Friday, January 05, 2007

His space

Blimey! No sooner do I post my first YouTube link, than I follow up with this link to myspace.

Should I be getting out more? Not when there are gems like this to share!

Afterrabbit and Liver and Lights are the brainchildren of John Bently. John is an artist, writer, poet, performer ... and he makes books - in every sense of the word.

Here's how he describes his work:

Afterrabbit are an occasional band centred around the rantings of crazed yet strangely sensitive poet John Bently. First conceived in 2003, the band play live a few times every year, the gigs usually coinciding with the launch of one of Bently's infamous and bloody mindedly hand made publications. These are published under the collective heading of Liver and Lights...so far there have been 37 volumes in 20 years, stuffed with illustrations in editions of about 200. People seem to collect them! All over the world! The last four have contained Afterrabbit recordings and the new one, Liver & Lights no 37 Van Gig Zine contains a dvd of them performing earlier this year at the launch of Three Songs and a Camper Van, where they invited the audience to bring home made instruments to the gig to perform with them. What Fun! When it comes to jam, shoes and music Afterrabbit believe Home made is best!

I went to this gig. (Who says I never go out?) It was amazing - the home-made instruments included a crutch with string attachments, three lengths of hosepipe with cones on the ends, an ancient transistor radio with a fretboard added on ... and much more. When the audience joined in to jam with the band, the result was not only good music but was also strangely uplifting ...

Anyway, check them out. John also blogs here. I can promise you, you will never have come across anyone quite like him before!

5 comments:

Cathy said...

Hi Debi
I've just discovered MySpace...all these sites are addictive aren't they? Nice to see you visited my own blog today and thanks for the link!

Unknown said...

What an amazing guy. I love things like this - I must go and get me hence to a post office up North for some sterling postal orders!

Unknown said...

A crutch with string attachments? Three lengths of hosepipe with cones on the end? This is something this undercover alien chicken must investigate! Humans, they never cease to surprise me!
;-)

Unknown said...

Found a few snippets to listen to as well....

http://www.last.fm/music/Afterrabbit

Would like to see them 'live'. Good stuff - thanks Debi.

Debi said...

Not THAT kind of crutch, Aty!