ACOUSTIC NIGHT 27 Feb 12 2007
Saturday, February 17th, 2007
A Halo is more than a restaurant up the Gloucester Road in Bristol, it is a traditional depiction of the Chi or inner light thought to emanate visibly from certain gifted individuals. Nobody glowed visibly on Monday 13th February 2007, but there was a profusion of verbal and musical lightshows.
Andi set the scene as emcee as she let free her poetry about a relationship that somehow ended up in A&E.
Sarah Class, with a great melodious and harmonious guitar, said “Baby I’ll know you, when our hearts beat as one” and most of the men and some of the women in the room were thinking the same. So High was next, and it visibly took us higher.
Andi, sensing that we all were drifting off upward, dangerously ungrounded, possibly without direction, wisely brought us down to earth with a plea for money in the jar to buy gaffer tape. It is thought that next time we are all going to have our feet taped to the floor at the written request of Health and Safety officials.
Wendy Day told us the story of a coffee loving couple who went out for a cup of coffee. I will not spoil the story by telling you how it turned out, but it wended up all right at the end of the day. (geddit?)
WENDY DAY
Andi rightly suggested that Caleb may have Californian genes in him, the way he covered his Neil Young, the wondrous lost lone dusty pathos of the Neil updated by a uniquely modern allure of a catch in his otherwise powerful voice that recalls the effect of a scratched CD that is nevertheless playable – and none the worse for that.
CALEB
Richard, your present blogger, limped up suffering from a Bad Back brought on by budging outsize (tree) butts (Physician heal thyself, if thou canst get thy acupuncture needles round thy back). He declaimed of Sheds. (Gina takes up the pen) “His inimitable self. Shed as a male handbag!! Prose poem, evocative memories from stored stuff. Eloquent & multilayered. The second piece mentioned Rudy Lewis, poet and editor of www.nathanielturner.com/ building a shed, taking in gods, trees and war. All in a shed…words flying at a level they are supposed to …” (Thanks Gina, will a cheque be OK ? – RL)
Next up was Keith, who let his fingers do the talking on the frets, exalting the Flight of the Raven, an instrumental, original, its black wings’ lightness worked from the wood of the structurally simple, musically uniquely personal, guitar, his strings wailing the feel of soaring flight, tossing the unspoken lyricism of a bird in swirling currents high above the hill top and the standing pine, rising and falling, at one with wind this is one raven celebrating Life.
Keith’s second song: Someday I had a Dream, grabbed it, thinking it real, a song of the (broken?) heart through the seasons. It was a privilege, as always, for us all to be in the physical presence of a human telling the truth.
Andi’s enthusiasm for Halo virgins shone as she introduced John Christopher Wood, no virgin he to any but the Halo, for he did strange knowing things with the names of the diminutive descendants of the dinosaur that we call “birds” – did things that so alien to nature (and yet so much in tune) that if John Reid knew what he had done, he’d pass a law against it before you could say “Thoughtcrime”. He made a steam train out of birds. And then, he did it again, with other birds’ names, taking their names in vain, not for a train again, but in a sonic avian trail that made even the strongest of us quail.
James White – guitar: what we are searching for …while the living dreams we had as children fade away…help you understand…
JAMES WHITE
Now Derrick and Mark are up: we talked amongst ourselves, while Derek had an earnest conversation with his guitar about tension and pitch (Derrick’s motto: tune first, ask haiku afterwards). Mark’s rich voice went out to help Radiohead explain why she ran off (because he was a creep. Well, OK). Now we know that Derrick’s poetry is better than Radiohead. Nice ploy, Derrick.
DERRICK AND MARK 
Mark’s own poem gave voice for all of us who have fallen briefly in love with that well - turned - out maiden sitting opposite us in the Underground, this time with a tear in the eye.
Cute Loony on next! Guitar and bass building up to the sound of a full on 100-piece orchestra, building round a singer who sang in English, not Californish; full musical competence, the song of a black swan, building the music into some great shed of sound, the more intense for knowing that the song was born to die, for this band, this budding building band is bound for breakup. “I am free”, she sang, “‘cos I can’t hear you”. But we heard you, even if it was your last gig. Goodbye, Cute Loonies, good bye!
CUTE LOONY
The second half
Next, Bryn on the Steel Guitar! (geddit?) And a unique instrumental improvisation on birth of Stan (Hi Stan) and passing on of Gran (Bye, Gran, we know you lived a good life, you produced a good musician to make the world a better place). Lilting, hunting, birth, death, and here’s the melody in between. Then he Bryn us the Caped Goat, walking along, the futur belongs to Lucifur, (he said)…well, maybe, wait and see (I said that).
