Month: October 2022

at Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, 7pm, Friday 28^th October

FERLIE LEED were invited to perform at Glasgow’s unique Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, a bizarre, hilarious, and disturbing collection of automata and kinetic sculpture housed at the city’s 103 Trongate.

FERLIE LEED’s usual constituents Una MacGlone and Gerry Rossi can’t make this one, so Tam Dean Burn and George Burt have asked Jessica Argo to bring the ethereal magic of the Theremin from its homeland of Russia to the heart of Glasgow in a Futurist celebration of love, loss and the power of Radio…

There will also be a VERY SPECIAL GUEST…. the wonderful MAGGIE NICOLS!

For this special occasion we have re-named the band for this event- we will be THE FUTURISTICOS, and we will convey some of the power and magic of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and HM Enzensberger in Edwin Morgan’s outstanding translations into Scots and English.

The FUTURISTICOS are:

Jessica Argo- Theremin

George Burt- guitar

Tam Dean Burn- voice

Programme:

The Radio of the Future– V. Khlebnikov; music by The Futuristicos

Forfairn’s ma Hert– A. v. Platen; music G. Burt

Drowsing– HM Enzensberger; music G.Burt

Duo

Ha-Oo!– V. Khlebnikov; music by The Futuristicos

Gaffin Cantrip– V. Khlebnikov; music by The Futuristicos

Quartet

You must live!– L Martynov

I’ll be performing at the PLAYTIME sessions with Tom Bancroft (drs), Martin Kershaw (ss & as) and Sue Mackenzie (bari & ss),on Thursday 6th October.

Playtime is a fabulous gig in a fine venue, and I’m looking forward to it. Sue MacKenzie is a wonderful player and we haven’t really worked together outside of GIO.

I’ve always been a great fan of Tom Bancroft’s projects, and the PLAYTIME online sessions from Pathhead Village Hall were one of the few regular gigs that kept going during the lockdown. Clíona Cassidy and I did our RAIN SHADOW songs there, and you can see the gig here:

https://www.facebook.com/playtimemusic1/live

It was a strange experience! Although it magically looks like a conventional gig, we were all carefully isolated and we could only move in tightly prescribed areas. Tom bought us some fish & chips, and he had to place our orders carefully in the middle of the hall. The we all had to file forward one at a time to pick them up.

I was living in Falkirk at the time, and drove past Clíona’s place to pick her up and drive round the Edinburgh Bypass to Pathhead. The weather was wet & windy. Following the Govt coronavirus guidance, Clíona was in the back seat wrapped up in scarf, woolly hat and gloves while I drove through the wind and rain with the car windows wide open.

The music went pretty well: some of the songs are quite tricky to play, and Graeme, Tom, Mario and Martin played them beautifully, despite my scrappy parts and diffident leadership style. I played the guitar part to Clíona’s song THE LIGHTHOUSE on electric guitar, instead of the classical, and made a hash of it. The free stuff was nice though. A bit subdued, but none the worse for that…