A Fine Establishment Takes The Piss Out Of Its Punters

Going to see stand up comedy is one of our favourite ways to waste an evening. And we like Banana Cabaret at the Bedford in Balham very much. The Bedford is a massive venue and they’ve been running the Banana Cabaret nights there for years. They regularly get strong line-ups and there’s usually a good atmosphere with a mixture of comedy regulars and a casual, laid back crowd that doesn’t include too many hen nights.

However, we do have a few problems. Firstly, the usual cost without a concession is anything between £13 and £15 on a weekend which is far too much considering that the line-ups, although good, are rarely much better than those you can get at a cheaper club. Secondly, we hate the way that after the comedy is finished, it turns into a really tacky club of the type that you would never want to stay in for more than half an hour, unless you’re into rubbish student cheese. Thirdly, it is often very difficult to get a seat and they knowingly sell tickets to punters who are told to stand which, given that you’re paying a small fortune is not good enough when you’re likely to be there for several hours.

But worst of all is their absolutely shocking decision to put on a special new years eve event which differs little from their normal nights aside from one free cocktail and a buffet but to charge £65 for the privilige. The line-up of John Moloney, Will Smith (see above), John Fothergill and Steve Gribbin isn’t even particularly good. It’s a particularly shameless attempt to cash in on the usual new years eve nonsense.

Which is a shame, because, for a while now, we’ve been planning to write a piece about how much we like Banana Cabaret, but if they’re liable to take the piss out of their customers then all we can really say is that we recommend you take your business elsewhere.

Merry Christmas

Late Night Pretentiousness

Going to galleries in the evening always seems a more enjoyable experience than heading there on the traditional Sunday afternoon. Many galleries now have late night openings and special events in the evenings, but one of the most enjoyable is at Tate Britain.

The Late at Tate nights occur on the first Friday of each month. The gallery stays open until ten and entry to all the special exhibitions is half price. They create a bar area in the main hall which is lit up beautifully with projections everywhere and a range of special events going on. This usually includes DJs, bands and various types of performance, usually of the cabaret variety. On 4th January, the website says: "In collaboration with International Project Space, Birmingham, expect an evening of performance and music, including interventions from !WOWOW!, the creative collective of artists, fashion designers, writers and musicians, and Chymical Wedding, a performance from the future-past-fiction guerrilla group Plastique Fantastique". Hmm.

Well we tried looking at !WOWOW!'s myspace site but it was, frankly, too hard to read (go there and you'll see what we mean). Also, and we don't mean to sound like grumpy old gits, but when somebody talks about "recreating the New York warehouse party scene" we tend to roll our eyes a little bit. Which isn't to say it won't be great-it's just that we've found many of the cabaret/musical acts which they've put on in the past to be piss poor. So keep expectations low and you won't be disappointed.

Meanwhile, the philosophy of this site is to be as unpretentious as possible. Which is a problem here, since we've always found the Late at Tate crowd to be pretentious as fuck. Never have we seen so many posers in one room together. To make matters worse, we're not overly keen on the Millais exhibition which is currently running. It's all very well presented and certainly provided an insight into how his painting changed as he grew older, but we couldn't get away from the fact that it was all a bit, well, boring. He just seemed like a rather opportunistic man, chasing the money of his sponsors by painting dull but technically brilliant portraits. We haven't seen the Turner Prize retrospective that's running there but it sounds either tremendously annoying or great fun, depending on how cynical you are.

The chance to get into these exhibitions for half price is certainly alluring but be warned that it does tend to get crowded in the paid exhibitions so if you want to see them slowly and without stress, it may be better to pay the full whack and come another time.

All the criticisms above don't really give a great impression of the night and it's true that we have our problems with both the logistics of the events and the seemingly random choice of bands and theatre collectives whom they put on. However, we've always had a good time when we've gone. The permanent collections are as impressive as always and the atmosphere in the hall/ bar area, though pretentious, is at least lively and a change from the normal gallery visit experience. Also, you get a strange feeling from watching a band play in a room surrounded by invaluable works of art. An odd experience then, but probably worth trying once and don't blame us if you get trampled on and want to strangle the entertainment.

A Fine Way To Spend A Rainy Day

If you fancy seeing a film but don't have the cash to fund repeated trips to the cinema, you could do a lot worse than head down to the BFI Southbank (Formerly the National Film Theatre) where you can get free access to the excellent Mediatheque (see below).

