Opinionated Geordie Monsters 7

Another issue of 'Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene' is out. 

It's free, it's open to anyone who wants to review a local band, it's full of hand-drawn pictures of monsters (not for any particular reason, but just because, y'know, anyone can draw a monster). 

And this month I am going to scan them and turn them into internet-turnable fake books. You know the kind of thing I mean: like the 24 hour comic I did here. I'm not really into the internet-zine thing, it's not real in my books. But it's the best way to 'catalogue' what gigs I've been to and what bands we've reviewed. My memory needs that aid.

More importantly, you can pick the paper version up for free in the Star & Shadow, and the odd other place, gig, pub, bus, that I leave copies now and then.

Deadline for issue 8 is 31st December, and you can scan & send em to oldglen@gmail.com, or even better post it to my house : 42 Curtis Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 9BH

October is Big Draw Month

There are 4 zines that have thus far gone unblogged. ONE about the old anarchist misogynist Proudhon and my trip to his hometown; TWO the Beacons collaborative fanzine (to be finished next week); THREE Maltazine no.4 (to be finished this week); and FOUR issue 7 of Opinionated Geordie Monsters. But sheesh, time goes fast and the whole of September is gone and went already. (I know, grammar fans, you hate me, but it sounds so RIGHT in geordie).

And this is October and October is the month of the Big Draw and this year I am devoting a lot of my time to doing Big Draw stuff at the Star and Shadow. I am even doing a separate, daily blog about it, beginning here.

The Weekend Before Last

Well that was the 10th to the 12th wasn't it, and I was having all kinds of adventures and thoughts in foreign lands. Borders, police, dead revolutionaries and singing in the funicular. I'll blog about it, but not now. I'm just sticking this stub here to remind myself to remember. A travel zine will come out of it, and possibly 2 videos (1 a v.brief advert, 1 a hotchpotch of filmed travel and animation to make up for the battery going dead on my borrowed camcorder - if ever i get time to do that!)

Anyway, tomorrow I shall make the zine, or not. 

But if I do, I shall tell you about it right here.

Last Weekend - Beacons & Megacon

Ee, I've got behind in blogging. I'm behind in many things at the moment. It's testimony to being out and about. Or should that be testament. Either way, I was, and I made two videos showing what I got up to at:

Carlisle Megacon on Saturday.

I arrived self-consciously stinky from Beacons and was really happy to see those friendly familiar faces of the Paper Jam Collective all in place and sharing coffee and then, seeing my workshop was timetabled to start, making the comics that are shown in the video.

Click here for the Megacon video!

(All the action's in the first minute, and then the final half minute. The rest of the video is documenting the comics like these here - my 3 favourites - which we made together.)

  The finished comics on the pillars (above), Matt fizzing with ideas, and the Paper Jam stall (below). The bright green was unavoidable, and the acoustics were remarkable. Cuttlefish has also blogged about the day here.

Then it was back down to Skipton on the Settle-Carlisle railway (literally scores of trainspotters on the platform for the steam train, and well over-enthusiastic volunteer guides on the up-train who made it very hard to finish my book.)

Making a Collaborative Beacons Fanzine

Click here for the 'Making the Beacons Fanzine' video!

Anyway, there's a zine on its way for this one, as the video should make clear, so I shall write no more of my experiences than are included therein. This earlier blogpost tells you why I was excited to go, and the pictures below indicate some of the content and method of collection!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm returning the camcorder tomorrow so a healthy eye break from video editing for me! And I seem to have a bit of a backlog of zines to make, yipes!

Temporary Mouth Exhibition

I forget what it was now, I think perhaps it was some chance comment at the bar in the star and shadow when we were stood there, painting monsters on the Hexham Courant (best newspaper in the north east), and a pizza box, before a gig started. But it made me think "why not fill that empty exhibition space with an exhibition" and so I did just that the following Sunday, during the canny little library, with the help of anyone else who was hanging around.

The rules were simple: use your mouth to bite two eyeholes and a mouth-hole in a Star and Shadow brochure. 

