Tag: Theme Traders

Theme Traders Tour And Music Jam With DJ, 16 April 2019

I always look forward to my music jams with DJ, but I was especially looking forward to this one, as DJ had promised me a guided tour around the new Theme Traders Production Village ahead of the jam.

I sure wasn’t disappointed. It is a really fun, interesting and unique place. The following video gives a feel for it, but does not show all of the most recent innovations:

On top of all of the extraordinary props, equipment and creative spaces I saw, there were two encounters, or I should say re-encounters, that will live long in my memory.

The first was with this fella:

DJ gave Janie a reclining Buddha just like this one, many years ago, suggesting that we place it in the garden at Sandall Close. We didn’t realise that it was one of a pair.

Our Buddha had mostly returned top the earth by the time Janie moved out of Sandall Close and I can now report that there is no trace of our Gautama left – the following picture taken 22 April showing the site where ours returned to the dust.

But the discovery of that memory-jogging Buddha was the least of it.

More bizarre still was the discovery, when we got deeper into the props collection and looked inside a large old decommissioned safe, inside which they keep, for some reason, an assortment of old gadgets and gizmos.

There in the centre of the middle shelf was a spool of 9.5 mm cine film…

…with my Dad’s handwriting on it:

How an old spool from Dad’s shop has ended up in the Theme Traders props collection is a bit of a mystery. I do know that, when dad was shutting up shop, DJ bought up some of dad’s old stuff. But that was over 30 years ago when DJ was running “the Boffin Shop”; prior to Theme Traders even starting.

DJ doesn’t recall taking much if anything of that “boffin” kind across to Theme Traders back then. In any case, the chances of any item surviving that long – let alone finding pride of place on display rather than buried in storage as part of their giant collection, are minuscule.

It fair made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, seeing Dad’s unmistakable writing. Not only that, but a rare mistake of dad’s too. On the side and on the top Dad had written “The Pawnbroker”, but he also added on the top ‘Shop’, perhaps recognising that the name of the film is actually The Pawnshop”.

The irony of the discovery of that spool and the content of this film – some parts of the Pawnshop depicted look a bit like the Theme Traders props department – was not wasted on me. Well worth seeing the film (below) if you’ve never seen it.

https://youtu.be/8g3803sAfkE

I had never seen the film before, because we had no projector for that old 9.5mm gauge – that’s almost certainly why dad simply disposed of the film as I collected the 8mm items he hadn’t sold. Still have a box of them in the attic somewhere.

The music jam almost seemed like an anticlimax after all of that…

…except of course it never is an anticlimax to have fun making music.

DJ and I tried out my new rishas – plectra intended for ouds but Ian Pittaway has recommended that I use a cut version for medieval music, as they used a quill-like plectrum back then. DJ meanwhile thought the sound would be great for some of his jazz music work.

We mostly played 60s and 70s popular music this time, once I had demonstrated the medieval.

DJ and I bickered as usual as to who should be Major Tom and who should be Ground Control when we have a go at Space Oddity. As usual we ended up both trying each of the roles.

We tried some new material too. We’ll work on Valerie and Jesamine next time – songwise I mean. We also tried Daisy Bell, so that Daisy won’t be too jealous when she finds out about Valerie and Jesamine.

We also ate and drank…as always it was a really relaxing and pleasant evening.

A Groovy Happening In Cricklewood, Kim and Janie’s 60’s Party, 28 May 2016

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This party was rather a long time in the planning. The date was set at least 18 months before the event. Kim’s birthday is late April, Janie’s is late June, so the last Saturday in May, which is also a bank holiday weekend, seemed ideal.

60’s as the theme, given the “big zero” milestone year both of them were to be reaching. It did help just a bit, of course, that Kim is in the themed party planning business. It also helped that several vivid imaginations went to work on the ideas.

On arrival, everyone was given a little bottle and a pewter cup (see photo above). People only heard 1960s style sitar music – the following playlist was playing on a loop: 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final.

People were kept in a relatively small reception area, part courtyard, part entranceway to the Theme Traders site.

