And it's festival lift-off! Music, art & drama everywhere!

Frome Festival has begun its ten-day tour of the heart&minds of Frome, spreading dramatically and musically from the Merlin theatre to Marston Park where the lakeside band-stage is proving sensationally popular.  Talented singer/songwriter Leander Morales opened their festival bookings with a great set presented on Folk'n Funk Friday, and Saturday gave us a superb double bill: Al O'Kane with Andy Hill (above - you can hear them on 'Soundcheck' here) followed by Back of the Bus: covers that sizzle, from (to quote)"a 7-piece punk pop band, fronted by four female vocalists and backed up with a throbbing badass rhythm section, covering punk and pop classics with their own memorable twist." And their copy doesn't lie: a dynamic set that gave gothic drama to White Wedding as the sky darkened over the moonlit water. 

We Feed the World is an amazing photographic exhibition at The Station, the new complex opposite Frome's train station, with an overflow at the beautiful gallery in Whittox Lane. Both these venues are filled with photographs of small-scale farmers and fishers around the world, whose practices contribute to protecting, restoring, and rewilding as well as reviving and promoting traditional practices. Beside the striking photographs, explanatory wall posters clarify the grim facts about the way industrial practices degrade the soil and create wastelands for future generations. You can read more in the Frome Times - and definitely visit the venues. Here's Zuzana Pastorkova in Slovakia, posing for photographer Tina Hillier, who cultivates herbs, fruit trees, and 40 different kinds of vegetables on a small-holding that was her grandmother's, and claims her success is 'about being in tune with nature'. 

The Frome Festival Art Trail will feature in next week's bulletin, but here's an exhibition which is touring Somerset : Inch by IN:CH aims to bring art out of galleries and into public spaces. Frome Museum basement doesn't really fall into that category but it's interesting to get to see that area, especially filled with suitcases of curious work. I especially liked Fiona Campbell's decrepitised umbrellas as 'hope of a tree' and the glimmering lights in Philippa Edwards case, representing the bioluminescence of nature.

The big exhibition at Rook Lane is a tour through the 20 years of the life of Frome Festival. Succinctly and elegantly curated by Sue Bucklow, who must have had a dumper-truckful of events and memories to wade through, this shows the story-arc of the festival that came to grow from a dream in the mind of Martin Bax to one of the most highly rated festivals in the country, known for its enterprising diversity and egalitarian events. I was on the smug side of pleased to find that several events which were important to me personally have found their way onto the display screens. Especially pleasing is this reminder of the 2015 contribution from Nevertheless Productions: Midsummer Dusk was a site-specific theatre piece performed at the Dissenters Cemetery and probably my favourite production ever. (If this chimes fondly for you, too, you can check it out in this blog: type the title in the little box offered top left and you will be transported to13 July 2015 and offered images & a full review.)  

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's 2008 popular play about squabbling parents, translated from the french by Christopher Hampton, was the festival choice of Frome Drama, who managed to stay within regulations at the Assembly Rooms by limiting audience seating. The storyline - two parental couples meeting to agree how to ameliorate their offspring's quarrel and instead become fractious themselves - should be easy to make hilarious but actually the steep escalation of cultural & financial oneupmanship makes it hard to avoid over-egging, but the team did well, achieving a lot of laughs throughout. I particularly liked the brief boxing-ring fantasy that preceded the demure actual meeting of the two couples. 

And in other dramatic altercations: Flash-mob opera invaded the precinct on market day to the delight of a gathering crowd who heard a medley of arias wrought into amorous and acrimonious encounters by four incredibly talented performers. My comprehension of the lyrics was limited to andiamo so there's little else I can tell you, but it was magnificent - big thanks to the Cooper Hall foundation.

