Lager Time: Not Quite Live Edition EP 3

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening

Earlier this week, I recorded a Not Quite Live Edition of Lager Time. It’s essentially me running through a set poems, stories and some music on the loop-station. Had a few live gigs coming up, so this was good preperation for me

FULL SET LIST

1 - Trap It

2- Times of Respect

3- Whoever Said It Was Easy

4- Fair & Square

5- Chair Wars

6- Not quite A Cheetah

7- Premium Speed Ghost Train

8- Slow and Steady

9 - No Milk For The Foxes

10 - Now, What Do You Want To Say?

11 - Watts & Pommerlers

LAGER TIME PODCAST: A DATE WITH MATES - PART 2

Easy. Couple of weeks late but it’s the second part of the Date With Mates story, enjoy

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Another update

One two

Greetings. Bonjour. What’s happening?

Thought I’d pen a little update for the site about some goings-on – adding it to the consistently-inconsistent blogs and general updates that already exist on here.

So what have I been doing with myself?

LAGER TIME

Since late October last year, I’ve been regularly writing and recording a podcast / blog using Substack which I call Lager Time (some of which you can see below) I’ve been doing it every week (give or take the odd week off) and tend to share a piece of writing that I’m working and sometimes music, as well as having a general update on what I’ve been doing.

The reason it’s called Lager Time, is because it’s where I like to let off a bit of steam; which for me, I often associate with drinking lager. When I lived in Morden for a few years, with my mate, Dean. I’d often put on a Children’s TV voice and pronounce ‘it’s lager time’ to my mate Dean, whenever I went down to Ganley’s; the big Irish pub in the high street. I used to love going there, sinking a few jars with my brother Nat and chewing the fat.

I’m still figuring out what I’m doing work-wise, post pandemic and where, if at all, I fit in to everything. Even before the pandemic, I had this duel feeling of being a bit lost in the two worlds which I tend to operate; subsidized theatre and spoken word and figured I should try and carve out my own path. Figuring out what and how, is what I’ve been doing since and Lager Time is one aspect of that.

I’m enjoying doing it and gradually getting better at the production aspect of it. I’ve still not quite figured out the best shape of it but I’m excited, as it presents other opportunities. It’s a little platform that I’m slowly building and I’ve got a few ideas for it going forward. Like live-streams, live-events and guests.

You can subscribe directly on Substack, and have an email sent to you every week or you can subscribe to the audio, and have it on both APPLE podcasts and SPOTIFY.

Last week I recorded a live-set, which included a bunch of new poems, stories, a couple of songs and a bit of chat. I’m aiming to do a few more of this over the next couple of months as well as doing a video live-stream.

The big vision, is to be as fully self-sufficient as I can be. Ie – I can produce as much of my own content as I want. Audio, video, graphics, books , music and these are all things I’ve slowly been learning how to do. Earning some dough would be nice too

TOAST IN THE MACHINE

Speaking of music, I’m on the verge of releasing a new self-produced EP called Toast In The Machine. It’s five tracks (two of which I’ve already out put: Whichever Way It’s Blowing and Now, What Do You Wonna Say?) but I’ve remixed those and hopefully made them sound better.

I’ve been dabbling with music production for about fifteen years but never taken it that seriously. This is the first time I’ve attempted to mix and master my own music and mate, it’s hard! Though I’m treating everything with this project as a learning curve and I have zero expectations, I’m thinking maybe I should give it over to a proper producer / engineer as at the moment, it’s not quite sounding but I hope to have it all finished by next month.

RISE

Someone who is a proper producer, is my good pal Conrad Murray. This week he put out this track, RISE (OUTSIDE) which was one of the first track we wrote for High Rise eState of Mind but never ended up using. Have a blast and you can hear me singing on the chorus with Lakeisha Lynch Stevens aka Kiki.

MAKE YOUR OWN BED AND HOPE FOR THE BEST

I spent probably the first six months of this year re-writing this show, it’s now ready to go into production (I think) but I now have to go through the rigmarole of getting Arts Council funding to make that happen, so watch this space… have a look at some of the stuff I’ve done in the past with it…

WORKSHOPS

Aside from all that, I’ve been leading projects in theatre, music and spoken word with Dream Arts, City Academy, Wildcard Theatre, National Literacy Trust with future projects coming with Green Shoes and Mountview. I’ve also helped a couple of mates out with writing wedding speeches, If anyone is interested in any of the above, don’t hesitate to get in touch

