Gavin FridayTomorrow Belongs to Me – Topic – Gavin Friday – Official Site

Tomorrow belongs to me – photos

Caroline — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:00:54 +0000

Tomorrow belongs to me – programme

Caroline — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:57:13 +0000

Tomorrow belongs to me – bottles

Caroline — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:05:54 +0000

Beer bottle labels created in 2006 by Gavin Friday and Redman AKA for Beck’s. Other artists to create labels for Becks include Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George and Jeff Koons.

Tomorrow belongs to me: under the influence

Caroline — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:13:37 +0000

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered by Gavin Friday’s recent ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ shows?
Not to worry, we’ve done the work for you. Read our primer on German culture, ‘Unter dem Einfluß’, custom made for Gavin Friday fans.

“Billed as Gavin’s personal tribute to German culture, the recent Tomorrow Belongs To Me shows left several members of the audience scratching their heads. Those who recognised little of the performed material might have wondered exactly how such an apparently random collection of songs reflected Germany’s contribution to the world of the arts. Those more in the know might still have struggled to locate Ave Maria, Bela Lugosi and Iggy Pop in a German context. As ever, there is method to Gavin’s madness. In this feature, we explore precisely how he mined both Germany’s and his own artistic past to create this unique performance.”

The show opened to the strains of David Bowie’s Warszawa. It was a brave move to begin a tribute to Germany with a piece of music about Poland’s capital city and it set the tone for Gavin’s tangential approach. This track is taken from Bowie’s Low album, one of a trio (also including Heroes and Lodger) recorded in Berlin in the late 1970s with innovative producer Brian Eno. Bowie had moved to Berlin after a period in Los Angeles, during which his excessive use of cocaine had caused him to become paranoid and detached from reality. Returning to London from LA for a brief period in late 1976, in a public relations disaster he gave the welcoming crowd a Nazi salute.

The mood turned against him and he fled to Berlin, both to lick his wounds and to sober up and refocus himself on his music. He achieved his goal: Low heralded an artistic return to form. Its bleak, futuristic soundscapes (many instrumental) set the template for electronic music towards the end of the 1970s, heavily influencing subsequent performers such as Gary Newman, Ultravox and OMD. Also during the same year that both Low and Heroes were released, Bowie masterminded Iggy Pop’s comeback albums, producing and co-writing both The Idiot and Lust For Life.

It is from the first of these that another piece from Gavin’s show was taken: Nightclubbing, from The Idiot. Iggy Pop had recently checked out of the Neuropsychiatric Institute in LA and had left the USA with Bowie for similar reasons: to break a destructive drug habit and to attempt a return to musical form. Arguably, these two albums demonstrated considerable success. Berlin’s then grim metropolis proved a fertile creative environment for both artists. One of the defining aspects of the music that they created there was its stripped-down minimalism, expressed in each performer’s own characteristic way: Bowie’s forbidding, foreboding dreamscapes and Iggy’s pulsating, driven proto-rock.

Krautrock was originally a dismissive term used by a disinterested British music press, though it has subsequently become a term of praise. Essentially a bare-metal, electronic oriented form of progressive rock, though entirely eschewing the overblown ostentation normally associated with that phrase, its defining sound was the (more favourably journalist-coined) “motorik” combination of bass and percussion. It is fitting that one of the most well-known compositions of the genre was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn (German for “motorway”). Krautrock’s dynamic and experimental ethos had an almost immeasurable effect on post-punk European music of the late 1970s and early 1980s, influencing bands such as Public Image, the Fall, Einstürzende Neubauten and, closer to home, Virgin Prunes.

The UK-based nuclear power station at Sellafield remains topical and of particular interest to the Irish. This nuclear reprocessing plant is an ongoing subject for protest by the Irish branch of Greenpeace on the basis of the pollution that it causes both to Irish territorial waters and to the Irish coastline. It is also of great concern to many Irish citizens that any disaster at Sellafield, whether accidental or otherwise, would have considerable negative impact on Ireland due to the prevailing wind. In the post-9/11 world there is much anxiety that the UK’s nuclear power stations might be the subject of a terrorist attack. Numerous prominent Irish figures have lent their weight to Greenpeace’s anti-Sellafield campaign.

