The John Gillan Weekender - songs and words of Ivor Cutler, Syd Barret & Arthur Lee

[Steven Milne]

arthur lee

yeah

on the night it turned out to be a bit of an imbalance id agree.

thing is, we had a couple of folk pull out last minute who were doing arthurs stuff and that left us a wee bit short .

also, a few people changed their sets in the lead up to the gig to doing barrett stuff instead of lee stuff. I think this can maybe be attributed to two reasons.

one is a testament to syds material.I for one wasnt aware bar a few songs of syd barretts output and in the lead up to the gig investigated and got into it.some of the acts seemed to say that they really found they could adapt syds material and make it their own and thus wanted to do so.maybe more fun for experimentation and also they maybe felt they could tackle it easier. i know this is true of the jinx who changed from doing a couple of arthur songs to syd songs in the lead up.

Secondly, to cover love songs, you pretty much have to stay faithful to the original (within reason).And as someone pointed out, Arthurs songs can be difficult to play! I find it easy as ive listened to the material a lot and often dropped love songs into my solo sets. However, i did cancel two songs as they were not only hard to play competently but really hard to do justice to.Particularly "you set the scene" for example was one i considered but abandoned. I know a couple of the acts said they had a similar experience with the material.

Also, a couple of clashes ( people wanting to do the same song) meant that they changed their set and arthur probably suffered from that too.

Its a wierd one though, coz when I started organising it was almost all arthur lee covers for the night and then the syd stuff kinda overtook it. Again a testament to syd.we were originally worried about the amount of syd material to be honest.

Overall, from 8 acts you had the first four( all syd) me and sandy (all arthur ) phonefreak (more arthur than syd) and Kitchen Cynics (1 arthur song) so probably about 65/35 to syd.

I totally understand your frustration but I hope you still enjoyed the night.

I thought the musical element was very high quality and although the attendance was dissapointing I was blown away on many occasions.

All of the Jinx set - magic

Welfare Mothers - so laid back and could have listened all night

Lenny Helsing - syd jukebox and as mike said - legend

Adrian Crowley - brilliant and particularly Golden Hair

Kitchen Cynics - bike was great fun and great banter from ALan to silence the noisy girls!!

Kharleong - arthur lee songs done the way they should be and good to see sandy back gigging again with such force

Phone freak - always good to hear 7and7is and little red book rocked too

So thanks to all the above and to Dave Falconer for visuals (anyone else find themselves getting distracted?) and Mike Napier and the Lemon Tree.

I think come this time again next year maybe another similar night but in a smaller venue (probably a dirty hearts club night at snafu).

I know arthur lee and syds legacy wont diminish.I have an hour bus journey to work and every day recently i listen to forever changes en route to work.so maybe this time next year we can do it again and build on the positive aspects of this years event.

x

[ghost]

I think I was using an Ibanez DL 5 for the delay, and feeding it into an Akai Headrush for the loops.

I sometimes use a wee blue Guyatone MD3, and had them both on Friday....I definitely used the Ibanez on Saturday, 'cos the Guyatone battery was done (which suggests it was that which I used on Friday!).

Much appreciated Mr Cynic! It's on me birthday list.... *dreams*

[Alan Cynic]

Apparently there's a headrush one on e-bay at the moment (although at least 2 other Aberdeen musicians are interested, so I'm told!).