Last week I enjoyed one of the best nights out at the Cube for a long time - the “Cube Cola all spirits night”. This was the ‘first’ Cube Cola birthday party - though, slightly confusingly, not their first year - it was, according to the exquisitely James-Vickery-designed programme, “celebrating almost 4 years on the path to food science enlightenment”. The Cube Cola project is by Kate Rich and Kayle Brandon . . .
. . . and is based around providing a viable alternative to branded cola, manufactured from scratch. There is more info here, and here. The evening also celebrated many other home-spun products: food stuffs . . .
. . . some presented quite straightforwardly and deliciously, others with a bit more attached ( notably Jelena Stanovnik’s extremely good pie-chart Chocolate cake, which marks out the proportions of recorded religions in the UK as part of the ‘Life In The UK’ project by Jelena, Kate and Rasha Shaheen - who I’d previously seen give their presentation at Spike Island and Blackout at Shambala ); and also some clothes - in the form of some very versatile garments by Sylvia Zidek, including her specially designed trousers that level the pissing-field to make dignified street-urination as easy for women as men.
Kush DJ’ed infectious afro-beat in the bar . . .
. . . and Suffolk band The Pancakes played on their home-made instruments in the auditorium . . .
There was a healthy crowd despite stiff competition from a sort-of homecoming gig by The Goxxip ( Cube associates Local Kid memorably brought them over here before they blew up in the mainstream ) and everything just seemed to fall into place to make a perfect entertaining and thought provoking evening that I couldn’t quiet imagine happening anywhere else . . . thank The Cube !
Later in the week, and probably because it was mid-week, the tribute night for Anthony H Wilson, wasn’t so well attended. Possibly just as well as the promised Karaoke Orchestra couldn’t make it, and my proposed contribution ( a compilation of YouTube clips transferred to DVD ) wasn’t ready too . . . not unlike the various mythologically-behind-schedule-Peter-Saville-moments chronicalled in ‘24 hour Party People‘, which we did get to screen from the DVD with Tony Wilson’s commentary ( a great idea from Hog ), after showing some performances recorded in the Haçienda from the FAC71 vhs I bought second-hand as a young teenager.
Having searched around the net for bits and pieces the pretty obvious parallels in attitude, and more than occasional ineptitude, between the Cube and the Manchester music scene Tony Wilson was so associated with, seem even more blatant to me, and hopefully we’ll schedule another more party friendly, and suitably irreverent celebration night later in the year . . .
. . . meanwhile here’s links to a little gem I uncovered that was made for Channel 4 in the 80’s [ it’s split into 7 parts ] . . .
. . . which, if nothing else ( presuming you’ve seen 24hr Party People ), should draw attention at just how good Paddy Considine was at playing Rob Gretton !
Music by Punksi, Danni and this chap was truely fantastic. Well done Chaps, you had the bar packed with alot of happy smiley people
Bar staff did a sterling job, I’m glad to say my Paradise Punch went down rather well. It’s a vague version of a Sea Breeze if you’re interested, Rum instead of Vodka.Brin even had time to do some fire eating in the garden where a gruesome gang enjoyed his Satanicmastery
I’m afraid I missed the first act The Dagger Brothers but I heard they were simply marvellous. Later we were introduced to Time Travellers turned Techno Mentalists VexKiddy
See and hear for yourselves
We were then introduced to, I think, The Brian Epstein Mind Masturbator, a device that reads your thought waves and turns them into music. The lady wearing the device occasionaly works at my skool, so at least she’s used to oddities and potentially dangerous scenarios.
The device was bought out by ‘Barbara’ (aka Ali), a fine specimen of a girl, front and back
Anywow let’s have a look and see just what’s inside the young ladies head:
Quite insane and quite quite marvelous.
Well my chariot arrived and I headed off leaving everyone to carry on the Birthday fun.
Huge thanks to Sarah and Mark for organising the whole thing.
Yes we were all Children once my friends (I can’t believe I was 16 in that photo), I remember when Pater took me under his arm and said ‘Son, this is a Dick Dale record, I hid this up my ass for 2 years whilst I was in a POW camp in Vietnam, now it’s time you had it‘. I could be mixing up this story with another, I’m not sure I’ll check with my analyst/therapist (personally I think those buisness cards were a mistake). Anyhow what fun we had, we actually had some children turn up and lots of punters made the effort to wear a Hawaiian shirt or more.
First up was Michael E Gorton a last minute replacement. He did a fine job, kinda reminded me of a slighty less comatose Jonathan Richman. Meanwhile in the Bar
I had alot of fun spining some tunes, my usual mix of Surf, Greasy Rock ‘n’ Roll, Exotica, Lounge, Psychobilly etc, hell I even got ‘em dancing once ot twice
Why Bernard (aka Mike) wears a Monk’s habit I’ll never know but he regailed us with stories about rubbish mobile phones, Italian restaurant disasters and the video playing behind amongst other things. Well done chaps.
