One more time before the new year I followed the music abroad, bringing me to a bitter cold Paris for a third time this year.

Though I found the second part of the concert, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, a little hard going, I did enjoy Gavin Friday’s narration of Marquez’s ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ as set to music by composer Ian Wilson better than I did the first time I saw it, in Brighton. It was the venue’s ‘recital’ setting, placing the musicians amidst the audience, that much improved the sound and intimacy. Gavin, hindered by the low lights and the yellow marker ‘popping’ on his print out, fluffed up a few times, but he also hit some sweet marks. Particularly the part of the text that goes ‘and the hidden strength of his heart popped the buttons on his shirt’.

Afterwards musicians, crew, friends – among which the lovely Fiachna O Braonain – and yours truly retired to a restaurant cellar where rustic food, sangria, wine, calvados and hearty laughter kept us warm, happy, handsome and quite, quite drowned.

Surrounded by Irishmen and women, I sometimes got a little lost – this Dutch fallen Prod doesn’t really ‘get’ the holy Host or Mise Éire, but it’s endlessly fascinating nonetheless and somehow I always feel more at home than I do amongst my own.

“While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, set to music by composer Ian Wilson. Performed at the at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris on October 9, 2008.

More pictures of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

• Twitter Patterns –
• Kill your pet puppy – Great source of punk / wave singles downloads
• Drifting and Tilting – The Songs of Scott Walker – Gavin Friday – Official Site – "Gavin Friday will perform as guest vocalist at the world premiere of 'Drifting and Tilting – The Songs of Scott Walker', live performances of songs from Scott Walker's albums including Tilt and The Drift."
• Mealographer – record your meals, set goals, track your diet –
• gooseGrade – Let readers correct your spelling.
• Field Notes — “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.” – Oh teh purty
• Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com – "The job always comes down to finding the fulcrum in the teeter-totter, the balance that benefits both the individual and the community,"

The redesign is based on a rejected ‘heart’ design for a poster promoting the ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ shows in Dublin a few years back. It’s a really cool graphic, but the cross of the heart sticks out quite a bit which makes it heart to design around. I’m still not happy with the design, it is a bit of a compromise, taking into account feedback from friends, the client and my coding limitations. I am not keen on the font used for the ‘gavin friday’ header, or of its placement on the page. I think it would look better with a less ostentatious one. I also think there’s too little connection between the homepage and the rest of the site.

And there’s still much to do. Mr client was happy and I thought we were ready enough to launch, but I still got years of archived stuff to add to the database (Blogger export wouldn’t work and it needs careful filtering and rewriting anyway.) and lots of other things to add and improve.

It was all about the jewelry.

The concert, based on the double CD born on the sets of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, will be in support of ‘Arts at St Ann’s’. All proceeds benefit programming at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn.

Programme:
6:30 pm Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres
8:00 pm World Premiere of Rogue’s Gallery Live
9:15 pm Dinner and dessert

Tickets range from ‘Co-Chair’, at $10,000 a table (10 tickets), to ‘Friend’ at $250 (1 ticket). To buy tickets contact Inga at 718.834.8794×11 or inga@artsatstanns.org (before April 20)

More information

Puppetmaker and musician Erik Sanko (Lounge Lizzards, Tom Waits, Lou Reed.) has created a puppet show called The Fortune Teller. He made the puppets and wrote the music with Danny Elfman. Pre-recorded narration courtesy of the great Gavin Friday.

The show opens at the HERE Theatre in New York on October 19th and will play through the 31st.

‘The Fortune Teller reveals a world of curiosities as seven unusual characters are invited to the estate of a late millionaire industrialist and informed they’ve been included in his will,’

The Fortune Teller
Created and Directed by Erik Sanko
Original Music composed by Danny Elfman and Erik Sanko
October 19-31, 2006 | Tickets ($20.00)

Other artists involved in the project which is being recorded in various cities around the world with an all star line up including Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Gavin Friday, Bryan Ferry, Antony and the Johnsons, Loudon Wainwright III and Richard and Linda Thompson.

The album will be released on Epitaph Records in July 2006.

Source: U2log.com, GavinFriday.com (um, yeah, I’m blogging my own scoop.)

‘It’s not music,’ wellie-man insists, ‘flicking his hair like that, and…’

I’m thinking he likes Christy Moore and Altan, and feels more than a little threatened by the flamboyance of Herr Friday, ‘flicking his hair like that’ and oh horror, perhaps even ‘flicking his wrist’. Or perhaps wellie-man’s sour since a couple of hours earlier he’d been in charge of the door when the evening MC told him he better be taking good care of me since I was a ‘very. important. woman.’ My 8th row ticket was quickly replaced by one in row 2.

Being ‘very. important.’, even if tongue-in-cheek, is something that appeals to me, with my long dormant delusions of superiority (now a raging inferiority complex). It is enforced by the fact that I’m hanging with the ‘talent’ all day, offering my unsollicited advice on arrangements and scoffing complimentary lunch.

In the early afternoon it’s coffee and paracetamols with G., leaving band and crew to set up the stage for the soundcheck. As we go around the village (talking, window shopping), the kids call out and adults stare. I suppose they recognise his mug from the Indo’s celeb-pages. The waitress flirts as she serves us our orders. G. is part embarrassed, part oh-so-used-to-it. He grins halfway between shy and cheeky. It’s a good day for us, comfortable together in this foreign place. Joyous even despite the serious words we speak over cappucinos, words that haunt me still.

It’s time to go back to work and we walk down, I kid you not, ‘Goat Street’. Back to the venue, the 14th century St James Church. The sun washes prettily over the hills and the pastel colours of the houses reflect all kinds of gorgeous. ‘Look at that,’ he says, ‘isn’t that beautiful?’. Yes. I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than here, right now. But then it’s back to business. I put on my journalist hat, scribble down notes and take pictures to document this newest chapter of G.’s career.

‘Fuck. Lunch.’, is G’s curt reply when the soundman, over the PA, suggests we cut the soundcheck short for lunch. It is a tense moment. ‘Youse are very laid back here, aren’t youse, it’s lunch and then it’s pints and then it’s dinner and… Look, we’ll finish this and then we can ALL have lunch.’ Everybody laughs, more than a little relieved.

I expect the crew considers mutiny confronted with the ‘demanding’ prima donna, but they seem to appreciate being put through their paces. Afterwards, the director of the show, Bob, is in awe. 39 acts in two weeks and G’s the only one who had any conception of television, of how he wanted his performance captured. He’s the only one to sit down with the director and his aid to go through every song, explain what they’re about, what the instruments are going to sound like. Every little detail of the story. Bob shows me his notebook, three pages for this one performance, one for all the other acts. He’s thrilled.