The Mediatheque is a facility which the BFI made available when they revamped the back half of the building earlier this year. In the space which previously housed the excellent Museum of the Moving Image there is now a rather flashy ticketing area, a superb shop, a gallery, a rather odd and over-priced but not unattractive cafe/restaurant and the Mediatheque itself.

The Mediatheque is a room which contains about fifteen computer terminals. As you walk in, you are given a set of headphones and seated at a terminal. You are then able to choose what you want to watch from a large chunk of the BFI archive. You have complete control over what you watch and can fast forward and rewind in much the same way you could a DVD. It's a bit like a better version of Sky Box Office or Homechoice but better because you are able to choose from an odd, varied mix of material. We've been there several times and there are a few things we particularly liked. In particular:

-"Relax" (see below)-This is a half hour film about a gay man going in to hospital for an HIV test. It's mostly in black and white and the film explores the man's worries as he waits desperately for the results pondering the possible consequences. It was made in 1991 and is very much of its time and shows the sheer horror faced by many people as the HIV virus spread into mainstream consciousness. The only time we see any colour in the film is when it's his own blood.

-"Eastenders"-Almost as depressingly, they have the famous episode of Eastenders which simply consists of Dot and Ethel talking about life, death, the past and many other miserable things. It's practically a half hour Alan Bennett play and it's great.

-"Abigail's Party"-Available in full, (although when we watched it, the last three minutes were annoyingly not working) Mike Leigh's dinner party gone wrong remains a painful viewing experience. Mike Leigh has made better things since then, but it's good to go back to the beginning and see what all the fuss was about.

-"The Smiths on the South Bank Show"-He may officially be an idiotic Daily Mail type now, but seeing Morrissey in all his pomp still gives us the shivers. The part where Johnny Marr emphatically explains why it was imperative that the Smiths not sign to Factory Record is particularly insightful and inspiring. And the footage of John Peel emotively praising the band was enough to remind us just how much we miss him.

Those are just a few of the things worth seeing but in fact, the best things are the oddities. Searching the database you can find five minute films going back to the pre-war years, public information films, old newsreels and all sorts of odd stuff. And since it's all free, you might be able to afford a three quid cup of coffee from the cafe next door.

Free Music and A Slightly Unfair Jibe About Dickon Edwards

We want to go and have a look at Peter Hujar's current show at the ICA. But we're a bit tired of photography exhibitions, for a few days at least. Our last two excursions have been excellent with both Nick Waplington and Jeff Wall showcasing some great stuff that made venturing out through the arctic winds almost worthwhile.

If you're trying to save some money in the run up to christmas, you could do a lot worse than head down to the Pure Groove shop in Archway for their series of deftly selected free gigs. This evening they hosted a gig from the horribly rubbish Emmy The Great, but the past is the past and their forthcoming gigs are much more promising.

Tomorrow evening, solo singer-songwriter Eugene Mcguinness (see above) will be down there with a christmassy (christmassy may not be an actual proper adjective) set to warm up his growing bunch of followers. Eugene's music can sometimes be a bit ponderous and, sure, he sometimes lapses into acoustic dullness, but he has a definite charm to him, a way with a tune and a charismatic stage presence. Also, it's fair to say that any singer who makes references to Neighbours in his songs is alright by us.

Later in the week sees gigs from Noah and The Whale, Beans on Toast and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly who is accompanied on the same evening by the ultra posh George Pringle (see gratuitous photo below) who we wrote about last month here.

All the gigs kick off at 6pm and the venue is located conveniently close to the brilliant Boogaloo pub where, if you're lucky, you may just bump into the ghost of christmas past, Mr. Shane Macgowan or if you're slightly less fortunate, the ex Orlando singer (EDIT: Apologies to Dickon who was actually the guitarist and lyricist as he states below) and famous-within-the-world-of-blogs fop Mr. Dickon Edwards.

Oh-and in response to comments below, here's another photo of George Pringle.

More Photos To Make You Swoon

Following on from the storming time which we had at the Whitechapel Gallery's Nick Waplington exhibition, we felt in the mood for even more photography. So when we read some more than positive reviews of Jeff Wall's new show at White Cube we knew we had to go and have a look.

Jeff Wall is a photographic artist who is primarily known for his blown up, back lit photos to which he applies some super complicated digital jiggery pokery to make them into highly arranged situations. In 2005 he had an all encompassing retrospective at Tate Modern which we attended and enjoyed very much. So we were very excited to see the new pieces which were on display.

White Cube's new West End gallery is approached down an alleyway off an extremely posh street between Pall Mall and Fortnum and Mason in one of the most well heeled areas of London. The exhibition contains three large scale back lit works, a smaller back lit piece and some of Wall's black and white photography which he has been doing since the early 1990s.

