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Published: March 10th 2008
Well not lost exactly, some losses some plusses some just plain curious.
Friday night and the weekend starts here. Albert Lee plucking at the Half Moon in Putney! Fantastic, I feel as if I will be deaf for a month at the end of the night but he is just magic on a guitar, descriptions seem mild in comparison to the effortless way that he coaxes sounds form the instrument. The band with him "Hogans Heros" feature piano redal steel and drums and they kick arse. After one raging piece That has the crowd bouncing I ask if they could please play some rock n roll. The crowd is not young so we finish by eleven. Simon manages to come along and adds some good company to the good music.
Saturday starterd predictably enough, the usual pfaffing around until we got sufficiently organised to go see Helen's exhibition at the craft show in Teddington. You get the feeling driving in the UK that you will be there any minute wherever "there" happens to be. This is because every street you drive down feels like it must be the last one before you get there, but what appears to be a quiet
suburban street is infact a major arterial road that happens to be one car width wide with a bus coming towards you! Then you drive for another hour or so and you are there!
So we got to Teddington and the art centre is a deconsecrated church (Art 1, God 0) full of fabric based craft. Some of it is excellent and I would include Helen's work here. She has a diverse output some playful (3D sea side scenes) some of it seemingly simple but growing in complexity as you examine it some not to my taste but other pieces just elegant in every sense! Generally the standard was pretty high with a couple truly exceptional and others bringing up the other end of the bell curve. Some of the Batik work I would have bought were it not for the impossibility of fetching it back to OZ, others that were out of my price range. Of somewhat more interest was the cast of this scene. Craft like music attracts some of the jetsum of society in search of an environment less judgemental than the mean streets of conformity. Sometimes this finds expression in violence so I can hardly criticise
when the lady in the short lace skirt worn over jeans with a t-shirt over her mohair jumper wearing a faux fur waisted jacket chooses making hats over mugging punters in the park. The mad hatter metaphor seemingly quite apt although she may well be mugging punters as a second job!
On the subject of punter mugging we went more or less straight from the sublime and ridiculous to the just plain mad. Katie's boy friend Dan had arranged tickets to a premier rugby league match. The Harlequins (Dans mob) were playing Huddersfield Giants, pronounced Uddersfeeld coz they are from up north where apparently girls play rugby! Harlequins are called the Quins over the loud speaker which sounds remarkably like Queens but I say nothing as everyone in the stand is from up north where they don't like poofta jokes, The Quins crowd is motivated by eight young women in fake tans and costumes that show them who jump aroud shaking their pom poms at every opportunity. These are the Harlequin Hearts which unfortunately sounds like Harlots when announced over the PA, I'm sure they are lovely young women who's mothers now resent the cost of the ballet lessons. The queens down the Giants convincingly 24 to nil due in most part to capitalising on fundamental errors made by the visitors, the first of which was showing up in the first place. Still rugby is rugby and pretty well whatever your preconception is is what you will get. That and a beer after the game.
Having survived the day so far i came to see that this was just the warm up for the main event. Sylvia, Moya and Gerry's friend was celebrating her 70th with a function it the St Thomas the Apostle church hall. St Thomas, of whom there are several, this St Thomas is patron saint of architects and construction workers, you don't need to know this!
Sylv is a hoot, she has collected a divers group of people varying from the quite sensible, by which I mean people I could relate to to people who simply rock forward and back. The party has a theme which is thankfully nothing more harmless than a clever t-shirt, something of a wit t-shirt competition. Our table featured Moya, Gerry, Moniique who is quite mad but in a nice way, Sophie who is a composer and involved in the music establisment and her partner Geraldine who is in a music consultancy with Soph and plays a mean clarinet! They are great and even laugh when I tell them that I nearly wore my "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" t-shirt.
