Cubelog

Or, Ho, ho , ho , hoe down. I warn you there is alot more Cowboy/Seasonal fun to be had here………

So the second ever Cube Orchestra film rescoring was for Sam Peckinpah’s influential Western ‘The Wild Bunch‘

Not the best time of year to be doing these kind of things , possibly, after all Classic cinema isn’t always high on peoples lists at xmas, usually getting drunk and snogging office co-workers seems to be the priority. Also alot of the Orchestra disappeared to other parts of the country to be with loved ones etc (we’re not all locals like us Paradise Clan). And so we were left with just The Magnificent Seven

Barry, Marcus, Sheriff Paradise, Ale, Hugh, Stuart and Richard.
Now it had been mooted at Cube Orchestra rehearsals that we’d dress up in Cowboy and Injun kit, well shame on the other 6, and boy did they miss out, Cowboy hats rock this world and need to be worn more often, See:
Which was a conversation I had with James who was manning the bar and membership so wonderfully, of course the lad needed confirmation of just how cool a Cowboy hat is well it kinda worked but I couldn’t help but feel I’d seen this City Slicker before. Lucky for the others I had a spare couple of hats, and so Marcus had what was actually an original style Akubra hat from Australia, and Richard a tasteful Red spankly cowboy hat. I also took the opportunity to make Barry a Sheriff.
You can just see Barry at the bottom of the screen here
The film was great and it was a shame that only 8 punters turned up, so we literally had only A Fist Full Of Dollars at the end of the night. To make matters worse the DVD has to be changed with 35 mins left and all but three left, and two of them were Barry’s girlfrind and her Dad. And so to the unknown woman who remained We salute you.

We also did a pretty good job, Hogge was top notch on the sound (and a tip of the hat to your mate ,Jules?, too for his help) We could have done with some horns for a bit of Mehico style music ese, but apart from that we filled the screen with some good sounds, moody and allowing for a reprise of a theme tune we came up with for the day.
Here Hugh, Stuart, Richard in shadows, and Ale do their stuff. On the other side of the stage was myself, Barry and you can just see him here Marcus.
This side I called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, can you guess who is who?

So all in all a good time by all, except Team Brick of whom I took the chance to enact some vigilante style justice for crimes against music and body odour (amongst several things)
To those au fait with Hip Hop I’m literally poppin a cap in his ass.

Ciao for now and y’all come back now, Richie Paradise

PS I forgot to add that Ale went to a huge amount of effort to ’score’ the film himself, giving us notice of what was coming up. You can see his good work HERE.
Also we were able to add a great number of sound effects to our musical score, machine guns and pistols via Marcus’ keyboard and my Roland Kit (bout time they gave me that endorsement I reckon) and my cap guns too. Marcus was also able to add animal noises and, boy was he pleased when he did this one right on cue, laughter. Atta boy!

This post is by way of introduction to a new and hopefully (reasonably) regular voice on the Cubelog. I’m Ben Slater, I used to work at the Cube, probably back at a time when most current volunteers were merely a twinkle in Hogge’s eye. Scarily enough, I can say that I started my work there during the last century…

Anyway, I’m in Singapore now - a strange and small place in South East Asia, where I write, teach, curate and plot my escape.

What I’d like to contribute to the blog is some news and content about film and other cultural phenomema around the the globe - which is in some tenuous way relevant to the sort of events and films that the Cube shows. And since I am in Asia, I might also tell you what’s hot in the cinemas here right now. Sort of like Barry Norman’s man in Hollywood, moustachio’ed Tom Brook, except I’m not. In Hollywood. Or moustachio’ed.

Anyway, to get things rolling - the above image is for part of a new poster campaign put together by media artists 0100101110101101.org, known in real life as Eva Mattes and Franco Birkut. They did a piece I read about a couple of years ago where they declared an area of Vienna had been renamed NikeGround, and put up huge fake billboards declaring this fact, as well as manning a booth of fake Nike PR staff to inform the public about this latest piece of branding for the sportswear giant. Their website has tons of documentation of their activities… and there’s a fun recent interview with them here.

This latest work is an fictional film starring Ewan McGregor and Penelope Cruz which imagines an action movie scenario whereby Europe unites to bring down the forces of tyranny - namely, America. To see a bigger version of the poster - click here. It’s a lovely idea -although they do make the false move of called Ewan’s character ‘The English’ (shouldn’t it be the British?). And I hope they get a fake trailer up on their very convincing website soon.

Perhaps The Cube can take things further - organise the European ‘premiere’ of the film.

(Originally tipped off to this by the wonderful Green Cine Daily )

So it’s Novemeber 30th, the scene is the Watershed and Mr Hopkinson is doing his thang again . In cahoots are The Cube Orchestra. It was the start of Watershed’s Electric December thingy, no doubt you all know about it already as you’re clever and groovy enough to be reading The Cube Blog. Well anyhow everyone who was everyone was there, including recent Arnolfini writer in residence (where she had her excellent new book ‘Ride On’ launch by the way) local Poet and writer Claire Williamson now the fact that she’s also Mrs Paradise is purely coincidental……..
Tho Orchestra also had its Kobe contingent, Yoshino here is getting animated (kind of apt for the Watershed I guess) with our resident antipodean Belinda, all part of our prematch psych up. Tomoko and Akira were also there Nippon fans.