So that’s it for now

Thanks, as ever, for the support

Paul

The Emperor's New Football Kit

Some thoughts on craft-beer and total football, with a little poem at the end, by, me Paul Cree

originally featured on my Substack PAGE - LAGER TIME - including audio

If you know me, or you know the name of this blog, at least, you’ll know I very much enjoy drinking lager. These days, I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I’d like but I do enjoy a pint, or five. Those that know me well, know that I’m no fan of craft beer. It’s an odd thing to say, as craft-beer is a very broad-church and that rational part of me knows it’s an irrational thing to have a gripe about. BUT, I can genuinely say, I’ve never drunk one I liked the taste of but it’s not the content inside the glass or the tiny can with the whimsical illustration on it, that gets my back up a bit. It’s the perception, in my tiny paranoid mind, that I’m being told this is better, I should be drinking this. Well, what some it, just is’nt

Certain arguments I get; small local brewery versus cooperate bemouth full of chemicals and in many cases, I can understand people’s reasons to opt for the stinky hops, but it’s not always that simple is it. I remember waking up one morning after a night on that Camden Hells and my head felt like I’d been drinking Special Brew in a park, all day. I don’t think it’s all that squeaky clean. Then when stories broke of Craft-Beer-big-bollox, Brew-Dog mis-treating their staff, it made me think of that pious man that runs Canada who keeps getting caught doing black-face. What if, SOME of this craft beer stuff, is actually bollox

In a similar way, all this can be applied to food - see vegan /organic / sour dough etc and of course, to my other favourite thing, football. I’m a Millwall fan and like most Milllwall fans, I know that being in the to- ten of the second-tier in English football, is a decent achievement and if we’re there, it means that we’re probably punching above our weight.

These days, with Man City’s brand of football being the zeitgeist, playing the ‘right way’ means having multiple players that are comfortable on the ball and can move and switch positions. Trouble is, the players that can do that, tend to cost a lot of money. Millwall, not having the financial resources of other teams, have had to rely a bit more on being stifling-boring and defensive or failing that, the trusted four-four-two, blood and guts method. Which is often considered archaic. But what if it works

I’ve sat through and endured many teams attempting to play the ‘right way’ and sometimes, they get no-where. What if, SOME of the proponents of the ‘right way’ are just, a bit shit - see poem below

THE EMPOPERS NEW FOOTBALL KIT

They say they play proper football

how the game should be played

passing the ball, from back to front

and back again, all one touch

like a slowed down pin-ball machine

gracefully pinging about the pitch

yet they never get out their own half

they don’t ever score, nor do they

ever win, but the crowd applaud and

the pundits praise, because they play

proper football, how the game

should be played

NEW POETRY VIDEO: NOt QUITE A CHEETAH

Another video from the day I spent, few months back with the Muddy Feet Poetry team - this one called NOT QUITE A CHEETAH

I wrote it last year during the first lockdown and funnily enough, not long after that my missus went and got a dog, imagine that

Intro to spoken word workshop

Last week, I did a You-Tube live workshop, for the Tramshed; in An Introduction To Spoken Word.

I enjoyed myself, despite having done a bunch of Zoom sessions over this last year, this was the first time I did it live on You Tube, so I had to take a different approach to what I’d normally do.

I couldn’t see anyone, as I was on Zoom which was then broadcast onto You Tube but there was a team of 4 people behind the scenes doing all sorts of cool techy things to make it happen.

I based the session on using a personal object where you live as the basis to write a story, as well as giving one of my own, large up Stripey Bear. Have a watch / go below.

The workshop was part of Tramshed’s All Together Now, which are free arts workshops every Tuesday and Sunday at 4pm, get involved, they’ve had a whole bunch of different stuff on there.

M.Y.O.B (A.H.F.T.B) // PART 4 - LEAFY CANARY WHARF

Yes

Here’s part number 4 - Leafy Canary wharf. It’s about my brief stint as a labourer for a tree-surgeon.

The whole project is coming along nicely, though at some point in the near future, I’m going to have to sit sown and edit them and start to putting them togethor

It’s looking likley that I’m going to be doing some previews in July (COVID permitting / fingers crossed and all that) - anyway, have a butchers and thanks for everyone has watched so far

Paul

M.Y.O.B (A.H.F.T.B) / / PART 3 -TROLLY BOY

Here’s the next instalment in the Make Your Own Bed (and Hope For the Best) story development

Needs a bit of work this one but I least feel like I’m getting better at making the video’s.

Progress, mate

Make Your Own Bed (and Hope for The Best) - Draft Story Uploads

NEW YEAR WITH A NEW SHOW (FROM LAST YEAR) BUT WITH A NEW NAME

So we all know what happened last year. COVID and that, which in my game, meant cancellations, shows, workshops, projects, the lot. I’ll spare you the ‘it’s been a terrible year’ caper but it has, however, there were a few minor victories, which I’m claiming hard.

