Journal

Sounds from a town I love

2009-08-20T14:09:32Z

I'm surprised I haven't put any Woody Allen up here yet but now seems a good time with this little film he made shortly after 9/11 to support New York City. It's about overheard conversations on mobile phones (or cellphones as they say in America). It's not his best work but I like the idea of it. And it seems to fit here because I've just written two Very Stationary Mobile Phone stories for my one man show. I do find mobile phones weird. How quickly we've got used to them, how it's just normal now to talk loudly to yourself and not care if anyone is listening. How we expect everyone to have them. And how odd texting is - who would have thought we'd be typing messages on a phone to each other? Developing another language. I didn't see that coming but I suppose I don't have to. Phew.

Buster Keaton & the Next Part of the Journey

2009-06-12T14:26:17Z

With the Norfolk & Norwich Festival Showcase done and dusted in May and the first 20/25 minutes of my show tried and tested, I'm now faced with getting back to my desk and writing new material. I've got a few ideas - I'd like to do some pieces involving my MPC500 sampler and something using powerpoint but after two weeks working in schools (and very lovely schools at that), I'm finding it difficult getting back into the Ducks, Trains & Other Tracks groove.

So, I've gone back to my orginal idea and list of influences and remembered Buster Keaton and his short film 'Railrodder'. Probably my favourite silent comedian, Buster had a revival in the early 1960s and his final triumph was this rather unusual film he made for the Canadian Tourist Board. It's a black and white film in colour and just magical. Hoorah for Youtube and the fact that you can find it so easily. Life isn't all bad these days is it?

Another Diversion - Finding Passengers

2009-05-06T00:33:06Z

Once I got my show title 'Ducks, Trains & Other Tracks' and a vague travelling and journeys theme I started rooting around for ways to generate new material. I had this idea of getting together a playlist of songs about trains or travel (okay, it was more of a diversion than an idea) and actually found quite a few on this subject in my CD collection - Downtown Train (Tom Waits), Train in the Distance (Paul Simon), The Coal Train Robberies (Elvis Costello), The Morning Train (John Prine) and Train in Vain (The Clash). I know that last one's probably a different kind of train but it is a great song...

Then, on an old freebie CD from WORD magazine I found a something that I'd missed on first hearing - Passengers by Stephen Emmer, a spoken word track with the voice supplied by Lou Reed and the words extracted from Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazar. I was so delighted to find this track - since I've been doing my sonic tinkerings (poems mixed with samples, loops and sound effects), I've been collecting spoken word songs and this is a terrific example of how to do it. It's got a great video to go with it too. The album it's taken from - Recitement - is well worth checking out. Stephen's used the voice of Allen Ginsberg and Richard Burton among other people! So, that afternoon was one diversion well worth taking...

Playmore Toys

2009-05-06T00:10:21Z

My father was a toy maker. He had a company called Playmore Toys - more play with Playmore, that was his slogan. He liked it.... And so begins the 'Duck Tales' story in my one man show. But my father really did have a toy factory though he was hardly Geppetto from Pinocchio. It was all rather more industrial than that. Lowplas (Lowestoft Plastics) - my Dad liked his word play - began in the 1960s blow-moulding the backs of television sets and gradually started making toys. It wasn't called Playmore Toys until the 1980s and by then the most popular of their ranges were cricket sets for the beach, pots and pans with sprayed on smiley faces and plastic ducks for the bath. They also made the squeakers for the bottom of sweet-filled walking sticks (and also the walking stick handles). If you had a seaside holiday in Britain in the 1970s or 80s you probably played with Playmore Toys and didn't even know it!

This is a picture of my Dad at work on the factory floor - the caption on the back says 'swordhandles'. So that explains everything doesn't it.

The Idea Behind Ducks & Trains

2009-03-11T02:13:44Z

It came to me suddenly. I was being a bit stupid really - I couldn't think of a unifying theme for my show, something that would tie it all together, something that would help me write some new stuff too. I rarely listen to Radio 3 but it was on in the background and I heard a track that I found very unusual and interesting - it was by the American composer Steve Reich and it was called 'Different Trains'. And as soon as the announcer said that title, the idea hit me - I had lots of poems about trains and journeys (and some other ideas that I could develop). Now I had something!

Steve Reich's Different Trains is actually about his Jewish heritage - it seems that his parents were divorced when he was a kid and he spent a lot of his childhood on trains going back and forth between the two houses. Of course, meanwhile at the same time in Germany, his Jewish ancestors were travelling on very different trains...

I particularly like the way Reich uses some words and phrases in the piece - the sort of thing that you would hear on a train journey ('New York to Boston') - and then actually turns the words into a musical echo. Have a listen - to this short excerpt of a live performance on Youtube.