Shedfest 2011

I've decided to update these pages only occasionally when something worthwhile happens, and with this in mind I thought I'd tell you about a little event I attended recently where we all went out to Mersea Island and caught a boat out to the (former) Oyster Packing Shed where we watched a day of good music and ate barbeque food as the tide slowly came in and washed up to the stilts of our fragile-looking wooden hut that had become, for the day, the Smallest Festival Venue in England. The rusting husk of Bradwell Nuclear Power Station was visible crumbling in the distance and an evil huddle of seagulls waited beyond the oyster beds at the far end of the island to nibble anyone who was fool enough to venture up there.

The first thing that we saw was Oh Dear, who have recently released their own EP for free on bandcamp.com. Their squall of noise was a little lost amidst all of the maritime paraphenalia of the shed, but it was all classily done and much too good to be given away for free on some website. Thanks guys.

As the afternoon wore on with more music we were visited by a real life pirate who had come off of one of the boats nearby, lured by barbeque food. Later Dan Merrill and Matthew Simpkins, AKA Sons of Joy, who had co-organised the gig, came on and did their traditional songs bit. They both play the fiddle and dress like something between Amish people and someone from another time in history, but they are very musical. Dan joined several of the other bands thoughout the day on droning and squonking parts. Matthew is a bit more thoughtful and does most of the vocal parts and frontman bit. Together they are re-claiming folk music.

There was a nice mixture of people and ages in attendance on the day, and it made me think that Colchester/N.E. Essex does have it's own kind of scene that is nice enough if you hang around here long enough and get to know the right people. I have to thank Lulah Motherpopcorn for inviting me along to the tiny island and thanks also to Black Shuck for playing their first ever gig on the day - not a bad start guys, hope that your project has legs as it was very, very good.

oh dear + guest star

I forgot to say that before the day ended and we all packed up the amps and floated home there was a little band called The Doomed Bird of Providence who sang a few songs and basically made us all feel as though we were actually lost on a pirate ship somewhere in the pacific ocean, like the doomiest bits of Nick Cave's solo stuff crossed with Tom Waits, of course. It was atmospheric! We all went home chilled out & loaded up on beer and good food (apart from those of us who have dietary intolerance!) and no one was seasick.

This just in: Lulah told me to tell you all that the gig was actually organised by Stafford of the Arts Centre (who is the handsome man playing Rickenbacker bass in the picture above), and also visit http://flickr.com/tallulah_harper.




CURRENTLY READING: Jpod by Douglas Coupland - "A guilty pleasure, but it's a funny book. I enjoy how Coupland takes the piss out of himself by including himself in the plot with no apparent sense of irony."


photos: Lulah Harper-Motherpopcorn