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Actors dressed as Hari Krishnas welcomed new arrivals and mingled with the guests.

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Then the Hari Krishnas led all the guests through the warehouse, past all the nooks and crannies that would later be party breakout rooms. At that stage the 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final was playing throughout the warehouse.

In the garden at the back of the site, the guests were crowded into an enclosed area, not realising that the walls were paper and that behind the walls was a band ready to play and a barbecue ready to grill. In that area one of the actors was dressed as a guru. Janie had briefed him on the sorts of things to say, which ended up being a mixture of Timothy Leary, Beatles lyrics, general “peace and love” messages, getting people to chant back his incantations and the like.

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It’s hard to explain why this was very funny, but it was. Some people seemed to be really into it. Only a small handful of us knew what was really going on; we of course egged on the guests, although they didn’t need much egging. Everyone must have realised that it was all meant to be a bit of fun.

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Then the guru started to get very excited and even more rambling in his incantations, the drums started to roll and the guru tore down a paper wall to reveal the band.

With everyone looking towards the band, I realised that someone needed to make a start on the wall to reveal the food, which I did and found rather cathartic after all those months and especially the last few days of preparation. Soon others were helping me and the whole process probably took 5-10 seconds.

The band, Never The Bride, were really excellent. They are friends of Kim’s, or is it fairer to say that Kim is one of their groupies? Both statements are true I think. We’d seen them perform before at a small party at Kim’s house, but I hadn’t realised from that scaled down performance they had the oomph and repertoire to create a “60’s rock fest” atmosphere – but they did just that.

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They performed two sets during the evening. The first had the most impact, naturally, but the second was a good “watershed” period for the party…

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…a different atmosphere in the dark and a good foil for presenting the cake, butlers removing their trousers and other such merriment.

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Between live sets, there was a DJ. We had supplied him with a strong playlist of sixties dance music…

60’s Dance Soul and Funk Top 100 Playlist Final

…but he played little from that and showed reluctance when several guests (including Janie) made specific requests, unfortunately. Later in the evening, I switched the sounds in the Mods breakout area (see below) to the above playlist so that some of us could have more appropriate bop.

Breakout Rooms and Music

The breakout rooms were fabulous. I curated different music for different zones, the playlists for which (but not the music) are all downloadable here:

60’s Surf, Lounge, Jazz & Tropical Playlist Final

60’s Folk, Hippy and Psychedelic Zone Playlist Final

60’s Carnaby Street, Quintessential Playlist Final

60’s Mods, Go-Go, Ska & John The Only One Dancing Playlist Final

Between the surf lounge area and the hippy psychedelic area was a small breakout room with everything upside down, “Alice In Wonderland”-like. When we went over to set up the sound the day before, Kim’s team were worried because there was so much sound bleed between those two other zones in that area. I listened for a while and realised that the very different types of music, one  type coming from one side, the other type coming from the other side, created a very strange soundscape and decided that this was exactly what music in the upside down room should sound like! It became a real feature.

The actors changed from Hari Krishnas to characters from the Sixties and mingled around the party and the breakout areas. By way of example, here is a picture of “Andy Warhol” in the Hippy Zone:

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Movie

One of the breakout rooms was a mini cinema, which showed an amazing short movie that Kim and Janie had made a few weeks before the party. It depicts the two of them talking about the heady days of the sixties and mingling with many big names from that era. It is really very funny. If you haven’t seen it and want to have a look at the movie, for the time being drop me an e-mail or a comment and I’ll arrange for you to see it.

Photos

There are loads of photos. For now, if you go to my Flickr albums area, you can see all the mini albums that friends have sent to me and Janie, click here. More are coming through and we plan to sit down with Kim and make up a consolidated album over the next few weeks.

More

I’ll write more about the food and the photos and the music in the fullness of time, but it is (at the time of writing this piece) nearly two weeks since the party, so the public deserves to read something about it by now. Although those of us who were there will struggle to forget this party…

…although they say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t doing it right…so in that sense, I suppose, this memorable evening was contra-Sixties. Or perhaps uber-Sixties.

