The Other Half of my Heart

The Other Half of my Heart

You’re the other half of my heart

The love that burned from the start

You’re the time between the hours

You’re the colour in the flowers

(Chorus)

I loved you from the start

We’re not made to be apart

You’re the other half of my heart

You’re the completion of my soul

The part that makes me whole

You’re the end of the race

You’re the smile on my face

(chorus)

You’re the safe place inside

The difference between loss and pride

You’re the laughter in the rain

You’re why I’m whole again

(chorus)

You’re every bird that sings

All the hopes I have with wings

You’re the promise that came true

You’re the dream that finally flew

(chorus)

You’re the start and the happy ending

You kissed me when I needed mending

You’re the daybreak every time I wake

You’re the love it took a lifetime to make

(c) Roy Stannard  5.12.11

Christmas is a time the distance that separates people who love one another should magically be made to disappear.

There are songs that deal with this theme, but none that really connected with me, so I wrote some lyrics. My good friend Nigel Black suggested I send them to him – and he and his singing partner Tom Heaton worked the lyrics into a song. Another friend, Owen Vyse, who is a consummate musician in his own right, kindly allowed us to use his home studio equipped with Qbase and then added some instruments and flourishes of his own.

Christmas is no time to be on your own. Thanks to all my friends, new and old, this Christmas I haven’t been.

Listen to the song on Soundcloud here:

http://snd.sc/swo4M4

My Top 15 Albums 2011

Roy Stannard’s Top Fifteen Albums of 2011

1. The Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
2. Smith & Burrows – Funny Looking Angels
3. The Civil Wars – Barton Hollow
4. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
5. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
6. Adele – 21
7. Gil Scott Heron & Jamie XX – We’re New Here
8. James Vincent McMorrow – Early in the Morning
9. Wild Beasts – Smother
10. Yuck – Yuck
11. The Decemberists – The King is Dead
12. Feist – Metals
13. James Blake – James Blake
14. Frank Ocean – Nostalgia/Ultra
15. The Weeknd – House of Balloons

1. 1.     The Fleet Foxes:

A wonderful testament to West Coast harmonies, courtesy of six Seattle guys who patently grew up on a staple main course of CSNY and America. An masterly patchwork of guitars, harmoniums, bells, woodwinds and Tibetan singing bowls that expands on their debut, Helplessness Blues is equipped with signature vocal arrangements that sound out of this world – except that the voices you hear here are grounded and real. This is a wonderful move on from their debut, deeper, more heart-felt and in the title track seriously contending for the title of one of the best songs ever recorded: Check it out, where Robin Pecknold laments growing up while a skyward rush of harmonies makes it clear his sense of wonder is vibrant, poetic and still operating at full force.

1. 2.     Smith & Burrows

A Christmas album that caught us old cynics unawares when it came out in late November – with Tom Smith from the Editors and Andy Burrows (ex Razorlight and nowadays with We Are Scientists) – it may be just be the best seasonal album ever apart from one or two ill advised covers. ‘When the Thames Froze’ is magnificent with tramp-soulful vocals lamenting the state of the economy, young men sleeping in fields and the process of getting older. The spirit of Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life permeates the album with references to Jimmy Stewart and even a cover of the Black song ‘Wonderful Life’. Careworn but caring and absolutely mesmerising.

1. 3.     The Civil Wars

The Civil Wars are a duo consisting of John Paul White, hailing from Florence, Alabama and Joy Williams, originally from Santa Cruz, CA, but now residing in East Nashville. They have already altruistically shared a free concert album “Live at Eddie’s attic” which remains available on their My space site for those of you seeking fine new music and now we have this wonderful debut album “Barton Hollow” to tantalise our aural tastebuds. The word which best epitomises this record is “passionate”. Check out the performance of the swampy folk title track and try not to be smitten by its drive and force whereas ‘To Whom it May Concern’ is quite simply one of the most affecting tracks of the year with its refrain:

“I missed you
But I haven’t met you
Oh but I want to.”

