Cubelog

The Here Shop Party celebrating their refurbishment and reopening was a big success - sold out, and full of the usual high quality local kids ( usual that is until they all up sticks for Canada . . . most are only off for a month though )

Camilla filled in with her famous swimming poem ( minus swimming cap ) . . .

. . . before Headfall started playing. Like all the acts on the night they performed to images projected on the screen. They rescored a comic called Smoke from 1993 ( I missed who it was by, but I liked it and it reminded me of 12 years ago ).

Michal mentioned that despite it being a happy occasion that the Here shop is open and thriving after 2 years, the Green Leaf Bookshop is having to close with a large debt after 20 something years. There is a campaign called something like ‘one last book’, where people are encouraged to donate a tenner in lieu of a final imaginary book purchase to help them out . . . The Greenleaf Bookshop’s website is no longer up, but if you would like to get more info about making a donation you can email Michal.

I know I have no Collar were up next - their penultimate show before Aaron leaves for Canada for a year. Their final one is at The Here Shop today as I write ( Sunday evening ). They played their usual top stuff, interspersed with scarf and West Wing based banter, to speeded up DV of Aaron’s drawing and painting.

Next was Fránçois, playing to his great little short stop frame super8equse-but-not video animations and ending with both Fránçois and Rozi playing to a wonderful longer one they had made together that was fresh out of much thanked James‘ DVD factory.

Last up was the Orchestra Cube - introduced by Captain Richie, they ( we ! ) actually started about 11pm when the live license ran out ( but don’t tell anyone! ).

The Here Shop drawers, lead by Aaron with James on the live feed camera, were in the middle of the stage, the Orchestra was divided into two on either side. As with most OC outings there was no real clear objective, and so no parameters in which to fail. I think it was tricky for the two sides to hear each other, and I felt it could have benefited from a slightly shorter set, but as ever there were great moments, and moments of glorious chaos.

I enjoyed the unusual challenge of trying to take direction from what the camera was relaying of the live drawing - and liked the way the live drawers were the performers centre stage rather than musicians.

Old school Cuber Morgan, who missed a planed Big Chill performers reunion at Movieoke the night before, got back from London in time to join me on stage to help with the kaoss pad and pipes contribution.

We stayed on stage with my hi-tech looking bits for the faux satellite link-up with Jeffery Lewis.

After packing up we ( James, Aaron and me ) stopped for chips from Rita’s On the way back home, where the guy serving was intrigued to check out the drawings from the Orchestra Performance.

Yes, I’m a very bad man….

But look, here I am concentrating very hard on translating the pretty pictures drawn by the Here Gallery drawing team into music, and not on the (ahem) craic.
.

I thought this worked pretty well. The Orchestra is always gonna have a massive disparity of opinion on what works, what sounds good, bad etc But personally I thought considering we were stuck between a rock and a hard place, do we interpret the pictures as individual musicians or try and make a cohesive piece together?, that what we did come up with was actually pretty darn good at times.

Some lovely flute playing on one spacey section courtesy of Ellie was complemented by some (once again) good Tabla from Ale (seen here on guitar)

Some members found it difficult to hear others on the opposite side of the stage

I was possibly in the best place as I was nearer the middle. in hindsight it ay have been better to have the drawing team right at the front with us behind and around them. Personally I’m not in favour of the Orchestra soundchecking and all that nonsense, if people want to suggest a way for the music to go then they need to stand up and take charge at that moment. We’re all reasonable people who all shut up when Peter asks us to after all……………..

Anyway it’s about the smiley faces
and YOU the audience. It really was a great turn out at The Cube, Audience

WE SALUTE YOU

Hmmmmmmmmm.

He’s not the son of Max headroom, he’s a very naughty boy:

A Difficult one this. Like Mr Hopkinsonsaid, lack of staff made things difficult, but on the positive side there was a good turn out and lots of people keen to perform, which is slightly ironic. Anyway lots of pretty pictures for y’all to peruse:

Well done to those staff who did work, an admiral effort all round,

Rod

Mary, Matt, James and the rest (you know who you are)

‘But why the crazy pictures Mr Paradise?’ I hear you cry, well things got a little bit blurry later. To protect the innocent the crazy post gig shenanigans involving boiler suits and body balancing shall only be revealed at alter date, when this countries moods and mores have taken a Cubessent shift…………

I saw the core Here crew on the way to The Cube yesterday, when the shop looked like this . . .

