Word Music?

On Saturday I took Spud and Spud’s best friend to the art gallery to watch (hear, surely?) some live music.   Not classical this time, but a  mélange of styles from across the borough.  Due to an unfortunate timing issue, we missed the beginning because Stockport County’s match had just finished.  The ground, Edgeley Park, is just up the road from us. 

When we arrived, there was a young band playing and the musicians were good, the boy wasn’t bad but the girl was flat with a capital flat.  Then our old friend Paul Usher came on, he of the no nits.  Paul (several of us from our writing class had promised to support him), the chance for two teens to experience live music and the fact that it was free are the reasons I went.  I hope to be like my mother one day, who saw the Beatles at the Cavern before they were famous; Spud, his friend, my writing buddies and I can all say, ‘We saw Paul Usher at Stockport Art Gallery before he was famous.’  He’d better be famous because I’m tired of being let down by the boys’ school friends who form bands, let me watch them, then split up to go to university or work.   P.U. was amazingly good; much better live than he sounds on the net, and his playing is fabulous.  One of my writing buddies spoke truth when she said, ‘I wouldn’t want to be the act that follows him.’  As it turned out, nobody did.  Want to be that act, that is.  Spud and SBF were not impressed by the country & western duo who followed, though the woman was pretty good.

The best was yet to come, however.  One of the gallery’s staff advised us to stick around and listen to the next band: ‘A lady who chants poetry to music.’  Hmm.  You can’t whack a good poem, it’s true; but try listening to a woman in a Harry Potter cloak and her wild-eyed band mate – if I tell you he could look at the pictures on either side of the gallery at the same time, you’ll get my drift – read what was possibly good poetry but we couldn’t tell because all we could hear was ‘Mmffff ggghh hhhrret tttssd ddeeyy uhnx nmdjdhggfh’ from him and a wobbly, reedy, way flatter than the earlier girl, ‘Can’t get you outta my head’ from her, interposed after every fourth line of  ‘Mmffff ggghh hhhrret tttssd ddeeyy uhnx nmdjdhggfh.’  The boys needed to leave immediately so they could laugh outside without choking.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for experiments in poetry and music and supporting local artistes, but the boys are in favour of breathing and they just couldn’t stifle their laughter any more.  They will definitely remember the band, called Word Music, because they made up poems and interspersed them with increasingly hysterical  ‘Can’t get you outta my heads’ all the way home.