Well we may have been Maxless this Movieoke but goddamn it was a good one!
We even welcomed back some old friends and a few new ones too. To start with old friend Helen pictured above with new friend James (new to us not her) and her buddy, American ‘Surf girl’ (sorry I kept and keep forgetting your name).
These two did a great version of Fargo which if I’m clever enough you can watch via YouTube here:
Helen I’m in desperate need of some new Business cards so GET IN TOUCH.
We took a bit of time to get going and these chaps here we’re almost alone in the beginning
It was difficult because Tom had to Host and cue up films up himself, still these chaps we’re marvellous in Full Metal Jackets infamous scene with the Vietnamese hooker and the Marines. Unfortunately they left just as a big gang of well up for it Moviokeists turned up. It was time for a drink
not many speaking parts so most of them gathered around ye, sorry me and acted as the crowd. Brilliant.
Other highlights were an advanced level Movieoke (ie NO SUBTITLES) of Happiness
X rated that bit mind as Fellatio was involved (not actual fellatio, acting obviously).
“Yes Richie!“, you cry, “but how about you and Wunderkid Colin Smith, how did you guys play?
Well friends Colin was on top form as always, ad libbing and tuning The Good, The Bad and The Ugly into a Wurzel medley with references to Bedminster and Cider free flowing from them on stages lips. Marvellous. Actually Colin lost it every time we managed to slip the word Movieoke into any song we we’re doing, but that’s understandable. I’m a funny guy. We ended by singing Great Balls of Fire. Brilliant.
Well the evening didn’t end there. No sirree. After the hob nobbing those of us volunteers left over had a brew and chin wag and well, messed about.
Pile on George was agreed to be the favourite thing done, but Whose line is it anyway was great also. I enjoyed pretending to be a chat show host when talking to others as well as introducing top Pop act George and Sarah
Welcoming guests
And general Cheering
Well eventually the fun had to stop and we had to go home to bed. Great fun all round.
Thanks to Colin, Tom, Sarah, Richard, George, Polly, everybody else who helped it happen (Rikki for most of the DVD’s) and of course YOU the audience.
I’ve been summoned East, so I don’t have time at the monet to Blog any of the last three things I’ve been involved with. The good news is it’s musical why I’m heading off.
In the mean time a nice wee taster till I’m back to reveal all:
Even though it fitted in with a general feeling of establishment and build of the overall project, last month’s edition of Movieoke was so surprisingly successful it had me having high hopes for yesterday’s outing which closed March . . .
Well, hmm, don’t rest on your laurels, get comfortable and/or other clichés, cos now I feel like a bit of an April fool for expecting a blinder . . .
Despite taking several steps to perfect the formula, like getting the DVD list a week in advance to make up a raft of menus, even getting a laminator to make them splash proof ( though harder to alter when inevitably the actual DVDs arriving on the night don’t match up 100% ), rounding up equipment and people to sound and video check earlier to avoid a late start, fate seemed against us.
The first blow was the non-appearance of our irreplaceable musical genius Colin Smith, for mysterious reasons unknown.
Thankfully, due to the previously mentioned measures there was still time for Bluescreen Chris to rush me home to get my CD decks, mixer . . .
. . . plus a bunch of Library Music CDs, and we were still set up and ready to go for 8:30 . . .
Ready to go but not prepared for the second non-appearance of the night . . .
I believe the word Karaoke literally translates to mean “Empty Orchestra” - well tonight it looked like Movieoke meant “Empty Auditorium”, as for the first few hours, at least, there was no audience at all!
But despite the lack of punters there were none of the understaffing issues of previous Movieokes so the bar was almost full . . .
. . . and as we waited for someone, anyone, to appear we chatted and drank away in a slightly bemused fashion slowly discovering that my poster design had never actually made it off of the virtual world of sparror and into the realm of paper - usually both Movieoke instigator and organiser Tom and our unfeasibly enthusiastic in-house drummer Richie Paradise do an excellent job of printing out and putting up across the city, this time, however, both of them had managed to overlook it - which was even more weird because as we had had an enthusiastic email from a fan who was keen to put posters up herself - I’d presumed a three pronged publicity attack was well in hand . . . oh well.
Lack of posters didn’t make the event entirely publicity-less as it was of course listed in The Cube programme, which incidentally has been enjoying particularly beautiful design recently, and eventually a few, but not many, members of the public made it . . .
The first group included original Cube volunteer and distant cubelogger Ben Slater . . .
. . . who it was great to see, though it was tinged with a certain embarrassment that he was making a return visit from so far to witness a decidedly under par event. Hats off to him though, as he did probably the best movieoke of the night with a far from run of the mill ‘Miller’s Crossing‘ . . .
. . . and there were also good turns by Liam, who was also crewing as video tech, as a very fine and very physical Clint Eastwood . . .
. . . Richie really went for it as a brummie Tim Roth at the start of Pulp Fiction, a virtually wordless movieoke of the Jack Rabbit Slim’s dance sequence from the same movie . . .
. . . and many sterling attempts by Tom to warm the place up, but the lack of the usual atmosphere provided by a big enough crowd and Colin’s musical wit left the whole thing a bit lack lustre over all.
Richie filled in his electronic drums with various cheesy preset demos which did the job, but the entertaining layers of meaning that usually emerge from him and Colin, and the movies and performers, just wasn’t going to happen.
Max was beset by technical difficulties with his voice - not unusual - but I felt my performance of him was less than it should have been too, hampered by juggling the DJing ( the finest ( of thin ) moments was a time stretched Windowlicker under Snow White - worked for me anyway! ) and perhaps hampered the most by one too many nervous beers from earlier from when we were waiting for people to arrive.
