Last Saturday I opened up for the Shoreditch festival. The festival features a series of public artworks by Bob and Roberta Smith under the title of SHOP LOCAL.

Bob’s public works were a series of signs advertising local businesses in Bob unique hand sign painting style, including the ‘Ron’s Eel and Shelfish’ posters that are all over the underground (see previous post). There is a nice write up about the show in yesterday’s Times Newspaper by Grayson Perry.

Last Saturday was the launch party with live performance from The Ken Ardley Playboys, Leigh Clarke, Jemma Freeman and myself. The Ken Ardley Playboy are the archetypal art band featuring Bob Smith and Victor Mount; Jemma Freeman is previously of art-punk-band The Fucks and Leigh Clarke is an artist who also does stand-up comedy and body beatboxing.

Opening up a show is always hard work and I had also been asked to do a 30 minute set which is more that I usually do in on one go. 30 minutes of poetry is quite heavy going but I accepted as it was Bob and my last show with him was great. I had decided to base the show around Bob’s SHOP LOCAL project and I had proposed a set of grocery and food themed songs. When I started rehearsing last Friday I realised all my food themed songs did not quite add up to 30 minutes of material so I decided to add in a few readings of Delia Smith recipes to fill it out.

Making Delia Smith recipes sound exciting was a little harder than I anticipated and I had to cram in some extra last minute rehearsals. The extra practicing and the extended set was not good for my voice and the show got a little ropey in places, but you learn by your mistakes. I managed to end on a version of Art School Band which unsettled a few of the other acts so it all ended well.

Next weekend is Ditchlicker which is going to be a scaled down version of Frogstock with only one stage rather than 6. The smaller event should be a little less work and more fun. The line up features a few great acts that have a unconventional style and are associated with art school bands and wrong music so it should be an interesting experiment to see who bemuses the audience the most. Victor Mount is coming which is an honour. You can learn more about the entertainment and get directions to the festival site on the Frogstock website

The BBC promises the weather will clear up in time for the weekend

This week I have been earning some money as a freelance website designer working for some small businesses and added some updates to www.hobohouse.co.uk and www.rogergladwell.co.uk. After I finished the updates to Hobo House, Scott from Hobo Designs called me and he has some ideas about a new range of dolls and asked me to do some designs to help pitch the idea to some companies. Their current range is very funny but are aimed at a more mature audience but the new range of dolls have a much broader appeal and I could end up promoting children’s toys which might be an interesting experience…

I hadn’t heard much about my forthcoming gig with Bob & Roberta Smith this Saturday except that I was supporting the Ken Ardley Playboys and I had been advised that I should try not to practice too much. I decided to Google the event today and realised it has something to do with all those posters that are all over the tube. I think it might be more important than I thought so maybe I ought to prepare something special…

More info about Bob & Roberta Smith's SHOP LOCAL project can be found here...f
My gig is on this Saturday [19-08-2006] in the courtyard of Tannery Arts, Brunswick Wharf, 55 Laburnum Street, E2 with the Ken Ardley Playboys, Leigh Clarke and Jemma Freeman

The Rag and Bone show at Three Colts closed last Sunday with a evening of performance. Closing parties are never as much fun as opening parties, but we had a few people along for the final night at Three Colts. Unfortunately the other acts I had hoped to get had either declined the offer or pulled out a few days before so I was left on my own. I decided to be both support act and headline act for the evening.

I opened with a set of old material carefully chosen from some less successful projects. I began with a few extracts from Le Tour De Squirrel which was my 2005 touring show which only ever managed one date in Canterbury. The finally of the first set was a medley of Tony Benn songs from the first Blo Boys EP in 2001. I had been trying to write some new material for the show but hadn’t come up with any great inspiration but trying to rework the old stuff was good fun and added something a little different to the set.

Packed up the show this week and then put my tie on and went back to East Anglia to find some work so I could pay a few bills. I run website design business called Purple Network and most of my trade is from contact I built up while I was based back in Blo’ Norton.

While I was back I saw Theo and got to pick some vegetables from his garden he had been working on. Theo has also built a recording studio in the shed and had been practicing with a new line-up of his old band Opposite the Hotel. Though they were now much more musically competent, they were having a few problems with front man Tom Cutler writing too many epic prog rock guitar solos. I decided to use the opportunity with the studio and get the Blo Boys back together for a session. We recorded some rough demo versions of Focualt and Judith Butler. Our drummer Jeep also got a chance to record a demo of a song he has written about Syd Barret. Hopefully we can fit in some more practices before we return to the stage at Ditch Licker on 26th August.