The night proceeds quite amicably, the three piece combo Guitar, Violin, and Sax/clarinet/flute are doing a bang up job if some what predicable but they are skilled and right for the night. Later I ask them if they can play the A train by Ellington and they cut loose and it is their best number of the night. Sadly they have to be punished for being professional so they are made to assist Soph on piano while she accompanies some truly truly awful displays of the kind of hell that awaits evil musicians. I'll spare you the first couple of acts, Moya had instructed me not to swear but even she was holding her head in her hands mouthing expletives that would make a sailor proud. Monique rendered a Pam Ayres poem well enough to lift the spirits if only temporarily.
In every group of sixty or more there will be one who's mother never had the common decency to drown at the first sign of precocious behavior. Sylv neighbouris a thirty something enthusiast of the musical fee-ater. Her enthusiasm in no way substitutes for actual ability and she renders a couple of songs in a variety of keys occasionally hitting several notes in a row before giving full vent to her almost high note. Worse she the sings something from Les Mis unaccompanied thereby denying herself the only tuneful aspect of her performance she is remarkably pleased with herself and her boyfriend looks likely to get sex tonight because he is cheering wildly for some reason!
There is a singalong where sixty out of tune voices battle the ten or so in tune by all starting at a slightly different time, and still the ground refuses to open up and swallow me! clearly this means there is no god to answer my prayers or there ids a god and thisis the opportunity he has been waiting for! just what the world needs a vindictive, interventionist omnipotent one with me in his sights!
There are more turns that confirm the vindictive theory and the Sylv and friend sing "there's a hole in my bucket (dear Lisa dear Lisa)". about a third of the way through I exclaim ironically "Oh I see where this is going!" and Moya is kind enough not to hit me. On the second last verse ("with what shall I we it dear Lisa etc") the murderer of musical theatre lets out an involuntary laugh! If there is a god take her now please!
Outside it is cold and wet, no surprise there and we ease on home.
Sunday is of course time for some actual blues music and we head to Farnham in Surrey for the Boogaloo blues festival featuring a group of largely English players that I mostly do not know. The venue is a former malt house converted into an arts centre and as a music venue it makes a pretty good arts centre. The main room would easily hold 5-600 but neve has anywhere near that, It is a sound engineers nightmare with big flat hard surfaces and a wooden roof so the top end disappears as it leaves the speakers and the bottom end bounces round the room for days. We stop by to see Slack Alice who I have heard, of and the room just kills them, a better engineer would have made all the difference and there is no production other than a few ambiguous par cans which are left pemenantly on as are the room lights. The effect is rather like a high school talent evening excepth that these guys can seriously play! we go upstairs to a room that has mirrors all down one side and listen to some acoustic playing. The full line up is
The Hamsters, Ian Parker Band, Big Boy Bloater & His Southside Stompers,
Slack Alice, Innes Sibun, Sonny Black, Giles Hedley & The Aviators, Larry Miller, Sam Kelly's Blues Band, Paul Cox Band, Nat Martin Band, Hot Club, Coalhouse Walker Blues Band, Tim Aves and Tony Farinha. Dani Wilde and Oli Brown.
The bold ones we watched the best of which was probably Ian Parker. Lots of great players all worth the admission but the Ian Parker Band was the one with the "it" factor. Go here for more http://www.ianparkermusic.com/
The Hamsters were defeated somewhat by the room but still good fun. and the perfect full stop to the week end!
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Sue
non-member comment
Shame!
I was at the Boogaloo festival and it's a bit ignorant of you to blame the sound engineer, we watched Slack Alice who we thought were too heavy sounding, but then we saw Big Boy Bloater and their sound was great, so maybe it was just the first band just basically being too 'rock'? As you say the room is a difficult one, and even fantastic sound engineers can't perform miracles if the band is simply too loud on stage - not all the sound comes from the front speakers. Sorry if this sounds strong, but it's a shame to put down a professional doing his job as well as he can in difficult circumstances. And as for 'production' - this wasn't a west end show, it was a live show in a big hall!