Harper's Bizarre?

Firstly I have to say that these words are my own personal opinions, and do not necessarily represent the views of my fellow workers. Harper's is (was?) one of the best live music venues in Hastings (if you didn't know already, St. Leonards-On-Sea is part of an urban south coastal sprawl including Hastings and Bexhill). Experimental DJ/VJ/live musicians collective HomeGrown have a monthly residency there. Saturday 25th March :- amazing how chaos, confusion, synchronicity and misunderstandings can actually transcend the planning and expectations of a situation and transform it into something quite different and unique. Firstly : an unintentional double-booking meant sharing the bill with percussionist vocalist Nana Tsiboe's African hi-life band - no probs there really, Nana lives in Hastings, it's a small town, everyone knows everyone - there's an upstairs room and a cellar bar, although it took us all quite a while to realise that both groups could have been playing simultaneously without any real sound-spilling issues. Secundo : for a change, instead of our (un)usual VJ projections, Mr. Illuminati Top-Cat managed to convince Harper's to let us put up a seriously big canvas on their front window, and let a graffiti artist paint on it outside in the street. This was all filmed by our VJ man Jake using some high-power spotlights - the police had a bit of a nose around, (it was well after midnight, and the night the clocks went forward an hour!), but they soon went away, presumably (and quite correctly) assuming that we were not a threat or danger to public order, or actively breaking any silly laws. (Thanks a lot guys!) There's a good moral buried in all of this somewhere - the so-called ReGeneration of the Hastings area is "in full swing", but, as our local media are not telling us, there's a veritable minefield of socio economico politico culturico issues bubbling away under the surface and being totally ignored. Ok so now we can expect an influx of "young, high earning, educated, trendy, and sophisticated" tourists and new residents - very nice.......and then? What will these people actually be doing to support the local community, raise the profiles of local artists, and make some kind of contribution to real life here, apart from putting property and restaurant prices up? The arts scene here is just as close as it gets to the real thing - what happened in/outside Harper's that night was a spontaneously generated cutting-edge-mixed-media-event with no publicity, no (door) money, no subsidy, and no thank you from anyone except the few people who saw it, and the Harper's organisers. I recently performed at a mixed media festival in Berlin - the organisers paid everyone's expenses, accommodation (even if it meant staying with friends), and food for 3 days - in other words we were well treated and respected for our work - no subsidy was available, but the place was jam packed all the time, and even the strangest bands and performances went down really well. OK Hastings isn't Berlin, but unless audiences actually get the chance to see and hear new things, how can they decide what they like or don't like? It's not the place of the state or the media to make these decisions for people. Meanwhile back here the local arts centre St. Mary's In The Castle has pretty much had the subsidy-money-plug pulled - the future of the place for really serious artistic projects is now very uncertain, while a lot of subsidy goes to the White Rock Theatre, which presents "typically English seaside town entertainment". Fair enough, there are some community-related activities for young people going on there, but I can't see these new hip tourists and residents being that interested in weird nostalgic remixes of The Tommy Steele Show, The Black & White Minstrel Show, and an endless stream of Abba, Queen, Elvis, Beatles, Monkees etc covers band gigs. Apart from anything else, I always thought that these "Entertainment" affairs put plenty of bums on seats, and are financially speaking doing quite nicely thank you. So why do they need subsidising? The whole "Art" scene is something else. In the good ol' days most successful artists only became famous because they were already rich, or had some form of financial "patronage". The modern day equivalent of a patron is The State, which in my view has gone totally in the wrong direction. Art is definitely not a mirror - leave that to the White Rock and company - it is a hammer - not to smash or break things, but to reshape them. I'm no expert - maybe I've missed some essential snippets of information which would render this whole debate null and void, but my intuition tells me I'm on the right track. So what next? Getting back to the Harper's Happening - this was a great evening's "entertainment", but with a slightly arty edge to it - nothing elitist or inaccessible about African music, DJ's with live musicians, or graffiti artists - just the opposite in fact. The street meets the beat with no repeats and no bums on the seats because the media's in retreat. We don't do this to get rich and famous, we do it because it's what we want to do, and we refuse to play the game in terms of mass culture control thinly disguised as "sustainable community resources" along with all this "new-speak" slowly eating away at our language, turning it into meaningless jargon. We're not demanding tons of money, just the opportunity to express ourselves as we see fit, regardless of trends, fashions, political correctness, business speak, delivery deadlines, outmoded social and cultural parameters, the needs of the public/private sector to capitalise on anything and everything for it's own ends, or any of the other obstacles getting in the way of real progress in this cold world of art. All I'm saying is there is a lot more room for debate, and if I upset a few people along the way, it can only be a good thing - nothing wrong in gently rattling cages or shaking walls, unless there really is something to hide! And people have the nerve to ask me "Why Aliens@C ?" We'll see....

