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Pink Floyd – Their mortal remains 

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All pictures here: https://www.flubu.com/blog/pictures/pink_floyd_tmr_jul_2017

We finally got to see the exhibition. I’ve had tickets since last year! We went to Byrons for lunch, then Humming bakery, then V&A, then the Lego store in Leicester Square. We wanted to go to Taro for dinner, but turns out it’s closed ??. We went to a little pub and had very acceptable pub grub (with shite service).

​The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains is an immersive journey through the world of Pink Floyd. The show begins with a look at the band’s early digs gigging in London’s underground music venues and goes on to explore the making of their most famous albums – from Animals to Dark Side of the Moon.

The exhibition was conceived by the late Storm Thorgerson and developed by his Hipgnosis creative partner Aubrey Powell. Pink Floyd’s visuals are a key focus of the show – it is as much a celebration of the band’s iconic album art and theatrical live performances as it is their music. Scaled models of set designs are shown alongside inflatable puppets, music videos, animations, tour programmes and sketches for album covers, offering a look at the process and ambition behind the band’s visual output.

The exhibition begins with a look at pyschedelia and the counter-culture movement from which Pink Floyd emerged in the 1980s. 

The space – with its black-and-white walls and trippy visuals projected on to the ceiling – highlights the strong influence of psychedelia on Pink Floyd’s visual output.

Circular screens are now a signature feature of Pink Floyd gigs. The band first used one in 1974 – lighting and production designer Arthur Max created a 40-foot wide screen for the band’s tour of France that was used to project animations by Ian Emes and film sequences by director Peter Medak.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall tour was an elaborate production involving large-scale inflatable puppets, eerie masks and a wall that separated the band from the audience.

The album follows the story of a troubled rock star who isolates himself from the outside world after struggling with loss, abuse and the breakdown of his marriage. Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park designed the live show based on sketches drawn up by Waters while illustrator Gerald Scarfe designed puppets based on characters depicted in the record. The original production visited 31 cities in 1980 and 1981 and a later tour featuring more advanced puppets ran from 2010 to 2013.

Waters’ early drawings are displayed in the exhibition alongside clay models of the show’s ‘Wife’ and ‘Mother’ inflatables and masks worn by children in the video for track Another Brick in the Wall. Suspended from the ceiling is a vast inflatable ‘Teacher’ created for the 2010-13 tour – the kinetic puppet highlights the scale of the show and hangs alongside a replica of the pink pig featured on the cover of Animals. Nearby are concept paintings by Scarfe for the teacher, which show him spewing bile into the mouths of young children.

Roger Waters conceived the cover design for Animals while driving through Battersea to record at the band’s studio in Islington. The image shows a bright pink pig floating over Battersea Power Station – a reference to both the record (inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm) and the phrase ‘pigs might fly’.

The shoot was an eventful one – the 40-foot pig broke free and drifted into the flight path for Heathrow airport. Flights were grounded, Powell was arrested and both the police and the Royal Air Force were sent out to recover the offending animal. (It eventually landed several miles away in Kent.)

A look at the release of Dark Side of the Moon and the album’s iconic artwork closes the exhibition’s opening section. The artwork was a departure from the surreal photographic images created by Hipgnosis for the band and is one of the most recognisable album covers of all time. (The album is also the band’s most successful, with around 45 million copies sold to date.)

An adjoining room contains a holographic installation based on the cover design. Visitors are invited to gaze at the installation while listening to Pink Floyd’s music on headphones – an oddly mesmerising experience that brings the instantly recognisable image to life.

Storm Thorgerson’s cover for Pink Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell is inspired by the idea of communication. The image was shot in a field in Ely and shows a pair of metal heads facing each other as if engaged in conversation.

Images from the shoot are shown alongside Thorgerson’s sketches and six-metre tall models created for the Division Bell tour. 

The cover for album Wish You Were Here shows a man being set alight as he shakes hands on a business deal. Like the artwork for The Division Bell – and many of Hipgnosis’ covers for Pink Floyd – it was created for real and the man really was set on fire.

The powerful image is projected on to a wall in the exhibition. It is displayed alongside the original photograph and images from the shoot that show assistants standing by with fire extinguishers. An accompanying manuscript written by Thorgerson explains the creative process and concept for the artwork.

