After being collected from work by Carolyn on Saturday afternoon, we went back to Hastings, and bumped into Kim and his wife Ann outside St Mary In The Castle, and they invited us to the private view of the new group show there (in the SOCA Gallery) that Kim is in. The two of us went back to mine for a dinner of chips, then went back out towards St Mary's again, 'cos I'd picked up tickets the day before for Billy Childish & the Chatham Singers there that evening. We met Maya on the way, and once inside managed to catch up with Reuben, Tim & Liam and their friends; Tim Hoyte; Richard Evans & Sally; and Sally & her friend. We got drinks (bottles of sweet cider, for a change: I don't know why) and sat at the back and chatted, whilst the venue filled-up (it was a strong turn-out), and the group and promoters (Don't Feed The Poets' John and Justin, on behalf of the Coastal Currents festival that was running all across the town) got things set-up. I'd not been sure what form The Chatham Singers would take (and half-expected them to have some sort of multiple-voiced choir thing going on), but onstage was just a small drum-kit, a couple of guitars and amps, and microphones by each. Childish, still very whiskered, came on and sat down on the stage front, and made his hellos. He was a lot more garralous and self-deprecating than I was expecting, and although the evening was nominally meant to have a poetry-half, followed by a musical-half, the whole evening's performance was a lot more mixed. Childish did concentrate mainly on poetry, and a few anecdotes, in the first set, but on several occasions (partly 'cos his speaking-voice began drying up and cracking) he launched into several acapella songs (mostly traditional ones) in order to stretch his throat again. Having read a handful of his poetry and prose books, I found that much of the material he was performing was quite warm (in poems dedicated to his wife, child etc, or about his artwork), whilst I was prepared for the subject matter of some of the harsher poems (that largely dealt with his own childhood). When he took a halftime break I found, from chatting to my friends, that thought they were all enjoying the evening to some extent, a few of them were finding it very depressing, which suprised me. Regardless, I advised them to stick around for the second half: correctly, as it turned out that The Chatham Singers were indeed another 3-piece group (in similar vein to all those other 3-piece groups of Billy Childish's), with him and his wife on electric guitars, and a guy on tiny-drumkit and percussion duties (with all three on vocals). The group's mics and guitars were all fed back into their vintage (or, rather, ancient) amps, without any further amplification, which meant that, from the back, we had to strain a bit to pick out what was occurring at some points vocally, but they were still able to generate a trebly storm of jagged electric blues. Unfortunately, the gear was so elderly, it began packing-up during the set, and eventually Childish's own amp expired, much to his chagrin. He extended the evening further by singing a few songs unaccompanied (including Leadbelly's 'In The Pines' aka 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night?', and, as a pleasant suprise, his own 'You Make Me Die'), and then piecing together various combinations of the group through the remaining amp for a few more songs (Leadbelly's 'Bourgeois Town' made an appearance here - which I knew from The Fall's version - not, I assume, in reference to Hastings, although the round tables and bottles of wine in St Mary's were rather more highbrow that Childish's bands' usual gig-surroundings). I had a whale of a time, as did most of Reuben's lot, who were eagerly buying up what records they could from the group during the evening, chatting to the band and getting them autographed; though Rockabilly Liam predictably had some criticism of the way they'd treated their gear! Afterwards, Carolyn and I headed down to Smugglers (Reuben and Liam; Linda King et al, followed on when they were done at St Mary's) for the night's Rumiko Jr gig. I'd been entertaining thoughts of dragging Childish etc along to the Smugs to see Rumiko, partly 'cos I thought they might enjoy them, and partly 'cos I'd love to see them play the pub themselves, but Rumiko were playing so raggedly when we arrived that I was actually pleased I didn't. The band were fairly unfocussed partly 'cos they were being forced to play with the unusual line-up of just Dean, Rufus (who didn't look like he'd slept for several days) and Marcus, plus fall-back teenage drummer Jimmy pounding along behind them. Soph, Steph and Harry had all turned up, which was great, and the John's Matt was at the bar with his girlfriend: we said Hi to them, and to Reuben's mum, and Tom, before plonking ourselves up on the pool table to watch. We'd timed it to arrive just before Rumiko's mid-set break, so got a chance to catch up with everyone then, and fill people in about the St Mary's performance (once again, I'd found myself wishing that it was a little easier to coax my friends out to some of the more unusual events that have gone on over this summer). Caroline, Lisa, Helen and Christa all turned up; as did Jonathan Martin; Step and his partner; Richard Hart; Simon Bush; Jonny Russell, and many others. Rumiko got it together during their second set, with the guitars finally ringing through loudly and in tune, and Jimmy really making a strenuous but successful effort to force himself through playing all Bill's rolls and fills, often on cue from Rufus (the stress was showing on the lad's face, but he didn't slip-up, well, only once, by finishing a song slightly too soon, but they picked it up again). Rumiko's final song was that (title not known) rock-out with the rapid angular riffs, and it was great to see Gary at the bar, Linda and her friends, Reuben and everyone else grinning and throwing air-guitar shapes with their hands and arms during it. The band had pulled the gig off fantastically well by the end, and everyone was all smiles, hugs, kisses and free Disastronaut T-shirts afterwards. A lot of them, having only been out since about 10pm, were heading down to Brass Monkey to catch Cloudesley Shovell (Bill, John and Louis' group) playing, but as Carolyn and I had been mixing our drinks since the early evening, we left them to it and reeled back to the Old Town instead.
