Autumnal delights, before days under canvas begin

Samhain passed fairly quietly Frome this year: blustering storms cancelled the town fireworks and hallowe'en tricks and treats seemed muted, almost as if the punctured national build-up to October 31st left us unsure whether to celebrate or shudder. The week started extremely well however, with a superb Poetry Cafe at the Garden Cafe featuring delightful Stephen Payne as guest and Jo Butts, 2019 Festival Poet Laureate, re-sharing her winning poem.
Stephen's set featured quirky elegiac poems, arriving gently but with hi-impact afterglow -I especially loved the conga rhythm in the poem about eight siblings whose non-survival matched their order of arrival... Our nineteen (yes, 19!) superb open-mic poets offered an entertaining & engrossing variety of themes and styles, from John Christopher Woods' satiric ode to the Bullington Boys (to the tune of Cambeltown Loch) to Kat Jones' Tempest-ic life-story-style poem.  I was too enthralled to take any photos, but here's a picture of Stephen Payne somewhere else, and the flyer for our next event: the Festive Poetry Cafe (on December 9th will be an all-Open Mic event with lots of !!!presents!!!

Great music this week too: Root Sessions at the Grain Bar gave us Light Garden, billed as 'genre-defying' and mostly  sounding more funky than folksy, apart from the harmonic overtone singing which is a speciality they also teach. Peter Burns, supporting solo with an impressive loop system, included several of his own songs in his set, including a deeply personal one about his hometown, Belfast, called ironically The Riches of America - link here.

On Friday, an evening with the impossible-to-overpraise Pete Gage Band ensured The Cornerhouse was full, with dancing despite the crush. Pete's band set also included sway-slow numbers like their unforgettable of Motherless Child and - my favourite - Evening - the versions in those 2 links are recorded at other events, but give an idea of Pete's powerful versions of these classics.

Paul Kirtley brought another Bare to the Bones music event to the Artisan, featuring popular local country & blues band Hello Hopeville. His house band, the We Don't Scare Easy crew, focus on singalong enjoyment - Have You Ever Seen the Rain, and All Along the Watchtower are popular standards - with great impro jamming too.

Concluding the week's evening gigs, here's a glimpse of the lively Jazz Jam in the Cornerhouse, a relaxed atmosphere for musicians of any jazz-experience - and always with some great pro.s!

This Sunday being the first one of November, the streets of Frome were filled for the penultimate independent market of the year. 'More than a Market' is tagline of the Frome Independent and on a sunny winter's day it can seem more like party, as the queues for the street food and pop-up bars aren't as long as in summer yet it's mild enough for strolling and enjoying the bands and buskers. This view from the other side of the river shows the tip of the cross-town spread of an event that boasts over 80,000 visitors annually (I put all that in just because I like the autumny image) Here's a few of the music-makers this time - the band onstage is the Decades but I don't know the soloist and didn't ask either the busker on Stony Street corner or the DJ in Ramshack Barbers - let me know if you know and this will be amended! Have a happy November, all.

Two away-days ~ & Frome still hectic in summer heat

London on a hot day... there seem to be more people here than actually live in the world, I think as I walk from Paddington to Covent Garden, fantasising continents emptied, or perhaps some of the crowd are holograms. I'm here to see The Lieutenant of Inishmore, my birthday present to myself, at the Noel Coward, a classic end-19C theatre all gilded and rococo-styled with pink velvet seats.
For some reason I thought this would be a sad Synge-style tale of auld Ireland. It’s actually a black comedy. Martin McDonagh wrote this extreme parody while the Good Friday peace treaty was precarious, and there’s still plenty of provocative edge in this Father-Ted-meets-Pulp-Fiction tale of patriot terrorists - in this case, the IRA & all who splinter within it. It's savage, and hilarious, and astoundingly well-acted - Aiden Taylor is mesmeric - he says every word like it’s just come to his mind, a rare and brilliant quality in an actor. Dennis Conway as his father Donny is great - ‘It’s incidents like this that put tourists off’ he opines glumly as his living-room takes on the vista of an abattoir - and Charlie Murphy, the dead-shot Bonnie to Paidraic's Clyde, is sublime when she sings The Patriot Game. The production has been very well-received, with several ★★★★★ reviews - there's a roundup here. Praise is unfaltering for Aiden Turner's psychotic Padraic - 'magnetic' is a frequent choice in reviews, in some 'smouldering' and in others 'animal'. Time Out was specific: Turner is terrific - I mean, yes, he would surely be the most handsome terrorist to have ever lived, but get past the hunkiness and he is wonderful, perfectly nailing Padraic’s weirdly endearing mix of innocence, zealotry and murderous rage.
 'A violent play that's wholeheartedly anti-violence' was the playwright's aim: Michael Grandage's direction, enhanced by gory props, maximises both violence & comedy, but the indictment of terrorism is plangent too.  There's a throw-away comment from Donny on INLA, the anti-Ceasefire splinter-group: 'Some folk join the IRA to travel. With INLA you never leave the Falls.'  The reference might be missed by a modern audience, but I remember the Falls Road in Belfast, where catholic flats were peppered night after night with protestant bullets and the British Army's CS gas rained down each ferocious weekend - that was neutral, of course, it just poisoned us all, especially the babies.

Frome meanwhile is once again alive to the sound of music, with the fantastic Pete Gage Band on top form at Sam's Kitchen, and the wonderful Raggedy Men at the Griffin - the gigs overlapped so apologies to the  for missing the first set of a brilliant session of authentic 70s punk with style, soul, & splendid riffs.
The regular Roots Session at the Grain Bar this week brought us the compelling world-folk sounds of Light Garden.


Upfest 2018 arrived in Bristol last weekend, bringing masses of street artists and creative events to Bedminster - I missed the active days due to my boiler having adverse reaction to a routine service and emoting all over the conservatory, but the buildings of course were still there on Tuesday and North Street's pageantry is well worth a visit. Two of Frome's finest were represented - Paris and Boswell - as well as names from Argentina and Connecticut to Czech Republic, Greece and India, with immensely varied styles. There was bit of a Simpsons theme going on too but the cartoons were less impressive than the amazing large-scale portraits and life-like works.
I'll conclude this bulletin with an update on Frome Unzipped, which was the focus of a fascinating discussion at Rye Bakery last week led by Peter Macfadyen, founder of Independents for Frome, and a feature in Frome Times, our local news provider which always punches above its weight as a freebie, celebrating creativity and positive news. Thanks, Ben & team, for this one: