Scaledown

The trouble with gigs in pubs, of course, is that your memory of them will tend towards the hazy next day. So if you don't get around to writing about Friday night until Monday lunchtime you're ineviatbly going to end up a bit vague. Fortunately I have the excellent people behind Scaledown's website to remind me more or less who played, and the rest I must piece together as best I can.

Everyone here's an amateur tonight, in the best sense: that is, they're here for the love of what they do, and barring whatever pennies get thrown into the hat that's passed around halfway through the evening they're getting no payment for their performances.

First up is Alain Lacroix, who is both small scale in that his act consists of just him and his guitar, and large scale in that his 15 minute set consists of just one song. It's all about the story, he tells us. I'm not sure what the story was, to be honest. The sound's a little bit prog, with a dash of XTC in it. Perfectly pleasant, if meandering and ultimately not my thing.

Dave Hopkins represents something rather different for Scaledown, not least because he's not actually here. His 30 second films are very funny, and I recommend you go over to YouTube and watch them, it'll be a lot easier than craning to see a laptop as we had to do. There are a couple of gig shorts at the end of his set that aren't as interesting, as there it turns into a camera pointed at a band, and his links between films ramble, but the main meat of it's very good indeed.

Vic Goddard was supposed to open the show, but he got stuck on the tube from work (his day job is as a postman these days), but he manages to get here and performa several songs, accompanied by Scaledown hosts Mark Braby and Dan Whaley on ukes and the guitarist from Subway Sect (can't remember his name, sorry - this is what happens when you try to remember details from a night in the pub several days ago). Goddard's a legend, and again, the vibe is, in the best sense, amateur - a man who's standing up becasue he has something he's passionate about, with no ulterior financial motive.

The Southern Tenant Folk Union have played here befroe, I see, but I wasn't there. At the moment I'm partial to anythign with "Folk" in the title though, so I'm looking forward to this one. Disappointment looms when they announce a song called "Cocaine" thjat turns out not to be the one Davy Graham sang. Every song seems to be preceded by a mention of their two albums, and that palls fairly quickly. They play very well, very slickly, but there's something not quite right about them. Maybe it's the over-earnest, mannered replication of a certain style, maybe it's the fact tht they sing in cod-American accents, which seems fake after Goddard.

There's always one act at Scaledown you think's wank, and tonight Oli Mayne, Thanos Chrysakis, and Jerry Wigens are it for me. As my companion notes, anyone advertising their use of a "Chaos board" is boding ill, and so it proves. I'm sure it's great fun playing with your knobs, but that's no reason to do it in public. Music to stroke chins by (or other parts of the body. But not in puiblic).

John White also twiddles knobs, but as you'd expect from the man who invented Systems Music, played a leading role in the British experimental music movement of the early '70s (that also gave rise to such diverse composers as Howard Skempton and Michael Nyman) and has written over 160 piano sonatas, it's of a different order to the previous turn. It's determinedly lo-fi stuff, a couple fo cheap casio keyboards wired together and forced out of their comfort zones. What makes it fascinating rather than self-indulgent though is White's keen ear for what works, and his sense of humour. He's very serious about what he does, but never po-faced, and will happily title a piece "Significant parachute jumps of 1910", after the fact that the first successful paarchute jump took place in 1911. It's this combination of seriousness of purpose with a sense of the ridiculous that gives his music substance, and it's a priviledge to be able to see this inventive and under-appreciated man peform.

I do have some photos, but they're not great, so here's something different, a little extract from the sound between sets:

Scaledown, King & Queen, 25 January

Good intentions butter no parsnips, I'm told, and having determined after the last time I went to a Scaledown night to get along to another really,really soon, I find myself here, almost exactly a year later. So much later, in fact that one of the acts tonight is making a return visit to the Scaled Down world. Still, I made it eventually, and this year I'm definitely going to get along to another one in less than a year's time.

So anyway, this time we had another varied menu of sounds. It's the sort of evening where you're unlikely to like everything, but you're bound to like something, and so it proved. After the customary turn by hosts Mark Braby and Andy Coules - a unique take on "Smash it Up" by the Damned - we have some entertaining spoken word stuff from saxophonist Mark Norton, of which the funnier poems are the better, not a million miles from John Hegley territory. Next up is Dogs & Stuff, a duo who somehow put me in mind of Flight of the Conchords. They're good fun, although they make the fatal error of putting their best stuff at the start of the set, so that after a song called "Monkeys v Robots" (Monkeys! Robots! How can you go wrong?) and a song featuring the wearing of a toy octopus on the head, the rest can only seem dull in comparison. Still, I saw a man with an octopus on his head, so I am pleased.

Next up is Martin White, of whom I've spoken before, so I shall simply say that he was his usual thoroughly entertaining self, and gave us a preview of some songs from a new musical he's writing about a 19th century German flea with magic contact lenses (or something).

Hong Kong in the 60s is a trio plying a C-86/lo-fi electronica type sound, which you may find intriguingly gentle or just fey, depending on whether you like it or not. I wasn't sure at first, but I found myself warming to it fairly quickly and by the end of their set was happy to let it wash over me in its unobtrusive way. And they do good badges too, which is an important thing, I think.

