Eric goes solo (part 5)

Big Hogg are blasting their final piece, and Vile is off to smoke a cigarette, leaving me staring at this blank page.

Amazing how I am thinking a  million things, but they are not really relevant to the performance itself. I'm examining the audience.

The lead vocalist of Natalie Pryce sits diagonally across from me; he looks nervous. They're performing last, so I guess pressure is starting to build. Meanwhile, everybody else seems to be genuinely mesmerised by the performance. There is no reason not to be - crisp cymbals and beat, bluesy electric guitar, smooth keyboard notes, triumphant trumpet (as Vile said)... Well, they're off-stage now, saluted with the thunder of applause.

Although not full, the Stereo basement seems warm, almost intimate, despite the stage that stands at chest-height (for me... I'm not exactly tall).

I don't know quite why the live blogging is exciting. I suppose I enjoy the challenge of recording as much as possible of what I am hearing and seeing as quickly as possible, while ensuring that what I say is relatively accurate.

Now Vile is back... and the lights are on... do I want to know?

Vile goes solo... (part 4)

I usually pride myself on not taking notes when I am reviewing. So sitting in the corner using a laptop is a pretty strange experience. At least none of the really hard looking guys have come over and asked what I am doing. Especially the guitarist out of Dog Moon Howl. He looks like he could kill me with one finger.

Then again, that's probably  part of the whole rock'n'roll mythology. DMH make tough, masculine blues - for me, it shreds the vulnerability of the acoustic tradition and armours the heart against the breaking that makes the blues. Big Hogg are far more a joyous sound - I am hearing a 1973 outdoor festival between the notes, and the looser they get, the more seduced I am.

Natalie Pryce - the band are wandering around the audience, looking very sharply dressed - have created an evening where the delicacy and sensitivity of performance art meets the rough vitality of rock. I'm not sure that I can find a narrative - dear God, I'm pretentious - that resolves the tension, although McLuckie did have an abrasive edge on his more whimsical story-telling. Maybe MacAskill will give us more answers...

As for my narrative comment, I believe that an evening like The Gatsby Club would have a narrative, the acts tied together by the theme of the evening. Natalie Pryce are more interested, I think, in presenting stuff they like.

Eric versus Vile at Stereo (part 3)

GKV: Okay. The mood shifted while I was uploading the last blog. A woman is dressing on stage. She was saying that she feared...

EK:  In the silence of the Stereo basement, she began to speak, and undress. But this was no ordinary striptease. She essentially exposed herself, in a literal sense, while also exposing her thoughts. It was about fear. As human beings, we fear many things, especially in a social environment - we fear being humiliated, we fear forgetting someone's name...

I don't think this had anything to do with the sexual element of the removal of clothing. Removing clothing is like peeling the layers off an onion, exposing what lies within; so how does one expose what lies within the 'onion'? Beneath the skin, beneath clothing? I guess that was a taster of it right there.


'I fear forgetting this moment.
I fear your judgement.'

GKV: And I am back. The next band are up: Big Hogg. They have a flute and a trombone, and come from a muscular, progressive rock angle. It's good to find such an eclectic range of bands on one bill: I was expecting a couple of acts sounding more like Natalie Pryce, but this evening's curation emphasises difference. It does have a cabaret aesthetic - diversity of arts, diversity of sexualities. What the artists seem to share is a seriousness.

EK: Yeah, but they also seem to enjoy what they are doing. The last note of the first tune barely has time to reverberate into silence before the audience clap in approval. Big Hogg have no connection to the metal sound of Dog Moon Howl; although they have an electric guitar thrown into the mix, they're using it completely differently.

GKV: I think this is getting to the core of our partnership. I am a jaded old man, and  can't help pointing out how I have heard everything before. These guys are giving me memories of Jethro Tull - although the flautist isn't just giving it showy solos - but you can  hear things through fresh ears. And you can probably hear the higher frequencies that I lost by standing too close to a speaker stack at Instal in 2004.