Finally, in this back-to-front, slightly late, report: last week also saw the launch of a new book from  Corinna Sargood, artist extraordinaire and Angela Carter's favourite illustrator: The Village in the Valley arrived at an elegant soiree in the garden of Rook Lane chapel on Wednesday. Corinna and her partner Richard have visited this Mexican village every year, since they discovered it over 20 years ago; her lino-cuts inspired by that first visit illustrate the second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, and now the village has its own story, along with other travels. It's published by Prospect Books, an elite London establishment which clearly has no notion of Frome culture as her publisher Catheryn brought only 2 boxes of books for this launch and was surprised that all copies were bought before many of the guests had even arrived. But the night was balmy and the bar was open, so we partied on. 

In contrast to last week's rather quieter report, this bulletin seems to be obsessed mainly with music - live, local, and exhilarating!
Roots Sessions at the Grain Bar on Wednesday featured solo singer-songwriter Leander Morales, and six-piece band The Hoodoos, with both acts enjoying appreciation for their intimate audience interaction as well as splendid performances. Hoodoos do a particular good version of the 1973 hit 'Long Train Running' which really suits their hi-energy impact style.

Friday evening brought another exciting double-bill to a crowded house, this time the Bennett Centre where Chesterblade Hills featured The Pagan Gospel Groove Machine aka Ed Green's band, followed by Jaz Delorean with cabaret-style songs on piano. The 4-piece band has a mellow mood reminiscent (for me) of the seventies: I loved the repeated chant ... at the end of the night, the moon fades away and the sun comes up in the sky..... In contrast, Jaz is best known as front man for Tankus the Henge, which is a popular festival dance band.

Another mood change on Saturday for the Frome Punk Festival, an eight-hour fiesta, for anyone staying throughout, of punk bands classic and contemporary on the main stage of the Cheese and Grain.

The main attraction for me was The Raggedy Men who always deliver a brilliant performance and get people up and dancing too. Also very good, though earplugs recommended, were The Lonely Goats who perform their own songs -you can check out Elvis on Mars here.

Saturday's stirring music continued till late not only in Frome but also down the road in Bruton where mutant new wave / post-punk trio Invisible Eyes were featured guest at the Bruton Castle open mic night - you can listen to a sample here.
Sunday also provided an afternoon of excellent live music at The Three Swans as Paul Kirtley's acoustic club provided its usual mix of folk, rock & jazzy pop, though sadly there are no images for this as your reporter had to default due to another winter ailment.. sigh.

Begin

 "Wishing you all year of passion, excitement, narrow escapes and a few victories" ~ from Alex Boyt, that for me was the cream of the crop of generic new year wishes on facebook.

Like 600 others in Frome, I launched my 2015 launched in retro style, dancing & chorusing along with Sergeant Pepper's Only Dartboard Band at the Cheese & Grain with their finale performance ~ the final foot of their last leg show-tour. Allegedly.... A brilliant event from the fab five, including all the favourites ~ especially their spine-tingling version of While my guitar gently weeps ~ with Leander Morales providing superb support. Leander is in fact a Frome Standard Man-of-the-Year, along with equally lovely Peter Macfadyen for being a splendid, warm-and fuzzy yet environmentally effective, mayor ~ in Leander's case the nomination is for collecting signatures from diverse celebrities  (Ed Sheeran to Terry Wogan via Nicholas Cage & Paloma Faith, fr'instance) on a guitar which raised £11,000 on eBay auction for the RUH neo-natal intensive care unit. 

I'm ending with this image of Bratton White Horse for sentimental reasons: my beautiful little Nikon reported a lens fault immediately after taking it - first camera I haven't broken in years, and it goes and breaks itself - so NY picture in this posting is from my mobile, with Leander filched from Rob Moger's facebook. Unable to face a cameraless future, I've just splashed out on a new system, either brave venture or the triumph of hope over experience...
So as we carefully unwrap box-fresh little 2015, here's my usual January offering to you all: the sublimely ordinary words of Brendan Kennelly, hoping you'll find both comfort and inspiration here.
Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise 
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin, 
 begin to wonder at unknown faces 
at crying birds in the sudden rain 
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.