1. 4.     Radiohead

The eighth studio album from the rock band that no-one can second guess has a misleading restraint: lush electronics, thickets of digitally tweaked percussion and cryptic lyrics, sung in a prayerlike daze. At 38 minutes, it sounds unfinished and quietly perverse, even more anti-rock than Kid A – at first. Repeated immersion, though, reveals a seductive concision and insistent undertow: the space-alien-Beach Boys effect of “Bloom,” the dark, muted-treble blues of the guitars in “Little by Little,” the nimble charge of “Separator.” This was a record that insidiously crept up on your subconscious throughout the year and then took over.

1. 5.     Bon Iver

The second album from Wisconsin’s Justin Vernon thrives in an unlikely sweet spot between Nick Drake and Peter Cetera. Bon Iver deploys horns, banjos and Auto-Tune amid Vernon’s Möbius-strip lyrics, which luxuriate in emotional vagueness. Vernon’s private world is a soft-rock heaven of the mind.

1. 6.     Adele

“Turn my sorrow into treasured gold,” cried Adele Adkins on “Rolling in the Deep.” It was a confession and a prophecy. 21 was this year’s most stunning pop success, transmuting the young Brit’s personal sorrow – the collapse of an 18-month relationship – into a 13-million-selling smash that leapt across borders and oceans and united everyone from teeny-boppers to baby boomers to hip-hop-heads. The sound is state-of-theart retro soul, with touches of Motown, bossa nova and 1970s piano pop. But at its heart was that voice: giant, classic-sounding, promising emotional depth way beyond its years. More than any other album this year, 21 made you feel its pain – from the triple-hankie tear-jerker “Someone Like You” to ripsnorting revenge songs like “Rumour Has It,” where Adele rides a roiling groove and flattens everything in her path.

1. 7.     Gil Scott Heron & Jamie XX

Rather than being passed around from remixed to remixer, ‘We’re New’ Here benefits from the focused attention of Jamie Smith of The xx.

Scott-Heron’s original album of 2010, produced by XL head-honcho Richard Russell, let the poet’s crack-ravaged vocals do all the talking, lo-fi production hiding in the wings. Eschewing this, Smith uses Scott-Heron’s vocals as illustration to his industrial and innovative production. It’s his subtle, back-lit percussion which gives The xx their edge, and this album lets Smith turn things up a notch to create a bass-driven collection the dancefloor in Hoxton.

Last year witnessed dubstep implode, but from its ashes an exhilarating selection of electronic music emerged. Chameleon-like, Smith assumes many of these styles, makes them his own, and produces a sonic snapshot of dancefloors across the UK. NY is Killing Me pays homage to the original movement, carrying the dark swagger of early Benga, whilst the clangourous and spare percussion of Home and My Cloud shares a sound channelled by Mount Kimbie and early James Blake. The thuggish UK Funky of Lil Silva is present in Running, before it gives way to the 8-bit sound Ikonika spearheaded. The tripped-up beats and ephemeral melodies of The Crutch feels like a relative of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder family – but this is not just an onslaught of club tracks. Moments of lightness appear in interludes and the exceptional euphoric endnote, I’ll Take Care of You.

Just like the radio that switches between frequencies in the opening of Ur Soul and Mine, Smith’s use of sampling tunes the listener in and out of his musical predecessors. He rewires a personal musical canon into something utterly contemporary. As Scott-Heron says in an interlude: “The spirits are your parents, your bloodstream moving through you constantly, because they want you to live on and because they want to live on too, they are trying all the time to tell you s*** and if you just listen to yourself, you will hear them.”

Those approaching this release as fans, exclusively, of either Scott-Heron or The xx might be at a loss, but this collection works on separate level. Whilst I’m New Here marked an introspective turn from Scott-Heron, this set offers a multi-layered retrospective of the music which bore and surrounds Jamie xx. It’s not merely a rehash of the original, but a cohesive, considered masterpiece in its own right.