Then a nice little harmonious wife-pleasing piece that brought us all down to earth, called “I gotta please Louise”. That’s Louise, mother of Stan.
BRYN
Brynning it all back home, for a finale, Bryn brought the hidden Ringo out of the audience, doing the rhythm part to “World Keeps on Turning”, tink-tinka-tink on the glasses. If the world turned that fast, we would all be flying off into space, wishing we had given more into the collection jug so Andi could have bought that gaffer tape…and whilst she wandered off in search of refreshment Hazel took over the MC’s role. Is there no end to this woman’s talents?
Next – WoooooHooooo – Pete SuperchargedJetTurbineUltrahighRevvingMotormouth Eldridge eruptingvolcanicsonorousjettingflurriesofverbalsound. I heard him say “People don’t always make sense”. This is true. But I would rather listen to Pete than Tony Blair any day. It may be a trifle challenging to catch enough the meaning of Pete’s words as they go whizzing past your ears faster than a boxed set of deadlines, but at least they sound nice, and they do not grab your heartstrings in a steely chill grip of death.
Pete gave us his North London version of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (I would like to mention at this point that your blogger met that Allen Ginsberg once and he wrote an Om on my hand. He looked as wild in the flesh as he does in the photos. I only mention it as an interesting point, and in no way am I trying to bask in any reflected glory or drop names. Ginsberg. Oops. Ommmmmmmmmmm.) In a rush of words, Pete gave us a litany of the fallen, the collected lives of a hundred beings of light who came to earth, got messed up, got into heroin, and pegged it. It was a roll call of gonners, of people who chose to die rather than go work on Maggie’s (and Tony’s) farm. Pete, you shining crazy diamond, may you continue to tell their tale until you are old enough to get a bus pass and free prescriptions.
Enter Wilf, enter these walls with words that flood in torrents weaving and flowing in and out of the mountaintops corries coombes valleys woods meadows streams rivers estuaries seas oceans and clouds of human cognition. Those documentaries on TV don’t know the half of it, not a bit, they just do not get it. This is humanity, dig this jazz, as Lord Buckley said.
Pete came back up and jus’ put rap into a phat cocked hat, like that.
Misty Blue, O Misty Blue, we all love you, your virgin blues
Big voice, and comely too, come back to sing we all love you.
MISTY BLUE
[continued by Ian as I had to go at this point]
Cathy Keal stepped up to perform “Blue Butterfly” – “she unfurls fan-blue sails” “her coat electric, acetone” and “Love isn’t good for me” (“it sends me dizzy, stirred”).
CATHY KEAL
David Bosankoe brought a first for our night with a Jaw’s Harp on which he adroitly played three short tracks creating a sound reminiscent of a didgeridoo Kraftwerk covers album!
DAVID BOSANKOE
Rupert Hopkins took us through space and time from Barcelona train station 1969 to the running of the bulls in Pamplona and across America in Kerouac’s footsteps, ending with the memory of the instinctive decision to jump the express train which took his life in the direction fate decreed.
Julian Ramsay-Wade performed his poem for “Eric’s mum” - “future waves washing over a sea of possibilities”, “stolen moments of soft morning music” and as a contrast remembered the ursine Mr Olver and the shame he felt on his first day at school before dyslexia was understood (note to self – must remember to spellcheck dyslexia!).
Monty brought a new song “Nutshell” emphasising that there is more to life than “get your grades and act your age”. He followed this with “Imagine” (not a John Lennon cover!) which posited: “Imagine if healing the sick and the blind was like walking on water”.
MONTY 
Phil Baber sang a Jacques Brel song supposedly at his daughter’s request: “The girls and the dogs” is a sexist anti-love song which he performed with relish “the girls; they’ll throw you from towers, they’ll whip you with flowers (it depends on the hours)”.
The Kindly Ones closed the night with “Rain”: “How do you feel when the rain washes my tears away?”, “there’s two people in the picture: the negative fades as time goes by” and honoured Valentine’s Day with a cover of “I believe in a thing called love” – a distance from The Darkness with beautiful harmonies, no Spandex and a Kazoo solo.
THE KINDLY ONES
Andi Langford-Woods ended the show and left a tired & happy audience to wander home.
Acoustic Night Stats:
Acoustic Night Virgins 5
Audience 63
Performers 26
Found 1 pink, purple and grey scarf
PAUL MOYER
SARAH TAMER
MIKE SCOTT
JOHN TERRY
SARAH AND CHARLIE
THE ROAMING BRONCOS
STEVEN PARK
EMMA HARPER AND DAI JESSOP
CHRIS BROCKES
PHIL BABER AND DAME GABRIELLE
HAL CAMPLIN AND PETE HUNTER
WILLS