It's the full scale, back lit pieces which inevitably form the centrepiece of the exhibition. The way in which they are displayed makes them appear like billboard adverts, even if the subject matter is far from that of a Marlboro ad. The amount of work which Wall does to his photos always tends to give them a too good to be true shimmer where everything is just a little bit too high definition and perfectly lit.

The White Cube website has thumbnails of some of the photos on display so you can see what we're talking about. "Hotels" shows the gutting of an apartment building and is essentially a highly worked landscape of an urban building project. Like many of his photos, the view is intersected by the electricity cables which are recurrent in Wall's work and which divide his photos in much the same way as a viewfinder.

"Dressing Poultry" is a rather grim view of the inside of a poultry processing factory. Feathers lie everywhere as pasty American farmers perform icky acts to birds for human consumption. A pool of animal juices lies on the floor and the surroundings look far from sanitary. Each worker's pose is highly constructed and it's easy to see how Wall may have had to take hundreds of photographs of the scenario to come up with this final, far from improvised version. Effectively, this has the same level of artifice as a painting. Wall is not an artist who attempts to capture a unique moment in time.

Elsewhere in the exhibition he explores some desolate landscapes, particularly downstairs in his black and white works which are equally as impressive as the blockbuster technicolour photos upstairs. All his work just seems so bloody cold that it gave us the shivers. It's imperative for the GDP of Canada that he should never be signed up by the Vancouver tourist board.

A hugely impressive exhibition, perfect in length. It's enough to satisfy any existing fans of Wall and act as a good taster for anyone who hasn't seen his work before. Stretched over a full length exhibition in the Tate Modern, Wall couldn't quite justify the sheer quantity of his work on display. However, in a small gallery like this, his photos each get the level of scrutiny they need and the results are excellent. We also recommend Chequers, the tiny pub next door which is a great place to go afterwards. The exhibition runs until 19th January 2008.

N.B. The photos shown in this article are not the photos on display in the exhibition.

Beautiful Things In Whitechapel

Last night artslondon went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery for the preview of a new exhibition by photographer Nick Waplington which runs until 20 January 2008. We were very impressed with what we saw and it's always nice when the highlight of these things is the art itself rather than the free booze.

Waplington has released much of his work in book form and has always taken a particular interest in documenting his patch of East London where he lives. But this exhibition is something rather different. It's actually more of an installation than a straightforward photography exhibition.The main part takes place in the gallery's cinema/auditorium. A slide projector shows a range of 1000 photographs. Each is displayed for about ten seconds before the projector progresses to the next one. In the background there is an audio feed from a US radio station where they discuss business issues and economic theory from a pro-capitalist perspective. Meanwhile we see a collection of photos which Waplington has sourced from the internet.

All the photos are taken by soldiers and predominantly focus on the Middle East. We see Russian soldiers making brotherly poses in Afghanistan and then American soldiers doing the same thing twenty years later. Meanwhile, many of the images are mundane in their focus. They veer from friend to friend, relative to relative, with nothing to link each image to the next apart from the sheer human factor that they were taken by hired killers.

What's interesting is that despite the seemingly random, fractured nature of the images, your brain naturally orders them into some kind of logic. Patterns emerge, agendas reveal themselves but what those agendas are is very much left to you, the viewer. It's quite an experience but really needs to be viewed without distractions and with time to spare.

Meanwhile, in the foyer, a number of books of Waplington's work are also laid out. We didn't have time to examine these in as much detail as they deserve but we're told that they have more of a suggested narrative than the projected images. Those we saw focused more deeply on war and the different landscapes of the Middle East as well as the more common day to day reality of small town America which so many US soldiers call home.

The exhibition is also spread out all around this corner of East London. Images can be found displayed in a range of East End venues from the Rough Trade East shop to the Brick Lane Beigel Bakery.

Meanwhile, it's probably worth mentioning that we love Whitechapel Gallery. Sure it contains the predictable hordes of East London tossers, there to pose and not much more, but enthusiasm and personality just ooze from every slab. They display posters of successful past exhibitions in the same way that say, the Dublin Castle shows photos of Blur playing in their youth. And the gallery has a flexibility that allows a true variety of exhibitions and an exciting range of talks and events which we will be bringing you more information about in the coming months.

Oh-and if you're wondering why this entry is formatted so badly, it's because Blogger is rubbish and we can't be bothered to learn html. Sorry.