1. 8.     James Vincent McMorrow

A few of the artists that have influenced McMorrow’s style include Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and The Neptunes. In fact, Donny Hathaway is one of the primary motivations for McMorrow to basically take 3 years off to learn how to sing more convincingly. He then banished himself to a secluded beach house in Ireland and for 6 months created this art now titled Early in the Morning. For those familiar with the story behind Justin Vernon’s recording, this could be another reason why McMorrow is compared to Vernon.

It will come as no surprise to those who hear this album that McMorrow describes himself as a “quiet individual.” Early in the Morning is filled with tracks like “Breaking Hearts” and “From The Woods!!” that will get you hooked and keep you listening, not because of the complexity of the harmonies but because of the simple integrity of the songs. Recorded in a cabin with one mic and no professional production equipment or personnel within hundreds of miles, the album couldn’t have more integrity.

1. 9.     Wild Beasts

Smother was created in relative isolation, in Wales, and it sounds like it: on Deeper, Tom Fleming sings that “all else falls away”, and while in the company of this record it’s entirely likely that the outside world will, indeed, fade into insignificance. It’s that sort of special collection, one that manifests an entirely believable, almost tangible soundworld which one can’t help but inhabit alongside its creators. And it’s only a few steps forward before the first rabbit hole blocks the path, into which a stumble is inevitable. Hayden Thorpe introduces Lion’s Share atop a synthesised throb; but it’s when the plaintive piano begins that the piece commences its hypnotic charm, and one becomes deeply enveloped. “What are you running from?” asks Fleming, here taking the lyrical spotlight more frequently than on the past two albums. Truth is that we’re not running from anything at all. Rather, we’re racing towards the band, eager to discover what’s around the next compositional turn.

Lion’s Share is gorgeous, no question about it. A simple, seductive song that opens an album which, largely, continues in a similar vein: here lies mystery, romance, tall tales told by men who surely wouldn’t just make this stuff up. It’s there in their eyes, the reality of the experience and the sincerity of their stories. Again, Thorpe’s thematically entrenched in a loved-one’s undergarments on more than one occasion: Bed of Nails is one such number, albeit with lines like “surround me like a warm bath” conveying a more emotional connection than the borderline smut of their last LP, Two Dancers. Plaything is a little more teasing, rather more distant with its affections – although it discusses uncertainty with what its protagonist’s paramour is thinking, suggesting tentativeness where once there was thrust and swagger. Invisible is wholly different – Fleming, flanked by understated instrumentation, seems lost in melancholy, offering farewells to “things I thought I’d want”; its final line, a literal kiss-off, is devastatingly exquisite. The song is another tender, almost unsettlingly touching moment on a collection replete with them.

1. 10.  Yuck

Two of Yuck’s members, singer/guitarist Daniel Blumberg and guitarist Max Bloom, used to play in Cajun Dance Party: ambitious and typically spazzy post-Arctic Monkeys NME faves who issued a Bernard Butler-produced debut album, The Colourful Life, in 2008 on XL. Together Blumberg, Bloom, drummer Jonny Rogoff, and bass player Mariko Doi, joined on certain tracks by part-time backing singer Ilana Blumberg, have taken a giant step forward. As Blumberg sang with his old band, the one he started as a 15-year-old, “This is now and that was then.” Or as he sings now, on instantly searing album opener, “Get Away”: “I can’t get this feeling off my mind.” Teenage Fanclub meets Nirvana and produces something spinetingling in its own right.

1. 11.  The Decemberists

The Decemberists’ first Number One album was their easiest to love at first spin, a smart step back from the ornate-epic reach of 2009′s The Hazards of Love. Singer-songwriter Colin Meloy packs his storytelling eccentricities into popsong packages of verse, hook and country-Smiths jangle, arranged with the introspective simplicity of Neil Young’s Harvest. It is hard to believe that Meloy was already planning a long sabbatical before this album was made. The earthy texture and economic buoyancy of “Calamity Song” and “Down by the Water” ensure that he – and his band – will be missed.