This time last year, I was getting ready to go and do a full one-hour preview, of my new work-in-progress show, WORK. Which is about, yep, work, as in all the jobs I’ve done since I was newspaper when I was twelve; I’ve had a few. 

Did the show, it went well though I knew there was a lot of work (no pun intended) that needed to be done before it was anywhere near ready for a full run, I was still testing out ideas at this stage.

I was booked in for a two night preview at Camden People’s Theatre in April and by the end of that I was aiming to have a finished show for the end of the year-then CRASH-BANG-WOLLOP, COVID.

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW HARDER

To be fair, it was probably a bit of a touch. I decided to leave the show for a bit and focus on other things. Anyway - I’ve since been back on it, having had a bit of a hiatus and have come at it feeling somewhat refreshed, starting with the name, which was never gonna top anyone’s Google searches, was it?!

So, WORK is no more, it is now called Make Your Own Bed (and Hope For The Best)- which sums up my working ambitions, from when I had to leave home and fend for myself.

I’ve rewritten quite a lot of it and have added quite a more stories. I’m now in the process of trying to trim it all down, so being that we’re all stuck in doors, I’ve decided to film it in small episodes and stick them up on You Tube. Just me going through that process is useful and even better if people watch and respond. I’ve already uploaded the first part and have the second part ready to go.

HAVE A BUCTHERS BELOW

p.s I’m provisionally booked for two nights at CPT in June, fingers crossed it goes ahead but until then, you can see my boat and hear my dull tones on the video

Peas and taters

Paul

CRONGTON KNIGHTS FESTIVAL #CKFESTIVAL

Back at the start of this year, I began working with both Pilot Theatre and Young & Talented, running workshops with groups of young people up and down the country to make response pieces to the currently touring play Crongton Knights, which is an adaptation on the YA novel written by Alex Wheatle. The musical director on the show, is my Beats & Elements sparring partner, Conrad Murray. So of course, all of the music in the show is created by the cast, using beatbox, rap, singing and spoken word. So right up my street.

Young & Talented is a theatre school, based in London that run classes across the age spectrum. I was approached by Suzann McLean to work with the Theatre Peckham strand and also, with Catherine Palmer in the Bethnal Green strand. Due to this virus, of course, all of this work was cut short. However, for what seems like a huge effort from all those at Y&T, Theatre Peckham and Pilot , the artists and of course, all of the young people, they went on the produce the online #CKFESTIVAL.

 Below, you can see some of the pieces that I worked on with them. It was a real pleasure.

Appearence on Poet Woffle podcast

Had the pleasure last week of jumping on Dan Cockeril’s Poet Woffle podcast to talk about all things poetry, how I got into it all, family, relationships and audio books. Dan’s a bit of a legend in this little thing we do, he co-runs Bang Said The Gun, probabaly the best live poetry night thet I’ve perfomred at. He’s got this sick little office in his garden, loved it mate. get involved and have a listen, give Dan a follow on the socials.

You can stream the podcast on Apple and bare other podcast platforms, the one below is Soundcloud

me and Dan, after recording the show. Dan’s got a way better smile than me, Ilook like a plank

New video's: Crows and Trap It

Back in Janaury, I bopped down to these studio’s over in docklands somewhere, to link up with my mate Peter Hayhoe and his Muddy Feet Poetry team and film both of these video’s there. As ever, I had a good laugh and was glad to get these one’s done and shot. They both feature in the Suburban book, in the final third, as they were written whilst I lived in Morden, probably about three or four years ago. Both pieces are based on a cominbation of experiancing the same things, a few times, football and crows respectivly. Trap It has become a staple opener for me, in my sets, over the last few years and I latterly introduced Crows back last year, sometime. They’re both fairly short and amusing (to some, at least) so work well as openers. I’m slowly putting a new set togethor, so these will all be put to bed for a while, until I get bored again, so I was chuffed to get them filmed and out there at last. Give Muddy Feet a follow, they put out new spoken word video’s every week.