There's something about a trumpet that lends a band a triumphant sound. They are jamming an instrumental here... build and falls, solid chord slams. Yeah, that's a big 1970s, pre-punk.

Anyway - what's your overall feeling of the evening so far? And is that air piano?

EK: It is a very interesting evening. I'm enjoying it - especially the variety of stuff on show. Look, Derek McLuckie is enjoying it too! Anyway, it feels remarkably relaxed; there's no high-adrenaline stunts going on, or any particular distance from the performers. I suppose the venue set-up sort of helps with that.

Vile versus Eric at Stereo (part 2)

EK: Focus, man! Burlesque dancer on the stage! Crowd cheering, guys whistling... typical, I guess. But then, you're tired of nudity on stage, aren't you? And the crowd quickly disperses...

GKV: Yes. That's why I am off for a coffee. And keeping you typing so you are not corrupted by Miss Hell's Belle's striptease.

EK: Well, it's over now. What to do. Not my fault I get excited by these things... Although admittedly, it's more fun in the intimacy of a bedroom. I can see why you tire of the nude on stage - what is the joy of that?
And Derek McLuckie takes the stage.
Extremely poetic narration ensues. It doesn't always rhyme, but he is telling us a story that sounds like a dream. Or a nightmare.
'Machine gun rattles, old woman cackles...'

GKV: It's exciting to see McLuckie going solo... dressed up as a fireman, then one quick change and he's an American starlet in 1952. He's trawling through the glamorous era of  Hollywood. An abortive romance with Steve McQueen is told in a thick Glasgow accent. Then the last days of Marilyn Monroe recited in the voice of a jaded friend of the sex goddess.

It's even better as a juxtaposition - a queer balance upsetting what could have been a rather macho evening of blues rock and striptease. McLuckie is relating a memory of an orgy starring Jack Kennedy, in drag, but the surreal narrative is contrasted by the specificity of the detail. The crowd is silent - my typing is the loudest sound and I am feeling self-conscious.

EK: And we are back to the thick Glaswegian accent, to the rhyming. And he slips into a clearer accent, almost like Dracula.
 'Jealousy is mine'
Commercial break.
Advertising a doll  of Judy Garland - the 'perfect gift for young queens everywhere'. I wonder how many layers of meaning we have to unpeel to thoroughly understand this performance.

GKV: He's jumping between different moods - sometimes singing, other times getting vernacular and even poetic. There's a theme of disappointment and twisted romance throughout... he refers back to classic camp icons, that feminine glamour of Monroe, the ballet dancer, Judy Garland, filters them  through the alienation of a very Glaswegian nightlife. There are corpses littered through the monologue.
EK: And now he speaks of Camp, a wrinkly old lady seducing young men. The audience hangs on his every word. He speaks of elderly masturbation, and 'entertainment'. Not sure what to make of that.

GKV: He's good. He has a presence, and it's fascinating to see him stripped of scripts and props and theatrical supports.

EK: His energy reminds me of the solo performance titled TITUS at THAT Festival, part of a very young, adrenaline-filled triple bill. There was no need for him to move at all, because he tells a story so well.

Live Blog: Vile versus Eric at Stereo

GKV: Hey Eric, I've just realised we can probably get a signal for the internet in Stereo. Fancy doing a live blog review of Nights at the Circus?

EK: Sure, why not? I'm impressed this works.

GKV: The magic of the Vile Arts. So - a bit of scene setting. We are in the basement of Stereo, the event has been curated by Natalie Pryce - we've been punting their new album on the show because I love a nice garage rock sound. But you seem to be enjoying the band onstage at the moment. I saw you doing some air drumming just there.

EK: Aye, they're loud and grungey. This seems like the appropriate setting for a gig like this. And yeah, look, even that guy was shaking to the beat! I wonder if you could mosh to this...

GKV: Don't let me stop you. But try and get a flyer first. I want to be sure about the line up before we publish this. For me, these guys are a little too metal - the intricate guitar solos, the serious vocals, the thudding bass, the sudden aggressive riffs. But I guess they do suit the venue pretty well. And they look like they sound - tough and uncompromising.

