuary, which was very beautiful in that bleak cornish way. we got a park and ride train to st ives which made me and steen very happy. my nan commented how she hadn't been on a train since the 1980s. for shame. i do get frustrated when there is a train station about 5 minutes walk from where she lives, she's just afraid to go anywhere on her own. she's always been aghast at how i travelled to american (and back!) on my own but she's even similarly shocked when i said i went to the cinema on my own. people just didn't do that when she was young. st ives was pretty as i'd remembered it (vague plans made with steen to go back there on our own and stay in one of the b&bs on the sea front on the cobbled streets) but it was packed with tourists. happily dad said for us to go off on our own for a bit and we ran around the sea front and tried to get into the TATE ST IVES but it was expensive. i've been before and although it is interesting its not as worth the money as an exhibition in TATE MODERN and the same sort of price.
a couple of ruined days of trying to go places we went before but had changed: the amazing model train museum, a much loved memory for me and my family (my dad loves model trains, my brother loved the fact that they all had moving bits and bobs, i love small scale bits and bobs, i have a bit of a thing for things out of scale). we went to a crappy "craft centre" instead which was notable for the fact that they made their own chocolate (ok) had a horrid gallery assistant who told us off the moment we got in there and a very nice knitting lady who i had a chat to about STITCH AND BITCH and YARN AND YARN. good! helston town centre was not the most amazing place to go to on a very wet monday morning, although i did find some brilliant cat birthday cards (cats dressed up in a number of different situations). we also had some of the best pasties of our lives in a great bakery in a little alleyway.
now is the time to address pasties. i love pasties, as does my family. when we left cornwall i would admonish anyone for eating pasties that were not baked IN CORNWALL (just one of my many demonstrations of nationalist leanings in primary school). it is good, hardy food and also great fast food. i like any type of pasty but if a choice is there a traditional meat and apple is best. steen does not see the appeal of pasties and turned down many a pasty on this holiday. idiot.
the best thing about the holiday was the location. praa sands is a nice little beach and i have great memories of being there as a child (terrifying memories of being caught in the undertow when i was a kid and being sick all night due to the sea water notwithstanding). it was lovely to walk on the beach at the end of the day and even nicer to sit and have a pint of rattler (cornish cider) in the SANDS bar and play air hockey with steen (and win, despite him claiming that he was the air hockey king in the 6th form). we had some great evenings down there. playing with frankie and exploring the garden was also quite magic, he loved it.
the final day was a good one. we went on a drive out to porthcurno and stopped at the NATIONAL TELEGRAPH MUSEUM. after being at goonhilly this was even more of a tech fest. it was the sort of technology i can actually understand with wires and buzzers and suchlike. we had a brilliant talk from one of the former engineers that put it all into context. i learnt things like that the mid atlantic ridge, the mountains under the sea was found by the hms challenger. these men thought that they would just take 2000 miles of cable and lay it on the sea bed, not knowing anything about the sea bed previously and discovered that it had mountain ranges and was incredibly deep and suchlike. he also told me that those cables are mostly still under ground today. we also heard how the original french - british cable to connect up europe that began at dover was dug up by a french fisherman in calais because he thought he'd found an amazing form of seaweed that had gold in the middle! amazing! i love stuff like this.
anyway, it was a lovely way to end the holiday, it was a shame it wasn't as hazily golden as i had hoped but we did have fun and it was nice to get away from cardiff for a bit. but i was happy to come back to our own house and a bit of a lie in the next day was very welcome.
4 Jun 2009
dead can dance
sorry, posting this a bit late, its from the first week in june!
this week the weather has dominated the topics of conversation. it is a hot one. today is a bit cooler, the wind cycling to work was quite icy but the beginning of the week was marked by the heat and lack of air and all those things about summer i hate. i'm not really a summer person. i like temperate climates, not those that make you want to pass out after lunch. a welcome break from the weather was watching werner herzog's new film ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. herzog is an odd man seeking out other oddities and praise be! for that. he was in antartica for 7 weeks to interview people who lived and worked there, to find out what they did and why they chose to live in such an inhospitable climate. i found it facinating and beautiful. there were amusing moments when an engineer stopped talking logically about the ins and outs of living in the continent and started talking about how everyone there was an amateur philsopher and how he was probably related to mayan royalty. to decide purposefully to pack up your old life and move to a place where human beings shouldn't be takes a bit of a leap into the unknown and i felt privaleged that herzog decided to do a study of this. moments from the film stay with me, the scenery and heartbreaking times like the penguin who decides to follow a path to certain death towards the mountains rather than going back to the nest or the feeding ground, we humans watch him, unable to stop him on his suicidal quest.
