The venue is the Butterfly Club which is in a large Victorian House at 204 Bank street South melbourne. Right near the South Melbourne Town hall.
Its a cabaret room. It holds 50 people, who are seated and is run with all the formality and show manners of a theatre. You walk in off the street and down a corridor to a lounge area and a bar. There are other rooms for lounging up the stairs and a covered garden area out the back. Back out towards where you came in there is the performance area.
Usually there are no microphones in the room. A little lighting and a stand up piano is what the show is given.
We first did a show there in 2006 called POINT BLANK. This was a narrative show built around songs of mine, mostly from the albums "the devil drives" (1997) and "the dave graney show" (1998) . The narrative was that of a performer walking onto a stage and what he brought with him to that neutral area, that foreign planet, and the heroic battles he fought to conquer it. At the end he walks out to the stage and is met with the attentive gaze of a suddenly interested audience who can see him. Thats the POINT BLANK. We did it in the Butterfly Club twice and in Adelaide at the Cabaret Festival twice and at the Sydney Opera House Studio.
That show was performed by myself with Clare Moore on vibes and percussion and vocals and Mark Fitzgibbon on piano.
In 2008 we did a sequel called "LIVE IN HELL" This has been performed at the Butterfly Club twice. (two SEASONS of four nights) with Stu Thomas on a very quiet fuzz bass, Stu Perera on nylon string guitar, Clare Moore on a toy drum kit and myself on guitar. That show took up fom the end of POINT BLANK and began with the performer coping with life inside the perception of others. Previously he had been free to roam wide, coming out of the shadows and able to constantly renew and reinvent his own life. Now he was fixed in time and was in HELL. Songs included "one night of sin" by Elvis, "the Bogus Man" by Roxy Music, "new face in hell" by the Fall and many songs of mine. It ended with a recital of "lament for my cock" from the posthumous DOORS album, "an American Prayer".
MC BITS is a set of songs I'm gonna sing with Mark Fitzgibbon on piano. I just wanted to do a set of heavy songs. Songs that destroyed.Me. Music is a powerful force and eats up people who dive into it. And you have to dive into it. People think its easy because you have to get some skills to perform music. Balance, tone, cadence and poise. Things that destroy you for anything else much. You become a husk of a person. A collection of routines. MC BITS.
"hong Kong Blues"- Hoagy Carmichael.
"if the world wasn't there" and " love is teasing" - Bert Jansch.
"walk on water"- Kevin Ayers.
"paper Moon"- Nat King Cole.
"serpent at the gates of wisdom"- Robyn Hitchcock.
"I can't be satisfied"- Muddy waters.
"the goodbye train"- Peter Milton walsh.
"the blind mans penis"- John Truby.
"franklins tower"- the Grateful Dead.
And a whole lot of my own songs. Heavy songs like "saturday night bath", "lifes a dream" and "I will have always been here before".
You can check out the venue at http://www.thebutterflyclub.com
No comments:
Post a Comment