More music in the bar and then time for the Classic Surf film BIG WEDNESDAY
MEANWHILE IN THE BAR
A great night which even top comedian Dave Gorman turned up too
It’s been a while, but I wasn’t going to miss this one . . .
Last Friday found The Cube holding the 2nd ( or is it the 3rd . . ? ) part of QuWack, the mini-festival of 15 minute performances by uncategoriseable soloists who are cut by the closing Cube curtains whether they are ready to finish or not.
Do you remember the first time, QuWack ( M ) ? It was in May, back on the other side of 2006’s summer, and consisted of 2 days ( Hence the 2nd or 3rd part confusion above ).
That M stood for Male rather than May though, and this time it was QuWack ( F ) - see if you can work out what that’s for . . .
I didn’t hear anyone particularly express this, but you might think forcing a gender divide could be contentious or just plain unnecessary . . . but I think, like the other arbitrary rules, such as the 15 minute lenght of sets and solo artists only, it placed a constraint within which to be creative that was very effective over all - just this time it’s effect was for those choosing who to programme . . .
Events put on by Cube associates like Blackout and Venn, and alternative/electronic events just generally across the globe, have many times been criticised for being too weighted in favour of male performers, and even though there was still twice as many men than women over all, I suspect it could have been even further out of wack if that arbitrary rule hadn’t been in place . . .
I don’t want to bang on about it too much, but I reckon one of the main reasons an imbalance exists generally is because, regardless of gender, being approached in the first place is so important in giving you a chance to think about what you can do . . . and for a variety of reasons men just seem to get asked more.
In blogging the first one I think I praised Chiz and Mark for coming up with a format that forced the performers to think very carefully what they could do in the allotted time. I for one enjoyed making a one-off set for The Computer, which , not so incidentally, probably wouldn’t have spent the summer touring the country if Mark hadn’t asked me at some point to come up with a way to “perform” my electronic covers live . . .
Anyway, as with the first two nights every single performer . . .
. . . took to the challenge with style, and, for my money, once again, there wasn’t a duff performance all night. Unfortunately it also shared similarly sparse audience figures as the very first M night had - though the second M was packed out as I remember, possibly thanks to the draw of Kid Carpet’s name.
Continuing the form from before was Adam Faraday’s live documentation . . .
. . . he videoed all the performers across the evening onto a single tape . . . and no sooner than some footage was captured, was it projected onto the closed curtains during the setting up for the next act. A simple but highly effective method of visually pulling the event together and building expectation for the next performance.
Also expertly tying everything together, and also reprising a role from the first time, was Lea Potinek . . .
. . . once again introducing the acts with a sharp sense of cabaret. Lea as you may have noticed from above was also the first act on, doing a seven and a half minute performance. She also ended with another seven and a half minutes so dividing her 15 minutes in a echo of Twocsinak’s performance that was split in half over the two M nights.
Sadly, and a bit stupidly, I managed to miss Lea’s opening performance as I was oblivious to it starting, enjoying Nina’s DJ ing in the bar . . .
. . . but happily caught Lea’s closing one, an electronic interpretation of ‘The Erl King’ by Schubert ( although my camera didn’t ).
The first performance I got to see, presumably flown in from the States, was The Electricfyin’ Casey O . . .
. . . who sent us to sexy preset Casio heaven with some super fresh moves and cool, and manic, comedy command of the mic.
. . . who completely mesmorised the audience performing three amazing songs for electric guitar and voice that I later found out she had only written that week. Even more astounding, given just how arresting the performance was, this was the first time she had performed it that style, i.e. not using electronics, for two and a half years. Seems a great waste for what could have been in-between, but I’m very grateful she decided to come back.
The next performer was someone I had not heard of before - Chipper . . .
. . . Her setup was cello with live processing via laptop, and also succeeded in captivating the audience. This was one single piece over the 15 minutes which was artfully constructed with a real feel for the over all musical dynamic of the piece rather than getting caught up in the technical possibilities of processing. It reminded me a bit in feel to Team Brick’s show stopping finale to the M night, and I think he dug it too as I heard a distinctive low “yeaha-ah!” when the appreciative applause broke out as the last note fell away.
Back after a short break, with Rosie swapping DJing with Nina in the Bar . . .
. . . the second half started with Lady Lucy . . .
. . . Originally billed as “Lady Lucy and the MPC”, though due to a last minute change of plan it was Lady and her laptop instead ( stay tuned for the first LL & MPC outing . . . ). After a reprise of “I ride my Sk8board, yeh” as featured in her recent “Don’t Do Tricks” DVD launch. Lady took to the mic, much to everyone’s delight, with a rambling but somehow completely hilarious story about being advised to learn to love karaoke at her art school interview, and brought up, on the feed from her laptop which was on the cinema screen behind her, scanned images of her paintings of Blondie, hand clicked on in Windows Picture and Fax viewer. Then, using a downloaded midi file as backing, Lady performed a version of ‘Rapture‘, and on finishing asked for a female volunteer from the audience. Jessica Marlowe obliged and they sang The Bangles ‘Manic Monday’ together, after Googling live on stage for the lyrics, with much of the audience joining in the shamelessly shambolic fun.
