A very busy weekend...
Friday night we were at the South Bank for Pere Ubu's 'Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi'. It didn't quite hit the mark but did feature a great performance from Sarah Jane Morris and son, as well as some added amusement as avant-garde curmudgeon David Thomas got increasingly exasperated with his under-rehearsed band and crew.
Saturday's 'Hello Goodbye' was an altogether more congenial affair. The show was an Easycome special featuring Post Modern Antiquarian Andy Hankdog along with Jason McNiff & band, Indigo Moss, and Petra Jean Phillipson, all playing separately and then together for a rousing finale of 'Bella Ciao', which it turns out is a revolutionary call to arms and not a tribute to a South London pizzeria. Good to see my old engine room-mate from the Glint days, Mr Steve Brookes, alive and well and playing drums for Jason.
All that live music gives a man a thirst so I then sauntered up the road to the Parquet Mortar to meet T-Lo and Judge Ed for the nearest we get to a Crops rehearsal these days - a fez-wearing five-pintathon.
Worked off the hangover yesterday with a brisk 108 lengths in the pool and a large dose of constructivism at the last day of the Rodchenko exhibition at the Hayward, inspiring stuff indeed. As if that wasn't enough culture for one weekend, we then pedalled up to the Barbican for a screening of 'I Served the King of England', a Czech film based on the novel of the same name by Bohumil Hrabal. There was a Q & A with the director Jiri Menzel (of 'Closely Observed Trains' fame) afterwards, involving a very amusing translator. The film is the story of a waiter in Czechoslovakia before during and after WWII and is showing at the Barbican for a couple of weeks in May and is well worth seeing, though the book (inevitably) is even better.