As well as celebrating Pink Floyd’s experimental approach to visuals, Their Mortal Remains highlights the band’s innovative use of new technologies. The band was one of the first to use synthesisers in their music and a Mini Moog synthesiser owned by Richard Wright is displayed alongside hand-painted drums and custom guitars. A glass-fronted display includes over 50 instruments while an interactive element allows visitors to mix their own version of the track Money.

The exhibition opens with a larger-than-life model of the band’s Bedford Van. The replica is over twice the size of the original vehicle that the band used while touring in the early 1960s. It’s a lovely way to kick off the show – inside the model is a hand-written letter from Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett to his then-girlfriend with a small picture of the freshly painted van. “When I got back to London tonight the others had painted the van with a white stripe, which looks good with our name on it,” Barrett writes.

Capturing the scale or impact of a Pink Floyd gig in an exhibition space is an impossible task – the band played to vast audiences in some of the world’s biggest arenas – but a performance room at the end of the exhibition aims to give some sense of the spectacle. Footage of the band performing Comfortably Numb at Live 8 (their last performance on stage together) plays out across multiple screens while sound blasts from 18 loud speakers and seven sub woofers. It’s a suitably ambitious ending to a spectacular show.

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Pink Floyd: their mortal remains

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London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has announced the first major international retrospective of Pink Floyd, one of the world’s most pioneering and influential bands. To mark 50 years since the band released their first single Arnold Layne, and over 200 million record sales later, The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Moral Remains experience will be a spectacular and unparalleled audio-visual journey through Pink Floyd’s unique and extraordinary worlds; chronicling the music, design, and staging of the band, from their debut in the 1960s through to the present day. The exhibition marks the first collaboration in decades of Pink Floyd’s remaining members.

The exhibition will celebrate Pink Floyd’s place in history as the cultural landscape changed throughout the 1960s and beyond. Pink Floyd occupied a distinctive experimental space and were the foremost exponents of a psychedelic movement that changed the understanding of music forever. They became one of the most important groups in contemporary music.

Pink Floyd have produced some of the most iconic imagery in popular culture: from pigs flying over Battersea Power Station, The Dark Side of the Moon prism, cows, marching hammers to giant inflatable teachers; their vision brought to life by creative individuals such as modern surrealist and long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson, satirical illustrator Gerald Scarfe and psychedelic lighting pioneer Peter Wynne-Wilson.

The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains will celebrate the band’s era-defining work in composition, staging, design, film, music technology, graphic design and photography. It will feature more than 350 objects and artefacts including never-before-seen material, presented alongside works from the V&A’s outstanding collections of art, design, architecture and performance. Highlights will include spectacular set and construction pieces from some of Pink Floyd’s most innovative and legendary album covers and stage performances including The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall and The Division Bell, instruments, music technology, original designs, architectural drawings, handwritten lyrics and psychedelic prints and posters.

At the exhibition, visitors will have the unique opportunity to experience never-before-seen classic Pink Floyd concert footage and a custom-designed laser light show.

I’ve had my tickets since October of last year and I can’t wait!

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Gin distillery, bar, hotel and visitor center

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Pack your bags sweetie, we’re going to London in November.

Portobello Road Gin has announced plans to launch a vast distillery complex on the street which it takes its name from, incorporating a pub, G&T bar, visitor centre and hotel. It will mean that the gin is distilled entirely on the iconic London road for the first time since 2011, when — only months after launching — the company was forced to outsource much of its production in order to keep up with demand.

The four-storey development of a former boozer on the corner of Portobello and Talbot roads will see a 400-litre gin still fitted in the basement, a striking contrast to the 30-litre still at the distillery’s original home above the Portobello Star pub. Alongside this there will be a modern visitor centre called The Ginstitute where guests will be able to learn about the history of gin and try their hand at blending their own.

The ground floor will be turned into a pub called The Resting Room where spirits will be served direct from barrels above the bar. It will have the style of a decadent Victorian gin palace and will also offer craft beers and English wines alongside gastropub-style British food. At the top of the building will be a private dining room as well as a small number of hotel rooms, making it London’s first distillery that you can stay in.

Portobello Road Gin founder Ged Feltham said: “It feels a bit crazy, but for some time we have been determined to bring all our gin production in-house and it is amazing that this will enable us to do that without leaving Portobello Road.”