EK: Indeed. I think I've heard their vocalist before. Not entirely sure. Too bad there's not more  people here... It seems like a 'friend' audience to me. What do you think?

GKV: I just shat my pants as Derek McLuckie walked past in what appears to be a zombie military outfit. You might want to explain what you mean while I am wiping myself clean in the toilet...

EK: I meant that, judging by the number of people here, the audience seems to consist mainly of friends of the performers, although more and more people are joining the ranks. As for Mr. McLuckie, I saw him performing vocal exercises earlier. I wonder what he's doing tonight. Also I can see Calum Macaskill wandering around.... You've missed him.

GKV: Anyway, that's Dog Moon Howl rocking out on stage: I am not sure I'd agree about that. What I can see is an interesting  mixture. Dog Moon Howl are getting more metal, and this is very masculine music - I could see them sharing  a bill with the mighty Holy Mountain, as they have shades of that 1970s heaviness. But the audience is pretty balanced between men and women. I can see people I know from the theatre world and more obvious rock fans. And that's why we are here: to find out whether there is an audience for this kind of show.

EK: But Nights At The Circus? There is a variety of performers here, but I don't know whether I'd call it a 'circus'. Then again, they have some acrobats performing later, don't they?

GKV: Hey, you are the one checking out the acrobats. You'd know better than me... Give it time. It might be a reference to the Angela Carter novel - and it's more suggestive of a variety atmosphere than being about a traditional circus. Anyway, you like blues rock, so I imagine you are digging Dog Moon Howl...

EK: Indeed, it might be. I looked it up just now - it comes under 'speculative fiction'. No idea what that is. As for the atmosphere, I'd say I'm not the only one digging Dog Moon Howl. That guitar solo! Woof. Admittedly, I'm also impressed by Stereo's equipment, seeing as most gig-hosting  pubs I've been to tend to have bad acoustics.

GKV: Sorry, I just got distracted by that couple snogging in the corner.

Nights at the Circus

The landscape of performance is changing. Back when I started The Vile Arts Radio Hour, most of my guests were firmly in one camp or another: here's the musician, next up, it's cabaret time, and we'll be joined later by a visual artist. Suddenly, I'm having guests who are working several angles. I mean, we invited Mark from Natalie Pryce on because his band had a new album out. A few weeks later, and they are putting on a variety evening.

I am not claiming that the Radio Hour has been instrumental in this shift towards eclecticism, only that it does suit the show's own short attention span. I shall point out that two of the artists on the bill for Nights At The Circus have already visited me at Subcity this year, and allow the reader to draw their own conclusion on whether the approach of Vile Arts is accurately reflecting this new wave of promoters and artists who are interested in crossing aesthetic boundaries.

In the meantime, let's cut to a shout out for Natalie Pryce. The album is a rough-edged take on the sinister blues that have served Nick Cave so well, given a punkier, youthful vitality, and the event on Thursday 18th October sees them line up alongside fellow creatives of a more DIY, visceral edge. The curation seems to have picked up on what the cabaret revival was always threatening - a genuinely diverse bunch of artists, united only in a broad enthusiasm for the darker side of human emotion.

Rather like Edinburgh's Kabarett, Nights at the Circus aims more for quality than uniformity: three bands (Pryce, the more traditional blues rock of Big Hogg and Dog Moon Howl), live art maverick and sometime Minotaur Calum MacAskill, Derek McLuckie turning out a spot of "short theatre" (last time out, I saw him in a genderqueer reading of Genet's The Maids, a dizzying slap at sexual and social power games), a couple of acrobats and burlesque from Miss Hell's Belle, who has been known to stray into Nick's dark Cave of erotic terror.

It's interesting to see how each of the acts can play off each other: burlesque's downfall was always the ubiquity of certain routines (the fan dance, the reverse striptease) appearing at every show, and rock gigs degenerated into bland rituals in around 1974. Poetry - here read by Claire Askew - is pulled out of its polite ghetto into Stereo's basement and MacAskill always brings the discomfort.