Anyway, it was fab and groovy. Peace and love.

Kim & DJ, Theme Traders 20th Anniversary Party, The Stadium, 29 May 2010

Ken, World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0.

This was a really good party.

Not quite as good as the Kim and Janie one in 2016 – click here – but still really good. Same holiday weekend; just six years earlier.

Could it really have been 20 years? Yes of course it could, but still it sounds ridiculous when I say it.

Anyway, all of the usual suspects were there – DJ’s friends, Kim & Micky’s friends…which of course meant lots of our (Janie’s and my) friends.

There was a special guest appearance by neighbour Ken Livingstone, with whom I chatted idly for a while. Also the local mayor was there.

Never ones to miss out on a promotional opportunity., I discover that Theme Traders made a promotional video of that party, in which, if you look carefully, you can spot both me and Janie, more than once…

…which provided evidence that we were really there…

…and for a while aided our memories of the event, which was one of those hard to forget (because it was so spectacular) yet hard to remember (because we were enjoying ourselves so much) evenings…

…but the video has gone now.

The Bikini Beach Band were the headline act and jolly good they were too, as always.

Middlesex v Lancashire Day 3 at Lord’s 23 June 2006, Arabian Nights Party at Sandall Close 24 June 2006

Arabian Nights or Moroccan Den?

At the time of writing (January 2017) I was sent scurrying for my 2006 diary when King Cricket reported that Lancastrian cricketer Tom Smith had retired.

Like King Cricket, I first saw Tom Smith play in the summer of 2006, but in my case it was June and the weather was lovely.

My diary simply has a line through the Friday daytime and the word “Lord’s”. That means I went to Lord’s with me, myself and a heap of reading.

By the start of Day 3 (the Friday), the result of the match was barely in doubt; it was really only a question of whether Middlesex could salvage some pride and bat for a day on the road we call the Lord’s pitch.

Click here for the match scorecard.

I remember that day at Lord’s primarily for one silly thing, which, as it happens, did involve Tom Smith.

I chose to follow the sun (top up the tan for tomorrow’s party), so by the afternoon I had plonked myself in the front row of the Mound Stand, closer to the Edrich than the Tavern.

Scott Styris in particular was batting well; with some aggression as well as for survival. On one occasion Styris lofted the ball into vacant space, in my direction; a couple of bounces, then the ball bounced up and pretty much landed on my lap. To this day it is the only time I can recall the ball absolutely coming to me, personally, while watching a professional match.

I had on my lap at that juncture not only the book I was reading but also an apple I was about to munch by way of light lunch.

Tom Smith arrived to gather the ball. I considered throwing him the apple rather than the ball but momentarily thought better of it and simply threw him the ball. I then spent the rest of the afternoon regretting that I hadn’t played that practical joke on Tom Smith.

Smith looked very sharp as a pace bowler back then. I remember being very impressed with him, even though his figures for the day don’t look special. He looked “the lad most likely” that afternoon on a very flat track and I remember carrying high hopes for him as an England bowling prospect for a few years.

Saturday 24 June 2006

There is a line through Saturday which reads “party”, as it was the day of the famous “Arabian Nights/Moroccan Den” party at Daisy’s old maisonette in Sandall Close.

Tony (downstairs) let us use his garden as well as ours (in return for an invitation). Kim and DJ’s company, Theme Traders, themed the gardens up for the party (see picture above).

The weather was glorious for that one and the party really was a huge success. I struggled to take photographs on the night (enjoying myself too much and then couldn’t get the flash to flash) but perhaps some better pictures will emerge from friends.

I can just about make out Bobbie and John-Boy in the background. Tony in the foreground and a few members of the family.

There were quite a lot of people at the party; a few dozen anyway. I’m pretty sure I recall Bobbie, her Dave, Andrea and one or two others hanging around with us until very late indeed; it was one of those parties that people didn’t want to end.

I had just acquired my first iPod and I made up a good playlist for this party. I’ll dump the playlist in a file and attach it as an aside later.

Daisy (Janie) might well want to chip in with some memories of this party too.