After that delightful disorderliness, Irina Artamonova . . .
. . . who I’d never caught a performance by before ( though I’d hoped to see staff panic only wall unit at Venn ). She came in contrast to the preceding chaos with what I presume was a well rehearsed, certainly a well structured one. Behind a whole raft of impressive looking electronics, no laptop there ( at least I didn’t spot one ) she built up a beautiful, noisy and slightly terrifying, as in awesome, piece. Particularly engaging was the way she skilfully worked her voice in.
This was followed by Rasha Shaheen who has gigged quite a lot with her solo stuff, I recommend her album Hatshepsut, and I assumed she would be playing some tracks from her regular set. Instead, presumably with the M / F theme in mind Rasha appeared very strikingly on stage ( though not that visible in the pics ) in full Niqab and performed the Islamic call for Prayer, or Adhan, with layers of electronic processing . . .
. . . After the performance Rasha explained that this piece, which she had been performed before, is in protest against the fact that it is forbidden for women to perform the prayer. Rasha then said after this serious piece she would like to do something more fun - show her “home movie” . . .
. . . Sheesha - how to prepare one. With much musical equipment on stage the subtitles were a bit obscured from some audience angles. A plucky soul took the initiative to get on stage and to rearrange stuff to give everyone a better view. Accidentally, and unintentionally rather theatrically, she cut the film by pushing down the onstage laptop’s lid to her brief embarrassment, but actually to the audience’s, including Rasha’s warm hearted amusement.
After the film resumed, with no further hitches, Lea had the honour of introducing herself once more . . .
. . . and finished off the evening with that fine electronic reworking of Schubert.
All in all a very entertaining evening. It felt a shame not to have been enjoyed by a fuller audience, though at least one person I spoke to rather enjoyed the fact they saw something so good so exclusively. It was full of stuff, but seemed to end too soon - I would have loved to have had the chance to see a second F night as before . . . not sure what the plan is now for QuWack, but if you hear it comes back, I suggest you make tracks.
Meanwhile here’s a couple of YouTubes of moments I managed to capture . . .
This Friday & Saturday saw a new mini-festival brought to us by Qu Juncktions . . . QuWack
This was QuWack, number 1, “M” ( for all Male. Next, obviously, will be “F” for all female . . . )
Two nights, seven and a half solo male performers, all categorised as uncatergorisable, doing one fifteen minute set each - the “half” men being one man doing a pair of seven and a half minute performances to end the first day and start the second - with the curtains closing bang on the 900th second ( or 450th ) whether they’d finished or not . . . geddit?
That’s what we were promised, and broadly got, although Saturday had an extra bonus performance ( from George Headfall ) and a Chiz curtain calculation error meant Kid Carpet got cut off at the 10 minute mark - but he came back almost immediately for a 5 minute encore much to the crowd’s delight.
So, who were the fellas? Have a look see . . .
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
It was all top notch and a tribute to good thinking by Chiz & Mark of Qu for giving so many singularly talented odd-bods a set set time to prepare something stunning for.
A particular inspirational stroke was Chiz’s idea, faultlessly executed by Adam Faraday, to video the performances which were then played back ( sans audio ) immediately onto the closed curtain while the change-overs took place . . .
. . . so bringing a wonderful coherence to the over all events.
. . . from ( separately ) mr_hopkinson’s computer and ( pictured ) Kid Carpet . . . which leaves out-on-their-owners Don Mandarin ( karaoke of your own songs ), just off the plane from Berlin international electro superstar Kurt Wiesel ( needs no introduction - this man is HUGE, if you haven’t heard of him, you will . . . ), a beautiful little set from last minute slot filler Fránçois, plus S J Esau, who I sadly missed as I was taking care of my computer after his set ( sorry, Sam ! ).
Friday’s audience was a little bit undersubscribed - not too bad though - but Saturday was completely packed out - all in all amazing.
The one female performance presence in this male, though handsomely un-macho atmosphere, was multi-linguist Lea Piontek, who introduced acts carabet style in the spotlight in front of the closed curtains . . .
. . . including Kurt’s intro in German and Fránçois’ in French.
Loads of pics up on Sparror . . . and if you want mp3s of my compy’s Cutler tributes you can get one on his myspace space ( search for Ivor’s image ), and the other on Rob Da Bank’s listen again ( around the 1:04 mark ), if your reading this around the week it was written . . .
was truely fantastic. Well done Chaps, you had the bar packed with alot of happy smiley people
and back 
Richie Paradise
Richie Paradise (here aged 25) + friend