Muddy Feet You Tube

High Rise eState of Mind

I’m told no one reads this stuff anymore, articles, blogs etc. Instead, as an artist, who probably needs people to engage with what I do, I should be banging-out Instagram posts, with pictures and videos of what I’m doing, whilst putting a squillion hashtags underneath. Whilst I have and use an Instagram account (plus twitter and facebook as well) and enjoy the accounts of some other artists, I’ll be honest, I can’t really be arsed with it. I realised a long time ago, that I’m shite at taking pictures and for the most part, appearing in them as well. What I do enjoy, though, (on the occasions when I can get it together to do it) is this. Taking the time to sit down and write something. If, as I’ve been told, that no one reads this stuff, fair enough, mate. It’s a task. So maybe me doing this is pointless then? Or maybe, I’m just crap at promoting it, or both. If it really is pointless, then so is all the other stuff I do. As in, what’s the point of any of it? I’ve come to realise that life ‘aint all about getting to points, being all pointy and that. Sometimes, I think, it’s worth just doing something for the sake of it, like now, look, there’s words appearing on this screen, I crafted this, it’s a thing, it exists. A crafty (not craft beer, allow that!) thing without a pointy point. Well, that ‘aint strictly true, there is a point to this, sort of, just taking my time getting to it, that’s all and this paragraph I’m about to finish, is the pointless bit but I guarantee you, it’s way more fun for me to write.

HIGH RISE eState of MIND

Our latest show is here (our being Beats & Elements). We kick off at Battersea Arts Centre form March 20th – 30th. After that, we head to Gloucester in April for two dates TBC, then finally to Camden People’s Theatre May 7th-11th.

If you saw our first show, No Milk For The Foxes, back in 2015, it was kinda-like a play but with rapping, spoken word, looping and beatboxing. This new one, not only has twice the cast size (there’s four of us now, there was two of us in Foxes) – there’s even more rapping, spoken word and beatboxing, all done live.

In the show, we tell a story, set in the future, with three characters who live in a high rise building where the super-rich live on the top, the middle class, who are in the middle floors and the poorest on the bottom, with a fourth character (who I play) who is a bit like a strange robot-narrator, that lives in the building and fixes things. The idea is inspired by the JG Ballard novel High Rise. Interspersed with the story set in the future, we each tell our own stories around housing. What we’re trying to do is pretty ambitious, it’s easily the most challenging thing I’ve ever worked on, in terms of the writing, the devising and the performance. We rap, beatbox, sing, move, speak, act and have to remember what comes next and trust me, there’s a lot!

What I’m trying to do here is promote it but also to provide a bit on context about it, writing this thing here, helps me, actually, so if you’re interested, you might wonna’ purchase some tickets?.

After we did Foxes, it wasn’t long before me and Con were talking about starting a new project. We both identified we wanted to work with Junior (Gambit Ace) and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens, both of whom we’d worked with before. Con came to me with the High Rise book as a starting point. We used Owen Jones’s Chavs book as a starting point for Foxes, so this just continued something for us, we both talk and read a lot.  High Rise is nuts and I thoroughly enjoyed it and it weren’t long before Con got all four of us together. It was over two and a half years ago now, we’ve had various different blocks of development for it (none of which were paid by the way, we just did off our own backs, but thanks to Camden People’s Theatre, Arc Stockton, The Barbican and Battersea Arts Centre all of which gave us space) so far and all in all, did six work-in-progress performances. Five at Camden People’s Theatre and one at Wilderness festival in 2017, so coming into this first run at BAC, I think we’re in a good place with it.

Con’s taken the lead in directing this one and he’s shaped it into something which I don’t think I’ve seen before, not the way we’re doing it, anyway. I’ve learned more from working so closely with Conrad than anyone else, ever. He really is both a student of the theatre and a pioneer, I’m fortunate enough that I get to come along for the ride, be part of it and contribute my own skill set and ideas. All those years ago now, he convinced me that I should be rapping in the theatre, this was way before I’d ever heard anything about Hamilton, it was a skill that I had, so we used it. I assumed (wrongly) that people wouldn’t get it. In essence, that’s all we’re doing here, telling the stories we want to tell, in our own way, using a medium that we know best, rapping, spoken word, looping, beatboxing, in order to create something that’s meaningful to us and hopefully many others.

In a time where there’s a lot more conversations around class, race and ethnicity popping up, in the arts, who gets to represent on stage etc, it seems as if it’s beginning to move in the right direction, in terms of facilitating a genuinely diverse talent-pool of backgrounds, however, it does still feel like the diversity doesn’t yet stretch as far as a diversity of ideas and also, it does still feel there are a legion of cultural-gatekeepers, who probably aren’t diverse in either sense, who get to say what gets allowed through. Proofs in the pudding I guess, we’ll see if and when we’ll get any reviews. Either way, we’ve worked hard on this and we’re proud of it, and we started making stuff all these years ago, purely because we enjoy it, what else would we do? Come and have a butchers’.