In addition, Gavin performed material by three British/Irish bands strongly influenced both by this genre and by the wider environment of late 1970s Europe: Bauhaus, Siouxsie And The Banshees and his own former band, Virgin Prunes. The Siouxsie track was Metal Postcard and was chosen because it was itself an homage to a specific aspect of German culture. Its full title was Metal Postcard (MIttageisen); in German, “mittageisen” translates as “midday iron” and is a pun on “Mittagessen” (lunch). It was dedicated to John Heartfield, who created a picture called Hurrah, The Butter Is Out, which showed a family eating iron. It was published on the frontpage of the Arbeiter Illustrierten Zeitung (Workers Magazine Journal) in 1935. Heartfield (1891-1968) was an early member of Club Dada. This image was also used on the sleeve of the 7″ single release of Metal Postcard and was based on a sentence from speech by Hermann Göring: “Iron made a nation always strong, butter and lard only made the people fat.”

Gavin FridayThe Virgin Prunes track Theme For Thought might seem a tenuous choice as a tribute to German art, but there are probably several reasons why Gavin chose it. All of the above influences would have been contemporary to the band when this song was written in the late 1970s. Although it didn’t appear on a record release until 1982′s …If I Die, I Die, it had been performed live on Irish television as early as 1979 and was probably written even earlier. In its original incarnation, the song’s fierce and impassioned call for individuality (“Why… should I… be like you?”) was supported by material from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad Of Reading Gaol. In this 2006 performance, Guggi’s reading of Reading was replaced mid-song by Gavin’s recital of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem First They Came… In this, the narrator belatedly bemoans his own lack of support for minorities threatened by the Nazi regime (first Communists, then Social Democrats, trade unionists and finally Jews) until in turn he finds himself in the minority and “there was no one left to speak out” for him.

One of the most memorable parts of the performance was the fifteen-minute segment covering footage from the classic film Nosferatu and the cover version of the Bauhaus song Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Although Lugosi himself was Hungarian, this part of the performance alluded to several aspects of German art. Firstly, the group Bauhaus is named after a modernist school of German design of the 1920s. Secondly, the group were one of the earliest members of the broad musical movement that became known as “Gothic”, alongside Joy Division and Siouxsie And The Banshees. This so-called Gothic movement was named after the Goths, an early Germanic tribe. Subsequent aspects of German culture were often labelled Gothic (e.g. architecture, or typefaces) and were frequently contrasted with classical, Latin culture. The Gothic label was also attached to other genres, for example the “Gothic” literature created by Mary Shelley, Horace Walpole, and so on.

Thirdly, Bela Lugosi had lived and performed in Germany for a while. Born in Hungary in 1882, he emigrated to Germany in 1919 and then two years later he left for the USA. It was here that he gave what many consider to be his definitive performance, in the 1931 Universal Pictures film Dracula. However, the footage used in Gavin’s performance was actually from the 1922 German expressionist film Nosferatu, which was essentially a reworking of Dracula story, for which the director FW Murnau had been unable to obtain the rights. Subsequently Bram Stoker’s estate sued for breach of copyright and won, leaving Nosferatu’s production company bankrupt. Remaining copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but many survived and the film is now in the public domain.

Lou Reed’s Berlin, beginning with a sweet and mildly sinister rendition of Happy Birthday, is the title track of the album of the same name. This was his third album, showcasing a collection of songs dealing with suicide and despair (epitomised by the blandly titled Sad Song). It is generally considered to be one of his most harrowing works and in isolation this song’s gentle and almost throwaway lyrics (“It was very nice / Oh honey, it was paradise”) are unrepresentative of the album as a whole.

Seventies avant-garde rock holds a special place in Gavin’s affections and musical tastes, but the show opened with Miriam Blennerhessett’s stunning performance of Ave Maria. Identified by audience members as ‘Italian opera’, the piece is in fact a religious song composed by Charles Gounod, based on the first prelude from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. There was also a Weimar cabaret theme in the earlier part of the set, with a performance of Marlene Dietrich’s Falling In love Again and the old standard Lili Marlene. Gavin explored similar territory in much more detail in his Ich Liebe Dich run at the Dublin Theatre Festival in late 2001.

Other influences were more fleeting. Samples from Propaganda’s Dream Within A Dream were used very briefly. Propaganda was a German group of the mid-1980s, operating on Paul Morley’s ZTT Records label alongside Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Art Of Noise. Their own music referenced the German expressionist film genre in a very similar way to Gavin’s use of film clips from classics such as Metropolis and Das Kabinett Des Dr Caligari. (One of Propaganda’s most well-known songs, with its memorable “Sell ‘em your soul, sell ‘em your soul, never look back” lyric, was based on the classic German film Das Testaments Der Dr Mabuse.) Caligari also inspired the show’s “Mitteleuropean” design, notably the living room and windows backdrop with its skewed angles.

