“… a rap artist and a street poet using words and rhythms as a vehicle to express anarchic musings and unstructured passions to challenge the listener to challenge their own thoughts. a recent review described the poet as being “an angry chav crossed with a modern day Shakespeare” who rather than reads his poetry explodes his words directly (sometimes literally) into his audiences faces”

click here to hear james in action: www.myspace.com/theedgerhiphop

8.30pm. drinks on the house.

thursday evening, as a dreary, misting of dank weather engulfs the town, a small gathering of surfers, designers, poets and artists got together for the second of our ‘tiny poetry’ gigs at the electric angel gallery – tonight was the turn of landscape poet mark dickinson.

mark’s work is intrinsically linked with his surroundings, his time spent in the natural environment, be it fishing or surfing. he says more important to his poetry than these activities is walking. his great knowledge of natural environments, geology, history and words create orchestral poems that build and ebb and flow as if a part of the landscape themselves. mark read from a decades worth of work ending with the epic trods which follow.

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our next poet, john clarke, attended (who you can see next thursday, 26th august), along with local filmmaker ollie banks, who works with mark on many surfing related projects, and james koppert, another of our poets who’ll be performing on thursday 9th september.

two weeks in to our tiny poetry gigs and they seem to be going down very well indeed.

what’s the point of having space if you’re not going to use it? ok, so we only have a tiny little space but let’s use it anyway. so as seen as our current exhibition is all on the walls (literally – see here) we thought it would be fun to use the gallery floorspace for some poetry gigs while it was on. there’s the loose theme of the sea/surf/coast to tie in with the exhibition, but we’ve told the poets ‘do what you want’ and we can’t wait to hear what they do.

for full details download a flyer here.

coastival sees the welcome return of scarborough’s festival of light [which i think was our first design work for create]. we’ll be converging on the rotunda museum for a lantern parade on friday 13 february and will certainly be checking out other light goodies such as video installations in the south bay underground car park and in the crypt of saint martin’s church on south cliff. there’s also something called the chroma van which promises ‘a unique exploration of colour perception in the comfort of a remodelled caravan’. how can you resist that?

i’ve also been invited by poet kate evans to apply typographic interpretations to a series of haiku’s as part the peasholm magic lantern. the lantern will take place in the faux-oriental pagoda on the island of peasholm park and features haiku’s by kate, photographs by mark vesey and an original composition by amaya huntley. kate showed me the first draft of the complete sequence yesterday – i think it’s going to be something rather special. the music is wonderful and the whole experience reminds me very much of some of the more immersive alt.worship experiments we instigated in bradford.

the images above are from felt – our little book of treatments of poetry from 2 years ago. this haiku makes an appearance as part of the magic lantern – you’ll have to come experience it for yourself to see the others.

back as part of digital scarborough 06 we organised a creative coast event – the 5 minute pitch. we invited a panel of investors and creatives to hear three local creatives pitch an idea, dragon’s den style.

the ‘pitchers’ received training on speaking in public from lizzie of raised eyebrow and duncan from business link. ollie green was the youngest of the participants – still in school at the time – and impressed the panel with his idea for an internet radio station showcasing local music and his enthusiastic & slick presentation.

forward-wind 2.5 years and olllie is now at music college and has just released his first album ‘hold on’. it’s a free download so you can enjoy it too: http://ollie.bandcamp.mu/

the tracks are as infectious as ollie’s enthusiasm was back at the sjt in ’06.
if you’re local, look out for an interview with ollie in next month’s issue of scarborough’s future.

miles davis, olympia 1973
miles in his post-bitches brew stop-start chuggery. ‘jazz fans’ often hate this stuff. but if you like it there are lots of live performances from this period available on the net.

charles earland, leaving this planet
tight group with stellar soloists often heading for the stratosphere.

tony williams lifetime, emergency!
where jazz really meets rock. frantic, distorted, kinda scary.

fela ransome-kuti and africa ’70 with ginger baker
funk jive goodness.

a quick mention…

for the punch and judy puppets exhibition opening tomorrow at scarborough art gallery. maybe see some of you at the launch this afternoon?

for seafest for live music, boats, seafood, fireworks, real ale and other good things in and around the harbour this weekend. it’s free. [as is the wifi]

for rachel howfield‘s installation in the coffee lounge at scarborough art gallery which opens on saturday.

and for the bbc proms which begin tonight with a blast of brass and there’s plenty more of that in this year’s programme. i’ll offer my pick of the proms next week [like you're the least bit interested...]

have a good weekend y’all.

saying you like billy joel always feels like a confession due to the success of uptown girl. only intended to be a lighthearted pastiche of frankie valli it nonetheless marked joel as a writer of pop fluff and with this second bloom of chart success it seemed the rayban-wearing model-dating rock star no longer felt comfortable writing songs about the ordinary working man [1989's the downeaster alexa the notable exemption]. i always assume songwriters have a few years worth of experiences filed away to turn into songs and maybe joel had just moved beyond his point of reference. besides, he’d almost already written the obligatory ‘i had it big and hit the skids’ song [i've loved these days] albeit as a requiem for america, so in some ways there wasn’t much left for him to say. if you call a halt to your billy joel listening with the 1982 album the nylon curtain, the songwriter that emerges couldn’t be less uptown. he’s the angry young man whose songs are written around the everyday stories of the blue collar workers of america.

joel was fairly self-depreciating on the south bank show and whilst the ordinary-man-sat-in-his-garage location was rather convoluted, i thought his mention that he just writes songs the way he speaks rang true – he’s never tried to be a poet or even be clever, he just sang what he knew. to his credit, joel’s never really played the working class card whilst still being wealthy beyond his dreams [hello bruce springsteen], rather he played the rock star when he thought that’s what people wanted him to be. i thought his admission that his drinking is just what working class people do rather than the result of dealing with too much fame and money seemed authentic. and whilst the contrast between the past-it performer and his heavy-lidded younger self jarred a little, you still got the sense of that frustrated and disillusioned man who is righteously angry at the way his country ignores the struggles of people who actually do most of the work. the concert footage from the 70′s showed that anger bubbling away so much so that he sometimes can’t help but bitterly spit out even the lines of the love songs that made his fortune.

one gripe though – in the programme southwold was quoted as the first english seaside resort. tut-tut, mr meades. that accolade does belongs to somewhere beginning with an ‘s’, but it’s definitely in the north of england.