1. 12.  Feist

“Get it right, get it right, get it right,” sings Leslie Feist on her fourth album. Romantic strife is the theme, running through the shivery folk rock of “Comfort Me” and a series of tough-minded ballads. Hooks surface in unexpected places, and Feist’s supple voice pushes toward gospel – the promise that, someday, she’ll get it right.

1. 13.  James Blake

The James Blake album is where Dubstep came of age. On The Wilhelm Scream, the lyrics about being suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed by love are gradually submerged beneath crackling static and chords that start out echoing blues and gospel but turn increasingly dissonant, while I Never Learnt to Share’s tale of family dysfunction – summed up in one, mournful, endlessly repeated line – is set to music that seems to have been blown apart; the sounds don’t properly connect with each other. More often, however, working out exactly what he’s driving at is like trying to grasp vapour, not least on I Mind: three minutes of incomprehensible vocal loops speeding up and slowing down, slipping in and out of time with the backing track, which unexpectedly shifts from the usual agonised crawl to a kind of pattering, vaguely Latin-American rhythm midway through. It’s worth pointing out that its incomprehensibility isn’t a failing. Even at its most impenetrable, the album leaves you in a state of ecstatic bewilderment with no idea where the man might go next.

1. 14.  Frank Ocean

New Orleans born songwriter Christopher Francis Ocean established himself as a solo artist of Worldwide acclaim in 2011. The 24 year-old OFWGKTA member moved from Louisianna to Los Angeles following hurricane Katrina to work on his first album, and legally changed his name from Christopher “”Lonny”" Breaux shortly after.

In L.A. the singer soon hooked up with the Odd Future collective and began work writing for the likes of Brandy, John Legend and most recently Beyonce on I Miss You. Ocean was also called up to work on two tracks from Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch The Throne.

Collaborations aside, it was Ocean’s solo work which garnered most praise. Signed to Def Jam in 2009, Ocean delivered his debut mixtape nostalgia,ULTRA earlier this year, winning fans on both side of the Atlantic, including Zane Lowe, who debuted tracks from the release on Radio 1 in November. World class in one short hop – his peers must be feeling sick

1. 15.  The Weeknd

Yes on the surface it doesn’t look auspicious. The work of Toronto singer Abel Tesfaye and producers Doc McKinney and Illangelo (Drake producer Noah “40″ Shebib, is not, as has been reported, involved in the project), it should be a standard sub r n’ b project, but it isn’t. House of Balloons is a remarkably confident, often challenging work that excels at both being forward-thinking, genre-mash-up dance music and good old-fashioned songwriting.

What makes this whole thing work in an album context is that all the thematic and sonic pieces fit together - these weird, morning-after tales of lust, hurt, and over-indulgence (“Bring the drugs, baby, I can bring my pain,” goes one refrain) are matched by this incredibly lush, downcast music. Not since the xx’s debut has there been a more moody, sheer sky-at-night release.

Fifteen of the best here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/sy3j2bmfqf82zc3/Roy%20Stannard%20Top%2015%202011.zip

Gary Speed 8th September 1969 - 27th November 2011

God Speed

God speed you. Black and white Emperor.

Pure breath of granite hewed from the ground of Flintshire

where dragons fly and the hills sigh for the business of dreaming.

You were already formed as a warrior

As the Merlin alchemists mixed your being together

In the days before the men of Harlech began to sing your name

when your promise whirled and eddied from the valleys,

tendrils of smoke from the miners’ fires gathered

and formed on the terraces of Leeds, Everton, Newcastle and Bolton

where working men admired the chiselled stare, the rapier pass and the Aquila dribble

A club man that darted, never clubbed.

You served in the football trenches with McAllister, Batty and Strachan,

going over the top with them,

comrades in no man’s land, where even the enemy ceased firing to admire you.

You were the midfield General, the Captain and Sergeant of armbands

You played them at your own game

You did not go gently into the night

You were the black on the white, the raven hair and pithead eyes burning coals on the turf.