On a more lowbrow basis, Nena’s effortless pop song 99 Red Balloons was included as a prologue to Radioactivity, the nuclear themes of the two pieces working well together. Snippets of mid-80s industrial group Einstürzende Neubauten’s NNNAAMMM and Installation No 1 also found their way into the set, alongside two fragments of Gavin’s own musical past: excerpts of Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves and Angel.

Gavin is first and foremost a musician, but this was a decidedly multimedia show. Drawings by anti-war artist and Dadaist George Grosz were projected on a wall in the lobby before and after the show, while a blonde pig-tailed actress dressed as a German bar “Mädel” vibed out the audience in the bar and in the venue itself, off and on stage. Noni Stapleton tbtm_8666Throughout the show, two video screens showed clips from the aforementioned expressionist films, as well as various incarnations of the artist’s chosen logo: the Sacred Heart of Gavin. This ‘Heiliges Herz’ was also prominently featured on the label that Gavin designed for the limited edition collectible beer bottles, distributed at the shows.

Looking at Tomorrow Belongs To Me as a theatrical spectacle, two of the most well-received numbers came from very different ends of the spectrum. Gavin’s cover version of Boney M’s Daddy Cool was a superb piece of retro-modern kitsch, its disco origins allowing several moments of leather-jacketed high-camp. Boney M was a very successful German group of the late 1970s, with numerous European hit singles to its name. Backed by svengali producer Bobby Farian (who actually provided the band’s male vocals), the group’s often preposterous blending of disparate elements (reggae spiritual music on Rivers Of Babylon, cheesy sci-fi on Night Flight To Venus, “Russia’s greatest love machine” on Ra Ra Rasputin) mirrors Gavin’s own habit of juxtaposing ideas that shouldn’t work, but do. This updated disco vibe is fertile musical territory that, with his own track Billy Boola in mind, we’d like to see him explore further in future.

The other part of the performance that rivalled Daddy Cool for sheer theatricality must surely have been the song that gave the show its title: Tomorrow Belongs To Me. From the musical Cabaret – and also covered to great effect by 1970s glam rock luminaries The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – this was another performance highlighting Gavin’s long-standing desire to provoke his audience into questioning the world around them. Viewed in the context of Cabaret, this song might appear to be a distasteful paean to Nazism and thus a questionable part of this performance. However, it has earlier roots as a traditional German country air that predate its use in the musical and Gavin’s manipulation of its lyrics (substituting references to the Rhine with those to the Liffey, for example) made it clear that the “Fatherland” of the song that he had in mind was much closer to home.

This was elaborated when his temporary partner-in-craic Justine Doswell – billed for this show as the “Celtic Reich Tiger” – returned to the stage wearing an Eircom-sponsored green football shirt for a spot of Riverdance-style Irish dancing. As Tomorrow Belongs To Me morphed into an almost grotesque tape recording of Tomorrow from the musical Annie, Irish tricolour feather boas were handed to all performers and musicians and the Tiger led the entire troupe off the stage in a drunken-wedding-style conga. This was slapstick comedy with a serious intent and it seemed likely that Gavin was drawing a parallel between German and Irish nationalism, warning of the twin dangers of insularity and sentimentalism.

It is this deft weaving of the personal, the political, the local and the global that gave the show its unique tone. Whatever deficiencies there might have been in the overall smooth flow between individual songs and segments of the performance, these were more than compensated for by the riot of ideas and personal influences presented in the space of less than two hours. With a revitalised popular interest in the post-punk musical period of 1978-1984 (see Simon Reynolds’ superb book Rip It Up) and the Krautrock that influenced it so heavily, this was a very timely moment for Gavin to stake his claim as one of the foremost connoisseurs of this era. It also represented a considerable artistic step forward from the Brecht, Brel and Bolan material that has dominated his live performances and artistic mindset for the past decade or so. In providing him with a dynamic and refreshed musical and visual vocabulary, we suspect that Tomorrow Belongs To Me will come to be regarded as a landmark moment in his performance career.

Unter dem Einfluß

Caroline — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 23:56:44 +0000

A German cultural primer for Gavin Friday fans

Billed as Gavin’s personal tribute to German culture, the recent Tomorrow Belongs To Me shows left several members of the audience scratching their heads. Those who recognised little of the performed material might have wondered exactly how such an apparently random collection of songs reflected Germany’s contribution to the world of the arts. Those more in the know might still have struggled to locate Ave Maria, Bela Lugosi and Iggy Pop in a German context. As ever, there is method to Gavin’s madness. In this feature, we explore precisely how he mined both Germany’s and his own artistic past to create this unique performance.