The real fun exploded when those few people who did come, left . . .
After Movieoke powered down, the considerable crew, containing considerable amounts of alcohol, found themselves indulging in a weird impromptu, virtually bacchanalian, party on stage . . .
Kind of like, um, a sort of karaoke - funny that - though we backed ourselves with some visual larking about too as Tom got improvising on the vision mixer revelling in the cheesy 80’s effects.
So overall a disappointing, but at least not totally joyless evening. Movieoke has so many elements it seems that while you rush to attend to one end everything topples off the other, but still, when it is good it really is good - so hopefully we will establish some sort of stable formula before all around us completely collapses!
Meanwhile the first event I advertised in my previous post, Bluescreen on Wednesday, had an unexpectedly large audience with people standing in the aisles! Hopefully there will be a fuller post on that from Chris . . .
And the ‘Random Festival Of Improvisation’ night on Thursday wasn’t that busy, but there were enough people in the various groups performing to have a reasonable audience. I only caught the end with a couple of enjoyable improvised stories from Hannah Godfrey. . .
. . . who puts on The Cube storytelling nights, and Peter Reynolds’ Absolute Dream Palace trio . . .
. . . who were a brilliant example of rigorously structured freedom. Nice.
EDIT . . . after the recent video blogging experients, here’s a snatch of a version of supergroupextreme back onstage where they belong ( Additional, The Janitor and Extraordinary, where were you!? ) . . .
Well, I’ve been in The Cube a bit more a bit recently, but I’ve also managed to missed a couple of things I’d meant to see . . .
Sadly didn’t make it in time for the many membered The Arctic Circle on Thursday, even after determinedly hot footing it with Amy from an informal film-makers’ meeting at Watershed arranged by Harriet Fleuriot of the Bristol branch of Future Shorts ( anyone interested in joining in email me and I can pass you on . . . ).
So yeah, missed The Artic Circle, but happily added to The Cube’s volunteers’ how-tall-wall . . .
. . . and became part of another impromptu oversized indie supergroup called The Hidesincoats, check us out . . .
. . . no songs to speak of, but the first video’s pretty much done . . .
I’m looking forward, as David Hidesincoats, to being invited to do obscure unmixed guest dj sets at indie clubs across the land . . .
The second thing I missed was the Plug58 nanoplex on Saturday - I was out of The Cube, but with ( some ) Cube people again - this time at Spike Island for a few talks and a few free pies. The final talk was given by Hogge and Kate . . .
. . . both talking generally about The Cube, including some interesting ideas about what the unpaid structure and what word the ‘amateur’ can actually mean in terms of the ‘professional’ ( or presumed no- or un- ) and the passionate - with it’s original meaning deriving from ‘amor’ Ð love, The Cube’s relation to Artists’ practice, Artists’ practice in relation to it, and specifically about Kate’s Feral Trade project, which was later in actual action for the evening Plug58 portion, which I did make . . .
Apperently there was a bit of a hoo-hah at the earlier Plug58 Nanoplex event for the kids - Patrick Duff and Duncan Fleming’s contribution was deemed too scary for some - I heard reports from Patrick ( not happy to be asked to comprimise ), Kayle ( uncomfortable but confident in her actions ( as event manager the onus was on her to ask them to tone it down ) ) , and Jem ( as a parent he, and more pertinently Milo, were at ease with a bit of scary in a kids’ story - though wary that some were under the 5 years and over suggested in the programme ).
As I wasn’t there it’s hard to tell what it was like, but hopefully it won’t scare off parents and kids from future Nanoplexes as I reckon it’s a brilliant, and in my experience, well executed idea.
I’m presently trying to work out how to work in some Singing Science for some future one ( I’m really love to see them performed by Tom Bugs in his labcoat, possibly as part of an ‘educational’ nanoplex, along with Fránçois teaching basic French ).
Like the earlier reports, the evening ‘adult’ audience were in for a bit of a, potentially scary, surprise too - while the predominate theme of the night seemed to be singer-songwriters with semi-acoustics with Leila Music, Joe McGann ( with Sam Kidel ) and Simon Breed . . .
. . . all performing intricate, beautiful, and in Simon Breed’s case quite funny, songs with a bit of that plug58 dark undertow, I wondered how was an audience that visibly flinched and audibly gasped at a bit of a click when swapping guitar leads would take to the mighty Team Brick when he took to the stage . . .
He wasn’t playing a semi-acoustic. Admittedly there was a bit of guitar in the mix, but his most impressive instrument, after his voice of course, was a contact miked wooden plank and file . . .
. . . too much for a few, but admirably most enjoyed it, if somewhat open mouthedly.
Well, that’s what I did and didn’t see recently - acutally I made the Fonal records night too, which was good - enchanting in fact - but I’m tired now and the pics I took weren’t too hot, so won’t say any more for now.
As always, I’m keen to encourage anyone involved in The Cube, at any level, including ‘mere’ audience members and long distance blog readers to contribute their perspectives on this place, so please comment if you have something to say, and also comment/email me if you would like me to set up a login so you can do some blog posting proper . . .
Oh, and there’s much coming up with Bluescreen on Wednesday, a night of improv involving the Orchestra on Thursday, and the unmissable Movieoke on Friday . . . all of which looks like it will be interesting, though what I/we will make or make of it we’ll have to see . . .
(Krissy) and Richie Paradise