 You saw the whites of their eyes and flayed them with black and white stripes.

And yet, the gentle cleft of your jaw, the downhill saunter of your nose,

 were a softer frame for the imperial neck, a pedestal, a clenched life raised in victory,

the full motion slide on grass, cutting your legend into the soil,

a fighter blooding his territory with over 500 battle cries.

Many were victories, but you couldn’t win them all.

Your fame will grow with your passing.

When your foe faced you, you vanquished him.

But when he came to live within, you vanished.

God Speed you. The Emperor who did not fade to grey.

Roy Stannard. 30^th November 2011 (for Gary Speed 8.9.69 – 27.11.11)

Alfriston - St Andrews in the Tye, raised mount and flint walls

Alfriston

Alfriston, oh Alfriston

I still hear your sea winds blowing

I was 21 the last time I smuggled myself into your secret passages

It was sunny then too, with the light dappling at windows

like an impressionist painter with an endless palette of time.

Alfriston, oh Alfriston

I can still hear your sea waves crashing

At the end of the Cuckmere where Eleanor Farjeon’s morning was broken

Sea trout, dace and perch open their gills

as the anglers brace their lines.

I lock my car and recall an Anglia owned by a brave young student

abandoned beneath the tree in the village square,

its straight 4 engine glowing with the exertion of the trek from Falmer.

Tucked under my confidence then was the contraband of hope

And today there’s an Inn called the Smugglers, a kind of memorial.

Alfriston, oh Alfriston

I still see her standing by the stream on the east of the village

Looking over the valley of lows and highs

We unfolded our plans on precious parchment, wondering

where this unmapped love would take us.

Today I look at the steeple on the Tye and can still see the tears

That watered my memory, my crying shame.

And the raised mount of St Andrews and its flint wall

express the dialectic of the place, the uplifts and falls

like a gull wheeling in the small eddies and minor currents

and a man down, below.

 Roy Stannard 6.10.11

On National Poetry Day – with apologies to Jim Webb and Glen Campbell

When I was a boy I spent hours upon hours on Southend Pier, walking its length, feeling its girth, teasing its claim to be the longest in the world at 1.25 miles.  Its slot machine alleys whispered to me alluringly. Cheap, trashy items like tin rings and shoddy pen knives (that I would have left on the ground if had I found them) became irresistible treasure if found on a moving tray of pennies or laying prostrate below a mechanical crane. I would lose myself for hours in these glittering, garishly painted palaces, emerging into the light and air feeling poorer and coppers lighter to lean against the walkway rails.

Southend Pier. The daddy of all piers has been rebuilt more times than the six million dollar man, made up and repainted more times than a Soho harlot and yet it still receives its lovers, supplicants and one-day tripper stands.

In 1959, three years after I was born, a fire destroyed the Pier Pavilion at the shore-end, replaced by a ten-pin bowling alley. Eighteen years later another fire swallowed up the 1908 Pier Head which remained derelict until a £1.3m grant from the Historic Buildings Committee in 1986 made good and also financed new rolling stock so that the tiny railway recommenced  the traditional ride back for the outward bound walkers. Almost immediately afterwards the MV Kingsabbey sliced through the pier between the old and new pier heads leaving an ugly, yawning 70 foot hole. It was patched up reluctantly, like an old lady at a modern dentist in 1989. Six years later the bowling alley was destroyed by fire, repaired in 1998, followed by a brand new Pier entrance in 2003 - only to play with fire again in 2005 which swallowed and spat out the station, cafe, restaurant, toilets and the pavilion. In 2007 Southend Pier was awarded Pier of the Year and two years later its brand new station platform and office was officially opened by Southend’s Mayor.

The result of all this wear, tear and repair is that the end of the pier is now pristine, clean and virtually clear of buildings. The RNLI building stands alone, proud of its heroic status, poised for action, imperiously dismissive of the simple tourists that climb its stairs for a prurient look.

