this weekend. great line-up, tonight looks particularly good. i’ve seen stan tracey several times, my fave memory is of him pounding a rather tired upright in leeds cathedral at the world duke ellington conference. stan’s probably the british jazz legend - if you’ve seen the BBC documentaries you’ll know all about the ronnie scott’s house pianist who would amaze visiting jazz superstars from the US. superb band including guy clarke (surely the UKs most talented jazz trumpeter) and stan’s son, guy clarke, kicking up a storm on drums. visit the website

i’d be there, but… we’re setting off for a week’s break. james (james@electricangel.co.uk) will be returning from a weekend throwing himself down mountains in scotland and, any broken limbs permitting, popping into the studio at various points so leave a phone message or send an email if you need us.

this is the issue that tom worked on - an alternative guide to scarborough fills the centrespread. text by tom. photos by james. original idea by nick taylor and andy sharpe. i made the coffee.

you’ll be able to download it from www.scarboroughsfuture.org.uk when the site is updated.

bit of a bowie vibe in the studio at the moment…

lou reed’s transformer is chaotic, pastoral, dumb, smart, sexy and innocent all at once. but it’s always near the top of those ‘best album in the whole world ever’ lists so you don’t really need us to recommend it. the bowie link - he produced it and ’spider’ mick ronson did the arrangements. there was no stopping these guys in 1973.

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aphex twin’s mixes for cash is something james brought in. and boy is it good. we particularly like his take on philip glass’s heroes symphony, based on bowie’s album of the same name and featuring some wonderfully stretch-out histrionic vocals.

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and finally an album by the man himself. i seem to remember this got a bit of a slagging back in ‘96 and as a result earned bowie an ‘embarrassing grandad trying to hang out with the kids’ reputation. can’t see why, it now sounds twice as good as most of the drum n bass stuff that was its contemporary. he’s the man.

Often when i come into the office Adrian will have left a copy of the finished print of a recent job or a new book, so to walk in and see a t-shirt came as a surprise. A really good one!

After working on the poster’s and program for the Acoustic Gathering, Steve said he’d give us each a t-shirt, and here it is, beautifully modelled by a headless me. I must admit, t-shirts with large logo’s aren’t really my thing but I really like the subtlety of the metallic text with this one. And it fits good too! Getting this t-shirt was also a milestone for me as it’s the first design I’ve worked on that has been used on a t-shirt. Hopefully there’ll be more jobs that involve t-shirts because , as anyone who knows me can see regularly, all my favourite ones have holes in and are faded beyond recognition. Isn’t that always the way with your favourite clothes?

…starts tonight. called ‘growing creativity’ it’s a special evening to launch the schools creative diplomas with guest speaker kate jones from gillies-jones glass of rosedale abbey on the north yorkshire moors. free food n drink too! 6pm at the blue lounge, st nicholas street, scarborough.

the schools creative diplomas thing is exciting - another big key piece in the jigsaw of a vibrant creativity-driven north yorkshire coast. we’re madly busy at ea hq, plus tom [who did the centrespread in this month’s renaissance news which we haven’t even found time to blog yet…] has just dropped in with ‘thank you’ raspberry and organic chocolate muffins. mmmm. which means we’re currently troughing and will blog more about the creative diplomas at a later date…

acoustic gathering II is this sunday in the wonderful peasholm park. the island’s faux japanese pagoda has recently been rebuilt and when steve at mojo’s music cafe (who’s the dude behind acoustic gathering) asked us to design the posters again he suggested using that as an image. a waterfall runs down in front of the pagoda so we placed the names of the artists as if tumbling down the rocks.

last years acoustic gathering was superb - a chilled family-friendly atmosphere, fantastic setting (the musicians perform from a floating ‘bandstand’ on the lake - that’s the white silhouette at the bottom of the poster) and great weather. so fingers crossed for sun this sunday. do yourself a favour - pack a picnic and end the summer in style.

full line-up here, more about peasholm park here.

branding, leaflet and banners for a university of bradford led project.

