Hope I’m not jumping in and stealing his thunder, but original Cubester and Blog poster Ben Slater has just finished his book – for now here is a simple link.
He may be back here with more to say on the matter, or not – he’s pretty busy . . . but word on the wire is he’ll be in this country, and this part of it, very soon . . .
Yes we were back and it all got rather bizzare and psychedelic
But I’m jumping ahead of meyself. Now anyone who’s involved with Movieoke, and indeed anyone who’s been to Movieoke, will know it can be somewhat shambolic, so baring that in mind we sent emails out a month in advance to try to get everything sorted and high powered meetings were had by Cube Big wigs.
And yet we still ended up starting late and having monitor problems (which meant poor old Hog had to cue everything up on a video camera screen). Max being the sociopath that he is just spewed scorn and abuse
Anyhow when we did get going it was a fantastic night. Here’s why:
The Audience
give yourselfs a huge round of applause people, you rocked! The newbies who turned up made a lot of effort (more on that later). They even turned up early!
Tom
the mans a legend, with a fine singing voice to boot (Album avilable in all good record emporioums). Interestingly enough Tom had seen Movieoke being done in Berlin hopefully we can take The Cube’s version to our Deutsch cousins.
Colin
we all know Colin’s a genius on the piana but the real make of a man is if he will raise his game and step up to the plate (and other sporting cliches). Usually Me and Colin fill gaps between films with montages of whatever comes to mind (and i do a bit of picture taking)
well with the extended breaks due to our equipment problems Colin grabbed a mic and started regailing the audience Chas and Dave style. Well done sir.
Max
yes a rude, abusive, bad mannered sociopath, but he’s OUR rude, abusive, bad mannered sociopath.
The Cube Team.
So what of the evening itself? Well Tom in his rainbow beany got it off to a start with his usual acting skills
the performances were top notch, a lot of effort going into making it believable and yet lighthearted entertainment
As the liquor flowed the evening got more and more far out
and The Cube magic started to roll. The fine newbie gang dia great rendition of Shaun Of The Dead with a bunch of them walkig around the stage like zombies. Rather scaringly this woman physically attacked me and Colin
she was VERY convincing. We even had a drama student forced on stage towards the end to add some gravitas, and it worked too (I’m surpised more acting types don’t turn up actually).
The audience were then treated to a rendition of My Way from me and Colin as they made their way to the
bar and home. A really fantastic night and one that’s given us a few ideas how we can take Movieoke into the next Century.
We hope to see you at the next one – Next Movieoke 31st March
Big Love,
Single and Hot, 
Richie Paradise
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.
There were too many performances for me to do in-depth reviews, but overlapping themes were looping and layering ( Ian Green / Maiof / Freeze Puppy/ Def Con Stylus and Paul Bradley ), virtuosic single instrument mania ( George / Colin Smith ), startling vocalisations ( Men Daimler / Team Brick ) and timely Ivor Cutler tributes . . .
. . . 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 . . .
OK – reposting of Ben’s Sunburned review with my pics at last . . . I only arrived in time to see The Clear People ( who were my highlight of a night of highlights ) so the narrative of the images and the text kind of run along separate parallel tracks, but hey that kind of makes a Sunburned Cube sort of sense, I think . . .
For everyone who feels that if the Cube is anything it is a place for people to explore areas of their work that other venues cannot reach then two nights of Sunburned Hand of the Man may have been something not to miss… Not since the Klinker have a group of artists and thinkers taken the place and made it theirs for a night and given the impression, at least for a moment, that they spent most of their time hanging out.
It all started with a poster that to quote ‘while not a poster a member of the band may have produced seemed to capture what they we are about’ and was lovingly hand printed by The Lady Lucy and it ended with slipping and sliding to The Beatles and Mr Dylan before heading out to get some carefully prepared Chicken burgers at one of Stokes Croft’s finest.
So to the main acts. It all began quietly on the first night with Hush Arbors the solo vehicle of Keith Wood, who also plays a part in Sunburned and Wooden Wand, with a set of mournful country melodies juxtaposed with a bit of rock, backing was provided by John, Ron, and Mark from Sunburned. Out on the merch table Keith’s most recent album ‘since we have fallen’ stood out for its beautiful handmade cover and slightly surprising 12.5” size.
The last time Sunburn played the Cube the lights were bright and the projection screen laid bare but this time everything changed; they remembered that the venue was in fact a Cinema and asked special guest member Bridget Hayden of the Vibracathedral Orchestra to show the video piece ‘Ink’. With the lights down and the blood red curtains closed a cow’s head slowly appears from behind and as the curtains slowly roll back the vastness of Sunburned, this time a group of 5 + Bridget, slowly rumbles to fill the place with a throbbing base for the next hour and a bit. Again the Cube crowd was a strange mix of young and the older with, to quote the next night, a ‘lady with 3 fur coats’; all rocked backwards and forwards as the Ocean rolled its great waves over and over. At the end a Cube regular asked ‘what will they be doing tomorrow’ and one might take a guess: ‘ they’re going to do a play – working title “Get Thee to a Nunnery”‘. However, I’m not sure anyone could have predicted just how good this second night would turn out to be, and how it exposed the bottomless pit that forms the foundation of those East Coast Surf Girls.