There was something of the Zeitgeist in their brooding, relentless compositions, reflecting the ongoing nuclear threat of mutually assured destruction. Berlin, a divided city, was the epicentre of the Cold War: controlled in four different sectors by the UK, the USA and France (collectively known as West Berlin) and the USSR (known as East Berlin). Reflecting this, Germany’s musical output in the 1970s had become increasingly experimental and forward-looking as the decade progressed. Most prominent were the so-called “Krautrock” bands: Can, Neu!, Faust, Cluster and the more well-known Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.
Krautrock was originally a dismissive term used by a disinterested British music press, though it has subsequently become a term of praise. Essentially a bare-metal, electronic oriented form of progressive rock, though entirely eschewing the overblown ostentation normally associated with that phrase, its defining sound was the (more favourably journalist-coined) “motorik” combination of bass and percussion. It is fitting that one of the most well-known compositions of the genre was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn (German for “motorway”). Krautrock’s dynamic and experimental ethos had an almost immeasurable effect on post-punk European music of the late 1970s and early 1980s, influencing bands such as Public Image, the Fall, Einstürzende Neubauten and, closer to home, Virgin Prunes.

Gavin’s inclusion of three Kraftwerk tracks in the Tomorrow Belongs To Me shows acknowledged this band’s extensive musical reach. The Hall Of Mirrors, performed as a duet with Miriam Blennerhassett, mused on the nature of celebrity and performance itself, wryly noting that “even the greatest stars live their lives in the looking glass.” Showroom Dummies was a robotic mock horror story of shop-window display models breaking through the glass and walking through the city, taking a wry comedic twist when it ultimately reveals that their objective is only to go to a club to have a good time. The third Kraftwerk track of the shows was Radioactivity, demonstrating a more serious intent with its “Chernobyl, Harrisburg, Sellafield, Hiroshima” lyric.
The UK-based nuclear power station at Sellafield remains topical and of particular interest to the Irish. This nuclear reprocessing plant is an ongoing subject for protest by the Irish branch of Greenpeace on the basis of the pollution that it causes both to Irish territorial waters and to the Irish coastline. It is also of great concern to many Irish citizens that any disaster at Sellafield, whether accidental or otherwise, would have considerable negative impact on Ireland due to the prevailing wind. In the post-9/11 world there is much anxiety that the UK’s nuclear power stations might be the subject of a terrorist attack. Numerous prominent Irish figures have lent their weight to Greenpeace’s anti-Sellafield campaign.

Also from the Krautrock genre, Gavin performed Can’s I Want More, a funky disco song that provided a surprise chart hit for the band shortly before their break-up in 1978. Alongside Kraftwerk, Can probably provided the greatest long-term Germanic influence on the music of the 1980s and 1990s. Can’s discography is notable for the fact that each successive album became more experimental as their musical career progressed, when for many bands the opposite is true. Scratch the surface of any truly alternative musical fan of the 1970s and you’ll usually find a Can album or two in their collection, possibly alongside releases from Neu! or Faust. Gavin is no exception and music by Neu! was played through the PA during the hour immediately before the show, with the distinctive driving rhythm of Hallogallo being the most memorable track.
In addition, Gavin performed material by three British/Irish bands strongly influenced both by this genre and by the wider environment of late 1970s Europe: Bauhaus, Siouxsie And The Banshees and his own former band, Virgin Prunes. The Siouxsie track was Metal Postcard and was chosen because it was itself an homage to a specific aspect of German culture. Its full title was Metal Postcard (MIttageisen); in German, “mittageisen” translates as “midday iron” and is a pun on “Mittagessen” (lunch). It was dedicated to John Heartfield, who created a picture called Hurrah, The Butter Is Out, which showed a family eating iron. It was published on the frontpage of the Arbeiter Illustrierten Zeitung (Workers Magazine Journal) in 1935. Heartfield (1891-1968) was an early member of Club Dada. This image was also used on the sleeve of the 7″ single release of Metal Postcard and was based on a sentence from speech by Hermann Göring: “Iron made a nation always strong, butter and lard only made the people fat.”