I nearly tempted them to Movieoke - with new additions to the menu like Buffy and Spaced, but they didn’t get there - but they must have been busy because less than 24 hours later the shop looks like this . . .

Nice work.

I’m now off to the Here Shop Party at The Cube, featuring the Orchestra amongst many others . . .

More on that later . . .

Hmpfh. Well, to be honest I returned from this month’s Movieoke feeling a bit drained and depressed. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad night for the Cube - it was better attended than ever, despite it being holidaying August, but it certainly didn’t run as smooth as last month’s when it felt like it was really coming together.

Two crucial crew members were sadly missing and very sorely missed . . . ( we all now appreciate even more what you do do when you are there ! )

First absent-with-leave was walking movie encyclopaedia and DVD changist Hog, whose role was taken by a good humoured but tested Rod - already quiet inconvenienced by supplying and setting up all his equipment for all the Movieokes so far despite it always falling in the middle of much of his own work, and being give very short notice each time. He struggled all night locating first the DVDs and then the specific scenes from Hog’s extensive archive.

Second was the Movieoke human host and general overseer Tom, who’s big boots were stepped into by Ed Stoner ( sat on the left in the green t-shirt, in the Reservoir Dogs scene below ) . . .

. . . who, though as he admitted was nervous to begin with, did a good job as on the stage presence for his first time - the problem was all the other organisational parts . . .

Along with Tom and Hog, also missing were . . .

Front of House ( or FOH in internal cube email speak )
Event Manger
DJs in the Bar
Sound technician

. . . after phoning round James graciously filled the first two and me, Rod and François - all inexperienced - cobbled together an initial sound mix which wasn’t exactly great as Richie ( on drums ) couldn’t really hear Colin ( on piano ) properly all night. I put my iRiver on random in the Bar, more important than you might think as people wait for the auditorium to open . . . which was quite a wait . . .

Colin, the musical maestro who keeps time better on stage, didn’t show up until 9, and the auditorium didn’t open til gone 9:30.

It’s not unusual for the Cube to run a bit late - but quite a few potential punters intrigued by the increasing popularity of the night apparently took the listed 8pm start seriously and left perplexed before the main doors opened, and more who did get in were put off by the elongated times in-between turns due to the searching for scenes . . . having said that I don’t think it actually looked too bad from the audience’s point of view . . . we all did what we could to keep it running along.

The audience did themselves proud in fact - there was no trouble getting people up to have a go - in fact there was more wanting to try than we had time for.

One group of enthusiastic regulars, featuring Dan and Martin ( pictured below chatting post the 11pm cut off with Rod ) . . .

. . . brought a big bag of DVDs, all checked for subtitles and with very organised scene donating post-it notes!

Dan ( on the left ) also took some great pictures of the night too, which you can see here, the 1st of which, apparently, was posted live from the stage!

We need to keep up with this kind of style - the email list of films I was sent, and had made up into a fancy looking menu, wasn’t exactly accurate I discovered when I got to the Cube to set up at 6, and we were soon back to hand written ones.

As suggested before I really think we could benefit from making a list of specific scenes rather than just movies - though there is something to be said for spontaneity and flexibility - if Colin had prior knowledge of the Wickerman we wouldn’t have had that great moment last month for instance, but a firmer base to go off the rails from would be better . . .

I think in generally more co-ordination is needed, hopefully ( possibly ? ) with some hands-on help from instigator Mark and intelligent joined up preparation that means no one is over-stretched, or called in too last minute.

Anyway it is still a good and exciting thing, still in embryonic form, that is attracting much interest - it’s just that it could be so much better if the people volunteering to make it happen could have as much fun as those coming to see it / be it . . .

. . . anyway, enough complaining- it wasn’t all misery, after packing down me and Rod had fun finding faces in the projection room . . .

. . . and I got a lift back with our the equipments, which was nice ( our own that is, not swiped stuff from the projection room!).