Aliens@T-4-2-Ceremony

A lot of you out there if you can be even bothered to read all this stuff might think I'm just a miserable old bastard coming down on every~body / thing that pisses me even the slightest bit off......partly true, but I try to keep an open mind. I don't spend all my time dissing partypeoples or moaning about the horrible state of the world....just a question of keeping a balance - on the ball, knowing who the enemy is, not forgetting to have a good time. The party gig on Saturday was great - big gaff, loads of good food, booze, people, two room DJ setup, a bit chav-central in places but at least concentrated into ghettos (the kitchen?? very english!) so enough space to cater for all palates......and no real serious aggro towards us the whole night (= as in "When I left at 9.30am the groove was still going strong."). Pill / Powder fuelled of course, which I can honestly well do without...too dark for my taste, white but dark - still making it through the night on loads of weed and a couple of glasses of wine.....red + green, stop + go.....good enough for me. Highlights of the gig - local Hastings-based blues singer Mama Josie seriously belting it out over funk-hop trax with live scratch, very electric sax + flute (see previous post), and our new wonder-mix-man processing everything in sight from the music to the stars......so it seemed anyway....and not forgetting the usual top-draw VJ-ing. We didn't get into too much of the seriously X-periMental stuff we've been playing around with at our own open rehearsal parties - total free electronics, ambient to fierce --->> we stuck with laying down more grooves and tried to leave some open spaces normally overflowing with background noises, but still a lot of it was already way pretty way out over the collective heads of the majority......not to sound elitist.....just the way it is......also I guess those ancient oriental scales can sometimes be very powerful (spiritually speaking), and intense - a lot of people haven't yet developed their sonic senses enough to know how to deal with it. So they stuck to the well-worn path of Bm-Ch-Bm-Ch-Bm-Ch in the main room eardrumbleeding scene (bad move to put the food table 3 inches away from the sound system - didn't seem to bother most people......all deaf?). We were much more user-friendly on that score....copped the billiard room opening out into the chill sofa optional dance salon sector....the house was apparently on loan from the Kaiser Chief's manager - he wasn't there (just namedropping, maybe not even true?)...the vibes were though......HomeGrown dishing the dirt once again...here we come, shaking the invisible walls between reality and the rest of the planet....

More info and downstreams:

www.neonfilms.org/homegrown

Alien@T Ceremony

Ok.....screw logic, forget the hour, day, week.....don't believe everything you read, especially online. It's always time. I thought maybe a pre-emptive postscript xmas/new year strike would do the job......it almost worked last year, so...... nothing to lose this time except maybe what's left of my feverish imagination's wildest dreams, and they're pretty much knackered or at least on temporary hold these days.
But why can parties be so boring?
The people?
The excess?
The ritualistic nature of these semi-inherited archetypal tribal gatherings has become so predictable it baffles me let alone the experts - there I am drinking cups of tea while the booze/dope/wizz/coke/e-heads make out real kool all around me.......well I did smoke a load of weed myself, but 5am arrives and all the idiots have passed out or at least dissolved into the night, and I AM BUZZING dear friends......crystal clear cannabinoid clarity cutting straight through the arty farty tarty party not so hearty state of under-life's clouded vision, thinly (sometimes very thickly) disguised as hipness, one of the few truly inner qualities left once the fancy packaging is taken away for recycling.
Booked to jam some nu-jazz grooves with DJ crew The Illuminati, but the arty party dwellers want Michael Jackson, they don't want living breathing humans spoiling their fake fun suntan over-exposure; it's too real. Then I had to hang around until 9am to make my move out into the snow/sleet/icy bleakness, which gave me plenty of time to observe, notate, record, and un-dig the inner remnants and workings of the rapidly coming down last guests & (g)hosts, (although I have to say the main mein host was ok). Not a very pleasant job but someone has to do it & it is a job + a half & it is mass culture and we can only control it by not taking the external manifestations of the control bureau too seriously, or we blow our cover.
Alternatively........

FCUK / SCUX