The Cambridge Museum Of Obsolete Technology
Went off to Cambridge for the weekend to hang out with TISSP! and see the Palimpsest Festival and other assorted spacerock japes. (Read: drink so much tequila you can't see straight.)
TISSP! lives in a beautiful house in a weird gated community just off the River Cam. I noticed a gigantic Victorian chimneystack in his back garden, like something out of Lord of the Rings. "What's that?" I ask. "It's the Cambridge Museum Of Obsolete Technology" he replies, which sounds like the best thing ever.
Anyway, yes, we went to the folk festival. I felt a bit left out as I did not have a beard and resolved to grow one as quickly as possible. First off, the venue... All Saints Church. The most incredibly beautiful and psychedelic full-on Arts and Crafts Masterpiece I've ever seen.
Most of it was very, very lovely - a mixture of Proper Folk (plenty of gruesome, bloody murder ballads), experimental NOIZE and, err... Free Jazz. I'm not going to go into great detail (there was talk that we might review it) but A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Directing Hand, my hat's off to you.
Sunburned Hand Of The Man, however (the band I actually went to see) - my god, what a disappointment. The immediately set me on the defensive with this utterly philosophically unsound crap about "the difference between Religion and Spirituality" which was such BOLLOCKS theologically and metaphorically (my mum and I had a good rant about it the next day) that when they started shouting "Can I get a hallelujah?" my response was "No, you bloody well can't. Not from me."
It's funny how many of the English will put up with this crap, or even find it charming because they think it's ironic or kitschy. Not realising that not only is it deadly serious, but this is exactly the sort of Fundamentalist Bullshit that is poisoning the US at the moment.
Fortunately, Frances was just as pissed off by them, so she and AMP and I absconded to the nearest pub to sink shots of tequila and rant about magazines. Hurrah! At some point in the after-gig drinking, this photo was taken, but I've no memory whatsoever of it:
Sunday morning was hangovers and Mean Beans and getting woken up by the most amazing TOOT-TOOT from next door, look over and there are STEAM ENGINES being steamed up mere yards from the house. Have to go over and investigate, and yes, steam engines and huffing machines and strange Cambridge Instruments that no one could figure out what they do (including one that turned out to be an electron scanning microscope - though not as cool as the one my Science Granny had). Some of them would power up, some of them wouldn't - you pays your money, you takes your chances.
But oh! The noise! The heat and the steam and the puffing and the huffing and the awe-insiring massive spinning flywheels and the tubes and pipes and shiny brass and bright red and green paint. Is there anything in the world that sounds better than a steam engine in full swing? I don't think so.
TISSP! lives in a beautiful house in a weird gated community just off the River Cam. I noticed a gigantic Victorian chimneystack in his back garden, like something out of Lord of the Rings. "What's that?" I ask. "It's the Cambridge Museum Of Obsolete Technology" he replies, which sounds like the best thing ever.
Anyway, yes, we went to the folk festival. I felt a bit left out as I did not have a beard and resolved to grow one as quickly as possible. First off, the venue... All Saints Church. The most incredibly beautiful and psychedelic full-on Arts and Crafts Masterpiece I've ever seen.
Most of it was very, very lovely - a mixture of Proper Folk (plenty of gruesome, bloody murder ballads), experimental NOIZE and, err... Free Jazz. I'm not going to go into great detail (there was talk that we might review it) but A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Directing Hand, my hat's off to you.
Sunburned Hand Of The Man, however (the band I actually went to see) - my god, what a disappointment. The immediately set me on the defensive with this utterly philosophically unsound crap about "the difference between Religion and Spirituality" which was such BOLLOCKS theologically and metaphorically (my mum and I had a good rant about it the next day) that when they started shouting "Can I get a hallelujah?" my response was "No, you bloody well can't. Not from me."
It's funny how many of the English will put up with this crap, or even find it charming because they think it's ironic or kitschy. Not realising that not only is it deadly serious, but this is exactly the sort of Fundamentalist Bullshit that is poisoning the US at the moment.
Fortunately, Frances was just as pissed off by them, so she and AMP and I absconded to the nearest pub to sink shots of tequila and rant about magazines. Hurrah! At some point in the after-gig drinking, this photo was taken, but I've no memory whatsoever of it:
Sunday morning was hangovers and Mean Beans and getting woken up by the most amazing TOOT-TOOT from next door, look over and there are STEAM ENGINES being steamed up mere yards from the house. Have to go over and investigate, and yes, steam engines and huffing machines and strange Cambridge Instruments that no one could figure out what they do (including one that turned out to be an electron scanning microscope - though not as cool as the one my Science Granny had). Some of them would power up, some of them wouldn't - you pays your money, you takes your chances.
But oh! The noise! The heat and the steam and the puffing and the huffing and the awe-insiring massive spinning flywheels and the tubes and pipes and shiny brass and bright red and green paint. Is there anything in the world that sounds better than a steam engine in full swing? I don't think so.
posted by Masonic Boom | 1:56 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home