The distillery is due to open in November.

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The tao of Bill Bailey

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Contentment is knowing you’re right. Happiness is knowing somebody else is wrong.

Danish hygge could be considered as “cosiness of the soul”. The Danes insist though that hygge was never meant to be translated. It was meant to be felt.

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‘It’s going quite well,’ says Bill Bailey, 30 minutes into his new show. ‘I think I’ll do my joke.’

Yep, Bailey is on typically bewildered form in ‘Limboland’, which has landed in the West End for a Christmas run after a year of touring. The closest the 51-year-old comic gets to a one-liner is a lengthy, meandering gag that starts ‘Lionel Richie walks into a bar…’ But quickfire jokes aren’t Bailey’s style, of course, and his trademark fanciful musings and musical deconstructions are out in force.

‘We’re in a strange time of extremes,’ he explains at the top of the show, before launching into a wonderfully playful routine about the post-election political landscape and the Labour Party’s current ‘experimental album’. As the show title suggests, Bailey feels caught in the middle; the long-time lefty’s not quite sure what to think or who to believe in.

From there, the grumblingly upbeat comic moves into jokes about typical British feelings or trying to explain Skype to his octogenarian father; and in the second half, there are more long-form stories as he explores what it actually means to be ‘happy’.

It’s Bailey’s beautiful turns of phrase and imaginative similes that bring each tale to life. There’s a whimsical poetry to every sentence; each observation is filtered through his fluffy brain like he’s in one long, extended daydream.

But it’s when he gets behind an instrument that the musically-dexterous comic is at his best. Remixes of iPhone ringtones, German death metal covers of Abba songs and ‘Happy Birthday’ reimagined as a 1930s Berlin cabaret number and a Moby masterclass are just a few highlights.

There’s a musical theme to his stories too, as he describes an awkward encounter with Sir Paul McCartney and a trip to see ‘boneless chickens’ One Direction at the O2.

It’s Bailey on top form; joyous, playful and effortlessly funny. ‘Limboland’ brings more festive cheer than Santa this Christmas.

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Cats review

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Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, and produced by Cameron Mackintosh. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as “the Jellicle choice” and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life.

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Act I — When Cats Are Maddened by the Midnight Dance

After the overture, the Cats gather on stage and explain the Jellicle tribe and their purpose (Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats). The Cats, who constantly break the fourth wall, spot the human audience and explain how the different Cats of the tribe are named (The Naming of Cats). This is followed by a dance from Victoria the White Cat that signals the beginning of the Jellicle Ball (The Invitation to the Jellicle Ball) and Munkustrap tells us that tonight is the night when Old Deuteronomy will choose a cat to be reborn into a new life on the Heaviside Layer.

Munkustrap appears and introduces Jennyanydots (The Old Gumbie Cat), a large tabby cat. She “sits and sits and sits and sits” all day, while at night she rules over the mice and cockroaches, teaching various activities to them. Jennyanydots finishes, greets the other cats, but is interrupted. The music instantly changes, and The Rum Tum Tugger makes an extravagant entrance (The Rum Tum Tugger). The Tugger is a Tom with a wild mane and leopard spots on his chest. He is very fickle and unappeasable, “for he will do as he do do and there’s no doing anything about it”.

Hannah Kenna Thomas (White Cat) Natasha Mould (Jemima)Antoine Murray-Straughan (Rum Tum Tugger) Dawn Williams (Rumpleteazer)Benjamin Yates (Mungojerrie)

A shabby old grey cat stumbles out and looks around. It is Grizabella. All the cats back away. The cats sing of her saddened, unfortunate state (Grizabella: The Glamour Cat). Grizabella leaves and the music changes to a cheerful upbeat. Bustopher Jones, a fat cat in “a coat of fastidious black”, appears (Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town). Bustopher Jones is among the elite of the cats, and visits prestigious gentlemen’s clubs. A loud crash startles the tribe. Could this be Macavity? The cats run off the stage in fright. Hushed giggling signals the entrance of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, a pair of near-identical cats. They are petty burglars, very mischievous, and they enjoy causing trouble for human families (Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer).