The Virgin Prunes track Theme For Thought might seem a tenuous choice as a tribute to German art, but there are probably several reasons why Gavin chose it. All of the above influences would have been contemporary to the band when this song was written in the late 1970s. Although it didn’t appear on a record release until 1982′s …If I Die, I Die, it had been performed live on Irish television as early as 1979 and was probably written even earlier. In its original incarnation, the song’s fierce and impassioned call for individuality (“Why… should I… be like you?”) was supported by material from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad Of Reading Gaol. In this 2006 performance, Guggi’s reading of Reading was replaced mid-song by Gavin’s recital of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem First They Came… In this, the narrator belatedly bemoans his own lack of support for minorities threatened by the Nazi regime (first Communists, then Social Democrats, trade unionists and finally Jews) until in turn he finds himself in the minority and “there was no one left to speak out” for him.
One of the most memorable parts of the performance was the fifteen-minute segment covering footage from the classic film Nosferatu and the cover version of the Bauhaus song Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Although Lugosi himself was Hungarian, this part of the performance alluded to several aspects of German art. Firstly, the group Bauhaus is named after a modernist school of German design of the 1920s. Secondly, the group were one of the earliest members of the broad musical movement that became known as “Gothic”, alongside Joy Division and Siouxsie And The Banshees. This so-called Gothic movement was named after the Goths, an early Germanic tribe. Subsequent aspects of German culture were often labelled Gothic (e.g. architecture, or typefaces) and were frequently contrasted with classical, Latin culture. The Gothic label was also attached to other genres, for example the “Gothic” literature created by Mary Shelley, Horace Walpole, and so on.
Thirdly, Bela Lugosi had lived and performed in Germany for a while. Born in Hungary in 1882, he emigrated to Germany in 1919 and then two years later he left for the USA. It was here that he gave what many consider to be his definitive performance, in the 1931 Universal Pictures film Dracula. However, the footage used in Gavin’s performance was actually from the 1922 German expressionist film Nosferatu, which was essentially a reworking of Dracula story, for which the director FW Murnau had been unable to obtain the rights. Subsequently Bram Stoker’s estate sued for breach of copyright and won, leaving Nosferatu’s production company bankrupt. Remaining copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but many survived and the film is now in the public domain.

Other material in the show came from performers equally influenced by Germany in the 1970s. Randy Newman’s In Germany Before The War tells the story of a child murderer (“A little girl has lost her way / With hair of gold and eyes of grey / Reflected in his glasses as he watches her”), a theme echoed in the projected film clips from Fritz Lang’s M, which inspired Newman to write the song. The murderer’s eerie whistle (to the tune of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King) was also used during this part of the performance.
Lou Reed’s Berlin, beginning with a sweet and mildly sinister rendition of Happy Birthday, is the title track of the album of the same name. This was his third album, showcasing a collection of songs dealing with suicide and despair (epitomised by the blandly titled Sad Song). It is generally considered to be one of his most harrowing works and in isolation this song’s gentle and almost throwaway lyrics (“It was very nice / Oh honey, it was paradise”) are unrepresentative of the album as a whole.

Snippets of Donna Summer’s 1977 hit I Feel Love had popped up at the very start of the show and during Lili Marlene. Summer recorded this track with producer and disco-pioneer Giorgio Moroder, they had met in Munich where they were both living at the time. I Feel Love was probably the first song to use techno and electronic sounds in dance music. Moroder later restored Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis and gave it a score.
The other part of the performance that rivalled Daddy Cool for sheer theatricality must surely have been the song that gave the show its title: Tomorrow Belongs To Me. From the musical Cabaret – and also covered to great effect by 1970s glam rock luminaries The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – this was another performance highlighting Gavin’s long-standing desire to provoke his audience into questioning the world around them.
Viewed in the context of Cabaret, this song might appear to be a distasteful paean to Nazism and thus a questionable part of this performance. However, it has earlier roots as a traditional German country air that predate its use in the musical and Gavin’s manipulation of its lyrics (substituting references to the Rhine with those to the Liffey, for example) made it clear that the “Fatherland” of the song that he had in mind was much closer to home.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me, by Gavin Friday. With: Niall Macken, Anto Drennan, Cait O’Riordan, Kate Ellis, Guy Rickarby and Miriam Blennerhasset.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow!

Caroline — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:12:40 +0000

Patrick Lynch sees Tomorrow Belongs to Me, July 27&28, 2006

If I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey In a Bubble (Gavin’s spoken word and autobiographical production at the 2003 Dublin Fringe Festival) was his ‘A Life Story of My Life’ show then ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ certainly would seem to come from the same prized scrapbook, but marked more specifically under ‘My German Influences’. Despite the pre show press promotion little was actually given away as to what to expect from this two night residency at The Liberty Hall theatre.

Gavin’s German obsessions have to these ears always sat loosely alongside his Dublin ones. They have been readily referenced in everything from ‘Next’ in the live show context or on record with Shag Tobacco’s ‘Dolls’ . He has quoted German like most high brow English authors show off their Latin. It is a love of the language and place that characterises a certain European otherworldness in Gavin’s work. In the pastwe’ve had but only the briefest of glimpses of what lies within but with these shows we were promised a deep submersion in this very personal book of Gavin’s-Brilliant-German-Things.