scarborough has been added to google maps satellite images (for all i know it’s been there for ages). see our hq (well almost, google is out by about 12 doors) by clicking here. ok, not quite a seafront property, although we are currently making enquiries about a possible studio that’s almost on the beach itself…

i assumed they were recent images and have been trying to guess when they were taken, the number of people on the beach and traffic is a good way of working it out, but the give-away is the chairs and people in the spa suncourt. they must have been there for a concert which puts it at around 11am in summer but before the school holidays due to the beach being so quiet. but then i noticed something really odd - the south bay pool is still there! the landscape site of the holbeck landslide is also on the pic, so that puts it sometimes between 1993 and 2003. perhaps the key is to find out when the esplanade gardens opposite the ambassador hotel were landscaped as you can see the work in progress on the photo. will have to ask when we next meet to discuss the south cliff map/sign we’re producing with the parks & gardens dept and scarborough civic society…

some organisations issue annual reports because they have to. some use them as an opportunity to celebrate the last 12 months and share a few stories. the latter are always more enjoyable to read.

i remember a friend once observing how most contemporary jobs lack a ‘harvest festival’ moment - the point in the year when you reflect on the past 12 months of work and celebrate the result of your labour. of course, churches still have harvest festivals but the focus has remained on agriculture meaning there is no celebration for the office worker, the shop assistant, the council employee, the graphic designer… as a result there’s little sense of spirituality - however you choose to define that - in many working lives. it can become an endless working grind.

so there’s a good case for annual reports and for them to come accompanied by a big party, a day off work and a celebration in the church, the mosque, the temple or wherever you choose to celebrate life. and then maybe we’d all feel a bit better about our work.

images are of artworks annual report from last year - the first using the new visual identity. we’re just about to complete this year’s. has 12 months gone that fast? we need a party…

we took the opportunity of the heritage open days to get a look behind-the-scenes at scarborough’s futurist theatre. in truth, there’s not actually that much behind the scenes and that’s one of the problems the theatre has - it has an auditorium large enough to attract big acts [it seats 2000+ which, i think, makes it the biggest cinema auditorium in britain] but it doesn’t have the capability to host some of the big touring shows any more. that’s because it was originally built just as a cinema in the 20’s and adapted to house theatre productions only in 1958. all the sets have to go in through the front lobby and a rather small door onto the stage. there are no wings to speak of and the dressing rooms belong to another age. [interesting factlet: the bachelors, too busy to get to a proper recording studio, recorded their album ‘under and over’ in the futurist’s dressing rooms in 1967.]

i took photos [on camerafone so a bit grainy] of the signage we encountered on the tour which charts the history of the building, from 1921 to present [click on the little pics to see a bigger version]:

the futurist’s future is scarborough’s hot topic. the building is owned by the council and although the current programming is bucking the trend after decades of neglect by previous owners, the building is in need of a big rethink. a decision will be made shortly as to its future - the council have promised that no matter what there will be a theatre on the site, but current research suggests that refurbishment will cost nearly twice as much as demolition and a new building. although it would be a shame for this grand old lady to be flattened, the auditorium itself isn’t architecturally anything that special other than that it’s big and old. if a rebuild gave scarborough opportunity to host bigger and better shows, then it’s a persuasive argument.

the frontage however is a different matter. a rather hideous false front was added in the 1960s[?] hiding the glorious 1920s marble frontage. we got a peek behind the frontage and it looks it good shape, minus the cherubs which got lopped off in order to fit the facade. scarborough can perhaps learn two things from its neighboring cities of leeds and bradford: one is not to let iconic buildings rot like bradford has with the odeon, and two is to keep your beautiful building frontages and build modern buildings onto the back of them like leeds has done. [dull electric angel factlet: i drew the illustrations for what is regarded as the textbook on how to preserve and re-use building facades.]

someone on the tour was muttering about getting the building listed. best get a move on…

[pics below: the original frontage behind the facade; peek into the shadows and see a relic of the un-pc seaside shows of the past - a black & white minstrel; family shot in a dressing room mirror - smell the greasepaint!]