Monkeyrack Writers and Spotlight Lancaster

One of the great things I have discovered while
advertising the event I co-host 'Poets and...'
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56414263840&ref=ts)

is other interesting events and similar-ish sorts
off nights that are run by other groups.

One which I encountered recently on myspace
are 'Monkeyrack Writers' a small but certainly
from what I can see welcoming writing group based
in the Lancaster area off Manchester.

A lot of their back history is contained on their
myspace page but it kind of reminded a lot off the
history off 'Trio Writers' (which formed in 2008,
but was previously known as 24 Hour Arty People
from 2003) . Like us, they have also gone through
a few homes and also produced a few collections
over the years, and from what I can see are also
involved in a cabaret night held regularly (which
is something our own Poets and... night could
head into before you know) called 'Lancaster
Spotlight'

I recently spoke to Moll from Monkeyrack, who
I guess is also involved with 'Lancaster Spotlight'
recently who recently mentioned to me at the
start of each of these nights which is held on
the third Friday of every month a open mike
element of their night but also in February
there is going to be a open mike poetry night.

If I can con, my pal Tony into driving down,
we could be making a trip down that way for
February.

It could well be worth a visit.

More details are:

http://www.spotlightlancaster.co.uk/ (Spotlight Lancaster)

http://www.myspace.com/monkeywrackwriters (Monkeywrack Writers)

Music for One - The Red Thumb (Review)

What I love about listening to a variety off music is the fact

sometimes you honestly never know what you are going to.

On Christmas Day for example I set my music matchjukebox

on my PC to play some tracks at total random, and it

pulled out some tracks which threw me a little certainly.

First up it brought up some post disco music from Blackpool called

‘Little Boots’ which was then followed up with some mood music

from the last but one Nine Inch Nails album ‘Ghosts’, which was

then followed in due course by a couple of tracks from one of

my bands DIH (off it's forthcoming album) and then suddenly it

threw out some tracks I didn’t know.

I had a look further into this and jukebox didn’t say who the

track was. It just said audio track 2, which said to me it was

probably something I would have ripped from a CD or CDR to

drop onto my mp3 player. Either way, it was beautiful instrumental

recorded just an what I was getting with a guitar with a primal

hunger that I had heard since Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ album.

The music was mood music certainly with a timeless hunger that

could have recorded in the 1930’s or 1940’s but had a feel to

it that suggested to me it sounded like it had being recorded

recently. I looked into the mp3’s further and traced them to

a folder on my PC which told me the name of the artist

was ‘Music for One’ and the album was called‘The Red Thumb’.

Without offering tons off whaffle, I first met Canadian

born Sherry Ostapovitch aka Music for One at a house

party concert in Levenshulme in 2005. I’d never forget

that set as she played a frightening guitar set which mixed

crunching solo guitar with effects and delay pedals which

left both me and my mate stunned for a few days later.

This album is a lot softer and completely different in

tone, as interestingly on the sleeve notes it says it

was recorded on a 2 track tape recorder in a handful

of hours in Spring 2007 with no multi tracking

or editing. Certainly from listening to the album, the tone

is certainly suggestive of a night time recording with

songs in a complete change in tone from the first time

I saw her.

Songs here since certainly seem to be reaching back

to the past, hence the reference to Nick Drake

before but also touching to old, old blues records

which probably makes sense considering a cover

version of Skip James’s (Devil’s got my woman) is

at the end of the record which could be slight

reference to her own guitar playing with the title

alone.

Either way, the playing here is ghostly and on

some songs for ‘The wind from the Irish Sea’ the guitar

is so faint, it almost sounded like it was almost recorded

in another room in places, but played so subtle when

you get into the album, it is a difficult place to pull yourself

out off.

Recommended.

For more details – contact Sherry directly on

musicforone@riseup.net

OR go to this page on her page which has a couple off mp3's

available for sampling (they are lovely)

http://www.musicforone.com/recordings.htm

Helloooo 2009

Dear all;

Perhaps I should try and write a poem welcoming 2009 to all off us,
but frankly I can't really be bothered at the moment.

At the moment, I am still coming to terms with the end off 2008 if I am
honest, and now 2009 is with us, I am working slowly but surely towards
the end of the next ‘DIH’ album ‘Metamorphosis’ which I completed the
10th track for it earlier on today. Current plans are suggesting somewhere
around the 14 to 16 track mark for the album, which will take it
somewhere towards the 40 minute mark.