on tuesday we dashed to buffalo to see the LOOSE gig with the patti ladies, jon and raybould. we had a lovely chat with liz and john rostron first about swn. i am getting excited in that way that makes me make involuntary squeaking noises. this year will be ace! we went to get a drink and discovered that two small bottles of water costs £5.20 in buffalo. never have i been more grateful for tap water. what a cheek! first on was a bunch of posh lads singing pleasant enough songs and looking like they'd stepped off a set of brideshead revisited. next up was MEINZ HEINZ. the first time i saw them was supporting john mouse in dempseys a good couple of years ago. they have the air of a gang that you're not cool enough to join but i know that huw evans is a lovely lad and the playfulness between him and his girlfriend cate le bon and steve baboo is great to watch. the songs were messier and squelchier than i've heard before and they didn't seem quite as pissed as when i've seen them previously. bloody good fun. the band on as support was JESUS H. FOXX, a rather silly name for a band much sweeter and less fashionable than that. they were very arcade fire, all banging percussion and swinging sweet harmonies. i really enjoyed their set and made use of the money i'd taken out of the cashpoint to buy an ep, they needed it, apparently they've lost £300 on this tour already. but for the headliner. i must admit i was getting gig fatigue by this point and had to bow out and sit at the back for the last half of the gig. CRYPTACIZE were a band with proper songs. apparently she used to be in DEERHOOF but i'm afraid i've not digested deerhoof yet, missed the boat there clearly cos she was great. her voice reminded me at times of nina persson from THE CARDIGANS who i love, all pure and sweet. it was a great gig but a strange atmosphere. meinz heinz attract a weird crowd that you see about in cardiff often at these sorts of fashionable places where people will come and watch their mates' band and fuck off. in a way i wish they'd just not turned up in the first place cos they tend to talk loudly in the back if they are there and just disappoint the headline band when they come out to play to half a room. why would you go to a gig and not want to see everything? i find the whole thing really idiotic. i'm really glad i'm not cool if cool means you have to irritate the promoter by blagging a guestlist place and then talk through sets and leave. morons.
anyway, enough of the anger. wednesday is one of my favourite days of the week, my old people movie day. this week i thought they'd love it, IS ANYBODY THERE? the new film with michael caine set in an old people's home. but they didn't. a bit too close to home maybe? it dealt with senility and undignified old age and some of them were quite angry as they left. i loved it though, i'm not afraid or ashamed of old age! it had a fantastic cast with peter vaughan, elizabeth spriggs, thelma barlow, leslie phillips, rosemary harris, sylvia sims playing the old people (how amazing is that line up?!), david morrisey and anne marie duff playing the people running the home and the brilliant bill millner (from SON OF RAMBOW) playing edward, their son obsessed with death and ghosts. edward befriends micheal caine's character clarence, a grumpy retired magician and he helps him on his search for an answer to "what 'appens" after death. everyone was wonderful and it was made me cry and laugh a few times. at the end i discovered that elizabeth spriggs from SIMON AND THE WITCH and ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT and countless other things from when i was young, had died during post-production and this made me cry all the more.
that evening, after playing with the cat in the garden and crying MORE over my book group book EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (i swear i'm not premenstrual, there were just a lot of sad things i chose to take into my heart that day) i tried to wrest myself of all the sadness by going to see HOLLY GOLIGHTLY in buffalo. there was a lot of confusion over this gig and strange circumstances bringing her here. it was originally scheduled to be in treorchy, there is a man there called john who is trying to bring music to the valleys other than boozy guitar bands, a valiant effort but he booked holly only to find that no fucker bought a ticket so had to see if anyone else wanted to put her on so she wouldn't lose out. last minute this was transferred to buffalo but circumstances being what they are there was a miscommunication about the price (advertised in listings as £10, actually a more digestible £5) and no flyers about till the night before. so this was pretty much a facebook 1 day only advertising campaign. in all about 20-odd people came, i was worried that she would be playing to me and my friends and hate it but the atmosphere was actually genuinely lovely in sort of british "getting on with the show" way. first up were OK, who were ok. don't have a name that leaves you open to predictable reviews, boys. they shyly announced that they had recently lost half the band so would be playing an acoustic set but i think this is probably the direction to go in, they harmonised and sung nice songs, it reminded me of SCOUTING FOR GIRLS or something that if i heard on the radio a few hundred times a day i would probably hate and want burnt but they did a lily allen cover and a version of "you've got a friend in me" and plodded along nicely enough. holly golightly's official support on this tour is swedish alt country lad ANDI ALMQVIST. his was a set of two halves. the first half kind of irritated me, he seemed insincere. this swedish guy singing songs in an american accent about devil women was odd, it left me with the image of a chinese elvis impersonator, i was longing him to play what he knew. the second half he played songs that sounded a bit more real with longing and heartbreak and i warmed to him more. he was playing a room of about 10 people maximum and seemed a bit more humble and grateful by the end. when HOLLY GOLIGHTLY came on stage you knew that this was the real deal. she had an excellent slide guitarist with her lawyer dave (the broke offs) and their acidic stage banter was a joy. rather than throw a starry diva fit at the lack of an audience she made us her friends, telling us stories about their cat that her mum ran over with the car and trips on the brecon steam railway with two people in the audience. the sound transported us somewhere else, a shack somewhere in the appalacians maybe. some of the songs were so old no-one knew who they were by "so let's just say i wrote it" joked sidekick dave, some were modern ditties on domestic violence "you better run you better hide... that .45". the feeling was authentic bluegrass and a lady you don't wanna mess with. a great gig.
