Gavin Friday has contributed a track to “The Devil in Love”, a soundtrack to the 1772 occult novel “Le Diable amoureux” by Jacques Cazotte.
Cazotte’s story follows the young nobleman Alvare as he summons Satan, who appears to him first in the shape of a dreadful camel, then as a spaniel dog and finally as a beautiful androgynous girl. Alvare wrestles with the temptation presented by this mysterious creature. Is the Evil One really as black as he is painted, and can Satan himself fall in love?
The contributing artists were handed “Le Diable amoureux” to read and then given free reign.
The double CD is released alongside the novel by Swedish publishers Malört Förlag and can be ordered through their website for €26 (including international postage).
The Fortune Teller, the acclaimed creation of New York City puppet maker Erik Sanko and designer Jessica Grindstaff, returns to the stage by popular demand at the Here Theater in New York City, October 28th–December 4th, 2010. (Click here for tickets)
The Fortune Teller features a grotesque array of 15 artfully handcrafted figures in a dark comic tale unfolding in a fantastic Victorian world. Seven characters representing the seven deadly sins convene at a dead millionaire’s estate to claim their inheritance as determined by a fortune teller. One by one, each is delivered what they have coming to them, but perhaps not what they are expecting—a brutal, but suitable, demise. Featuring the gravelly, recorded narration of Irish vocalist Gavin Friday and an eerie score by Sanko and Grammy-winning film composer Danny Elfman, this sinister puppet theater spectacle is a perverse, but gleeful morality tale for grown-ups.
Reviews
“For those souls with a taste for the elegantly macabre, attendance is highly advised. To miss it – now that would be a sin”
-The Village Voice”
“A morality fable for grown-ups, evoking the familiar idioms of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton in a style you might term Victorian ghastly… the set, a regular wunderkammer, keeps opening up to reveal new sets and images, little Victorian dioramas… macabre and engaging.”
- The New York Times
Dublin-based band Preachers Son (Brian Hogan of Kíla and Emmaline Duffy-Fallon previously of Engine Alley) released their debut album “Love Life and Limb” last Friday, October 15th.
“Love Life and Limb” features the song “Lipstick” with Gavin Friday on vocals. The song, and the album, can now be downloaded from iTunes, Amazon and CD Baby.
“With string arrangements over a languid rock rhythm, ‘Lipstick’ features an explosive Gavin Friday performance..” Hotpress Issue 20 – Oct 2010 Colm O’Hare
“Gavin Friday lends his voice to snaky torch song Lipstick..” The Irish Times Oct 15th Lauren Murphy
“X for Sandra is a highlight, as is the adorable Lipstick featuring Gavin Friday on vocals.” The Star Oct 22nd
This BBC Weather ‘Be One Step Ahead’ trailer which has been running on BBC television for the last couple of months features the track “All our troubles have flown away” from the Friday/Seezer soundtrack for Jim Sheridan’s movie ‘In America’.
“Having recently come across a book of photographs of John Hinde’s Ireland from the 1960s and 1970s, I was totally taken aback that after all these years they had such a poignant effect on me…Was this the Ireland I grew up in? An O Connell Street in the 1960s looking like an exotic boulevard from a Technicolor Hitchcock movie? The images of Butlins so overtly lush with surreal detail, saturated colour and over decorated glamour that they would put David LaChapelle to shame. This was Ireland as an imaginary island, a place where the sun was always shining, as seen through the eyes of John Hinde, who in his genius meticulously and painstakingly staged, designed and produced these images. He didn’t create them for any aspirational purpose or as great art, but as postcards to be sold for a few pence to tourists and holidays makers. Andy Warhol eat your heart out! He was an innovator and outsider and his work is most definitely a touchstone for many-the extraordinary printmaker Tim Mara, the profound writings from the wonderful mind of Pat McCabe, the Pop Art of early Robert Ballagh and more recently, Sean Hillen’s magical ‘Irelantis’. In hindsight, as a teenager I wrongly discarded these postcards as stage Irish – it most definitely wasn’t the Ireland I grew up in, yet today, I love and embrace these photographs wholeheartedly. Ireland through the eyes of John Hinde…Wish you were here.”
