Month: April 2015

Rage Monologue #9–Neighbours

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So the plan had been that The Rage Monologues would be a purely live project during 2015, that I would build a set over the course of the year with material that was intended primarily for performance, before ultimately – perhaps – producing a pamphlet or chapbook collecting the pieces I had done in 2016.

The cancelation of a number of events, coupled with a simple lack of openings for a writer whose pitch is to stand in front of people and bawl obscenities in a way that will make them feel shit about their sad pathetic little lives (not an easy sell, believe me) compelled me to reconsider my strategy.

The number of monologues ready to go is expanding weekly. the number of places to perform them seems to be reducing at a similar rate. So as a taster, here’s a monologue I am yet to perform, due equally to a lack of opportunity and a lack of guts.

Enjoy. And of you’ve got a spoken word night in need of some live rage, get in touch.

 

 

Neighbours

Hey, you! Yeah, you! Can you hear me? Yeah, me, banging on your wall? I guess not, since you didn’t hear me banging on your front door or window earlier. It’s me! The guy next door! The quiet, friendly guy you sometimes nod to in the street, usually if we’re arriving or departing at the same time. Yeah, howdy, neighbour, nice to meet you. Only, I wish I never had. Because right now, your racket’s causing me considerable stress. Could you please just keep it down a bit? Please? Just a bit? I’m not even expecting you to stop, although that would be nice. But c’mon, have some consideration, would you?

Do I keep you awake? I doubt it? Does my racket mean you can’t hear your TV, your music, that you can’t hold a conversation over dinner? Are your walls and floors vibrating on account of anything I’m doing?

Listen, we all make noise. I play music, watch TV, do DIY. All the normal stuff. But I watch my volume and I watch the clock. I never vaccum clean after 9pm. You know why? Because I don’t want to disturb the old lady on the other side, and in truth, I don’t wan to disturb anyone. I keep myself to myself, you know? I’m not saying I’m a model neighbour, but all I’m asking is that you have some consideration, you know?

Do you hear me? Are you listening? Hey! Yeah, you! Motherfucker! Can you hear me? Will you please just shut the fuck up? I’m sane and I’m sober, but you’re driving me to a place I don’t wanna go! You hear? You hear? I’m telling you, you’d better listen up! Motherucker!

If I ever get round there you’ll regret you ever moved in with that fucking stereo and that fucking awful dance music. You’ll regret you were ever fucking born. I wanna smash that fucking stereo to smithereens. I’m guessing you don’t have any vinyl and probably don’t even have CDs, so I’m gonna have to smash your iPod or whatever the fuck else you’ve got, and your laptop, but not until I’ve deleted all of your fucking Spotify lists and ripped your fucking cable and phone lines out and stamped your router to bits.

But it’s not the equipment’s fault, is it? Venting my rage on inanimate objects is pointless isn’t it? A temporary solution. And complaining to your landlord or making your life hell to the point you’re evicted or move of your own accord, it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem that is you. That’s why I wanna cave your skull in with your fucking speakers and kick your broken body down the fucking stairs. Kick it out back and boot it around the yard for a bit, like that night when you and your fucking idiotic mates got pissed up and played football with various random objects like tin cans and milk cartons from your recycling box – after you’d lost your ball over another neighbours’ wall at 2am. Yeah, you’re such big tough guys, no fear of scrambling over to fetch it till the dog came after you. It’s jut a shame it didn’t get you and chew your fucking balls off, ‘cause as much as I’m sick of your shite music, I’m sick of your loud shagging at all hours too. No, I’m not envious: your half-witted girlfriend’s a fucking skank and what’s more, you disgust me and don’t deserve to get laid. And regardless, who doesn’t hate the sounds of someone else’s sex?

And so, I want you to be silenced. I want to do you damage. I want to break you. Demolish, annihilate you. And when I’m done I wanna fucking skin you. Sit your throat and fucking skin you.

