Friday, March 19, 2010

With The Gluts at Cafe Oto

Of course, I got off at the wrong bus stop; I was away from my manor, and East London is an exciting mystery, even under the stress of thinking one is going to be late.
I bought an A-Z from a kindly gentleman in a wunderkammer store, and charged through Richmond Road, north of London Fields, to Kaff's warehouse, toting my ukelele and some lyrics.
The Gluts have asked me to guest with them tonight at Cafe Oto in Hackney, and I had an hour to teach them the Baked Alaska song and learn it myself.
I thought it would be nice to debut the ukelele Gina bought me a couple of years ago when I learned some of her songs to play at the Stella Vine exhibition that land of many one-way streets, Oxford, and had worked out some chords.
New pain, to play uke; it's not the same as guitar-agony because the whole instrument is a different shape and size and you have to hold it up too. Oh, I'm being silly! It's as light as a feather... but you do have to scrunch your fingers up, exactly the opposite of what you do to play guitar.
The Gluts themselves were spread around Kaff's apartment, relaxed and smiling, and within minutes we were almost there (what good singers they are!) after they'd finished a song about Arctic Rolls, which had an endearing camel-like rhythm and vocal layering reminiscent of Anglican psalms.
So I'm actually looking forward to tonight.
At 3 o'clock this morning I remembered I am supposed to paint a wooden spoon black to thread through my hair, and went downstairs to get one out to leave on the side for this morning.
Alas, they were all covered in tomato paste from various cooking exploits (has Offsprog 2 been playing Macbeth witches with her pals at dinnertime?), so I've given them a scrub and I'll do that when I get back from work.
So tatty-bye for now: come to Cafe Oto if you can, as they are very funny.

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