The weekend just past, the band and I were booked for Secret Cinema. As the name suggests, it was supposed to be all very hush hush regarding the details of the event. Now it’s all over I can reveal what actually happened.

Secret Cinema puts on classic films in unconventional venues, then themes the night around the film. The audience does not know what the film is until they arrive at the venue. The film that was screened last weekend was Wings of Desire, directed by Wim Wenders, set in Berlin in 1987, it follows a couple of angels that watch over some troubled characters. It’s all rather dreamy, and not a lot happens, but it’s a very beautiful film to watch.

The venue was a disused theatre on Shepherds Bush Green, right beside the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Inside the main hall where the film was being screened, there were some circus acts and a trapeze artist, which fitted in well with the contents of the film. They also had Fyfe Dangerfield playing a few deliciously romantic numbers before the film began, swamped in natural reverb and backed by a viola and fiddle player, “faster than a setting sun…”, the soundtrack to the weekend, I melt in recollection.

Outside of the main hall, Secret Cinema created a small Berlin night club called the Metropole, with a few rooms mocked up in 1980s German decor. I was to host this area, as the owner of the club, play with my house band, and introduce a few other acts. The other main act was This Is Laura, which were possibly the most appropriate act to put on, other than Nick Cave himself.

Well with 4 screenings, that meant music either side, making it a very intense 48 hours. Matinees and evening shows on Saturday and Sunday. The crowd would walk past us to get to the main theatre, or leave the venue. Thankfully, many would stay for a drink and watch and listen to me spitting about throbbing tumours and the like, and by the end of it they were screaming and hollering and dancing and leaping around.

Certainly a weekend to remember, plenty of camaraderie between my own band and This Is Laura. I now feel very toned, like a musical equivalent of Dolph Lundgren.

There will be plenty of post promotion of this event, which I’ll post up as I receive the links to it. Though you can see a slideshow of the event here to get an idea.

So Obama has cut Nasa’s budget and shelved any plans for putting a man on the moon by 2020. Across the political spectrum the press are calling it a travesty. Some wildly, some barely, but there is at least a hint of dismay in all of it. America will fall behind, China will overtake them in the exploration of the galaxy, and technological “progress”, with all its unintended wonders, will be slowed. You can even hear the shuffling of nervous environmentalists in their seats, as they see all their climate change techno fixes go up in smoke.

There aren’t many things world leaders do which can be seen as a positive and progressive step forward for humanity, but this is certainly one of them. Whether it was intended this way or not, is another matter. The solution to all of Earth’s ills already exists on this planet. No amount of money ploughed into research centres for space exploration is needed in order to mitigate the effects of climate change and peak oil, bring about peace in the middle east, greater social cohesion within nations, and to raise the standard of living for those already living on earth.

We’ve had the answers to all the manmade evils and inequalities for millennia and passed them up to inflate our collective ego to an even more monstrous size. Like a pissing stream of urine, drunk on our phantom triumphs over nature, we aim for an unmarked goal, an ill defined objective. Somewhere out there, in the breadth of one careless sweep of the arm, across the unimaginable expanse of the universe is our old friend Progress.

Any old friends of mine would no doubt be splitting their sides hearing me speak like this today. As a teenager the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson captured my imagination like no other work of fiction at the time. I still find the concept of colonising and terraforming another planet incredibly fascinating, as well as the technical details involved in space travel. This stems more from my breeding however, than from any form of rational self interest.

These days I’m more likely to be swooning over the cycle of phosphorous, the basics of barbering, or the art of origami, than some form of state funded national escapism. How dull, but how bloody useful.

Practical material objects and tangible skills are all humanity needs in order to create a world in which it can live a fulfilling life. With Obama’s retreat from the race to put a man back on the moon, this should only be seen as a small but symbolic step forward for mankind.

My dear friends,

It is with great sadness and much irritation that I bring you news that the Islington Arts Factory, Power Down’s birth place and home, may be forced to closed. The fire brigade dropped in on them before Christmas and told them that unless they upgrade their fire safety stuff, doors, alarms, who knows what, then they’ll shut them down. The work comes to a staggering £12k, which has brought the Factory to their knees as I’m sure you can imagine.