thursday night was the pop quiz in Y FWCH GOCH. this is the first time i realised that the place is owned by clwb ifor bach. its a good idea of them to have somewhere that is more of a pub rather than just a darkened venue, it had the same easy going vibe as clwb but brighter and expensive looking tables. apparently the food is quite good but all i had that night was cider and crisps (very good crisps) so i couldn't really comment. i didn't know what to expect from the pop quiz, i tend to start pub quizzes very laid back but by the end turn into a horrid competitive shrew and especially something so close to my heart as a music quiz i was worried i would start banging my head in frustration. the questions were pleasingly difficult and made my brain hurt and kept that "its at the tip of my tongue" quality of a good quiz. lots of people were there, intimidatingly enough most of them were involved with music promotion and djs. i am sure these people have watched at least the same amount of top of the pops as me. but we did ok. in fact, out of a team called "you shouldn't bake cakes for dogs" made of me, steen, smallsteen and anwen we came 3rd, beating noel and rostron and all kinds of people, which was a total shock (i actually thought we'd been disqualified for some reason after our names weren't called for a long while). a good result. made me salivate for the next quiz.
but on! to a family holiday with steen. hmmm, this should be interesting...
this week the weather has dominated the topics of conversation. it is a hot one. today is a bit cooler, the wind cycling to work was quite icy but the beginning of the week was marked by the heat and lack of air and all those things about summer i hate. i'm not really a summer person. i like temperate climates, not those that make you want to pass out after lunch. a welcome break from the weather was watching werner herzog's new film ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. herzog is an odd man seeking out other oddities and praise be! for that. he was in antartica for 7 weeks to interview people who lived and worked there, to find out what they did and why they chose to live in such an inhospitable climate. i found it facinating and beautiful. there were amusing moments when an engineer stopped talking logically about the ins and outs of living in the continent and started talking about how everyone there was an amateur philsopher and how he was probably related to mayan royalty. to decide purposefully to pack up your old life and move to a place where human beings shouldn't be takes a bit of a leap into the unknown and i felt privaleged that herzog decided to do a study of this. moments from the film stay with me, the scenery and heartbreaking times like the penguin who decides to follow a path to certain death towards the mountains rather than going back to the nest or the feeding ground, we humans watch him, unable to stop him on his suicidal quest.
on tuesday we dashed to buffalo to see the LOOSE gig with the patti ladies, jon and raybould. we had a lovely chat with liz and john rostron first about swn. i am getting excited in that way that makes me make involuntary squeaking noises. this year will be ace! we went to get a drink and discovered that two small bottles of water costs £5.20 in buffalo. never have i been more grateful for tap water. what a cheek! first on was a bunch of posh lads singing pleasant enough songs and looking like they'd stepped off a set of brideshead revisited. next up was MEINZ HEINZ. the first time i saw them was supporting john mouse in dempseys a good couple of years ago. they have the air of a gang that you're not cool enough to join but i know that huw evans is a lovely lad and the playfulness between him and his girlfriend cate le bon and steve baboo is great to watch. the songs were messier and squelchier than i've heard before and they didn't seem quite as pissed as when i've seen them previously. bloody good fun. the band on as support was JESUS H. FOXX, a rather silly name for a band much sweeter and less fashionable than that. they were very arcade fire, all banging percussion and swinging sweet harmonies. i really enjoyed their set and made use of the money i'd taken out of the cashpoint to buy an ep, they needed it, apparently they've lost £300 on this tour already. but for the headliner. i must admit i was getting gig fatigue by this point and had to bow out and sit at the back for the last half of the gig. CRYPTACIZE were a band with proper songs. apparently she used to be in DEERHOOF but i'm afraid i've not digested deerhoof yet, missed the boat there clearly cos she was great. her voice reminded me at times of nina persson from THE CARDIGANS who i love, all pure and sweet. it was a great gig but a strange atmosphere. meinz heinz attract a weird crowd that you see about in cardiff often at these sorts of fashionable places where people will come and watch their mates' band and fuck off. in a way i wish they'd just not turned up in the first place cos they tend to talk loudly in the back if they are there and just disappoint the headline band when they come out to play to half a room. why would you go to a gig and not want to see everything? i find the whole thing really idiotic. i'm really glad i'm not cool if cool means you have to irritate the promoter by blagging a guestlist place and then talk through sets and leave. morons.
anyway, enough of the anger. wednesday is one of my favourite days of the week, my old people movie day. this week i thought they'd love it, IS ANYBODY THERE? the new film with michael caine set in an old people's home. but they didn't. a bit too close to home maybe? it dealt with senility and undignified old age and some of them were quite angry as they left. i loved it though, i'm not afraid or ashamed of old age! it had a fantastic cast with peter vaughan, elizabeth spriggs, thelma barlow, leslie phillips, rosemary harris, sylvia sims playing the old people (how amazing is that line up?!), david morrisey and anne marie duff playing the people running the home and the brilliant bill millner (from SON OF RAMBOW) playing edward, their son obsessed with death and ghosts. edward befriends micheal caine's character clarence, a grumpy retired magician and he helps him on his search for an answer to "what 'appens" after death. everyone was wonderful and it was made me cry and laugh a few times. at the end i discovered that elizabeth spriggs from SIMON AND THE WITCH and ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT and countless other things from when i was young, had died during post-production and this made me cry all the more.
that evening, after playing with the cat in the garden and crying MORE over my book group book EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (i swear i'm not premenstrual, there were just a lot of sad things i chose to take into my heart that day) i tried to wrest myself of all the sadness by going to see HOLLY GOLIGHTLY in buffalo. there was a lot of confusion over this gig and strange circumstances bringing her here. it was originally scheduled to be in treorchy, there is a man there called john who is trying to bring music to the valleys other than boozy guitar bands, a valiant effort but he booked holly only to find that no fucker bought a ticket so had to see if anyone else wanted to put her on so she wouldn't lose out. last minute this was transferred to buffalo but circumstances being what they are there was a miscommunication about the price (advertised in listings as £10, actually a more digestible £5) and no flyers about till the night before. so this was pretty much a facebook 1 day only advertising campaign. in all about 20-odd people came, i was worried that she would be playing to me and my friends and hate it but the atmosphere was actually genuinely lovely in sort of british "getting on with the show" way. first up were OK, who were ok. don't have a name that leaves you open to predictable reviews, boys. they shyly announced that they had recently lost half the band so would be playing an acoustic set but i think this is probably the direction to go in, they harmonised and sung nice songs, it reminded me of SCOUTING FOR GIRLS or something that if i heard on the radio a few hundred times a day i would probably hate and want burnt but they did a lily allen cover and a version of "you've got a friend in me" and plodded along nicely enough. holly golightly's official support on this tour is swedish alt country lad ANDI ALMQVIST. his was a set of two halves. the first half kind of irritated me, he seemed insincere. this swedish guy singing songs in an american accent about devil women was odd, it left me with the image of a chinese elvis impersonator, i was longing him to play what he knew. the second half he played songs that sounded a bit more real with longing and heartbreak and i warmed to him more. he was playing a room of about 10 people maximum and seemed a bit more humble and grateful by the end. when HOLLY GOLIGHTLY came on stage you knew that this was the real deal. she had an excellent slide guitarist with her lawyer dave (the broke offs) and their acidic stage banter was a joy. rather than throw a starry diva fit at the lack of an audience she made us her friends, telling us stories about their cat that her mum ran over with the car and trips on the brecon steam railway with two people in the audience. the sound transported us somewhere else, a shack somewhere in the appalacians maybe. some of the songs were so old no-one knew who they were by "so let's just say i wrote it" joked sidekick dave, some were modern ditties on domestic violence "you better run you better hide... that .45". the feeling was authentic bluegrass and a lady you don't wanna mess with. a great gig.
thursday night was the pop quiz in Y FWCH GOCH. this is the first time i realised that the place is owned by clwb ifor bach. its a good idea of them to have somewhere that is more of a pub rather than just a darkened venue, it had the same easy going vibe as clwb but brighter and expensive looking tables. apparently the food is quite good but all i had that night was cider and crisps (very good crisps) so i couldn't really comment. i didn't know what to expect from the pop quiz, i tend to start pub quizzes very laid back but by the end turn into a horrid competitive shrew and especially something so close to my heart as a music quiz i was worried i would start banging my head in frustration. the questions were pleasingly difficult and made my brain hurt and kept that "its at the tip of my tongue" quality of a good quiz. lots of people were there, intimidatingly enough most of them were involved with music promotion and djs. i am sure these people have watched at least the same amount of top of the pops as me. but we did ok. in fact, out of a team called "you shouldn't bake cakes for dogs" made of me, steen, smallsteen and anwen we came 3rd, beating noel and rostron and all kinds of people, which was a total shock (i actually thought we'd been disqualified for some reason after our names weren't called for a long while). a good result. made me salivate for the next quiz.
but on! to a family holiday with steen. hmmm, this should be interesting...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
