Apologies for the gap again.
It’s been a busy time and there is much to report.
Everyone who attended enjoyed an amazing evening of Folk Music for the Championing Rotherham Concert. In one evening Rotherham Against the Cuts
managed to bring together Yorkshire based talent that many Festivals would have
been envious of.
Topping the Bill we had the legend that is Roy Bailey. There seemed a little confusion about his
age, but no matter how old, to put together an hour long set went beyond the
call of duty. I think the word
immaculate sums up the performance. Some
how I had managed to miss Roy in the past so to me the songs were fresh and the
ties with people like Pete Seeger were fascinating.
Perhaps we have all reached that certain age, with top performances
coming from John Young, Dave Oldroyd, Pippins Fancy, The Rotherham Red Choir, and
the magnificent work of Toein’ In The Dark and not forgetting Ray Hearne. Oh – and the Rawmarsh Mashers standing out
as poor cousins to those who went before.
The youngest performer turned out to be Tony Gooders, The Pitman Poet
who blew us away with some heart felt words – and he’s not that young!
The left is lucky and we do have some fine young song writers, Joe Solo
and Alun Parry to name but two, and one day I hope that we’ll be able to offer
a stage for these fine wordsmiths of the working class.
The purpose of the evening was to raise money to combat the rise of
UKIP in Rotherham and the huge sums of money being thrown at their
campaign. We raised just over
£300. While helpful, just a fraction of
what is really needed, but non the less a nice wedge of cash for the
cause.
The turnout was fantastic, given all the problems leading into the
event, the main one being having to change the venue due to the closure of The
Trades, which meant that we had to move out of the Town Centre, highlighting in
my view just how devoid of quality venues we are in Rotherham.
On a personal note it was great to join up with my old mate John
Statter and thrash out three classic Masher numbers. I don’t think the performance was hurt too
much by me being on a pain killer high – nor a total lack of serious rehearsal,
lol. Just goes to show that you can’t
keep The Mashers down.
I’ve spent a really interesting day in London as a guest of the British
Council as part of the Active
Citizenship scheme.
The range and number of projects that they have facilitated, Worldwide,
left me in awe. Our Jam
and Slam project in Rotherham attracted attention, and it was fun
having the opportunity to talk about it.
The British Council is non-Government Organisation and the Active
Citizenship Scheme enables and empowers people to discover themselves and seek
alternative perspectives to engage with the Community in which they live.
I would encourage everyone involved and perhaps not involved in the
delivery of Community Projects to follow this FREE course. Not only does
it offer to help with the provision of tools to engage with Communities and
develop personal projects; some lucky participants get the opportunity to
travel, all expenses paid, across the World to see projects in Countries
covered by the British Council.
Those wanting to find out more or register for the 2015/16 cycle need
to contact Kerry or Shafiq at VAR Email HERE
As a slight aside - this was my first trip to London in many years having been a frequent visitor during the sixties, seventies and eighties for Conferences and demonstrations. To see Policemen on the Streets waving sub-machine guns around was a little hairy, but demonstrates just how much the World has changed over the past thirty years or so. Not to be able to walk down Downing Street was also a bit of a shock - surely it's our democratic right to go and shout abuse at number ten and eleven!
The Secret History of Cake a
play, or should it be an entertainment written by Rotherham Play write Tair
Rafiq. I say entertainment as it was
really a series of sketches held together by the evil Cake Demon and had shades
of the sitting room entertainments so popular during the thirties and forties
amongst the artistic Community of the period, almost Noel Cowardess in it’s
presentation. Tair has one of the most
wonderfully bewildering creative writing brains I have come across, and knowing
something of his technique from his recent chat at ROAR talk The Secret History
of Cake was everything one would expected, madcap and “out of the box”.
As a showcase of Tair’s talent the Pantomime nature of the show allowed
for the demonstrate several different writing styles, from the contemporary to
the classic Shakespearian.
The actors making up the Company performed wonderfully and at times
making the whole story believable, I was certainly pulled into Tair’s World of
Cake – one that, as Rotherham folk are aware, Tair knows very well, having
added calories to many art buffets over the past few years. I only have to look at a slice for my Doctor
to go into a fit.
There were one or two problems with the Production though. Publicity for the show had been poor. From my experience Radio and Newspaper
interviews even supported by Social Media blitzing is not enough. Once again the lack of suitable Theatre
venue facilities were highlighted, staging in The Old Market Gallery and RCAT
had it’s problems not least with lighting and dare I say, back stage space,
especially for a piece requiring several costume changes.
That said, one has to admire the dedication that Tair has shown in
bringing the work to the stage, not least the funding which eventually came
from the Arts Council.
So congratulations and I’m sure that we are all looking forward to
more.