No end of pier theatre, no varieties, not even a stick of rock in sight. Length isn’t everything. As a young man, I felt that there must be a better pier. The kiss me quick hats would always be faster and racier elsewhere. In 1977 I left Southend in search of  true seaside seediness in Brighton.

Before that, in the faraway fifties and sixties, a boy played on the longest pier in the world, a pier with no beginning or end, a pier that stretched as far as the imagination would stretch. Beyond that, there was always Kent.

Like the pier, I have had fires, objects that sailed straight through me, numerous repairs, modifications and people walking all over me.

We are both still standing.

Sussex Enterprise Business Edge Magazine page 39 Aug/Sept edition

When I arrived at ad agency Zerofiftyone on the 4th January I embarked upon an audit of the affiliations, memberships, connections and outbound communications used by the agency. Many of the memberships including Sussex Enterprise, Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce, CADIA (Crawley & District Industry Association) and Wired Sussex were in the name of a short-lived digital media offshoot called Blue Herring.

As this deflected from the primary brand, it was decided to drop this - but all the links were in this name. As the branding had reverted to ad agency Zerofiftyone Digital I used this as an opportunity to telephone all the membership managers of the organisations we belong to and bring them up to speed.

I have also created a Facebook Places presence for the company and logged it as a location on Foursquare.

If you drive past our offices in Peacehaven with your Smartphone applications switched on you will detect an invitation to pop in a have a complimentary cup of coffee over a chat about your marketing strategy.

Since January I have also joined the Worthing Theatres Trust as a Trustee/Board Director and because I maintain the website, the Twitter account and the Facebook page there has been a lot of activity on the internet over the last few months.

After ringing Business Edge magazine (the members magazine for Sussex Enterprise – circulation 12,000 businesses) to ask why the magazine was printed in Gateshead (a perfectly reasonable question to a title set up to nurture and defend Sussex business), the magazine offered to put me into its Movers and Shakers page. Despite arriving in January and the piece appearing on page 39 of the August/September edition, it was good to see it finally appear.

I insisted on a credit and website link for Maria Scard, a fine photographer who kindly took the photograph free of charge at a recent event. She will be tagged in this piece as well. The beauty of social media is that it is easy to promote like-minded businesses without resorting to the traditional avenues such as sponsorship or co-promotion.

Writing a blog post about it and connecting it to all my sites is another easy way to communicate outwards.

You reading this now is testament to its efficacy.

www.zerofiftyone.com

www.worthingtheatrestrust.co.uk

www.mariascard.com

Memories on CD stored safely

I recently took part in a pilot with Patrick Woodward called Memory Box that my sister-in-law Lynne (Angel) Kerr  is initiating in which you pick your nine most influential tracks from childhood to the present day and talk about what they mean to you – which is then recorded as a kind of podcast and copied onto CD. Patrick has done a wonderful job of editing the 40 minute programme. It reveals quite a lot and explains why music is so important to me. It is meant to act as a kind of demo for anyone else wanting to record their memories and favourite tracks onto a CD. If you would like to do it yourself – and have something to pass onto your children then please contact me – and I will pass your details on.

 Roy Stannard’s Life Tracks

1. Ricky Nelson - Hello Mary Lou (Father’s favourite)
2. Bob Lind - Remember the Rain (played it all the time when I was ten)
3. America – A Horse with no Name (first consciously adult record purchase, still love it today)
4. Marvin Gaye - What’s Going on (first record that told me that you could actually change things with a song)
5. Geneva – Tranquillizer (Lyric ‘We will be happy while we are still young’ nuff said)
6. Mike Scott (Waterboys) – What do you want me to do (don’t believe in God, you will after listening to this)
7. Tom Baxter - My Declaration (My philosophy of life captured in a beautiful song, perfect)
8. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues ( a classic song from the present – they do still write songs like that!)
9. Neil Young - Like a Hurricane (Best guitar ever, recorded live in one take in Toronto before a gig in 1975, first track I ever played on radio, my favourite song of all time)

Listen to the Podcast on Soundcloud here:

http://snd.sc/lsAmgj

Worthing Pier - only 55 left in the UK

Emily Gosden’s piece about end of the pier entertainment in the Daily Telegraph (9.6.11) makes the valid point that out of 55 remaining piers in the UK only six are offering traditional Summer seaside entertainment. The end of the pier show has been part of the English seaside landscape for as long as Punch has been altercating with Judy and candyfloss has been blown away by stiff north easterly breezes.