The set further feeds this promise. Table, chair, wine, dummy’s head, a luminous window frame backdrop, side show screens, a painted draped curtain overhead, the stage edge lined with light bulbs. Welcome To The Cabaret.

The audience are still settling into their seats when the lights dim and the red heart that has been beating consistently on the video screens looks like it might be about to explode. An intro of Bowie ‘s Warsawa paves the way for the serene figure of a red dress-ed, beehive haired, painted faced lady. When she opens her mouth the purest mezzo-soprano voice emerges. Miriam Blennerhassett delivers Bach’s Ave Maria, instantly blowing away any expectations of tonight’s show. Indeed it is the first indicator to the constantly shifting themes of the evening. Movie footage follows on the video screens. In vintage black and white a young curly haired girl bounces a ball against a poster that refers in German to a murder. We see this image clouded by a man’s shadow and later the ball rolling freely into a park. Instantly the tone is set for something ominous, the suggestion of innocence lost.

Gavin strolls on, in trademark shirt, suit bottoms, thick wedged soles and carefully adjusted pony tail of charcoal black hair. He looks as much a Spanish flamenco dancer as a north side boot boy of seventies Dublin , oozing his customary charm and confidence. It’s a presence that cannot be ignored and one that on the second night, is enough to make one male admirer heckle “G’wan Gavin, ya ride!”. Suffice to say Gavin’s retort is appropriately ribald: “Do ya want to see me mickey?”

He wanders the stage, singing a gentle rendition of Randy Newman’s In Germany Before The War , whispering his vocals into the microphone and into every corner of the venue. More audio visual links lead us into Lou Reed’s Berlin . So far the mood is sad and reflective, a sense of a different place at a very difficult time. Gavin drifts into Angel . The mood lightens with recognition. We leave this dark but riveting place.
Falling In Love Again, Lillie Marlene and Each Man Kills The Things He Loves bring us back onto familiar terra firma to the Friday we have known and loved for the last seventeen years, with his penchant for cabaret and vaudeville. But just when we think we have the show sussed he emerges after an Einstuerzende Neubauten musical link to perform Kraftwerk’s The Hall of Mirrors. Fully suited now he sits down and sings the song’s lyrics. Blennerhassett stands behind him, adding a classical backing to this magical duet.

The video footage briefly departs from its collage of blinking, twitching eyes to show Gavin in pre and post ‘star’ mode, wide-eyedly contemplating his alter images. The whole performance is nothing short of hypnotic, like entering sleep and re-emerging from a strange dream.

The stage soon empties for the next part of the show which commences with an electronica beat and a single flashing white light. Clad in a black dress like we’ve never seen her before Cait O’Riordan arrives on stage, her gorgeous bone structure and bass guitar playing as striking as each other. Other band members appear from the shadows and Gavin re-enters the stage walking like a robotic Charlie Chaplin and clicking his tongue to the song breaks of Kraftwerk’s Showroom Dummies . It’s a wonderfully animated performance that ignites from the deadpan original and reminds us that with Mr Friday it is never mere song delivery but theatrical interpretation too.

Can’s I Want More lifts the tempo even more. Gavin gets seriously down dirty with a similarly clad female. She has the sensual frame and moves of a super model. As the title suggests this is pure filthy gorgeous decadence. This light mood makes way for a round of the ‘Spin The Bottle’. Gavin embarrasses audience members with his game of truth or dare. The back rows aren’t spared. On the first night this section of the show takes Gavin all the way up the back stairs to the balcony. On the second night he stays closer to the stage and reaches everyone more effectively by ordering us to hold aloft our limited edition bottles of Beck’s, adorned with the show’s logo. This light hearted play throws the next segment of the show in sharp relief.
After a brief interval Gavin gradually finds his way back to the stage with eerie Nosferatu silhouette play against the backdrop. When he does come back to the stage he is red lipped and white faced, cloaked in a chunky coat with a pointy raised collar. His version of Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead is spectacular not least for its stripped down white noise/white light performance that brings back the hey day of a certain Punk/Goth era but also seems to resurrect the former Virgin Prune. He kneels on the stage stabbing at his heart with the microphone, his hair style and face not aged much in the twenty something years since. Validating that this is not just my reading, the next song after Siouxsie and The Banshee’s Metal Postcard is the incredible Theme For Thought from the Prunes’ … If I Die, I Die .