Demeter (Zizi Strallen) & Bombalurina (Charlene Ford)

Finally, the Jellicle patriarch, Old Deuteronomy, shows up (Old Deuteronomy). He is a large old Cat that “has lived many lives” and “buried nine wives (And more, I am tempted to say – ninety-nine)”. He is the one who will choose which Jellicle cat will go to the Heaviside Layer. In most productions, at this point, the cats perform a song (The Awful Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles) for Old Deuteronomy. It is a story about two dog tribes clashing in the street and subsequently being scared away by the Great Rumpus Cat, a cat with flashing red eyes. After a few words from Old Deuteronomy on the destiny of Jellicle Cats and Pollicle Dogs, a second loud crash, presumably from Macavity, sends the alarmed cats scurrying. But Old Deuteronomy calls them back and the main celebration begins (The Jellicle Ball), in which the cats sing and display their “Terpsichorean powers”.

After the Ball, Grizabella reappears and tries to dance, but her age and decrepit condition prevent her from doing so. Once again, she is shunned by the other cats, but that does not stop her from singing a short version of Memory.

Act II — Why Will the Summer Day Delay — When Will Time Flow Away?

After the Jellicle Ball, Old Deuteronomy sings of “what happiness is”, referring to Grizabella. This message naturally goes over everyone’s heads, so he sends the message again and Jemima sings it for everyone to hear (The Moments of Happiness). Gus — short for Asparagus — shuffles forward (Gus: The Theatre Cat). He is the cat that was once a famous actor but is now old and “suffers from palsy which makes his paws shake.” He is accompanied by Jellylorum, who tells of his exploits. Gus then remembers how he once played the infamous Growltiger, Terror of the Thames (Growltiger’s Last Stand). He tells the story about the pirate’s romance with Griddlebone and how he was overtaken by the Siamese and forced to walk the plank.

Back in the present, after Gus exits, Skimbleshanks is sleeping in the corner (Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat), a cat who is unofficially in charge of the night train to Glasgow. He is very clever and very important because if he is gone “the train can’t start”. Within his song, a whole locomotive train engine is assembled out of objects in the junkyard, with various cats spinning wheels, holding up the structure and lighting the headlights.

With a third crash and an evil laugh, the “most wanted” cat, Macavity appears. He is a “master criminal” and is never found at the scene of the crime. He is a horrifying looking cat and a “villain” of the Jellicle Tribe. Macavity’s minions throw a net over Old Deuteronomy and capture him. As the other cats try to follow him, Demeter and Bombalurina sing what they know about Macavity, as they have had some sort of past with him (Macavity: The Mystery Cat). When they are finished, Macavity returns disguised as Old Deuteronomy. When revealed by Demeter, he fights with Munkustrap and Alonzo. Though he holds his own for a time, Macavity is overwhelmed by the two younger tomcats; as the rest of the tribe begin to gang up and surround him, he shorts out the stage lights and escapes in the confusion.

Rum Tum Tugger suggests that the cats find Mr. Mistoffelees (Magical Mr. Mistoffelees). Mr. Mistoffelees is black and small and can perform many feats of magic that no other cat can do. Mr. Mistoffelees performs his dance, which is often one of the most intricate and challenging dance solos in the show. The magical cat restores the lights and brings back Old Deuteronomy, earning praise from all the cats. The Jellicle choice can now be made.

After Old Deuteronomy sits down, Grizabella returns to the junkyard and he allows her to address the gathering. Her faded appearance and lonely disposition have little effect on her song (Memory). With acceptance and encouragement from Jemima and Victoria, her appeal succeeds and she is chosen to be the one to go to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn to a new Jellicle Life (Journey to the Heaviside Layer). A large tire rises from the junk piles, carrying Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy partway toward the sky; he then steps off so she can finish the journey on her own. Old Deuteronomy gives his closing speech to the human audience (The Ad-dressing of Cats) and the show comes to a close.

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We saw some astonishing leaps and bounds, beautiful ballet and jazz technique, aerials, splits, cartwheels, flips of all kinds. You could hear the entire audience hold its breath as they performed to utter perfection. There is something about the way a cat moves, where not a single cell of the body, not a single separate hair, is motionless, and yet it is all moves with fluid uniThe dancers incorporated this animalistic aspect into their movement and gave Cats its sense of power balancing on the edge of control.

Plus, you know, seriously bendy, curvy dancers in skin-tight lycra…. what’s not to love?

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