Punch and a Judy

In Worthing there is an additional threat. Apart from the economy, the migration abroad rather than to the UK for Summer holidays, the dwindling municipal coffers for seaside promotion, here the Council operates all three major venues (The Connaught Theatre, the Assembly Hall and the end of the pier Pavilion Theatre) and there is no more money in the cupboard to maintain the cultural and leisure service to the community. The theatres have been advertised in The Stage and expressions of interest requested from operators keen to take the theatres off the Council’s hands. Worthing Theatres Trust is a Company Limited by Guarantee (Community Trust) set up with this in mind – and to return profits, pride, interest from local groups and schools and good old fashioned bums on seats back to the venues of Worthing.

It is well documented that Worthing’s Connaught Theatre has a rich theatrical tradition – it’s where Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE (who announced this week that he is to become WTT’s Patron) as a young assistant stage manager performed on stage (they were short handed) in 1956. Pinter lived around the corner and wrote in the Town. Susan Penhaligon started her career here. Mark Wynter, Michael Simkins, Nick Day and many others trod the boards early in their careers in Worthing.

However, The Pavilion, built in 1926, is a thriving venue for traditional seaside entertainment. Every Wednesday afternoon in August John Mann’s Seaside Summer Melodies on the organ will beguile the elderly – and in the evenings in a Tardis-like experience, you will be able to track down the 60s group The Searchers, the inimitable Ken Dodd who holds the record for the longest stand up show ever performed in Worthing, The Rat Pack who will swagger on stage, then set the controls to ‘One Night of Queen with Gary Mullen’ followed by ‘That’ll be the Day – the stage show, along with old-time TV comedy duo, Cannon and Ball, The Glen Miller Orchestra, The Alter Eagles, before finishing the Season with Jim Davidson’s Seaside Frolics.

If this wasn’t enough, Worthing Theatres Trust TT has already made a public declaration that it will seek every means of preserving the future of the world-famous Wurlitzer organ found in The Assembly Hall. It is listed. Who else owns a listed organ? The Trust also sees a public trust as a means of increasing community and educational participation in the three venues – with a particular emphasis on encouraging local schools and colleges usage of the three venues. The Preserving theatres, culture, the arts is not about creating a business plan. It doesn’t – and shouldn’t fit into a business portfolio or a corporate plan. This is why we are receiving support from actors, directors and other theatre professionals who have worked at the Connaught Theatre and other Worthing venues. You can’t chip away at people’s memories.

The world loves the sound of waves against shingle, the curlicue calls of seagulls tossed into the channel gusts, the cries of children building memories like sandcastles. In Worthing we know how to do history, heritage and the celebration of what we are, and where we’ve come from. Worthing Birdman is an annual exercise in futility as participants build their own flying machines and try to fly off the Pier. One year an entrant came within centimetres of succeeding. Futility – or hope?

Worthing Pier from the Pavilion Theatre

Each September in Worthing we celebrate our heritage with the Annual Pier Day where people flock to the pier to enjoy vintage fun, frolics and a veritable mountain of popcorn, candyfloss and Edwardian sing-alongs. As one of the six remaining piers that endeavours to entertain its public, we see our job as preserving this facility for future generations.

The Trust is appealing for public support at this critical time – especially from the 17,000 plus people who signed the Save Worthing Theatres petition.  

Visit  www.worthingtheatrestrust.co.uk and go the to the Friends page to join up immediately as a Friend of Worthing Theatres. Alternatively, email your request for a form to  ideas@worthingtheatrestrust.co.uk

Which part of your history are you prepared to see sold?