So of course, there will be a special Power Down organised to help raise as much as possible. The date will be Saturday, February 20^th, 2010, and so far the line-up under candlelight will be:

The Boy Who Trapped The Sun

http://www.myspace.com/theboywhotrappedthesun

Wry, alt-folkish singer-songwriter from the Isle of Lewis with new EP out on Rough Trade now.

Monooka

http://www.myspace.com/monooka

Romanian folk singer that swallowed an aviary.

Chancery Blame

http://www.myspace.com/thegadjoclub

The virtuoso gypsy violinist from the Gadjo Club.

Marmaduke Dando

www.myspace.com/marmadukedando

Shameless, I know, but why the hell not? I’ve not played one of my own nights in years now.

These fantastic musicians are playing entirely for free, so all money from the door and bar will go directly to the Islington Arts Factory. If you’ve been to a Power Down before, then I hope you’ll agree the night is worth much more than the meagre sum of £5 that it’s usually priced at. With this in mind, I’ve set up a two tiered pricing system for the tickets this time. For those of you that can afford it and want to help keep the Arts Factory open, I urge you to purchase a ticket for £10 here:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/71075

And if you’re lacking in funds for whatever reason, of course, we’d still love you to come, you can buy a ticket for £5 here:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/71076

I leave it entirely to your discretion. If you’re not able to make the concert on February 20^th, but would like to donate some money to the Islington Arts Factory, you can do so here:

http://www.islingtonartsfactory.org/about/donate/

And now onto some other news for this weekend. My band and I are playing Radio Gagarin at Passing Clouds in Dalston this Friday, Jan 29^th. It’s £5 with a flyer that you can get from me, or £7 before 11pm, and £10 after. I believe we’re on about 10pm, and the brilliant Chancery Blame and the Gadjo club are also playing. Here are the details:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/event.php?eid=263743769499&ref=ts

Have a grand weekend all, and hope to see you soon,

Marmaduke

The last post about division being the basis of evil, is a little confused, I admit.

When one looks at the alternative to individual expression, it’s herd mentality, do nothing original, raise no objection to the status quo, to follow others blindly. Not the most attractive of ideas, nor realistic. It works as a successful meme for some if not most animals, but humans have evolved to question, to analyse, to adapt based on ideas, which are all examples of individuality. So, essentially human, and not much we can do about it unless you can drug a population to act as a herd of animals.

Under that assumption, the negative effects of individualism can’t be completely eradicated, but they can be mitigated. As Huxley points out, pride, hatred and anger, are individual expressions that deny others freedom, whereas greed and lust necessarily don’t.

With this in mind, one can reject the former set entirely from one’s self without the need for constant proof. With greed and lust however, it will take analysis and judgement at every instance on the part of the individual to determine whether they are denying another of any freedom.

Admirable, but is it realistic?

As if to confirm my previous rant about the evilness of individuality, Huxley comes along in the final pages of Eyeless in Gaza with the same sentiment:

“Evil is the accentuation of division; good, whatever makes for unity with other lives and other beings. Pride, hatred, anger – the essentially evil sentiments are essentially evil because they are all intensifications of the given reality of separateness, because they insist upon division and uniqueness, because they reject and deny other lives and beings. Lust and greed are also insistences upon uniqueness, but insistences which do not entail any negative awareness of others from whom the unique being is divided. Lust only says, ‘I must have pleasure’, not ‘You must have pain’. Greed in its pure state is merely a demand for my satisfaction, not for your exclusion from satisfaction. They are wrong in emphasizing the separate self; but less wrong than pride or hatred or anger, because their self-emphasis is not accompanied by denial of others.”

Here’s a video taken by a fanatic in the crowd at The Victoria show:

Taken from Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless In Gaza, Anthony Beavis explains at a party in London in 1926, the correlation between sexuality and civilization. Much food for thought here:

“Civilzation and sexuality…there’s a definite correlation. The higher the one, the intenser the other…

“Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First class proteins for the body, fourth class love-stories for the spirit. And this in a safe urban world where there are no risks, no physical fatigues. In a town like this, for example, one can live for years at a time without being made aware that there’s such a thing as nature. Everything’s man-made and punctual and convenient. But people can have too much of convenience; they want excitement, they want risks and surprises. Where are they going to find them under our dispensation? In money-making, in politics, in occasional war, in sport, and finally in sex. But most people can’t be speculators or active politicians, and war’s getting too much of a good thing; and the more elaborate and dangerous sports are only for the rich. So that sex is all that’s left. As material civilization rises the intensity and importance of sexuality also rises. Must rise, inevitably.”