I need to be clear. I don’t hate you. I just hate your behaviour. The way you stand at the front, and the the back of your house, smoking cigarettes with the smoke blowing in through my windows as you talk loudly with your housemates and your friends. I don’t actually mind your existence, and actually expect occasionally to hear sound, sneezing, coughing. I’m a reasonable kind of guy. But you don’t need to be slamming every door in the house every time you move between rooms. The fact you insist on cranking up your console gaming to such a volume I feel as if I’m in the room, yes, I hate that. I hate your coming home drunk and bawling all the way down the street at 4, 5, 6 am, then spending an hour yelling up and down the house, tramping up and down the stairs, banging and crashing against the walls.

I hate your mid-week parties that start at four in the afternoon and run for 12 hours straight. I hate your fucking shitty club music. That despicable, shitty club music. That endless, repetitive, dum-dum-dum-dum, the same fucking tempo for what feels like an eternity and more. Those endless fucking beats, that monotonous rhythm that drives into my brain at all hours, relentlessly, relentlessly, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum…. die you bastard, die!

The Jinx

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You often read that projects are or were ‘ill-fated’ and I’m starting to get that feeling about my latest project, ‘The Rage Monologues’.

I’d written a couple of pieces that seemed well-suited to spoken word nights, not because they were exactly accessible, but because they weren’t stories, but fiery rants that straddled poetry, prose and performance art. I read them at a few spoken word nights, and they were successful (at least by my standards), and so the concept of ‘The Rage Monologues’ was born.

In short, I devised to write a collection of pieces that were designed with performance in mind. I’d take them on the road, do as many spoken word and open mic nights as I could get to, and maybe when I had enough, end it all with a one-man show where I did maybe 40 minutes of ranting and publish the pieces as a pamphlet / chapbook.

Things started well enough, with a well-received slot at Speakers’ Corner at The Golden Ball in York, and an even better received turn at Platform Thirsk a week later. I decided it was time to build momentum and hit every night going, and with a slot secured at ThreeVerse at Nevermind in York, I delivered another successful performance with some new material at Speakers’ Corner.

Alas, the ThreeVerse slot was cancelled due to several of the other performers cancelling. I got my slot rescheduled, but the week before I was due to perform, ThreeVerse got pulled by the venue.

Then I got news that Spokes, a night I had performed a number of times, and probably the best spoken word night in York due to its curated nature, announced it would be calling it a day in June.

The Leeds events I had previously attended seems to have stalled, but keen to maintain some kind of momentum, I decided to try my luck at the open mic might at City’ Screen’s Basement. I was revved, but anxious – open mic nights are a major gamble, especially for a fringe performer like me.

I arrived ten minutes before doors – just as the poster stating that the night was cancelled due to the venue flooding went up (seemingly a problem with the drains).

After three successive attempts to perform have been foiled and two regular nights have called time, I can;t help but feel that I’m something of a spoken-word night jinx, destined not to bring The Rage Monologues project to fruition.

But I’m not done yet. And if I have to resort to bellowing on a street corner before I get beaten up or moved on by the police, so be it. But if you’ve got any spoken word slots going and want to give a platform to an angry man spouting stuff in a fashion that may captivate or clear the room, give me a shout.

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at christophernosnibor.co.uk

Record Store Day Rebellion!

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I would always class myself as a record collector. I got my first 7” single aged 3, and grew up with vinyl. And while the ages of cassette, CD and MP3 have seen me adopt the new formats, I’ve always stuck with vinyl alongside them, for all the reasons any diehard vinyl fan will tell you they prefer vinyl. And I do prefer vinyl. But this year, for the first time in a long time, I passed on Record Store Day.

RSD has become quite divisive in recent years, with many complaining about the way greedy so-and-sos who don’t care about the music will buy up everything they can get their hands on and cash in by flogging it on eBay at insanely inflated prices. And people will pay the prices because they don’t want to miss out. It’s what collectors do.

And yes, I’ve done it myself, and been on both sides of the transaction: I’ve paid overinflated prices for releases out of desperation, and I’ve also bought items knowing they’ll be worth a packet in no time because the supply is nowhere near correspondent to the demand. Limited editions will always have that special appeal to collectors.

But people do have a choice, and this year, I opted to exercise my choice not to go and buy a stack of vinyl, despite very much wanting to.

It isn’t so much that RSD has been hijacked by greedy capitalists, and I’m not even entirely averse to queueing for stuff if I really want it. But I feel that RSD has lost some of its appeal, and moreover, sight of what it was all about in the first place.