So to the final day of the two day visit of SHOM at the Cube cinema which at 6.30pm it seemed that almost all staff for the night had not realised that the show begun at 7pm—this was in part due to the fact that the Feb program stated that both nights started at 8pm, editor please! As might have been expected this turned out to be little of a problem as by 7.30pm one slow burning drifter had taken a risk and crossed over the line into the land of Bridge, Hush Arbors, Ozone, Clear People, Man Cry, and of course Sunburn Hand of the Man.
… this was the night that saw SHOM strip themselves back to the bone to present a night of entertainment ranging from grown men crying…I know can you believe it… too two ‘stoned’ men making one laugh so much that I can’t really remember anything about that particular act!
Slowly the crowd swelled out and the show began with the Drifter, a breaded man wearing Sun glasses, in parting information about the evenings show; noting it would finish with the visual piece ‘Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda’ by Ira Cohen scored with a new sound track by SHOM, and then it began with Bridget leading the Bridge with a slight sliding feedback guitar. Following this was Mark’s side project Ozone which started from behind the projection screen with the deranged keys of the now infamous Cube prepared panio, sampled over and over and over. Slowly Mark with the support from John and Rob built up songs around this and then just as quickly two of them lay dead on the stage with the sound still growing and changing for how long who knows.
It was at this point in the evening, still early according to the clock, that for the few and many that had come expecting who knows what, it was clear that something was ‘happening’ and all the recent interest in this band was now being exposed and decomposed! While it is reasonble to say that the rest of the evening continued in this theme and a lot can be said about seeing 5 grown men cry as their driver informs them just what a waste their life has actually been and how few friends they really have, I feel it is time to stop and leave the rest too folk tales that will be passed on, changed and passed on again by the many followers of fashion as the years go by.
Finally, they will be back later in the year playing at the Green Man Festival along with Jack Rose, John Renbourn, and others…see you all there…
Now the Orchestra isn’t everyboidies thing, I freely admit to wanting to sometimes get up and slap some of the Orchestra when they are pushing the boundaries of pretension, but that’s something me and my Therapist are working at Tony Soprano style, (hey what the f.….). So it came as no suprise really when this very nice young lady
got up admitted it wasn’t her thing and scarpered, see
.
As you can see we miked up the chair for ultra pretension (it did a killer solo dude but lacked originality).
Barry looked worried
but got over it in nonchalent style
So no Maestro again so we shouldered on. Barry taking the ‘bring as little as posible angle’ that he’s persueing to a new degree by bringing a harmonica
also blowing away were Mark and Belinda. We took our time getting going but the triple geetar attack of Kush, Will
(who I think looks like Robbbie Robertson circa The Last Waltz, but I could be wrong) and Leo
(who wasn’t that keen on my last picture of him so I’ve messes about with this one, no honestly) pushed things in a really nice, varied way. In a not really but kind of in the execution of it was reminiscent of how African geetar bands play different things that come together. I wouldn’t have danced to it mind.
Classy and talented Simone has been doing some great stuff on her variety of violins recently, this week she bought along some fancy electric violin which was in the shape of a Clef (I think), no picture of that ut here’s my attempt to pretend we are in France circa 1953
We were also lucky to be joined later on by Ale who read and made up short stories while we played short pieces in between and underneath
.
It’s always fun to do that and I hope were going to do a similar thing with story writers in the future.
A prett good session all in all.
Right I’m off to play footbie,
Big Love and ciao for now
Richie Paradise
Here are the Skate Team, the last time I saw them.
If anybody has any knowledge of any planned sk8 team action
Please contact
sk8team at sparror.cubecinema.com
Sorry Cubeanistas I screwed up here and posted the same Blog twice (so i deletd one). I shall beat myself as penance (isn’t it lent or sommet?).
More Cube fun coming up real soon I promise.
ps please comment, especially if you were at one of the things blogged, its always good to get a broad spectrum of opinions.
Now I’ve heard that resident Orchestra Hunk of Love Barry is no oil painting, it’s blatantly untrue in fact, YES HE IS, SEEE 
I’d go so far as to say he was almost a pastel painting 
Anyway (this is 3 weeeks ago now) Peter was back 
and a small but experienced group played some sweet pieces. We only had an hour and a half but I enjoyed what was created. It helped having alot of brass and woodwind there (does melodica count?) 
that’s the eflish and well named Shelagh Kettle there, a fairly newbie who played some good stuff (we’re blessed with a number of good Flute players). Also full of wind were Gareth, Barry, Bel, Richard, Mark and Peter himself. I was full of crap generally (no change there then) but not much thunderpants. Talking of Thunder, Richard turned up looking dashing and like one of Thunderbirds 
The Maestro had achieved his aim of tying two pieces together, one a wind led ‘refrain’ which led into some mad couting system which we manged to do quicker than usual. Reminded me of chilled out 50’s bop Daddio.
Hoorah! then back to the Bell for lashings of lemonade and sandwiches. A wizard time was had by all.
Ciao for now, 
Richie Paradise
ps catching up on th blog so more to follow real soon…………………..
In a gorgeous package from Portland. Sepia tone photos come through the letter box.
Dear Lady Lucy-
Thanks so much for bringing me to Bristol.
It was wonderful to meet you.
Thank you for setting up the show and putting me in your home.
I had a fabulous time.
Here are some photos of the show
Vladimir