Live In Rotherham kicked off
in the strange surroundings of the Silverwood Miners Welfare Centre being
rocked by the amazing Whitesnake Tribute Band Lovehunter. Colin, John and co put on an amazing night of
rock. Our thanks to them. For our first outing the audience was
reasonable. Everything went really well
except for the ending of the evening when the fire alarm set itself off and
there was panic to discover where the switch was. It’s thought that there was a build up of smoke
from the dry ice machine in one of the dressing rooms, something we will have
to watch in the future.
I had an interesting Meeting with Ged from Gallery Town. As regular
readers will know I’ve not been a fan of Gallery Town as there seemed little
point to putting pretty pictures up around Town that had little context to the
location.
HOWEVER, Ged has convinced me that changes are afoot, big ones at that,
with many of the problems, communication with the arts Community being one of
them, addressed and improved.
RAE has agreed to help in the change where we can. Watch out for announcements in the weeks
ahead.
SLAMFEST News. Earlier this year we announced that the
Town Centre Slamfest event would take place on the 22nd August. Unfortunately, even taking into account the
generous in kind allowances made by RMBC we cannot attract the financial
support to mount the event.
Because of this, the main Stage for the event has been transferred to
The Cutlers. This enables us to keep
the event FREE to the people of
Rotherham.
RAE is now splitting it’s main Live
in Rotherham events between Silverwood Miners Welfare Centre at Dalton and
The Cutlers, this is in recognition of the huge investment that Chantry Brewery
has made in local music. The investment
includes the construction of huge canopy to cover the beer garden thus making
it possible to hold events during the summer months outside even if the weather
is wet.
For both SLAMFEST weekends, (4th
/ 5th July and 22nd August) there will be acoustic events
at The New York public House and a Stage for Youth at MyPlace.
If you would like to be involved please Email HERE. Youth Bands
should have an average age of no more than twenty four. Your application needs to be in by May 14th. Than you.
We’ve now run four Jam and Slam
sessions at MyPlace and each session has brought new people. We are offering young people the chance to
make their views known to us so that we can create an interesting and diverse
programme of activities.
If you click HERE you will
be taken to a basic survey where you can contribute to the discussion.
All the latest new can be gained from going to our Facebook page HERE
Our next Jam Slam is on Saturday
25th April at MyPlace, starting at 2:00pm at which our full
programme for young people will be launched.
We had a minor problem or two with the Web Sites, mainly with the flash
menu bars – these are all now working correctly.
We’re still averaging approx. one hits a day on average across the
sites with the Listings pages being
as popular as ever. The Word Pit performs well too with approx.
a hundred hits a week.
Some may have noticed some improvements to the flash slide shows for
the sponsors / supporters / partners and Live in Rotherham. They seem to load quicker and have pretty in
and outs.
I would remind you about the extensive Resource Page and of course for arty discussion or instant
publicity for your event why not try the Forum/ Shout Box page.
Our Blog, under Acoustic
Rotherham, is also performing well with 130 hits per week on average. Interestingly Rotherham appears to be big in
Eastern Europe. I wonder what they make
of the going ons.
I’m told by my spies that the Trad Session Festival in Sheffield over Easter was
another rousing success. This Festival
seems to grow in stature every year. Maintaining
this event is so important to the future of Folk Music in the area. Maybe next year I’ll be able to make it for a
day.
There are some good things to look forward to, not least The Wath Festival over the May Bank Holiday
period. Always a top Folk event. You can get all the details by going to the Listings page. Another Festival that caught my eye is the South Yorkshire Poetry Festival which
runs at the end of May in Sheffield, again the links are on the Listings page.
A mention to for the Imperial
Building. The first Sunday in the
Month Markets are proving to be very popular.
Well worth popping along and you might pick up a bargain or two. Brian and the Shops in the Imperial Building
should be congratulated for bringing the building to life and bringing much
needed attention to the services it has to offer.
Next up at the Imperial Building is Love Comes First Four on 25th April. Besides the usual entertainment they have
special guests I Shosholoza a Zambian Choir who will bring fantastic colour and
music to the Event. Congratulations to
the team for putting the event together.
Over at The Harlequin on the 18th April the sounds of Earthtales will be heard. Apparently this is the first of two Gigs they
will be performing there this year.
Good wishes to Phobia, Andy, Karl et al for a good one.
Live in Rotherham have two
events coming up in May at the Silverwood Miners Centre Dizzy Lizzy on the 2nd
May and Britain’s top tribute Band to Kiss on Friday 22nd May. You can get tickets using any of the links
on the Box Office Page.
You may want to put a note in your Diary that Bon Giovi will be returning to Rotherham by popular demand on the 6th
June at The Cutlers. Tickets are £9 in advance.
I’d like to congratulate two Bands making a stir in Europe. The Tom Kilner Band playing their brand of
rock blues with the fantastic vocals from Tom and Goat Leaf who have carved out
a niche for themselves by rocking Spain to a stand still. Both
Bands deserve every success that comes their way.
And that’s it for this one.
Whatever you are doing until the next Blog, support your local artists and musicians, shop local, have great fun
and KEEP IT LIVE.
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