Fingers were used to improve some holes, and noses, even ears, were added to some. 

I borrowed some blu-tack, stuck up the programmes, and went home.

Lucky for me, not having a camera these days, Miss 'Stolen Orange' was there with hers, and these photos are all hers.

 

Creative Stuff at the Green Fest

The first green festival took place in the first year I was in Newcastle, and I've been involved in all kinds of ways with it ever since then - even writing up its history once (a history I've since lost). I'm no longer 'secretary', sit on the management committee or even go to planning meetings, and this means I can enjoy it far far more - without the stress of money and such, and so I'm free to do whatever idea I think of each year - and every year different! 

(much respect and gratitude to those who do stick at that babylonian side of things, you make a beautiful free thing happen that would not exist without you - no corporation or council would ever have created the green festival, and nor would they have kept it going through all the weathers we've faced)

Last year I gave away strawberry plants and did collaborative typewriting with 2 borrowed typewriters. These created a crazily meandering collaborative story / stream of consciousness that I loved, and I learnt then - by doing for the first time - how to make such a thing more readable, copyable and manageable in future (isn't -able a useful word ending!) 

This year I based myself in the sensory spaces and family area, meeting some lovely new faces, and I roped in other members of the Paper Jam Comics Collective to set up a drawing table and mini comics workshops. I was pretty exhausted on the first day, and under-prepared, because of volunteering at the Star and Shadow for an afterparty the night before, meaning I didn't get home till 4am, long after the sky was light. Sunday was better for me because I'd had some sleep. Thanks to Joe and Vanessa for those crucial turkish coffees.

 

Mainly this year I did two things: one was getting children to imagine rooms to stick on 'our dream house' - and the forgiving weather meant that this structure (built by Jack) could stay outside in the sometimes-sun, which made it nice and visible. Plus it was a fairly easy drawing activity to run, with kids having the chance to display their artwork, and with us able to look elsewhere for much of the time, just supplying regular bursts of encouragement, enthusiasm, tidying and recognition for their work! Many thanks to Anton & family, Neringa and Lydia for getting this activity started with their own dream rooms!

I didn't set up the paper jam stall as planned, or even get round to selling my 'Pagan Geordie Yearbook' which I'd got printed especially in time. But there were too many folk to chat to, and things to watch over, to do that as well as the creative stuff.

The second thing I brought in on Sunday, after people asked for it on Saturday and yes, it was collaborative typewriting again - I even drove out to Bardon Mill especially to fetch the typewriter on Saturday night, rather than go out drinking. Again, I kind of 'managed' this activity without giving it my constant attention and support, so that I was just encouraging participants, moving the paper, fixing the ribbon etc.. and so this year I hardly wrote anything on it myself. Special recognition goes to Tom for heroically sitting with it under a tree, rather abandoned by me, as he listened to bands at the lakeside.

 

I'd also, on Friday, helped Jack make his 'Thrive or Dive' interactive exhibit, which he finished with added dribbling cups and did a pretty good job I think of explaining to interested participants in the permaculture area. Money spent locally, the effects and the variations, and how to help a neighbourhood thrive!

I also gave out 'interview yourself' questionairres and mini 'monster review' sheets to random people, and I will cobble together a kind of zine thing out of these, the typewriter stream and other artwork when I get a few more back.

Of course the other thing I did was film bits and pieces of the festival, as linked to the photos above, and for this I used a camera borrowed from SCAN (thanks SCAN). I found it quite fun, and haven't missed not having a stills camera half as much as I expected.

Videos on youtube of:  

 













The Overall Green Festival (15 mins)  

The Family Area (10 mins) 




Collaborative Typewriting (2 mins) 

 
Thrive or Dive (5 mins) 




Nathan & Loki's Circus Show (5 mins) 

And The Show Finale (1 min)




Next year I'm not sure what I'll do, with my brain currently playing with the idea of making some puppet characters that then feature in a weird kind of guided-video-to-the-festival. I'll decide next May, and you're invited to join with me, in whatever it is I do!