Acoustic Night

The night started in a spirit of improvisation, lacking, as we were, the skills of both Andi and Will. Acoustic night’s experienced techies were sorely missed (and much cursed) as the remaining organizers and meddlers fiddled with plugs and holes, handed each other ‘whastitmajingeys’ and racked their brains trying to call up images of ‘what it looked like last time.’

Luckily along came Mr. Paul Valliss to the rescue, accompanied by our wonderful featured artiste Helen Gregory. He hadn’t brought his cape, but he took a Doombar and manned the amp. With our saviour in position Acoustic Night was ready to begin…

Hazel Hammond and Ian Sills were our MC’s, in their wisdom and charisma guiding the first and second halves respectively. Hazel started us off with a poem and then introduced South Carolina’s own Derrick. The poet squinted his eyes to read his small words, opened that big heart and spun us two new poems. “If I don’t know what you’re looking for I can’t tell you what I have in stock.”

There’s a lot of truth there. And we were then served up some more, this time in a musical format with some rustic crooning from the night’s first virgin, Shay. “Tear it up and start again, tear it up and start again!”

And from this gentle anarchism Hazel lead us to the frenetic verse of the Craig Wilson. He proceeded to race around the stage in his verbal electric buggy. It’s a good job it was verbal as otherwise we would have been forced to throw him out and we would probably miss him.

Next up came Eddie Desenne our second Virgin, though he seemed strangely comfortable as he pulled out a sexy little soprano sax (like a golden clarinet) played an old trad-jazz cover and then an original composition. Apparently he writes poems too. If we find out he can backflip we will start to be worried he has been stealing other people’s talents.

Poetry Jack came next. “In my nation, it’s aloud!” As well as being an inspired line to shout at a magistrate, it was also part of a lovely poem. She followed with a tirade against the hegemony of the colour pink.

Acoustic night favorite Phil Baber followed with a beautiful little number, five years in the making, about a cheating harlot and a translated song: ‘Amsterdam’.

Next we had Cathy Keal with a new haiku and two poems inspired by the sea.

The second half, as promised, was brought to us wrapped around Ian Sills and we had the pleasure of hearing him perform a poem equating the mystery and allure of the star signs with his devious sexual misadventures. It was his pleasure to then introduce our featured artist for the night Helen Gregory. The self professed “seedy herb crawler” spiced up our lives with her culinary treats including “What do you do?” a stirring character piece about the pointlessness of that very question and an explicit account of the sex life of the snail. We feel the best single line to come out of the acoustic night of the 6^th November 2006 had to be from Helens love poem: “You make me feel that life is real even though I suspect it’s not…”

 HELEN GREGORY
A musical interlude followed with Laconic Badger Trap, though exactly how anyone could go buy a drink and miss lyrics like these escapes me: “We can get married whenever we like. We just can’t have sex in Nebraska because you’re 13 and I’m 21 and we are brother and sister so our children will be blue. Blue.”

THE LACONIC BADGER TRAP
The ‘traps’ second song included a much needed strip show from drummer Baz. With the task of following that dark, manly body hair (and a very competitive leopard skin thong) came Wilf. After taking us round a French market we were introduced to an angel with a penchant for prescription medications.

After a brief struggle, Wilf was replaced by our MC Ian and then duly by Stephan and Joe, both virgins, who crooned away in unison. Their compelling voices were replaced by crowd-favorite, slam-champion and poet-breeder George Wade, who put into his own (perfectly chosen, expertly spoken) words the whole acoustic night experience. After the regular and inextinguishable pleasure of seeing a master perform we had a very exiting new virgin. The beautiful Sarah Joy, a cleaner and a singer/songwriter and a guitarist. Acoustic night cannot testify to her cleaning talents, we simply do not know. She could be rubbish. What we can say (in full knowledge that it is a seldom-deserved cliché) is that she has the voice of an angel. And a real one too, not some drug-addled idiot falling out the sky.

SARAH JOY
Sarah’s voice still reverberating around the room, Caroline Sawyer took the stage. She claimed she was still not comfortable with microphones but she seemed at home as she read a poem about taking that proverbial axe (you know- the one you grind) and sticking it in an ex-boyfriends head. A sentiment that always goes down well with poets who are at best a bitter bunch.

This warm offering had come to a close. This hiding place from the cold and fog, this refuge from our respective storms. To send us off we had Julian who surprised us with a cover version of a song by Harvey Andrews. He reminded us that “When you sing accapella you might be out of tune but you are still in tune with yourself.” He then proceeded to amaze all (you think we would be used to it from Julian…) with a poignant and beautiful performance.

NB. Please recognize that the term ‘Virgin’, in the context of an Acoustic Night, means that it is the performers first time at the event and not, I repeat NOT, that they are yet to taste the sweet, sticky forbidden apple of human copulation.

