Guillaume the Weird Human Jukebox and other delights

Guillaume the Weird Human Jukebox and other delights
Originally uploaded by MonkeyGone2.

This picture shows one of the many wonderful sights (no sound alas) from the final evening of Cinema Nova's 10th anniversary celebrations. Guillaume, an engaging young man who I had previously known only as a bartender at Recyclart, entertains the crowd with his 'Weird Human Jukebox' show. Customers choose songs from a list of 166 tracks that Guillaume has memorized by tapping the song number into a calculator and paying the requisite 20 cents (10 cents for Beatles songs) through the slot of the barricaded ticket booth. He then plays whatever they have paid for, from Bert Jansch to Jacques Brel, Johnny Hallyday to Sun Ra (I plumped for 'Space is the Place', performed with a gusto not heard since Edward Barton years).
Inside the cinema itself, the evening began with Pierre Bastien and his Mecanium (a mechanical orchestra made of lego), soundtracking a movie by Dutchman Karel Doing. After a short break and a beer, we returned for Spaceheads (Andy Diagram and Dick Harrison, former cohorts in the ten-years-ahead-of-their-time Manchester alt pop combo, Dislocation Dance), with visuals from London-based filmmaker Greg Pope.
Spaceheads, who play a kind of dirty jazz electrobeat that occasionally touches on John Hassell or Miles Davis (circa Tutu) territory, but always remains defiantly itself, distinctly other, battled British train chaos to get to the show. And we were glad they did. As Andy Diagram mixed live trumpet loops (including basslines created by tuning his instrument down two octaves) with Dick Harrison's upright yet fluid and very funky drumming, Greg Pope took a drill to the celluloid spooling through the projector, to create a series of scratches on the film stock that, together with the powerful music, made for a very psychedelic and fittingly experimental, yet accessible, end to a fine evening.

Jimmy, donnez-moi les Gimmix!

In Mancheter a couple of weeks ago, you could barely walk 10 metres without seeing an ad for Artois Peeterman, a new addition to 'La Famille Artois'. As a Belgian resident I was both surprised an amused to see these ads. Surprised because I had never heard of Artois Peeterman before. Amused because the citizens of Leuven, the lovely city from which Stella Artois and its new offspring hail, are Dutch-speakers, not francophones. Brits ignorant of Belgium's language divide will doubtless sup up this marketing froth. In Flanders, questions would be asked in Parliament.
The food and drink industry in the UK loves a gimmick. This rule holds true all the way from Heston Blumenthal down to crisp manufacturers searching for one more novel flavour to tempt jaded snack munchers. In the booze sector, new variants of successful brands are the norm, from bottles of Fosters lager 'with a twist', to Stella's new children (Artois Bock is the other addition to the family, as this press release explains: http://www.artoischampionships.com/1/home/default.asp). It's all about market positioning: Stella, one of the three bog standard lagers sold everywhere here in Belgium (the others are Maes and Jupiler), used to be promoted as being 'Reassuringly Expensive' in adverts in the UK. Makes you wonder whether how much depth there is to the new-found interest in slow food, organic farming, etc? Just another gimmick being sold to people with no real knowledge of how food and drink is actually produced?

What Freddy did next?

IMG_3572
Originally uploaded by MonkeyGone2.

Property developer Frederic Nicolay is one of the key shapers of Brussels nightlife. After revamping Place St. Gery in the city centre from 1996 onwards with bars such as Zebra and le Roi des Belges, more recently he has tuned his attention to Place Flagey in Ixelles, opening the hugely successful Cafe Belga beneath the renovated former RTBF radio studio dubbed Flagey that is now a concert venue, cultural centre and recording studio.
So, where's next? Well, if I were Mr. Nicolay, I would take a short drive up the hill from Place Flagey toward the European Parliament. Place du Luxembourg, the square outside the Parliament building, is always rammed on a Friday evening when the sun is out. But between Flagey and Luxembourg there is another, somewhat forgotten square, with great potential as a nightlife destination: Place Raymond Blyckaerts.
Slightly set back from Rue Trone, the rather rundown square is well connected to the Brussels bus network, close to the Elsenhof cultural centre, large enough to hold plenty of people and has two cool quirks: a great monument to the 19th century Belgian Romantic painter, Antoine Wiertz, and a now empty 1970s Danish Tavern, Andersen.
The kitsch-cool exterior of the tavern is still intact. With a little renovation and a similar mix of hip music and events as Cafe Central in St. Gery, Andersen could soon be a destination for those travelling between/escaping from the nearby haunts of Place Flagey and Place du Luxembourg.
Once Andersen is established as an anchor, other hip bars, restaurants, etc will spring up in its wake, turning this currently sleepy square into a buzzing hive of activity. That's the theory at least. To misquote Nick Drake, time, time will tell us.

Wrong on so many levels

Wandering into my local Delhaize Shop'n'Go minimart the other day, my eye was taken by an item in the chiller cabinet that simply beggared belief. Called 'fruit of the day', it consisted of two kiwi fruits sliced up and packaged in a large plastic tray with a plastic film lid. The retail price was Euro 2.59. Two kiwis 'packaged' in their regular furry skin cost Euro 0.64 in the same store. So, a 400% mark-up and totally superfluous packaging. Well done Delhaize!