Acoustic Night

The evening starts with Hal (surname: Badgertrap) asking all to help him write the final song in his set, by form of a line each. A somewhat novel request from the Special Guest but it seems rather inspired and the audience duly oblige.

Starting with a somewhat sparse audience (although growing later) HELEN GREGORY gave us a tale about fish with souls (pun intension unknown!) and thus proves there is, indeed, much to be said about fish!

She then cordially invites us to be entertained by the 59th Acoustic Night @ Halo and JULIAN RAMSAY-WADE extended the introduction! With his excellent quick rhyming and entertaining verses he then told us about blizzards and the weather!

Next up was the man ‘they’ (who ‘they’ are I don’t know!) call ‘La Guitarra’! However, it appeared his alter-ego PHIL BABER was on show tonight as, quite rarely it seems, both his songs were in English.
Phil introduced his first song with a story of a Gloucester Road flower shop that advertised it’s availability for flowers for “Weddings or Funerals.” It appears some cynical wag had graffitied “No Difference” in capital letters underneath!
This aside Phil’s breezy numbers cheered us up on a rainy day, even if he did say so himself.

POLLY MOYER, Acoustic Night’s answer to Dellboy Trotter, followed. After informing the audience of the bargains that could be had, she read a childhood tale revolving around her father. A meaningful and poignant piece this was then trailed by a good poem about subtraction. Shame indeed that she will be soon departing our mists for the shores of the New World.

Next up was CHARLIE ANSELL with, firstly, his reworking of the traditional song Lisbon. A tale of travel, sex and pregnancy; all good folk territory. Next he ripped into Show Of Hands’ Cutthroats, Crooks & Conmen; a socio-political rant discussing the over-capitalist nature of modern Britain that got the crowd clapping.

From Political Agitation to Special Magication we swiftly moved with MAGIC SIMON. This week Simon found a coin, talked about The Bangles, had Knots that aren’t ‘Forget-Me’ Knots, disappearing Kings and the magic ribbon, which of course, produced much applause, especially from the rear echelons of the audience.

GINA BRIGANTI then sang a couple of numbers acapella dealing with relationships and finding each other, including the lovely No Pleasure Without Love. A lovely voice and a great lyric writer.

After Helen had informed us of her partially to sugar-based snacks ANGIE BELCHER appeared. We now all know of her less than fondness towards Dave! Luckily no Dave’s were harmed in the performance but hearing of the Coco Pops of Doom was a novel learning experience for us all! Computers then a took a battering in a very effective style for being slow and repetitive but Grand Theft Auto was the end result, a just reward!

We were led to the break by CASCAVEL. Acoustic Night virgins, they brought us some R&B previously lacking from Acoustic Night’s regular repertoire. You Want Me Back established that the two girl lead singers are not to be messed about by silly boys and Move On proved that they will. Two bonus features were their third member who played the keyboard and bass drum and also there snazzy matching T-Shirts!

THE BREAK FOLLOWED

After the break ANDI LANGFORD-WOODS introduced our special guest with a poem about belief and having sex with cricket teams!

Mr Camplin alias BADGERTRAP then took the spotlight with his lovely guitar (this blogger was jealous!) and his celebratory party poppers! His opening ditty was a lovely tale of incestuous sex in Nebraska which has hit potential! This was followed by songs about Caterpillars, Kidney’s, Monday’s and Phoetuses. The highlight was probably his tune Missing In 1981 and yes Hal, I bet that woman would like to know where you buried her cat!

The Badger Disco was the finale to the set, where Hal used the audience’s endeavours to adlib to the tune entitled Kebab Deaf. It was a fitting ending to a beautifully chaotic set with Hal dressed as his infamous alter-ego Barry the Badger and his side-kick, Lennox, showed us his new anti-rape alarm which blurted out  the phrase Get off me you paedo!

How do you follow that? Well IAN SILLS added to the parental poetry theme with one about his mother. We however, never did discover the name of the shop his mum can’t walk into in Cheshire, but it wasn’t Sainsbury’s. Then he explained why he couldn’t sing the blues, which fitting he didn’t sing in a blues style.

MARK & SUE were next. Mark first with his two solo tour-de-force’s, one called The Constancy of Affection and the other about being a girl on the inside. The latter song featured the line of the night; “my genitalia’s not going to change”. After the scat ending Sue joined for two songs; a Folk Song from Newfoundland with Mark and an acapella version of an old Irish song on her own.

After this the performing resources had been exhausted and we went around again.

CHARLIE ANSELL reared his head again and walloped us with an old Jacobite song about a very randy George I.

And finally ANGIE BELCHER popped up once more to tell us why the global recycling problem was down to not recycling lettuces!

Genius! Another Acoustic Night safely navigated with much talent, fun and frolicks!

ACOUSTIC NIGHT STATS

AUDIENCE          33
PERFORMERS   16
VIRGINS               7

Helen was our MC for a packed evening and a full house. She got us off to a culinary start with Paprika Seeker, a poem about love to get your taste buds budding.

