Recording the Writers Group at the Lock In.

 We were back at the Lock In today to record the written work produced by our writers group with our guest writer Geoff Cox over the last few weeks at Mind in Furness.

The lads have all spent time polishing their work, adding and subtracting and  working towards a piece that both works on the page and a reading.  There is more work to come from Phil, who will be adding his own music to a recording made in his own studio at home.


It was a great afternoon, the work has really progressed, the humour, honesty and clarity that has characterised  the sessions is all there in these pieces. You hear and feel the significance of records, tapes, music as company, nutrition, solace, social lubricant, and as territory to be explored.  The quality of the readings too is outstanding; it is a great thing to hear these stories delivered in these warm and characterful voices

Robbie from the Lock In  manned the desk. It was the first time he'd heard any of the work and as were packing away he was full of praise for the group and, like me, buzzing a little from the atmosphere the lads bring with them. There is a sense here of a group that can develop further projects in other media, and whose members have further skills that can open doors for themselves and others, making a real contribution to the cultural life of the town.

Thanks to Glenn, Neil, Will , Arnie and Phil for their welcome and for their work and to Robbie for making the process so easy and enjoyable.

I now have to edit and present the work for podcast; it's a delightful prospect. 

More photos below..


















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dispatches From the Dancefloor. More from the MIND women's group at Lock In Live

Image
 Sue and sound recordist Josh confer before our latest session at the Lock In in Barrow.  We got our usual warm welcome at the studio, the kettle was located in the debris from Lock In's (marvellous) Coastal Roads Festival, and the serious fun of recording began. The written and recorded work from the MIND In Furness women's group has been composed into a script, with additional bits from Kate Davis and me, and the result is a slice across time and place, reflecting shifts in the nature of  preparations for nights out, and the role of music in our social and private  worlds.  Sue writes about the buzz  she can find in a near-empty venue in the hours before a gig, and about the peace she finds in contemplative, enveloping sound.  In Nicola's account of a day out at the Radio One Road Show we hear the fizzing adrenaline of teenage fandom. In Louise's pieces, read by Nicole who we know from her work with Theatre Factory, we hear a contemporary anxiety worm its way onto the
Read more

Derek Brook and Earthquake, the accidental record shop

Image
 This is Derek Brook, accidental record shop manager.  From 1976 for seven years,  the doorway of Earthquake records was the threshold of a scene. Blissed-out West Coast psych imports rubbed against the first spitty shrapnel shards of punk.  Behind its counter - scrounged from a Rawlinson Street Chippy - Derek would sniff at your requests,  get you to an all dayer at  Knebworth to hear something better, and flog you his Vindicator fanzine to read on the coach. Derek gave me a morning and told me the story of the shop. Born out of a need to do something -anything-  for a year while waiting to do a Uni research project on footy hooliganism, Earthquake was different: it was open when everyone else was shut; it recognised  that you might want to actually hear records before you paid for them, and it understood that local scenes need a place to coalesce, a home-made place, built from the ground up  where a small town's 2 Captain Beefheart fans can meet, stand around, and, maybe, buy som
Read more

Intro. Talking Music, Eating Biscuits.

Image
INTO THE MUSIC is a celebration of the pleasures of recorded music. We are building a series of audio montages for broadcast or podcast drawing on new written work, music and the sound of the town of Barrow In Furness and its people. I'm John Hall, I'm the lead artist on this project, I work with narratives, text, archives and collections and recorded sound to tell stories. Here, we are looking at the role of music in our lives, in the grand narratives and the small, quiet moments.   We are looking at how music is received and experienced, how it has featured during different times in our lives, via radio, records shops, discos, downloads, pub jukeboxes and mixtapes and in the background noise of our everyday lives. We will draw on personal and shared experiences of music, on its role as a soundtrack or an aid to memory, as a source of identity and as a means of comfort and connection...the way music gets into our sonic environment and into us, and the places it reac
Read more