On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 07:48:34AM -0000, Stuart Bruce wrote:
The night in general struck me as several things, and was a mixed success I think. The range of performers was just a little bit too disparate to make any real sense, so basically it became a series of unrelated five- to ten-minute long performances, which ranged from the stand-up-comic approach (Ken Campbell), the philosophical travel writer approach (Iain Sinclair himself), the journalistic approach (erm... that journalist guy) and the general result was, dare I say it, pretentious.
At the Barbican? Never! It was "A Parallelist Performance In Three Lane Theatre", after all ;)
So anyway, Jimmy's track was undoubtedly the highlight of the evening. The stage went dark (except for the motorway footage which ran throughout the entire evening), and the LOUD sound of traffic racing past screamed through the speakers- when each noise reached its loudest, there were a couple of seconds of gunfire each time.
Right, here are my thoughts on it ... only discussed with a couple of people afterwards, and getter vaguer by the minute, so take with a pinch of salt... Was it gunfire? As the car noises rushed past and then ended suddenly with the "gunfire" I wondered if it was supposed to be the sound of cars hurtling into a concrete wall (or something equally solid) at 80mph. This would fit the theme of Gimpo's Spin as a lethal carnival of petrol-fuelled madness.
After some time of just this noise and a black stage, the noise of a choir singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" started, and two rotating lights (can't remember what they're called now- the flashing lights like you used to get on the top of police cars, except the orange kind that you still get on the top of wide slow vehicles) picked up. The drummer, the long-haired other guitar&vocalist and Jimmy wandered on stage in bright orange K2 flourescent jackets,
They weren't all K2 jackets, at least two of them were AMEY, the rail maintenance contractors (again, just what I thought).
picked up their instruments, and waited for the entirety of "Glory Glory Hallelujah" (all the verses) to finish. Then when it did the real noise kicked in.
The track was somewhere between "Gimpo" from the Kalevala stuff, "It's Grim Up North part 2" sped up, and some of Jimmy's nastier remixes. It wasn't as heavy and nasty as the Extreme Noise Terror performance though. It was a fairly continuous attack of noise- verse (where the other guitarist who wasn't Jimmy was coming out with some words, I didn't make out a single one, with a Metallica-ish guitar riff), chorus (Jimmy and the other one shouting what I heard as "Gimpo Gimpo!... Gimpo Gimpo!... Gimpo Gimpo!... The M25!" over another riff), and break (my favourite bit actually, heavy electronic bass effects and drum fills, very short though), and repeat... Probably about three minutes long (not counting the intro).
I thought the verse was "Gimpo, Gimpo, GImpo, You Fucking Twat" (as in the "Gimpo" Kalevala single), but wouldn't argue that "The M25" was screamed out too.
After this particular noise attack, they shuffled off stage and that was that. I can't remember who was on stage directly after that, I think most people took a while to recover enough to listen...
I know that Gimpo is Bill and Jimmy's main connection to the subject of the evening (the M25) but even so they both sounded quite Gimpo-obsessed. Gimpo may be a bit of a nutter but there's only so often you can write songs or short stories about one of your weird personal friends before it gets a bit repetitive. It was great to see them, but it wasn't the "something completely new" that we might have been hoping from either of them. Worth it though. Looking forward to seeing the photos...
I'd agree overrall. If the reports I heard of Bill being holed up in a shed in Scotland for a week working on his piece were true, it looks like he couldn't think of anything until 3am the night before, and opted to go for a Gimpo tribute. Oh well, it was fun, I thought Iain Sinclair was good, and Chris Petit and Brian Catling, and I got a copy of the book, so I'm happy. By the time I'd bought the book it was 22:55 and I couldn't find anyone in the King's Head, so I nipped round the corner to another pub and waited for a train there. Thanks very much for the ticket Stuart, and thanks to everyone else I bumped into before and during the show, it was good to meet y'all. Sorry I didn't see everyone who was there. Maybe see you on the spin next March! Jon -- "Always Read the Label" - anon.