What have we done with ourselves? We have destroyed the very heart of our being, in the pursuit of what noble cause exactly? What in the world could justify such a destruction?

The pursuit of specialist knowledge, the pursuit of personality, so unique on the surface at least, yet hollow as a rotten oak one hundred years old.

It’s ego that destroys anything good and beautiful. It’s ego that perpetuates misery. The unquestioning belief in the uniqueness of the individual, so strong, it’s practically a religion, or at the very least a cult of individuality.

That one is better than others, that one has the potential to be better than others, drives most of us on, into the jaws of vanity. The rest, into the fields of misery, lying fallow until sufficiently recovered, then ploughed through by another heartless machine.

All in the name of self discovery, career development, personal gain, and new experiences. And look how the world has changed, profoundly so, because of it. What a tidal wave of influence!

Happy new year, you bastards

Good god, another year over. What a predictable exclamation, but no less earth shattering each time. Last Christmas I drew up a list of all the venues I’d played at in London and gave them a short review from a performer’s perspective. I suppose I could do the same again for this year, but I’m not quite in the mood for such detail right now.

I will however point out a few highlights and low-lights of the year. Probably towards the start of the year, there was one weekend where we played 3 gigs: Passing Clouds, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, and Nottinghill Arts Club. All paid, and we were all laughing over the luck of it. If only we could be paid to do it every night, it would be financially viable, alas…Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club was for me a fantastic show, as the audience were looking wide eyed up at me and practically rubbing my erogenous zones. That’s really all there is to me.

Then followed a rather depressing period throughout the summer where the term “residency” was bandied about as if it were a ticket to Shangri-La. I hate Camden at the best of times, and this spate of empty rooms did nothing to help it’s cause. My poor band, the trials I put them through that summer. I can’t apologise to them profusely enough.

As Autumn crept up, a blizzard of change was brewing. I had to part ways with two sterling chaps, much to my dismay. The idea was to step up a gear in terms of musicianship. I had no idea if it was the right thing to do, perhaps I was getting above myself etc. I wasn’t particularly relishing the coming months of bandlessness, as periods of inactivity always get me down. Nevertheless the break was made.

This grand network of musicians I’ve been unconsciously cultivating helped me out of that hole rather quicker than I’d anticipated. Two new sterling chaps joined my band in the last month. They learned the whole Marmaduke repertoire off their own back mostly within two months. I was astounded, and pleased that I had indeed made the right decision.

This new line-up proved their mite at probably the best gig of the year, just the weekend past, at The Victoria. Professional to a tee but not irritatingly so. Just as it should be. What a grand pub that is too. I’d recommend anyone stopping in for a session.

So what on earth do I have to show for the past year? Materialistically speaking: not a lot. We did a few recordings this year, I hated them instantly. Now i’ve given them 9 months to fester, there’s a certain charm to them that I quite like. Next year, I promise, they will be in the public domain on download, stream, and vinyl. It will be an album of 10 songs from the last few years. It will be out at the end of March.

Alongside a great deal of soldering jack leads back together, that’s the general plan. See you at the launch party. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Marmaduke

My dear friend Lemond and I had a short writing session together a couple of days ago. Just 3 hours with a basic hook, stolen from Willie Wonka, Lemond laid it down on piano, one mic in a room, and lyrics made up on the fly.

I never work this way alone, as I don’t have the discipline. I’ve always got several songs on the go which are slowly added to and completed as and when I feel they’re ready, so it was quite a thrill to work this  fast.

I’ve no idea if this song is any good, perhaps it’s all over the place, disjointed, laboured? I would appreciate an honest opinion though, ruthless is always respected. Up on www.myspace.com/marmadukedando take a listen, it’s called Great Expectations.

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