Finally is John Ellis, former guitarist with the Vibrators and the Stranglers, whose pedal and ebow-driven guitar noodling just didn't really do it for me, I'm afraid (and that's mild compared to what my companion said. She really didn't like it). But it doesn't matter, because I heard plenty of stuff I did like, and had a good time. Which is of course what it's all about.

The next Scaledown's on 22nd February, and I'm going to be there, definitely, honest.

I did take pictures of everyone, by the way, it's just they didn't come out very well. It's difficult taking photos in a dark room without a flash.

By the way, the Scaledown boys have moved into the world of recording, and I picked up their first release, a lovely 7" single by a band called Pocket. Get it at the Orchestra Pit.

Scaledown

This is where the real fun in gig-going lies - 7 acts, none of which I've heard before, presented under the aegis of Resonance FM's "Scaledown" programme. It's billed as alternative/experimental - who can say what that'll involve? Could be great, could be awful - but it's free, so why not take the chance? And it's being held in a room above a pub, which automatically makes anything better.

We arrive round about 7, get the first round in, then hang about in the downstairs room wondering if we should wait until there seems to be some action, as there doesn't appear to be anyone going through the door to the upstairs room. Eventually we feel emboldened enough to go up, on the assumption that if we're not supposed to be there we'll be told about it. The room's small, it's almost like being in someone's living room. there are a few people milling about, mostly the organisers as far as we can tell. We sit down and nurse our pints, and people start to drift in. We wonder if we're the only people here who haven't come because they're mates with one of the acts or connected with Resonance in some way.

Two of our compères, Mark Braby and Dan Whaley, start off the evening with a rendition of a Copper Family song, "Babes in the Wood", before Whaley gets things going as the first act proper, under the pseudonym Big Ron Turner (one of many, as you'll see if you click through to his site). It's twangy bluesy stuff, which is the sort of thing I like, but it doesn't quite hit the mark for me. It makes me feel slightly bad to say this, because he's obviously deeply committed in his performing and deeply in love with the music.

Same Actor announces that tonight's a bit of an experiment for him, as he's left his laptop at home. His set divides into two parts, the first of which, he happily informs us, is inspired by the feeling of having stepped in some dog poo, and the second by the elation at having been shat on by a bird (it's good luck, you know). It's a minimalist affair, droning acoustic guitar which for the latter part is looped through some kind of sampler pedal (I assume - he's sat on the floor so I can't really see him) over which he then plays a sitar. it's quite hypnotic, although maybe lacking something - probably the laptop, judging by the excellent tracks on his MySpace page.

The Reactor Core Is Splendid consists of one man and his guitar, playing naive songs that have words that ramble rather than scan, that bring Ivor Cutler to my mind, for some reason. It's kitchen sink music, all about little details, which, while it does raise a chuckle or two, I can't help think lacks humour. On the back of these thoughts we wonder between ourselves whether it's humour or charisma that the performances so far have fallen short on - or whether these two things are connected.

Things perk up with the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, whose leader Martin White is the first performer tonight I feel has connected with the audience. (I wonder if it's partly that as the biggest band there, they have more friends in the audience, but I don't think that's it, although the fuller room obviously helps). It's funny stuff, stylistically out of the Weill/Eisler school of cabaret, with a healthy dollop of the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band thrown in for good measure, with settings of Poe as well as a song about John Cage's 4'33" and a heartfelt ballad about Euro-rockers Europe, which are very funny and leave us determined to catch them again sometime.

Nigel Burch is, as the pre-show publicity has it, a big man with a small instrument (a banjolele, to be precise) who rattles through some gleefully misanthropic songs that seem mostly concerned with the idea that people in love should not be permitted to live. It's what might happen to you if you grew old without shedding yourself of your youthful sense of the world's injustice against you. I Thoroughly enjoy it, my companion finds it to aggressive and bitter.




From one man with a tinny strumming instrument to another - Al Duvall look like he's stepped out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, dressed in cream suit and plantation tie. His songs are pure vaudeville, and seem to have a fixation with the act of being beaten up by one's love - "bare-knuckle ballerina" for instance. Lest this sound disturbing, I should point out that it's very funny, and he demonstrates that Americans in fact can do irony when he asks us to buy his album, thereby support the War in Iraq via his tax bill.

The final act is Mike Cooper who's been around since the sixties when he was part of the English blues/folk movement led by Davey Graham and John Martyn, and therefore the nearest thing to a star we've seen tonight. He's come to sing completely unaccompanied, so, he explains, as he rarely does this, he'll only sing two songs. In fact he's coaxed into doing a third, and all of them he sings with a dignity that ends the evening on an unexpected note.

I really enjoyed this evening. There's something in a small-scale event like this that moves me in a way that larger gigs don't. it's not to do with the style of music, or the quality - it's about the passion. These are all people doing what they do for love - the only payment any of them will get for this evening is what gets thrown in the pint glass that's been passed round the audience for donations - and there's a DIY aesthetic to the whole proceedings that's refreshing and inspiring.

There was recording going on, so listen out for some of this stuff on "Scaledown" on Resonance (alternate Friday afternoons), and keep an eye out for the next gigs at The Orchestra Pit. It'll be good for your soul.