Inside the vortex

Back home after 10 days inside the vortex of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
I was principally there to support Brussels's fledging 121 Theatre (performing the UK premiere [in English] of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's wonderful play, The Visitor, a piece I have now seen seven times, and whose luminous text shines even brighter with every viewing).
Though only written in 1993, The Visitor has already become part of the Francophone theatrical canon and, if there is any justice in the world, will become similarly feted among English-speaking theatre-goers over the next few years.
In total I took in more than 20 shows in total at this year's Fringe, seen as follows:
August 19 - Art
August 20 - Puppet Up; Spank! (You love it!)
August 21 - True West; Abigail's Party; Wil Anderson
August 22 - The Pearl; Did you used to be RD Laing?; Rich Hall
August 23 - The resistible rise of Arturo Ui; Reginald D. Hunter
August 24 - The Dumb Waiter
August 25 - Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Qu'ran; Get Carter
August 26 - Raith Rovers vs. Cowdenbeath; Killing Time; Late Night Live
August 27 - Charlotte the Destroyer; The Deluge; Knots
August 28 - Midnight Cowboy; Harry Benson: Fifty years of photojournalism.
Aside from The Visitor, two great pieces of physical theatre - Knots and The Pearl - stood out from the crowd. Making up the numbers: The final scene of True West (where did they find that mother?) and all but the opening of The resistible rise of Arturo Ui.
Comedy highlights were many and various: Puppet Up (adult improv antics from Jim Henson's sons and co.); a short but deliciously sweet guest set from Tim Minchin at Spank!; the tireless and hilarious Wil Anderson; seeing a legless Phil Nichol perform onstage at Late Night Live at the Underbelly just hours after winning the if.commedies award (the new name for the Perrier).
Other highs: The Jazz Bar; Haggis pakoras - and lows: the weather; seeing the hard work and good work of many performers rewarded with mediocre audiences.
Walking to the train station this morning, the flyerers and street performers had melted away, leaving only memories and newspaper cuttings as proof that the whole thing (which, when you are inside the vortex, feels like the only thing) had ever happened.

Picking bones

In preparation for 10 days at the Edinburgh Festival, I've spent the last seven being a serious culture vulture.
It all started last Friday with a trip down to Recyclart, the alternative club located in Bruxelles Chapelle railway station (which is still used, if irregularly, during the day). Every July and August Recyclart stages a series of gigs and club nights dubbed Fridays Holidays. Having missed 'Duran Duran Duran' the previous week (you'd have to go some to live up to a name that good), the August 11/12 line-up began with two local bands playing outside (the dreadful improv of I H8 Camera followed by the slightly better Creature with the Atom Brain (at their best operating somewhere in the hinterland between The Cramps and Sepultura, at their worst, a bunch of musos with a Shockabilly album and an effects rack).
Things started to hot up at midnight when we moved indoors to the station concours ) for the 'Kill all Hippies' club night. The Franco-Belge no-wave/disco primitif of Lawrence Wasser was pretty rewarding and the image is great - spangly tops, jump suits and face masks, topped off with bunny rabbit ears and tails. The masks are especially cool - covering just the cheeks and nose they have the effect of making the band look like identical mutant triplets.
The Ludes are a big noise with those looking for another Libertines or Arctic Monkeys. They're not as good as either, but they're still good. Despite some shocking sound problems, they still got the audience rocking to tracks such as 'Mr. Benson' and 'Dog don't bark'.
The Longcut were the final band but I didn't stick around. The records sound like Northside playing New Order. (I caught a bit of their soundcheck while avoiding I H8 Camera and, fittingly, they were playing the intro to Joy Division's 'Transmission').

Sunday and Monday evening were spent at the Markt Rock festival in Leuven, a three-day event centered on the famous university city's Oude Markt (old market), a beautiful 17th century square. The Sunday line-up included Postman (average funky hip-hop from Holland), Bjorn Again (a 90s joke that doesn't know when it isn't funny anymore) and Bloodhound Gang (surpisingly they have more than two songs. Even more surpisingly, they were pretty good, even coming up with a series of amusing captions (in Dutch) about Flemish culture). Top of the bill were Iggy and The Stooges, although, because everyone else had run late, I only caught the first four numbers before having to catch my train. What a quartet though - 'Loose', 'Down in the City', '1969' and 'I wanna be your dog'. Great stuff.
Heavy, heavy rain on Monday meant a delayed start from Brussels (would you get soaked for the Stereo MC's [sic]?) Arrived just in time to see Daan, a falsetto-friendly disco/rock/electronica hybrid fronted by Flanders's answer to Jarvis Cocker. I had never heard of, let alone heard him/them before, but was quite impressed.
Top of the bill though, was that most theatrical of pop groups, the Pet Shop Boys. With an excellent new album to showcase, and the magical setting of the Oude Markt (Neil Tennant called it 'The most beautiful place we have ever played'), the Boys and their backing singers and (brilliant) dancers put on an excellent show.
The stage set and lighting were brilliant - the main part of the set was a series of foldable interconnected wooden frames with scrims for projecting images onto. A simple yet ingenious construction that allowed all manner of creative possibilities, without slowing the pace. The set and lighting were complemented by some neat costume changes - Tennant began 'Psychological' dressed as a Victorian undertaker and ended up (for 'The Sodom and Gomorrah Show', 'Integral' and 'Go West') as a Five-Star General. Lowe, of course, wore the same flourescent green (Walter Van Beirendonck?) hoodie throughout and didn't utter a word.
'It's a sin', 'Opportunities', 'Rent', 'Shopping', 'Left to my own devices': Most of the Boys' biggest and best hits were given an airing. By the end, an initially lukewarm crowd was clapping in unison and hollering for more.