Don’t expect this to happen over-night as this itself has taken the
better part off 2 years to get this far.

Writing wise, after I finished off Poets and Pasties at the end
off November 2008, I took a somewhat quieter approach to
reading and performing afterwards.

I did do a reading at the The Cabaret Formerly Known As Bucket
(http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=23454554933)
at the end off November (just after Poets and Pasties) where I did
two short sets off poems ‘Voices on the Phone’, ‘She’, ‘Confused Identities’
for the 1st set which went down well and ‘Ten and a half lies’ and
‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ which went down really really well in the 2nd half.
‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ was great fun in particular as I got the full of the
audience up to help me out with the chorus for the poem, which
gave me a real real buzz if you know what I mean.

December wise, I did a six poem set at ‘Write Out Loud’ in Sale,
which gave me chance to try out another poem under my alias as
the Feedback Poet where I did a poem called ‘Seven’ as well as two
poems from my ‘Nothing to Save’ poems (Part I and III) which
are really more page poems, as well as one of my Xmas poems
‘Christmas Present Thank you letter’ and two kids poem
‘Brian likes to poke the bear’ and ‘My mum makes Christmas
pudding pasties’ which I enjoyed doing although it did worry me a
lot how under attended the night is. I think the night in question has
got a lot off work to do to keep going, as sadly there simply
isn’t a demand for it I think from the number of people who are
attending. It’s not really my place to say why it isn’t working,
but speaking from personal experience in marketing and P.R.,
if things ain’t going the way they should be going after a few
meetings, a change in thought somewhere.

The following night, Tony talked me into going along to another
open mike poetry night called Inn Verse based in the centre off Manchester (http://www.facebook.com/s.php?ref=search&init=q&q=Inn%20Verse&sid=0cb921d5ee8fd39812c919c8a6c93e8c#/group.php?gid=15047779703)
- this was a bit different to Write Out Loud which was a very serious
atmosphere by being very laid back, and certainly I think it
reflected in my own performance where I read out four poems
’12 Days after Christmas’, ‘Snow Ghost’ (A poem co wrote with a
pal, Audrey ages ago, a cover of a poem by David Rollibard (which
I forget what off the top of my head since) and a oldie called
‘A Lesson in interesting writing’.

I hadn’t being to that event before, but it was nice to
be spotted by the organiser, Simon who introduced me
(even though I had only seen him maybe once before in passing).
It settled me down a lot and I enjoyed reading there. Am glad
I stayed off the beer thou as I saw the effect it had a few other
people who got their poems back to front or in some cases forget
them altogether.

Otherwise, in December I did two radio sessions for my pal,
Coll at Literaryspot for Blogtalk Radio, firstly on 21st
December 2008 with Justin Blackburn which I performed
generally more serious poems, the poems in question being
‘Christmas Poem (2008)’, ‘The Snowman came alive’,
‘Nothing to Hide (I)’ and ‘I found’.

The second interview on there also featured among
others my pal, Kylyra from Dark World International and
my buddy, Gary from Trio Writers and it was a hoot doing
It. On this one, I performed two brand new poems
(which I haven’t performed on the live circuit)
‘Send in the Clowns’ and ‘On the Booze’ with ‘A Lesson in
interesting writing’ thrown in at the end to catch
everybody out.

Now 2009 is here, it is now time to get thinking about
what I am going to do this year. At this moment,
Poets and .. (Formely Poets and Pasties) will be doing
their second event in February 2009, which will take some
work as well a third one probably in April 2009 and I will also
be doing two other performances (I think) in March 2009 and
May 2009, but more details will follow on that soon of course.

I still need to get to the finishing point off ‘The End’ my
novel, which I intend doing a bit more work on over this
week-end (I think it is now 140 pages and around about
40,000 words) but it is looking good.

I also have a number of music projects to finish this year
(See mention to DIH before), but the DIH one will probably
be first I will aim to finish, and then I’ll think about Grey Ear,
White Noise and M.A.N.

All in all, it is going to be a busy year as normal! No change I know!

Keep Rocking

Andy N

Setting Sun – http://www.geocities.com/aen1mpo