So once again we had the lovely Mr Hopkinson introducing his on screen conductor idea We were quite literally spellbound by H’s rugged good looks, he’s kind of The Cube’s Marlon Brando, or at his most manic The Joker We were as usual cast either side of the screen, on my side me, Ale, Tomoko, Akira, Belinda and Yoshino (the cultural side if you like featuring 3 Japanese, an Aussie, a Chilean and, er, a very Exotic, slightly Romanesque, Bristolian. On the opposite side Ellie (confusing us by playing Violin rather than flute this time), Richard, Charlie (on his debut) and Marcus

The audience warmed to Mr Hopkinson’s and our madness and didn’t seem to mind that we got confused easily when we were supposed to play separately when the screen split in two. It was a very odd gig, lacked the warmth of The Cube but it was still nice to get out there and play to another audience .
Well the big head seemed to enjoy it anyway

After that more Mr Hopkinson weirdness with his crazy Computer Sings project, but Mr Hopkinson himself will have to tell you about that.

Thanks for all who came and supported,
Ciao for now children Father Paradise

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Hey now comrades, normally the bourgouise type charcters of the Cube would be the first against the wall when the revolutuion comes but nay I say, that’s not why i’m wearing this incredible hat, no. To put it simply I’m declaring that I Richie Paradise, and the Cube Orchestra to boot, are at the cutting edge of fashion. Don’t believe me? Well check this site and Vogue’s in a few months hein? Anyhow whatever. Don’t know if it’s ‘cus I teach about the holocaust and modern history plus the comedy eastern european accent is popular at the cube these days but there was a real old YURROPfeel to this week what with so much strings in evidence .

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For shame i made all my pics far too big son I’m gonna keep this one short. Liam is clearly the maddest looking perosn in the Cube Orchestra, see:
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we had a couple of newbies, Mark from Poole who had heard some good stuff about us and wanted to experience it for himself , man. I asked the good chap to show what he did up his way, for it sems Poole has its won improv type thing going on (sorry Mark I forget what it was called). Mark introduced us to a ‘drone’ type piece which I believe one is supposed to pay and develop in a kinda Spaceman 3 way I guess. All fine and good but, well, us slightly out there Jazzyer types can’t resist going abit mental at such ideas (no direspect and all that it’s just the way the Orchestra works, and it does work). Nice to have 2 Violas with Liam and newbie who for shame I have forgotten the name of, bloody good egg though, and no mistake. Gave us the chance to pay some vaguely cowboy esque type gubbins before next weeks rescore of The Wild Bunch. Nice to see the return of Stuart by the way. Oh and Barry did some top conducting, well done Comrade. Some interesting stuff again and a good chat down the pub as well. Well done all.

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More photos here by the way.

Hey you know it’s been an interesting year for the Orchestra, we’ve played about 10 gigs, several of us have ended up volunteering for the Cube, some of us do other things at the Cube like Movieoke, Djing, publicity and smoooooshing and yet we still, despite the efforts of many, sadly don’t quite feel a part of the Cube family. Hopefully this year we’re be truely accepted for the part of the Cube that other parts of the Cube cannot refresh, I know I’ll be the first to toast a nice hot cup of Coffee when that happens
Till next time, Budem zdorovy

Comrade Richie Paradise

Sorry, Cubeblog was on another hiatus there for a tepid minute. Actually, time and time travel has been coming up, time to time, for some reason in various conversations recently . . . plus the various dimensions beyond the 4 we can perceive . . . but it’s all just memories of bits that stick from In Our Time etc, so not exactly what you would call super rigorous science.

Anyway, whatever, Ben certainly looked like he’d just stepped out of the 20th Century . . .

. . . when he stepped into The Cube for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, or more specifically the night of readings, q&a, signings and occasional performances as part of a book tour, for Polly Marshall’s biography. They were in conversation on the stage . . .

. . . and later Arthur performed a few tracks with a guitarist, including a cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins‘ ‘I put a spell on you’, and another one introduced as the first track John Peel ever played on Radio 1, which I think was his own composition ( Arthur’s, not John’s ).

Meanwhile another cover lover, my computer, like Bournemouth, seems to have a life of his own . . . last night he turned up on Radio 1, on Huw Stephens‘ One Music Show Christmas special with a track from a live recording made at last year’s Cube Xmas show.

Huw’s whole show is available on Radio 1’s listen again for a week after the original broadcast ( there’s also a little bit of Confident Bob in there cut up with Cassetteboy, closing the show, apparently ). Just the computer’s bit as an mp3 can be had here for the foreseeable.

I think the Computer is performing his Xmas set again this Friday at the volunteers’ party in place of the-sadly-unable-to-play-though-listed-in-the-programme Quadrobe.

The volunteers’ email list has been rather active and forumesque recently thinking up things to show and do in place of Quadrobe, and with the mere mention of Buffy being as contentious and divisive as ever - love it or hate it, you’d be mad not to love it, I say - if you have any passing interest at all in risk-taking narrative subversion, that is.

Beautifully, but a bit boringly, Twin Peaks and The Simpsons seem to unite all.

Good will and peace out for now.