My week of culture was rounded off by a trip to the movie house to see Michael Mann's 'Miami Vice'. I never liked the TV series, so, unlike many people it seems, I was glad the film didn't try and replicate that tedious formula. It's a good, not great, action movie was some high-quality cinematography and a decent plot. Jamie Foxx is good and I really liked the character played by Gong Li (a nice update on the gangster's moll archetype). I think Colin Farrell is crap and his mullet and 'tache combo made him look like a mechanic from Pittsburgh who wore his Armani suit like it was a pair of beige chinos and a polo shirt. Not cool. Yet, despite him and some confusing editing, I still enjoyed the film.

The Testimonial Game

Received an email earlier this week about a forthcoming concert in Belgium by The Celtic Tenors (and Deidre Shannon). Now, this type of Opera Light isn't really my cup of tea, but I was grabbed by the testimonials, reproduced below:

“The best singing group I have ever heard. Their version of “Danny Boy” quite honestly brought tears to my eyes”. Bill Clinton. Dublin Castle 2002.

“Bono arranged for them to sing at my birthday party. It was a wonderful surprise. Nane and I absolutely loved them”. Kofi Annan. Dublin, December 2004.

Very smart marketing. I particularly love Kofi's testimonial, with its references to his wife and to Bono. The only thing that could top this would be an endorsement from the Dalai Lama that mentions Nelson Mandela, Sting, Bob Geldof and Aung San Suu Kyi (!)

Terry and Gerry

The debate over who should replace David Beckham as captain of the England football team - 'John Terry or Steven Gerrard?' Answer: Gary Neville - was resolved today in favour of the Chelsea FC skipper.
All that talk of Terry and Gerrard brought to mind the long forgotten 80s indie band, Terry and Gerry, Peel session stalwarts when I first started listening to the man. Trying to find some of their music online to refresh a very vague memory of what they sounded like has proved rather harder than expected: A broken link to their own site, nothing on iTunes, nothing on the file sharing networks, nothing on Last.fm (where even a group as obscure as Pink Industry is represented). This description makes it sound like they were crap anyway. Any evidence to the contrary is admissible.

All this blogging has got to stop

What on earth is this? 'Christmas Brownies land in Iraq'? Why is the Associated Press, one of the world's most successful news agencies, trying - rather ineptly - to become part of the blogosphere? A series of lame diary entries with no 'comments' function is not a blog, but why is it necessary for an organization such as AP to even consider 'blogging' anyway? This kind of sub-[insert name of any 24-hour rolling TV news channel] fare is both boring and counter-productive. A good news report needs no dressing up in the (soon to be un)fashionable clothes of the blog.
While I'm ranting about blogs and the mass media, I also have to say things were better when online newspapers didn't give anyone an instant right of reply to their op-ed pieces. If I want to read the ravings of (often semi-literate) cranks and ideologues I will go and look for them on their own web pages. If I want to read articles selected as being of interest by trained journalists I will do that too. Oil and water still don't mix. The main effect of the blogging/journalism crossover (apart from degrading English spelling and grammar still further) seems to be to turn print journalism into an extension of the 'news for news's sake', '24-hours-and-nothing-to-fill' world of rolling TV news. Sometimes less really is more.

Green Apollo and carbon pay t'ing

Sir Martin Rees, president of Britain's leading scientific institute, the Royal Society, has called for a research drive into green energy "to rival the Apollo moon project". Prof Rees makes the valid point that a single-minded, well-funded international research effort is necessary to develop green energy sources to the point where they can replace fossil fuels. Rees also refers, with some justification, to "a worrisome lack of determination" among G8 leaders to push the development of alternative energy sources. At the World Bionergy conference and expo I attended in Jonkoeping, Sweden at the end of May, there was huge interest in taking biomass-based energy (both solid and liquid fuels) mainstream. But in the countries where bioenergy has made the greatest strides (Brazil and Sweden), government intervention has played a key role. Interestingly, China's leaders are starting to wake up to the environmental problems caused by the country's industrial growth and have included targets for bioenergy generation in the latest (11th) five-year plan.
Prof Rees proposes a carbon tax on companies to fund his 'Green Apollo' programme. Carbon taxation of one form or another is certainly in the minds of policy-makers, and at the individual, as well as the corporate level: The UK's environment minister, David Miliband recently floated the idea that all British citizens could be given an annual carbon allowance and a swipe card to monitor usage. Such a scheme would be a hard sell politically, and also difficult to enforce, particularly if not replicated by governments elsewhere. If it went ahead Miliband's scheme would also pave the way for carbon trading among individuals, a strange thing to ponder.

Faces against war

Jordanian Flickr-ite Jad Madi invites you to join his online photo petition, Faces against war.

Town poets

Reading the website of Flemish newspaper 'De Morgen' earlier this week I learned about a Dutch-language phenomenon of which I was previously ignorant: town poets.
According to the report, the town of Diest has just appointed the first female town poet ('stadsdichter') in Flanders. Under the terms of her two-year contract, Ina Stabergh has to write between six and 12 poems per year about both daily life in the town and specific neighbourhoods.
According to this listing, Diest joins 25 other towns and cities in Belgium and the Netherlands in having its own poet. An annual stipend of EUR 5,000 is paid to the laureates of Groningen, Antwerp and Assen. Roermond's town poet picks up three K.
Although noteworthy, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to discover the existence of these town poets. As I've mentioned before, Belgium is big on arts funding (as is its northern neighbour). Poetry also seems to be held in high esteem judging both by the number of times I have been exposed to the work of Flemish surrealist Paul Van Ostaijen in my Dutch classes and by the fact that local Dutch-language community centre, the Elsenhof, organizes frequent poetry evenings (I even took part in one myself a couple of years ago, reading RS Thomas as part of a Welsh poetry theme).