The 2nd of three events in the Bio Rhythm exhibition currently running at the Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin featured Gavin and BP Fallon amongst a cast of music psychologists, therapists and fellow musicians to explore and discuss the relations we have with music. And specifically for the first half of the evening, that effect of music on our emotions. Is music driven by emotion or is it emotion that creates the music? Scientists and musicians discuss!
Irish Radio DJ Tom Dunne has been playing Gavin Friday’s duet with Maria McKee ‘Falling off the Edge of the World’ (lyrics) on his radio show for this ‘vinyl only’ month. The song proves to be popular with the listeners as many are texting and tweeting Tom to ask where they can get a copy of the song.
‘Falling off the Edge of the World’ is on Gavin Friday’s album Adam ‘n’ Eve and was released by Island Records as a 7″ single, 12″ and CD single in 1992. The album and singles are unfortunately no longer distributed on CD and have never been available for download. However, there are some copies of the album available on Amazon.co.uk.
You could also try a search for the album or singles on eBay, or on the vinyl and CD rarities site Gemm.com.
“How can your skin betray how you really feel about a song? Why is a minor chord sad? How is music linked with memory?” Gavin Friday, Kate Ellis – who is one of the lead instrumentalists on Gavin’s new album – and BP Fallon will appear at ‘Biorhythm Live: Emotion‘ on September 16th, as part of Dublin’s Science Gallery’s BIORHYTHM: Music and the Body festival to talk and improvise about the subject of music and emotion.
September 16, 2010
19:00 – 22:00
Science Gallery
Pearse Street, Dublin
Tickets €28. Book now
Gavin Friday on Yeats
with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill
Seen at the National Library, June 30, 2010
Demand for Gavin Friday, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill performing work by William Butler Yeats on June 30th was so great, the National Library decided to simulcast the event in the Library’s cafe. Gavin, approaching the material in his own inimitable way, read his personal selection of poems covering themes of romance, politics and celtic mysticism, using the full width of his voice to add light and shade to Yeats’ words, and body to punctuate his phrasing.
Hayes (fiddle) and Cahill (guitar) provided musical interludes and improvised on ‘The Stolen Child’, Yeats’ own tale of dazzle and delight. Although they had little rehearsal time and come from very different traditions, the artists managed to find common ground, and simply ‘clicked’. Hayes kept his eyes on Gavin throughout the performance following his lead while Cahill fixed on the fiddler. “I’m not from Sligo,” said Gavin, “I’m from Dublin,” and launched into a purposefully flat reading of ‘The Fiddler of Dooney’, accentuating his Northside Dublin inflection. It worked well with the ballad’s iambic trimeter: “I passed my brother and cousin / They read in their books of prayer / I read in my book of songs / I bought at the Sligo fair.” He ended with two encores picked on the spot and chose ‘Drinking Song’ because the title appealed to him and then closed with ‘Brown Penny’ (perhaps subconciously because it’s theme echoes his own classic ‘Tell Tale Heart’) the words of which sound particularly Fridayesque: “For he would be thinking of love / Till the stars had run away / And the shadows eaten the moon.”
Theo Dorgan, master of ceremonies, paraphrasing writer Colm Toibin in his closing words to the audience, said: “It wasn’t the guitar players and the fiddlers and the actors and the poets who bankrupted the country, who ran our country into the ground, but if we are to make it back, if we are to take it back… I don’t know about you, but my heart will be all that stronger, for tonight we’ve been in the presence of real art, real artists and it seems such a good thing that’s it’s in the heart of the National Library.” He then called for another round of applause. Later that evening, at the Merrion Hotel, the Library presented the musicians with 1st edition copies of Yeats’ books to thank them for their involvement in the Summer’s Wreath festival.
The poems
September, 1913
To a friend whose work has come to nothing
To Ireland in the coming times
He thinks of his past greatness when a part of the constellations of heaven
