Pals,
The Green Note is by far one of my favourite venues to play in London. First big gig in London for a long time. Mighty music from Manchester’s finest unhinged reed, word and string botherer Alabaster dePlume , left-field stories, contested poems and general in the moment inspiration/silliness from Wilf Merttens, impeccable sound and quite possibly some astral predictions from Oscar Cainer and some new never before heard songs from me + everyone who comes gets a high five and an enlivening evening of existential exploration delivered with humour and lightness of being, promise!
Here’s how Wilf describes what he does in his own words:
“Whatever you do, please don’t tell me a BORING STORY. I smash boring stories with my griot stick: whack! whack!, says my stick as I go, moving through the jungle at incredible speed, dodging spiders, tigers, ghosts, hungry ghosts – and then, BANG! I’ve fallen into a pit, I’ve stumbled into a bandit’s den, I’ve turned into a fox, I’m being chased by hunters, I’m chasing a rabbit, the rabbit’s making me soup, selling me stones… next thing I’ve turned into a bird!: I’m free to dance up from breeze to breeze, free to soar in the sky… But then a mountain rises up abruptly in front of me, blocking my path. I wish, I wish to be the man digging a tunnel through the mountain, but the sun is beating down on his head like a hot soft hammer, so I wish to be the sun, then I’m the sun burning everything up, but the clouds are blocking my way, so I wish to be clouds, but the birds are flying through my belly and tickling me, so I wish to be BIRD, but then a mountain rises up abruptly in front of me, blocking my path… so I wish to be a storyteller, who can move mountains, fly like bird, burn like sun, billow into any shape like the clouds that march across the sky. I am STORY TELLER! I RULE EVERYTHING I SPEAK OF! And it’s gone straight to my head.”