“Should I talk the way you want me to talk/say the words the way you want to hear them/I know a lot of people like that”… I did not think I’d ever see this song performed in such a way in my lifetime. It’s truly a memorable moment to see a performer take the best from their past and, through a megaphone, reinterpret it so immediately in the here and now. It’s the pinnacle of the show for me and an underlining of the fact that Gavin needs a more permanent band and frequent stage presence.

Theme for Thought has lost none of its integrity or vitriol, an anti-fascist poem by Martin Niemöller replacing the original Oscar Wilde verse, reminding us of Nazi horrors and how the path for their blitz of destruction was cleared by the silence of others. This ties into the show’s title song Tomorrow Belongs To Me, best known from the movie Cabaret, segueing into Annie’s Tomorrow. An Irish dancer and tricolour feather boas for all on stage complete the picture.

It could all end here but there’s more…and how! Environmental hazard reminders come courtesy of a version of Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity updated with mentions of Chernobyl and Sellafield. The sombreness is lifted with the release of Nena’s 99 Red Balloons . Stage exit again only for a swirling mirror ball to herald the return of Gavin as we truly have not seen him before! Leather jacket and jeans, with singlet and serious ‘there’s-a-guy-down-the-disco-thinks he’s-John Travolta’ moves this is The Disco Man Friday with his version of Iggy Pop’s Night Clubbing and Boney M’s Daddy Cool . It’s playful and fun, but also a re-education. If any of us ever thought we had Gavin Friday pinpointed, think again!

The show ends to a standing ovation. It feels like the ending of something, the start of something else. A rebirth, a reinvention, a shouting from the rooftops that anything is possible. Of course Gavin Friday shows have never been just ‘gigs’. They are events in all their creativity and attention to production and promotion. A ticket is a golden party invite. All ’round to Gav’s. You never know what to expect. And if this sounds like the hyperbole of the long-time converted I’ll let the newcomer seated behind me have the last word: “He’s brilliant. I’m glad I came. What a fucking performer!”
(text © Patrick Lynch / gavinfriday.com.)

Tomorrow belongs to me – setlist

Caroline — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:10:18 +0000

As performed on July 28, 2006
ACT ONE
Intro ….’i feel love’ [ Giorgio Moroder]
1. Ave Maria [Bach]
2. In Germany before the War [ Randy Newman]
3. Berlin [Lou Reed]
4. Falling in Love Again [Marlene Dietrich]
5. Lili Marlene [Marlene Dietrich]
6. The Tears of a Lady [Fassbinder / Peer Raben]
ACT TWO
7. Installation No.1 [Einstuerzende Neubauten]
8. The Hall of Mirrors [Kraftwerk]
9 Showroom Dummies [ Kraftwerk]
10. I want More [Can]
11. ‘SPIN THE BOTTLE’
ACT THREE
12. Nosferatu [Popol Vuh]
13. Bela Lugosi is Dead [Bauhaus]
14. Metal Postcard [The Banshees]
15. Theme for Thought [Virgin Prunes]
ENCORE ONE
16.Nightclubbing [Iggy Pop / Bowie]
17. Daddy Cool [ Boney M / Munich Musick Factory]
ENCORE TWO
18. Radioactivity / 99 Red Balloons [Kraftwerk / Nena]
19. Tomorrow Belongs to me [FINALE] [ from the musicals Cabaret and
Annie... and a little bit of Celtic 'Reich' Tiger]
Band:

Friday-show sold out

Caroline — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:51:45 +0000

Tickets for the Friday evening performance of Tomorrow belongs to me have sold out. There are still some tickets for the Thursday show available through www.centralticketbureau.com.

Freedom of Expression

Caroline — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:20:40 +0000

From the Irish Times:
Gavin Friday has formulated his lifelong passion for German music, art, literature and film into a personal tribute show – with the help of a German beer, he tells Brian Boyd

In a typically idiosyncratic reaction to the rise of punk rock, David Bowie moved to Berlin and recorded three albums that were, by his own standards, simple and stripped down. One half of one of the albums, Low, was entirely instrumental. One other gave birth to the song about two lovers meeting by the Berlin wall – Heroes. Musically, all Bowie’s work from this period was overtly influenced by German electronic band Kraftwerk and when he toured these albums he would use clips from classic German films as a stage backdrop.
In Dublin, Bowie fanatic Gavin Friday, still in his pre-Virgin Prunes days, was noting all these new developments and having his eyes opened to a whole new set of cultural influences.
“Bowie introduced me to Germany, there’s no doubt about it,” says Friday. “It’s not just the albums he recorded in Berlin but also the ones he worked on with Iggy Pop at the time – The Idiot and Lust For Life. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff. I even remember finding out that the pose Iggy Pop uses on the cover of The Idiot was inspired by a German painter called Erich Heckel. And Bowie was getting into Fritz Lang and German Expressionism. At about the same time, the film Cabaret came out and I started to learn about Christopher Isherwood. I found so much there”.