Carolyn reciprocated the hosting on the Tuesday after, when I went over to Brighton after work for Spirit Of Gravity, as usual at the Marlborough Theatre. I found her in the downstairs bar, and we were soon joined by Lee (who was contributing some vocals to one of the acts that night). More members of the collective were gradually arriving, including Geoff, who popped his head round the door of the Theatre Bar to hand me a copy of his new Elmaes 7" as promised - ta! When it was performance time, the three of us went upstairs: Carolyn & I seating ourselves, and Lee organising when he was going to perform, when to take care of the door, etc. First act on was This Sound Bureaucracy: basically the Malevich duo of Nick and Tony, with guest spoken-word vocalists from the Spirit Of Gravity collective. They started their set with Nick reading aloud their Manifesto Of Audience Appreciation Of Live Music (handily also photocopied onto A4 and left on each table, along with a pair of dice, the latter for use with the Audience Participation Event instructions on the reverse of the Manifesto) to Tony's sound-generation. Following that, Nick strapped a couple of electronic-manipulation boxes (I didn't recognise their identity or purpose) to his torso, and the first of the four guests stepped up to read into the mic. I'm not sure of the identity of the first two vocalists (though one of them would have been Dan Powell, according to the thank-you's afterwards), the second of whom came across more clearly as he decided to fit his poem about Art Galleries in with the rhythm of the loops that were being generated. Lee came on third, in curly black wig (not quite an afro wig, thankfully) and dark glasses, in order to read his adaptation of a Britney Spears online poetry posting about her experience of motherhood, which Lee had altered by the frequent addition of the words "Emperor Penguin". Geoff was the final vocalist, with an "I am Brian Eno" poem, which may have been pre-planned, but may equally have been improvised after the arrival of a couple who'd excitedly misread the Evening Argus' billing for Leo Abrahams that evening ('Featuring Brian Eno and David Holmes collaborator Leo Abrahams, and guests') as indicating a gig by Eno himself. Inevitably, that couple left before the end of the evening, during the set of solo electric guitar pieces and songs by Fupper. A shame, as they would probably have enjoyed much of Leo Abrahams' concluding appearance: as his more ambient pieces (generated with chiming, fluid guitar playing, looped with pedals and laptop) were straight out of the Eno, and associated, canon. These pieces were superb, but very, very soporific, though preferable to Abrahams' more dynamic pieces, which edged closed to Robert Fripp or Mike Oldfield territories. I still enjoyed both his set, and Fupper's rawer one, and it was a nice suprise also when Chris Cook (heavily featured on the Elmaes 7", as it turned out) arrived unexpectedly, on a flying visit from London, but we were finding it too easy to nod-off during the heavy ambient moments of Leo Abrahams (incidentally, is there no ventilation upstairs in the Marlborough? It's oppressive, but so relaxing..), and popped back downstairs for one more drink (first in the main bar, then back into the Theatre Bar). Turns out we'd decided on that move within the last few minutes of Abrahams' set, 'cos we then witnessed him, and most of the collective, filing out of the buildig in fairly quick succession. Lee knew we'd gone for another drink, though, and so joined us, before we all got the night bus back into Hove.
Ok, so I've declined to open the bills that came from British Telecom and British Gas this week: but I've still managed, along with Carolyn, to scrape through a major poetry/blues gig, a rocking pub gig, an art exhibition private view (St Mary's with Kim and Ann, Sunday afternoon), a pub lunch (The Pig, Sunday, during which I fielded many phone calls and texts as I tried to help Jeffrey find door-staff for the Air Guitar championships that night over in Brighton at the Concorde 2), an evening's social drinking (The FILO with Caroline, Sunday) and a night of experimental music in Brighton, all on the most minumum of wages. It ain't the way you do it, it's what you do, etc.
