Monday 19th May 09 Musicians Night featuring Disaster Radio New Zealand (1/2) by Michelle Dee

(1/2), (2/2).

Photograph Gallery - Gallery 1, Gallery 2.

Annie, budding stand-up comic from The Willows women's centre begins a night where it seems the strange and the stranger have come to congregate in the Adelphi. Annie has an old style ghetto blaster on which she is attempting to record her homework. Was she funny? Yes, but it wasn't easy to pin down why. A bizarre opening to a night that was to get steadily more fantastical. A dishevelled looking lady takes the stage and regales us with poetry about the wonder that is the New Deal scheme for the unemployed in particular IAP - Intensive Activity Period for the over 25's, I think.

They make you sit in a room full of numpties (they being the job centre advisors) and have you doing job search activities which includes filling in employment related hangman games or badly photocopied word searches with the word 'job' in them. They tell you, you have to find a placement where you will do a minimum of twenty hours a week. Sad thing is they don't have a list of placements for you to pursue. If you don't have much nouse, you can end up sitting in the room with the numpties for weeks on end achieving bugger all, apart from NOT figuring as an unemployed person on the government unemployment records for thirteen weeks.

These places really are the pits and make you feel worthless, thrown on the scrapheap of life and in some cases provoke feelings of suicide or self harm. I didn't catch the lady's name - she mayn't have offered it - but I commend her for her honesty and frank expression of her circumstances. thisisUll.com would very happily publish said poem if anyone knows the lady in question.

Moving on, we come to Sam Jones looking very slight - definitely a few pounds lighter than when I saw him last. He sings a side-splitting number about repeatedly committing the dreaded faux pas and involuntary euthanasia. Believe me it was one hilarious situation after another. Added to that, with his oddly comic operatic style and word play he was halfway to giving Brett and Jermaine a run for their money. There followed one about a broken in two house, a policeman, the psychiatrist and an unhinged door that had me and those around me roaring with laughter.

An entertaining, polished performance by the quirky singer songwriter that is Sam Jones. Next was a boy/girl duo - thanks to Blink, Tour Manager for Disaster Radio for taking a shot of the two in my absence. I was told they were very good particularly the vocal quality from the girl … apologies to them - I'll try to catch all of your performance next time.

It's about half ten I think and it's time for Disaster Radio: a one man synth act from Wellington, New Zealand. The technologically-minded Disaster Radio's bespectacled Luke creates his wicked, sonic creations on an array of electronic doo hickeys, namely an MPC1000, a Microkorg, a Novation X-Station and a vocoder to morph vocals. He plays and I dance with my new Kiwi friends. He gyrates behind the gadgets twisting and turning this way and that, creating layer upon layer of digitized sounds. My first thought is Axel F swiftly followed by Jarre and Vangelis in a midnight rendezvous on speed at a 24 hour garage.

Continued .... Next Page (2/2)

Photograph Gallery - Gallery 1, Gallery 2.

Photographs Copyright © 2009  Michelle Dee

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