HELEN GREGORY

Charlie Ansell launched straight into his own rewritten boisterous renditions of folk songs, shouting d’ ya ken John Peel (apparently not the famous DJ!?). I liked the aggressive line ‘We know but we don’t act’ in a song that seemed to hint a the sinister side of ‘trees biding there time, which I can only assume to be a take on the current environmental predicament were in.

CHARLIE ANSELL

Richard Lawson was on top form bringing a personal touch to epic tales in his poems based on Ancient Greek myths. His sober account of the Medusa tale echoed the closing sentiments of restraint and duty in the face of danger.

RICHARD LAWSON

The two members of The New Root produced an acoustic set of frenetic lullabies with the focus very much on endings and resting. The vocals were somewhere between Shirley Bassey and P.J Harvey, and showed amazing restraint for what is obviously a distinctly beautiful and free voice.

THE NEW ROOT

‘Her Holiness’ Andi, came on to introduce the Guest Poet for the evening, with a poem that reminisced about the memories contained in the most inanimate of objects, here being her carpet that now serves as the acoustic night stage.

Guest Poet Georgina Banfield had been invited to come and perform by Andi. The two had meet previously in London. Georgina read out a series of poems that focused on the cyclical patterns of love, from desire through consummation to finally separation and longing; from the obsessive fascination with every detail to the ‘loud’ silence of memory, where fantasy mixes with reality. Underneath many of the poems was a disconsolate, restless loneliness, best expressed in images such as London as a predator of lonely hearts, and the intimacy at a distance we experience on the last bus home, ‘how single is single in this city’ she questioned. The great thing about her poems was how she could interpret similar feelings through different relationships, such as in a poem about her Grandfather that seemed to echo the imperfect yet necessary connection she had with London.

GEORGINA BANFIELD

Julie mixed things up again with a couple of bawdy Nirvanaesque songs about her past in Cape Town (in which she managed to insert the words ‘Gert Lush’!), and the folly of Ms make-up who’s lost all sense of her self behind the mask of paint.

Next followed two performers who had came all the way from Cardiff. First up was Mab who delivered a very different and humorous take on haircuts of the bodily nether regions kind! She followed that up with a series of clever, hilariously offensive nursery rhymes, based on the characters that she grew up with on a council estate.

MAB

Noel continued the welsh theme with several pertinent but funny poems and a song. At this point I was still aghast at Andi’s ‘Indian-Welsh’ accent and the use of a guitar as a prop for poetry, all very surreal.

NOEL

Simon the Magician finished off the first half, and to mangle the words of Kevin Spacey’s character in the film The Usual Suspects, ‘like that, I was gone!’

MAGIC SIMON & JAKE BEETON
Polly Moyer - on a welcome return visit from America to her poetic home city - first explained that she had suffered a miscarriage and thanked Gina Briganti for ‘picking me up off the floor’. She then performed “No-one” a piece inspired by “Someone” by one of her poetry idols, Dennis O’Driscoll (another is our MC Julian Ramsay-Wade). Detailing the experiences that the lost child will never know (”no-one will tell you how much you’ve grown…again”), it was brave, heartfelt poetry and Polly just about fought back tears. In contrast, she introduced her second, lighter poem with reference to Albuquerque, her current home city.

This  was followed by Everton and Jackie. ‘Mondays always bring me  down’ as the lyric went and the sweet,  melodic rendition of the song. Effortlessly supported by Everton made both this and the cries of love of the second song a beautiful follow on.

Pete Hunter did not stray from the theme of love and gave us a very contemporary tale of cider, skunk and mismatched feelings of ‘the first time’. The next poem was a witty ‘coming out’ as a geek. All that expected self aggrandizement was present.

Phil Baber gave us ‘Lamoureuse’ ( in French) with a softer rendition than last time on the new ( tunable) strings. There are people who Phil has not seen for twenty years and he celebrated a meeting with a woman . A poignant line struck me ‘ loneliness becomes her ‘

Talking Teckla  tried and eventually succeeded  in giving us from memory ‘One hundred Love’ which we all appreciated very much especially me  as I do not seem to be able to remember even ten lines of my own.  !!!

TALKIN TEKLA

And so we came to the final part of the night and a new face stepped up to the mic. STUART O’CONNOR had been threatening to appear for a while and it was worth the wait. catch him on July 28 as our Special Guest

STUART O’CONNOR

RENE has been down a few times now, sadly too late to get on the main list, but his patience is admirable and he comes thru’ with his well worked words of life experience.

RENE

Due to some e-mail weirdness part of the blog has been lost and we apologise to Jake Beeton for the absence of his bit! As always there are fotos we would have liked to post here but some of you are quite mobile and hard to capture clearly. We do our best!

ACOUSTIC NIGHT STATS

AUDIENCE   FULL HOUSE!
PERFORMERS     20
VIRGINS              8