Acoustic Night

The evening began with MC Helen Gregory announcing that Rosemary Dun would be the night’s special guest and would be performing her poetry after the break. Acoustic Night Accountant and Man City supporter Ian Sills could not be with us until the break as his favourite team were playing at home against Watford. Helen warmed up the audience with her poem ‘Diva’, a composition she has recorded with Lou Bell on guitar. Tonight’s question for our acts was, ‘if you were to write your own biography, what would the title be?’

Our first musician tonight was Phil Baber singing and playing his guitar. His biography title would be, ‘It wasn’t me!’ This Acoustic Night regular entertained us with The Pogues tune ‘I am a man I don’t meet everyday.’ Phil Baber would be reappearing on stage later.

John Terry’s biography title would be ‘Things I should’ve done’, his poem ‘Feet in the clouds’ has a hopping, croaking, fishy type feel about it followed by another funny poem titled ‘Songs of Levity’ which involved a delicatessen getting stolen due to problems with increased shop lifting!

Just before 9pm Dan Weltman, a gifted songwriter who was preparing for his gig at Café Delight the following Friday, played two folk songs. His biography title would be ‘My life was bollocks!’. His performance was not…

Gary Death, an established performance poet from Edinburgh, but who has recently moved to the South West, made his debut appearance at Acoustic Night. An extrovert performer who entertained us with a cracking and very funny poem called ‘Ego Testicles.’ Gary then followed up by reading a poem titled ‘Give’. An excellent performance and no doubt we will be seeing more of him in the near future.

Singer and songwriter, Andy Skellern, who is also doing the Café Delight gig with Dan Weltman, gave us a moody and atmospheric performance on his guitar. So finger picking good I missed the titles.

Poet, writer, publisher and open mic regular, Simon Leake read two poems this evening, the first of which, ‘Armchair Anarchist’, talks about saying much but not doing enough. His second poem would prove to be dark and paranoid. It was called ‘Oubliettes’. Simon also publishes Deficit magazine.

Phil Baber returns to the stage but not before downing his pint! Can’t argue with that but then proceeded to sing in two languages! What great talent we have here!

Poetry Jack made a welcome return to the Acoustic Night stage. With the biography title ‘I did it!’ Poetry Jack went on to perform two poems called ‘You’ and ‘Ballad of Suzy Grey’, the latter poem about marriage.

At quarter to ten Helen announced the break, during which time Ian Sills returned having revealed that Manchester City enjoyed a goalless draw against the mighty Watford!

Andi Langford-Woods is our MC for the second half and promptly introduced poet Rosemary Dun as the special guest. With flowers in her hair, Rosemary went on to ask ‘Where has my Mojo gone?’ Rosemary’s second poem was of an experimental nature titled ‘Music Box.’ Will Lloyd our engineer had some fun getting the music track going, but soon all was well and Rosemary went on to perform a fine poem. A Rosemary Dunn favourite was performed next called ‘Spectacles’. This poem was also performed at Ashton Court festival in 2006. Rosemary’s last poem was for a late friend titled ‘Sunday Best’, an upbeat poem for her friend Maggie.

It was past half ten when Wilf Mertens (also known as Stan on MySpace) got on stage to perform two poems, the first of which was called ‘My Friend’ and the second about happiness, anger and life. Wilf has been with us for about eight months and continues to impress by reading and performing good, solid poems.

‘I’m only a fucking housewife’ would be Cathy Keal’s biog title but she reminded us that she also reads very funny poems. Her second poem, Cathy reveals, was only written the night before and she surprised us all by singing too. I think that might have been a first!

Phil Baber made his final appearance of the evening with his guitar. His first song is an excellent tune by The Stranglers called ‘Strange little girl’ whilst the second song is one of his adaptions of a Jacques Brel piece ‘Amsterdam.’ (A favourite place for Acoustic Night regulars!). Phil did an excellent job for us on an evening that was light on musicians but jammed full with quality poets.

Derrick, the poet from Carolina U.S.A. He also goes by the MySpace name Sir Paul McDarkney, and a few others. Derek opened with a fast paced poem titled ‘Transistor Blues’ and then follows up with a poem about hating rappers even though he is one! Overall a very well received performance.

Poetry Jack returns for the second time to the Acoustic Night stage. She entertains us with ‘One in a million’, a poem about winning the lottery. Poetry Jack’s second poem would be a rant against the colour pink. Poetry Jack does not like the colour pink!

It has now gone past eleven but the poets are still churning out their words to a hardcore audience. Peter Hunter who was the MC for Acoustic Night between 1998 and 2002 got onto the stage. Reading two pieces from the page and both very funny.

Our next poet is Boydon Goodman, who used to regularly perform at the King Charles, making a welcome return by performing his best known poem about dodgy advertisements on lonely hearts columns!

And finally Ian Sills takes to the stage with a poem he performed for the first time at the Shakespeare slam recently. His second poem titled ‘Nicky does numbering’ is a faced paced number which was a great closure to a top night.

Andi finishes the night by letting us know that the next show will be the last for 2006 on the 18^th December. An end of season mayhem night.

Thanks to Craig Wilson for the review