Live and local - just part of one weekend in October.

The title says it all. This weekend just gone was a blast - right up there with anything else in my 2013 in music. It is true that on Saturday I ventured a full twenty miles away from my home town of Frome to a tiny hall in a village that, I guarantee, most people even round here are quite unaware of. Why would I do that?
We won't start there. On Friday evening I was less than a mile from home - Acoustic+, Cheese and Grain, Frome. Usual format: four bands, roughly half-hour set from each, all for a fiver. To be honest, can you go wrong with that? The answer is no. In this case it was more a matter of pinching oneself in order to check that this was indeed for real. That is not a trivial thing to say, but that I still feel the same in the light of that which I saw on Saturday says a very great deal.
Of the three acts that I had never seen live before I can't speak more highly. Blue Midnight is the exception, I have seen them live several times and so I hope that their omission from this post is excusable. This is Salisbury-based Arch Garrison, with acoustic tales of landscapes and the thoughts that they evoke. He was prescient: this would prove to be something of a theme throughout the weekend.

That the next chance to catch him live is at Union Chapel, Islington says a great deal about the artist and also the standard that Acoustic+ sets for itself.

  

The opening act was another that I had not seen live before - Kelly and Alana, so here they are.

First support was South Divide. I'd say that this was my highlight of a very good evening. It is not just about the music for all of that was excellent, nor raw ambition either, it is about the presentation of it as a coherent whole. On that basis this is why I think it the most impressive of the four acts that evening. Here are a couple of photos from the set.

Full band, in the usual Acoustc+ setting.

On lead vocals and keyboards - Chloë Warren.

As I have recently been commenting on the remarkable resurgence of the EP, both physical and digital, you will find it continues with this one.

If you missed the forgoing then all is not lost. On Saturday, November 9, South Divide is playing The Griffin, Frome.

Arts venues.

Frome is, for a town of approximately 25,500 inhabitants, blessed with a remarkable selection of arts venues, both for static displays and performance arts.  In the latter category the Cheese and Grain, capacity 800 and hopefully soon to be augmented in both capacity and facilities, is the most versatile if not particularly architecturally distinguished. It is a 19th century produce-market hall that has been adapted many times since. Frome also has two theatres, The Memorial Theatre completed in 1924 in memory of those killed in the Great War and the more recent Merlin Theatre, which seats about 250 and is part of the Frome College campus. All three are used for all kinds of performance arts and other live shows.
Then there are many historic pubs, some of which regularly feature live music: amongst those most active are The Griffin and The Olive Tree (link currently broken, phone 01373 467140) and also many other venues that are used from time to time, most notably for the annual Frome Festival - taking place this year from 8 - 17 July.
One however, that survives at all more by luck than judgement, is the most architecturally significant and spectacular by a long mile.  Built when Frome was a town very wealthy indeed, based on the wool trade, it spent 251 years in continuous use as a non-conformist place of worship before it was declared redundant and then spent the next quarter of a century falling into decay. It was eventually compulsorily purchased by the local authority and restored.
It now houses, appropriately enough, an architects' practise in the ante-rooms while the main section is used as a space for static and performance arts both traditional and modern by the trust Rook Lane Arts.

As well as being an early example of such a building on a grand scale the bountiful finance saw to it that it did not have the minimalist functionality of many and that its patrons succumbed to more than a flourish of the baroque. Nobody - whose mission was truly to live the life of an ascetic - would ever have sanctioned windows like those!
When it was built John Wesley certainly wasn't preaching simplicity and sobriety to the masses in open-air sermons across Britain, such as became his trademark, not least because he was then only a toddler (b. June 28, 1703)!
   
I'm not the religious kind in any traditional sense but wish to thank those that were for the venue.

New Music 2011 - coming live to Frome

Like buses, like bands... one can wait for ages and then several are announced at about the same time. Thinking about it, in Frome that is actually far more likely with bands...
  
They may not be very famous, yet, but no matter.  Here is one that has caught my attention as being in the latest e-newsletter from The Griffin, arguably Frome's best pub and also that with the best beers (the winner of both Somerset-wide accolades in the 2010 'Taste of Somerset' awards that were voted for by the public), and which also does live music.
The May programme looks good too but I'll start by mentioning this, although there is much of note to come before.  
On Sunday, May 22 The Griffin plays host to Zora & The Tatsmiths. If punk-jazz-folk was never before a genre then, so they have decided, it is now. And I can't wait!

  

It is a five-piece from Brighton and if you wish to avail yourself of a legal listen before May here is a link.
The track 'Secret' should be, along with the band, one-no-longer and it is available as a free, legal download for the price of registering your interest. It is on repeat here at the moment and I'm minded to post the lyric for it tomorrow...  it is simple and yet rather scarily real.