Jake Oldershaw

So it's been nearly a full month of Rice for Stans Cafe. Milan, Newcastle and now Cork. The full story might have to wait a while but just a quickie about the home of Mr Johnny O'Hanlan.

It's not great to encourage stereotypes about Ireland but it's only cos i love it so much. As we arrived at the airport some of the kit got lost as it often does. I asked at the desk where the oversized luggage would come in. The answer - 'On the conveyor belt...unless it's too big' !

It's been a great week with the visitor numbers growing steadily every day. After a time pushed get in - 6 tonnes over 2 days, and an opening event we cut loose at a couple of gigs in the Spiegeltent. Local boys 'Fred' had great energy and rock humour - getting their dad up to play flute - then stage dive!

At one stage the whole audience seemed to spontaneously sit down except for two beligerent young lads, you couldn't help thinking they bore some kind of schoolboy grudge toward the lead singer or something. At which point they were rugby tackled to the floor by a sweet coleen.

The kind of night we usually reserve for the end of a run for some reason. Only this time turned on it's head for the first night.

It's followed on for the rest of the week really. Last night we joined a good 80 people each taking a papier mache dog for a walk around the city centre. For no discernible reason other than a laugh! That's the thing about being here, such a good natured relaxed spirit. Pretty much every night there's been something to remind us of a good friend back in Brum, Johnny O'Hanlan. He grew up in Cork, went to Dartington a few years after me and set up a performance company called Hamfisted! They're just doing an outdoor community show and you can't help thinking it would just go down so well over here.

Go to http://www.hamfisted.org.uk for details and the company manifesto - Putting smiles on peoples faces...

Posted by Jake at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Here's a copy of what's hopefully going into the Lichfield Programme, quite nice to focus my thoughts again on why the hell i do it...

The world’s moved pretty quickly over the last 100 years. You can do things your ancestors never even dreamed of. Fly to exotic destinations for the price of a meal; pay for a beer with a microchip embedded in your hand; discover just about anything you want to with the click of a computer mouse. It can be exciting, confusing exhilarating and infuriating all at once – a world of possibility moving so quickly it’s outdated before you even got to hear about it.

An ex gave me Theodore Zeldin’s ‘Intimate History of Humanity’. In the book, many individuals are interviewed about the emotions that define their everyday lives. We’re presented with snapshots of strangers, whose stories can often sound disarmingly like our own. Zeldin examines these portraits and compares them to the emotional behaviour of our ancestors. By doing so he reassures us that even though modern life can seem like a maze, it’s one that’s been negotiated hundreds of times before. It got me thinking - maybe all the new forms of communication that are available to us now, instead of helping us find our way, often end up confusing us.

You’re put on hold for half an hour by a well meaning robot, you’ve keyed in the wrong PIN, the battery on your mobile is flat and you can’t even remember your lovers phone number when all you want to do is call and say sorry. Despite all this advancement love breaks down and the world can still be a lonely place.

I wanted to make a performance where I would sing a song to one audience member at a time. I thought the intimacy of the singing voice would be magnified by that experience; just 2 people in a room, sharing a story. The book and its studies seemed like the perfect starting place.

When you come to ‘Intimate History’ you are asked to choose a show from a menu of six titles. Each one is a mini saga inspired by different themes touched on in the book. Your show might make you laugh, it might make you feel a bit sick, it might break your heart but before you know it you are back in the foyer with a vivid memory of your own intimate history.

Posted by Jake at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Now that I've vented my spleen about James Blunt here's a date for the diary.

Intimate History visits Lichfield Festival on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th July.

For more info and tickets go here
http://www.lichfieldfestival.org

All sorts of interesting stuff in the programme including the lovely Architects of Air installation, so make a weekend of it.

Posted by Jake at 08:06 PM | Permalink

Gnarls Barkley have apparently done the decent thing and pulled their song ‘Crazy’ from playlists, worried that people were getting bored with hearing it all the time. Good on them I say. It’s the same goodwill that John Cleese and Ricky Gervais showed by not making any more episodes of their incredibly successful series, and it never did them any harm.

Quit while you’re ahead. It’s a noble attitude, and one that must be incredibly difficult to have when you’re faced with indefinite amounts of royalty cheques. I just hope James Blunt will adopt the same attitude straight away.

The first time I heard his insipid ‘You’re Beautiful’ song was on the Joolz Holland show. I admit to being quite intrigued in the first few bars, it was vaguely Nick Drake sounding. But it only took a minute or two to I decide I wanted to kill the man. The sentiment, the delivery, everything about the song gets my blood boil each time I catch it. And wouldn’t you know it, he becomes an overnight success and the song as ubiquitous as coca-cola.

I retain music very easily, if I hear a tune once I can hum it back pretty much straight away. It’s obviously a handy skill when you’re working on a show with songs in it, but with people like James Blunt around it can be a complete pain in the arse. In Milan with the rice show last week the hotel played MTV at breakfast every morning. And there he was, mooning on about some wisemen with a semi by the sea, with his third internationally massive hit. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t rid my head of the song. Each and every morning. I don’t understand it, what makes a tune so catchy you want to rip your brain out and re-programme it to bar all calls from that number? Even writing this now makes me worry it’s seeping back in to my consciousness for a few hours.

Either James Blunt dies or I get an Ipod so I can self-administer some Death Metal or Nosebleed Techno as soon as he rears his ugly army-stock head. Please do yourself and all of us a favour and quit while you’re ahead, before your stage name becomes rhyming slang. James Blunt is a…

Posted by Jake at 08:02 PM | Permalink