FRIDAY’S CAREER-LONG INTEREST in the music, film, literature and art of Germany has now been shaped into a theatrical show called Tomorrow Belongs To Me”. “It’s my own personal tribute to the art of the country” he says. “It’s going to be a musical and visual journey into a remarkable period of creativity. It’s me with a live band and the show will be divided into themes: “The Gothic”, “Electronica” and “German Expressionism”. It will be everything from [ the groundbreaking 1920 silent film] The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” up to [ Kraftwerk founding member] Florian Schneider”.

Friday has previous form with German music. Five years ago, he had a theatre show called Ich Liebe Dich based on the work of Kurt Weill commissioned by the Dublin Theatre Festival. Back in 1989, and working with Maurice Seezer, he released an album called Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves which was, in part, a musical exploration of Bertolt Brecht.

“I had been asked to do another show based on Brecht and Weill but I said no,” he says. “I had done that before and in this show there is nothing by Brecht or Weill. What turned this around for me was being approached by Beck’s [ the beer company that is sponsoring the show]. I was interested because I knew they had been behind works by the artists Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, so I thought I could do something different with them.

“I WANTED A different take on the German angle and the idea for the show first came to me when I realised how many books on German Expressionism I had, how many albums of German music I had and how many films by German film-makers I had. People such as Warner Herzog, Fritz Lang, George Grosz and Kraftwerk still fascinate me and I wanted a show that expressed that fascination.”

Born Fionan Hanvey, Friday has always been an experimental figure on the music/theatre scene. A founder member of the Dublin avant-garde, post-punk group the Virgin Prunes, he was known back then for his uncompromising approach to how music should be composed and presented in a live setting.

“It was with the Virgin Prunes that I first got to Berlin,” he says. “We always had a good following in Europe and I remember taking the “corridor” to Berlin in the days before the wall came down. It was an exciting time in the city – there were bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten around at the time, but it was nothing like what it used to be”.

What struck Friday most about Berlin was how its once very rich and vibrant culture had come to a shuddering halt due to the second World War. “If you look at what happened there before the war, it was incredible. It really was more important artistically, in a sense, than New York. It’s remarkable how it stopped so quickly but also how much was there originally. And the stuff from this time still influences – whether it be in art or film or music,” he says.

It’s been a busy few years for Friday. He collaborated with noted producer Quincy Jones on the soundtrack to Jim Sheridan’s 50 Cent biopic, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ and he also had an acting role in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast On Pluto.

“When I was working with Quincy Jones, I spent a lot of time trying to convince him that the origins of hip-hop music can be traced back to German electronic music. The whole “Krautrock” movement really impressed me – not just Kraftwerk but bands such as Can and Neu,” he says. “With German film, what I’m doing is cutting up some classics to use as visuals in the show. There was so much there to look at – “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu among others but there were some copyright problems with some of the directors. Fassbinder is one director I really wanted to use but couldn’t”.

HE’S HAPPY THAT neither Brecht nor Weill feature in this particular show. “There’s been a lot done on them,” he says. “The idea here is to look into different areas. And it’s not just songs by German musicians. There’s the Randy Newman song In Germany Before The War for example”.

He feels that this slew of artistic activity in Germany in these years was helped, not hindered, by the fact that a lot of the names he features in the show were denounced as “degenerates” by the Nazi regime. “To be so outside of official sanction must really have been something for these people” he says.
The show runs for only two nights in Dublin, but he hasn’t ruled out touring it to different countries. Because it’s such a personal venture for him, he thinks the performance will be of the all-or-nothing variety. “When I do this stuff, I really bleed it . . .”

Dan Hegarty Show

Caroline — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:49:30 +0000

Sleepless in Dublin? Then set your dial to 2FM’s Dan Hegarty show from midnight to 2am tonight. Gavin will drop in to talk about the upcoming Tomorrow Belongs To Me shows. To listen online, start the 2FM livestream.
From the show’s website:

“Gavin will be bringing in an assortment of his favourite music, and talking about his upcoming live performance ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ (his personal ‘musical / visual’ tribute to 20th Century German Music, Art, Film and Literature covering a range of varied themes from German Expressionism to Electronica and the Gothic).”

Gavin FridayTomorrow Belongs to Me – Topic – Gavin Friday – Official Site

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