South Pacific by Worthing Musical Comedy Society

The Connaught Theatre Thursday May 19^th 2011 

Director: Lee Payne  / Choreography: Terri Moore  / Lighting Director: Stephen Holroyd

It was good to see a packed Connaught Theatre warmly receive South Pacific’s cute opening scene as Sky Cook and Robert Glick, playing the children of the Musical’s romantic lead Emile De Beque, sang and acted in French. The preamble with WWII combat footage reminds us that there is a serious war going on behind the South Pacific froth. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical is based on Tales of the South Pacific by Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist James A. Michener which focuses on the story of an American nurse in World War II, Nellie Forbush (showstopper Amelia Regnante), who falls in love with De Beque, a French plantation owner played by Chris Keen who exudes warmth and character throughout. He confesses that he killed a man in France – but what she still doesn’t know is that he has two mixed race children. There is an undertow of criticism of the US racial insularity running through the script which led to some discomfort in society at the time, but which seems quaint and arcane today.

The US army, Captain George Brackett (played splendidly by Paddy Gosden) and Commander William Harbinson (captured perfectly by Andrew Taylor), need his assistance and recruit Nellie to try and uncover De Beque’s political opinions.

Adam Knight

Running alongside this main romance is the tale of Lt Cable (Adam Knight, showing huge promise and smouldering control in his first lead) and Liat (the doll-like and demure Kristie Murphy), the daughter of Bloody Mary (played with wit and style – and with vocal excellence by Caroline Lowe). Their rendition of Happy Talk was memorable.

Some of the dialogue and vocal performances were hard to discern against the music – a mixing issue rather than a musical one. The band was excellent and ably led by MD Nigel Newman.

The character of Luther Billis is a comic anchor of the show and a lot of responsibility sits on the shoulders of the actor playing him. John Chambers does this with energy, pace and tremendous humour. John can also sing which is a bonus. His performance of Honey Bun with the full line-up of dancers was a highlight of the evening.

I have to mention first timer Michelle Quibell (Ensign Dinah Murphy) who delivered a memorably comic performance in the ‘Wash that man right out of my hair’ scene. Will Croome as Lt. Buzz Adams had the cameo of the night with his rat-a-tat-tat delivery in the military briefing scene.

Amelia Regnante

The final word has to go to Amelia Regnante who was equal to the tremendous acting, singing and energy demands placed on her. Resisting the temptation to overact and deliver lines in a cod southern US drawl, she sounded authentic and played the part with the subtlety and dignity it deserved. She undergoes a personal value system transformation and this was delivered realistically and with style.

The show sees two men change their minds but fulfill their military mission. The mission succeeds but one man lives and one dies. The women are defined by their relationships with their men. There’s lots of antediluvian attitudes to smile at, but this show does contain ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught’ a subtle song on many levels and delivered with understated power by talented teenager Adam Knight.

Overall, a fine show with a great ensemble WMCS cast that demonstrates precisely why the current campaign by the Worthing Theatres Trust to keep all three performance spaces open must succeed. A community show for all in a much loved community theatre.

Shadows Mingle

Mean Time

Where the sea kisses the horizon

Someone once drew a line

and now we see the boundary when before there was just a deeper blue.

In the beginning there were days when I drew you with words

that turned into sentences.

Why is it when we see a gate

we want to close it?

Even if there is nothing either side?

And when there is grass

We long to shorten it.

The long misty country trails turn into infinity

not destinations

as far as the eye can see.

When we walk together and our shadows mingle

There is no point where one person ends and another begins

Perhaps there isn’t meant to be.

When you fully discover another

and the soft edges become a little harder

the temptation to repaint the masterpiece

pouring trouble onto oily waters

doesn’t lead to change, only the desire to change the very thing

that was autographed by the Creator.

From here

in the deep, uncharted sun-chipped pools

On the endless shore of being

Where the you meets the me

Someone has drawn a line

Like a monstrous meridian

Snatching mean time

from a perfect eternity.

Roy Stannard. 17^th May 2011