As I understand it, RSD was about celebrating independent record stores. Sellers of vinyl. And s such, it was also a celebration of vinyl, the format, and what the format offers as a holistic musical experience. The medium is the message, in a way.

Most people queueing outside stores on RSD probably don’t frequent record stores on any other days of the year. Personally, I’d much rather celebrate record stores all year round, by dropping in and picking stuff up when the mood takes and finances allow. And for me, the record store experience is about the browsing, the mulling, and the milling. Charging in to buy stuff with a shopping list in hand and jostling for an item before it’s snatched from under your nose is not an enjoyable or even remotely pleasant shopping experience. Being pressured to grab goods – especially when you know the items have their pieces fixed high but not to the benefit of the retailer – really kills the buzz.

 

RSD queue

People in Leeds ‘Crash’ the RSD scene in 2014

But this year, above all, the releases themselves simply haven’t inspired me. It’s a perfectly personal thing, of course, and I expect that my working as a reviewer has only further jaundiced my outlook. The more bands I’m introduced to, and like, the less possible it is to obsess about owning every release by every band on every format. In my teens and early 20s, I would purchase single releases on 7”, 12”, Cassette, CD and whatever numbered / coloured / poster sleeve limited editions were going. Now… I’d rather buy five releases by five different artists, rather than the same release by one artist five times. In short, I’m still a collector, but not a completist.

And while I’m by no means averse to going out and paying for a physical copy of an album I’ve been given in digital format ahead of release to review, can I really justify doing so in the name of Record Store Day? Again, the frenzy that RSD has become pressures the decision to be made on the spot or even in advance.

This year’s list of releases features a bewildering number of reissues. I have no problem with reissues per se, but I’m not about to purchase yet another copy of something I already have on original black vinyl and CD with bonus tracks just because it’s on red vinyl, or a picture disc. I just can’t get excited about queueing up for ages to fork out £20 for an album I already have, and if I don’t already own it, chances are I could pick up a second hand copy of the original for the same price or less.

The same applies tenfold for singles lifted from albums that have been out for donkey’s years. And similarly, can I really justify parting with £6 for a limited 7” of a track I already have on album because it has an exclusive B-side? At any other time, a band could release a single in a run of, say, 500, and it would still be available a month later. Of course, it’s great for labels to be able to put something about and recoup their costs much more quickly, but it seems absurd that because a record is released on a certain say, it’s going to sell out before lunchtime.

Clearly, I can’t stop the madness, and RSD still does a great job of raising awareness of record stores and vinyl, and I still applaud that. But it’s because I so love vinyl and the whole record store experience that I jumped the RSD ship this year. I’ve still got another 364 days of the year to show my appreciation and support record stores by buying from them in more sane and sedate circumstances.

 

 

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.

Rage On the Road

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They turn up in their cable-knit sweaters and cord trousers to nod amicably to observations about hedgerows in spring. They quaff half-pints of session ale and continental lager, red wine and soft drinks ‘because it’s a school night’ even though half of them are retired. They chat amiably about this and that, this and that, thus and that, primarily who has a book launch event coming up, who’s event they went to and whatever beautifully-crafted collection they’ve just read. It was recommended by so-and so, and so-and-so other did a simply delightful job of the artwork and so-and-so else gave their apologies but had recently had an accident or injury or was otherwise incapacitated or engaged… The poetry set. The ageing, the mumsy, the middle class pseudo-sophisticates… the middlebrow, nicey-nicey, bland-as-fuck head-in-the-sand dinner-party chatterers who think a mild swipe at Cameron set to an acoustic rendition of some 60s pop hit qualifies as edgy, pithy and political…

I don’t sit comfortably with the poetry set. Nevertheless, I occasionally raid their spoken word nights as an uninvited guest. Sometimes, I’m invited to perform, too.

The momentum of the Rage Monologues may not have gathered quite the pace I’d hoped for in the last couple of months, but April’s calendar so far looks rather like this:

April 23rd – Nevermind, York (5-7pm)

April 25th – Basement, York (7:30pm start)

Expect rage. Expect to see me die. Slowly and painfully. Get in touch via Facebook / Twitter / whatever if you’d like me to come and spill fiery venom at your event. Will rant for beer.