Wondermentalist

I’ve had chronic computer trouble and I’m writing this from the Apple store in Exeter’s Princesshay while a Genius (sic) does an erase and install on my iBook. That’s why I’m slow off the mark writing up our night at the Phoenix. But Liv Torc just phoned and told me that the Express and Echo have beaten me to it and given us a cracking review. When you read it you’ll see why she was happy about it…

I’ll cut and paste it below for those who are, quite rightly, suspicious of embedded links. While I’m at it I’ll chip in, for the record, that Beryl the Feral, Bill Greenwell and Nomad Shuffle were brilliant too.

INSPIRATIONAL PHOENIX NIGHT

11:40 - 09 July 2008

“I have enough, I do enough, I am enough,” were the stark words of Exeter performance poet Liv Torc giving the two fingers to modern life at the humorous cabaret Wondermentalist.Her set was one of the highlights of the poetry, comedy and music night hosted by Devon-based Radio 4 poet Matt Harvey in conjunction with Exeter College.Torc’s ‘Living TV’ celebrates the lives of the enviable ‘have-enoughs’, such as size-14 Beverly who unapologetically eats saturated fat and caravan owner George who prefers buying Frank Zappa albums to a proper house. They were just two of the evening’s funniest and most endearing characters created and brought to life by some of the county’s brightest poetic talent.Making a hilarious appearance was Harvey’s famous superhero alter ego ‘Empath Man’ who “took part in a drugs trial that went horribly wrong - it was for an anti-pessimism drug, called Optiagra, for middle-aged men who find it difficult to get their hopes up.”

Harvey could have been describing one of the evening’s funniest performers, Jerri Hart, who is “single by choice, but not his choice”. Probably better-known to Exeter residents as a jazz busker in Princesshay, Hart had the audience laughing incredulously at his weird but hilarious jazz knitting and just plain silly origami scat.

Exeter College lecturers passionately championed their favourite writers in the Dead Poets Slam, cheered on encouragingly by English literature students in the crowd. Finally the audience participation poem pushed the people of Exeter to reach deep into their creative vegetable juices - each writing a line to describe their feelings on aubergines. A hilarious, moving, inspiring night.

I wanted to tell you, the curious blog reader, where you can find various highlights of the April Cabaret on Traydio, so look below and click as you see fit… 

A compilation of the highlights of the March 2008 Wondermentalist can be found here  

Stephen Park’s contribution is here

Nathan Filer’s flying words can be heard by clicking here

Jerri Hart’s comic turn is digitally reproduced right here

For the Audience Poem, however, you must press here

The band known as Nomad Shuffle can be heard here, while Nomad Shuffle doing the Empath Man Theme Song with Jerri Hart on vocals and Faith Burch and Johnny Bloor on backing vocals are, as you probably guessed, exactly here

I hope you felt moved to click on the links. I hope you liked a significant percentage of what you heard. There will come a time, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, my word alive but it’s coming soon, when it willbe possible to subscribe to wondermentalist  podcasts. These, once subscribed to, will bring  lovely audio files to your iTunes or equivalent without you having to do anything. Isn’t that marvellous? It’s a rhetorical question, but I like to think you;re sitting there, nodding, with a grin on your face that makes you look younger than you’ve looked all week.

It’s a nice thought. 

This is my review of the night.

The performers did us proud. They were all so very, very good.

Jerri Hart couldn’t be there. He’d lost his voice. Really lost it. We missed him, and the audience chanted his name. Then, at my request ‘just the women’ – I felt it’s what he’d have wanted. A warm and generous audience, as Dean and I were to prove (in the sense of ‘test’) at the end.

Leonie and Asha from Rae were wonderful, I hope we’ll have them back before too long. They reminded me of why I love Radio 3’s Late Junction. They’ll now be lending Traydio that warm, eclectic, exotic Late Junction feel. Next up was Liv Torc, brilliant winner of the Vibraphonic Slam in Exeter, with her personal superhero, Anxiety Girl, and she was followed by what I think was the best Dead Poets’ Slam so far, won by Dean Parkin reading Kenneth Koch’s To Kidding Around.

The audience poem was fantastic, again, and you must read it. They chose the theme of eggs. Eggs – what are you like?  [Read it here.] And Empath Man, without the promised theme tune (get well soon, Jerri) managed to get very cross with a crowd of people before being lured up the ladder and into the basket of Scorpio Rising’s hot air balloon.

Nomad Shuffle, still expanding, with percussionist Dan adding texture and zest, did a beautiful moving self-penned number dedicated to a friend. Then Beryl the Feral, who’d put together the Eggs poem in the interval, stepped up to deliver an utterly delightful short set that removed any possible traces of cynicism that may have been lurking in the room.

Dean Parkin delivered a delightful set, including the best audience participation cheek popping I’ve ever heard – then stepped into the breach, the unfillable Jerri Hart-shaped space, performing Shingles of your Mind with me, Matt, at the end, on a blue guitar purchased that afternoon. He played the Bobby Shaftoe version and, as debacles go, it was one of the most enjoyable and best received I’ve ever been part of.

But this is all just my opinion, and I’m about as biased as you can be. Where you there? Tell us what you think. How was it for you…?