Cubelog

It seems I spoke too soon, for the Maestro is NOT DEAD, LONG LIVE THE MAESTRO!

But he was late, so he had to do the new organised, disciplined Orchestra’s 20 press ups. Good lad.
Before he arrived we ran through the old signals in preparation for saturday’s Mr Hopkinson’s Cuttting Up my Friends extravaganza performance. And there were a few old faces, Mark on sax and Dani, on Clarinet, who looked like a cross between Rob Tyner (Of MC5 Fame) and one of them from The Mars Volta. See Dani did a bit of conducting in a crazed Maestro way though he seemed to think the V sign was a valid instruction.
Tomoko fell asleep but forgive her for she is our
Pink Rose of the Orient, and a darn fine Bassist to boot.

But what of the music Mr Paradise? I hear you cry, well the crazed mixture that was the signaled music and then we got down to waht we’ve been doing for the last fews months without the maestro, Wham and Kajagoogoo covers. Marcus was late, 40 press ups for him, and his paunch needed the help believe me……..
Personally I jsut struggled to do what I do best self publicity, though me drumming was ‘crisp and enjoyable’ (Copyright The LA times)
Anyhow a team buyildng exercise down the pub proved fruitful, the Orchestra that drinks together stays together after all, just look at those happy smiles and like most families we look a bit alike Marcus clearly older wiser, middle brother Barry sensible clean cut but full of anger and then poor younger stupider, uglier Team Brick. Isn’t life strange?

Next was Mr hopkinson’s Cut Up night but that’ll have to wait for another day.

Ciao for now, Your friend Richie Paradise

taken from http://www.livejournal.com/users/ladylucy/

Overall the weekend went great. On Friday night was ultra nervous as I remembered that the artists were being flown especially for it. Luckily there was an audience and by the end of the night they were standing on the Cube auditorium chairs watching Electronicat do his thing to audience members shouting “You sexy bastard.” Miss Le Bomb was like Blondie (the first thing I did on the internet was to look up Blondie lyrics) and her cover version of Jelous Guy really pleased My Roxy Music/ Bryan Ferry
soul. Missi also does a magazine and that’s great too. It’s half written in German and half written in English. Miss Le Bomb told me about her band Queen of Japan . I enjoyed djing too and ended up having some late of night drinks with the performers including Vanishing Breed who was by this time collapsed and had to endure some more dancing around to songs like Downtown. Leaha was also a brilliant sound tech and thanks for last minute help from Tom Buggs and James.
Saturday, Alex and I took a stroll around Bristol and it felt nice to do that. I love being a tourist in my own city sometimes. Also I havn’t been able to do it for a while because I have been working as an invigilator. After some food. a recipe I made up. quick lentil mousaka went to see
Kevin Blechdom, Planning To Rock and Organ Lady. Awsome. What amazing use of Cube stage. Baloons ( hydrogen baloons are on her rider). At the end she got the offal out of the tesco bag that Chiz had got from the butchers up Gloucester road. I felt like these are women who are doing stuff not really like no one else.

Afterward we took the rock stars over to Under_score. It was difficult to get in, but we managed it. At one point I saw Duncan saying “Kevin, you’ll have to wait you turn ” which was quite funny. It turns out that
PTR knows Emma H from art college so that was a sweet little connection. We went back to my house and played cards. I learned a new trick, well actually my only card trick.
Kevy B is the most freckily person I have ever met. I would like to draw her portrait. All in all I felt inspired by these performers and they make me want to do more of that kind of thing. I think Super Group Extreme should do more stuff.

Sunday night I realised that a couple had brought a festival ticket each and so that was good to hear. Quite a few people turned up for the Chicks film and The Nomi song. Meanwhile James and I had a fun dj clash in the bar. It went something like this from what I remember and I think we’ll be doing it again at Campari Safari- underscore soundclash
Bikini Kill- Helen Love- Sonic Youth does Beach Boys- love- Sebodah- liz phair- death sentance panda- gravy train- blonde readhead- undertones- stereo total-

So ich bin ein berliner was good, I was pleased with it.
Thank you to everyone who played and helped out and cube and qu junktions

Just over a week to go . . .

. . . and I’ll be posting more regularly !

OK. Not true. But we had such a storming set tonight that one of the tunes was killed ‘Death (or should it have been Deaf?) To Peter Swaffer Reynolds (The Maestro)’ ‘cus if he’d heard the blues pop jam thing we came up with, he’d have gone tres mental.

However I’m sure if he’d heard the other stuff we came up with he’d have been pleased as punch.
We started off Moody and Jazzy because (a) Gareth played some Brubeck on his sax and Joe Morello (Brubecks drummer for many years) is possibly my favourite drummer of all time. And (b) We kept the lights down. Man it was Crazeeeee. Gareth, seen here doing his Ian Dury impression called that one (decided by spin the drum stick) Welsh Rare Bit.

Onwards and forwards. A very percussive song followed by Ellie kicking off the next one via the skill of Flute effects pedal madness and Gareth danced to the beat . It was a top tune, kinda like Sergio Leone meets, er, Ellie. So I called it Sergio Elleone meets the good, the bad and the ugly Orchestra.
It was beautifully moody, I think the mix of sax, flute and melodica (strangley shadow inhabiting Richard hence no pic) worked really well. Mind you the rest of us contributed alot too. Check out the sounds when they soon get put up (nudge nudge Marcus).
Lens (also known as Hugh) reminded us that not only is he an inavative and original guitarist (ie limited by talent) and a Photogropher, but he’s pretty photogenic himself .

Dd I say how much I enjoyed today? My Quiff grew an extra inch or two (I said Quiff Mr Hopkinson)

and did I say how moody it was?

Our penultimate tune was a reworking of Midnight Cowboy using Richard’s skill on the melodica and the effect pedals set up for Ellie. Persoanlly I love Faith No More’s version, so I kinda bigged it up a bit, but then we brought it all back down again. We finished off with some craziness which was all good.
I found this week very satisfying and it was a great advert for what we can do, so big slaps on back to Tomoko, Ellie, Gareth, Marcus, Richard, Lens, and Meself.

Caio for now Richie ‘oops didn’t mean to do THAT‘, Paradise