NB(2). It does not necessarily follow that Ian Sills is a leathery old pro. But there are rumours…

MCs Julian Ramsay-Wade & Catharine Stott

There was a real sense of anticipation before the night kicked off. Andi had acquired a black backcloth to bring back memories of the gothic gloom of the Croft to those ancient enough in Acoustic Night history. This was combined with a Chinese lantern and other adjustments to radically improve the stage area for performers and audience. Now all we needed were performers and audience! Fortunately they both arrived in number.

Julian and Catharine

Julian Ramsay-Wade started proceedings with his poem for his newborn son Eric Henry (both names meaning king) for the little chap’s visiting grandparents (but we all enjoyed hearing it as well!).

Then Dan returned after a spell away with two new songs – firstly Start Out Easy, telling the tale of a relationship with hard-plucked strings and secondly an untitled piece from a newcomer to the city. He had to disappear soon after but will hopefully be back to entertain us soon. Craig Wilson performed biographical pieces about Jim Morrison and Gilles Villeneuve, the latter (entitled “27”) being the title piece of his new collection of poems. John Alderson then made his debut on our stage (although clearly not his first performance anywhere!) with “Sign of the Times” (about black Confederate soldiers rather than Prince as his bandmates believe) and “Ventilator Blues” a Rolling Stones track which he covered “to teach himself slide guitar” (it definitely worked!).

John Terry caught the mood set by Julian and read “For Ella” a piece he wrote for someone else’s granddaughter. He then tackled a mythic/historic figure in “Bluebeard’s Castle” which he described as “perched on the cast-iron slopes of an Edwardian mountain”. Stefan and Joe then stepped forward: both first-timers, Stefan played a solo guitar piece and then the two sang “Everywhere” to guitar accompaniment. Yet another act new to us but clearly not novices!.

Alana Farrell changed the pace of the night by reading a story – she is promoter of a storytelling night once a month at (I think) La Ruca a few doors down from Halo and is always interesting to listen to.

Alana

Phil Baber (who is convinced that as the opposite of an Acoustic Night virgin he must be “a right slapper”) sang “One last cold kiss” and overcame a couple of minor slips very well; he then sang a song heard at Cambridge Folk Festival (“Who’s gonna build your wall, boys?) about the proposal to seal off the USA/Mexico border. A great song that would not have crossed my radar otherwise. Gina Briganti exposed her poetic muse this evening with a triptych of Dawn, Midday and Dusk to lead us happily into…

THE BREAK

Brendan McLeod

Our returning guest star was Brendan McLeod. He joined in with the theme of newborn babies with a tale of his best friend becoming a father. He checked whether we knew of/liked David Blaine (we did/didn’t!) before singing a song about him, followed by a poem about his two best friends from High School (“always knew I would be uncle to their children”). He then performed a piece entitled “she eats each of her meals with a spoon” – a disturbing description of a mother mortally afraid of harming her child and a poem written in response to a challenge to “write the poem that you are most afraid to write”. (It must be a Canadian thing!!). He then sang a rock song: “Humanity is Awesome” which he described as “The most optimistic song in the whole universe” and encored with an inspiring poem about young, overexcited love. We haven’t asked anyone else to return as a star guest, and Brendan did not disappoint the packed room. Wonderful!!

Unfortunate to have to follow that, Livvy, Rose and Hattie (now known as Mood Indigo) sang acapella in the absence of their guru Everton Hartley (he’ll hate that!!). They were nevertheless as tuneful and refreshing as ever, catch them on November 20 as our Guest Artists. Marc Walton debuted a couple of pieces: one resenting the separation of arts and sciences (“The Royal Academy”) and one about real life on a council estate.

Derry made a solo debut as he was suffering from “ill flautist syndrome” and played two Spanish sounding acoustic pieces on his guitar. Can’t wait to hear how the flute fits in, but it was fine to hear. David Johnson hijacked the mic in the role of MC to Pete Hunter and performed a couple of nature-influenced pieces (about Loch Lomond and worms respectively) and introduced Pete, who read an email in appalling English asking for bank details (not real!!) and a nostalgic poem about his father taking the family Scottish country dancing (whirling her, whirling her.) Julian then chipped in with “Advice to a new man” (never iron naked!!)

Andi Langford-Woods paid tribute to IKEA for the “slightly sagging curtains” in the only way possible with Insects and then followed with a new piece Nerve Ends, a treatise on the confusion of animal magnetism and social stereotyping throughout history, and Not Tonight, curious eyes across a crowded bar. Helen Gregory returned from her American trip with She’s a Cleaner (about pigeonholing someone by their job) and a new piece Lucid Eyes (“when I was young and wise … I thought willies were a funny shape”). Wilf Merttens followed her up with Give Me a Wife Made of Leaves (very autumnal) and The Skyline Looks Beautiful.

On a run of poets (where are the musicians?) Ian Sills debuted two new pieces: England’s Gloomy (following the enormous national overreaction to defeat in a football match) and Re-freshing (having encountered freshers’ week in all its glory). Guy Herbert gave us Contrived (namechecking Mr & Mrs Paul Daniels), and six other snippets, which ended the show.

The kit was packed away in record time and everyone wandered homewards, tired but happy!