Cafe oto vs pizza express jazz club

john eden

male pale and stale
Fair do's - and I'm sure Watson et al would be sad to see it go too, because they've done stuff there (and whatever it is replaced by would be worse).

There are a few tensions at work really. I don't really know enough about the scene that Watson is so keen on (and never saw Derek Bailey for example) but it would appear from the outside to be heavily dominated by middle aged white men, whereas OTO's programming is way more diverse than that - and its audiences can be, depending on the night.

Similarly I'm a bit sceptical of precisely how jarring or enlightening something can be if its composed of several white dudes on tradiitional jazz instruments and one white dude reading out a text. Don't get me wrong, I definitely I enjoy that and it does send me down various pathways of thought that I get a lot out of. But I don't think that is the effect Ben Watson is trying to produce (and that effect is not unique to his particular brand of performance for me anyway).
 

luka

Well-known member
do you think old white men are inherently boring? my policy when booking tickets at Oto, which aren't always cheap, was no white people but that's just a silly prejudice of mine probably.
 

luka

Well-known member
i suppose we're all highly sceptical now of a diversity which is purely cosmetic, which includes various ethnicities, sexual orientatations etc but doesn't preclude a total uniformity of thought, behaviour and ethics. the diversity you can find proudly displayed at facebook, google and the military industrial complex
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
about 50 feet from Oto there's a big hang-out / meet-up place of all the food delivery drivers/cyclists - and I bet they'd be some interesting tastes stewing right there and maybe the improvisors should be out performing in front of them
 

craner

Beast of Burden
you never even hear jungle coming out of cars. its a huge part of the history of the city but its got no presence here at all. the sun comes out and garage is everywhere, jungle, never ever, nowhere, at no time

Garage has just aged better.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
do you think old white men are inherently boring? my policy when booking tickets at Oto, which aren't always cheap, was no white people but that's just a silly prejudice of mine probably.
I don’t think they’re inherently boring and I like a lot of them. It’s just that even I, an aspiring old white man, want more than that.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
about 50 feet from Oto there's a big hang-out / meet-up place of all the food delivery drivers/cyclists - and I bet they'd be some interesting tastes stewing right there and maybe the improvisors should be out performing in front of them
One of the guys in Morphogenesis insisted on performing outside the venue during their set. He got a couple of passing young women involved, it was cool.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Whilst we're at it...

Ben Watson at Cafe OTO:

1. We went to see Ben's Association of Musical Marxists perform one evening. As they started their set, an elderly gentleman walked from the back of the room right up to Ben and hit him with a newspaper before cussing him out about travelling all the way there on the train to see the original AMM (Tilbury, Prevost etc) perform.

2. Some German(?) guy did a drones set based on the sounds of Russian warplanes and showed a promo video of the planes made by the company that produced them. I was a bit, like, fucking hell this isn't really on. After he'd finished there was a loud, drunken outburst from a group of people behind me, including Ben, shouting "that was a load of bollocks mate, what are you doing?" amongst other things. There was consternation in the polite audience but I was impressed.
 

bunnnnnn

Well-known member
Ha! Do you know him? It was a good night...
Yeah, Ron's always been the unpredictable element in Morphogenesis, sometimes to the annoyance of other members. Have good memories of his impromptu 'social interventions' at LMC gigs, handing out instruments and setting up a mini PA outside the venue. He was (hopefully still is) an obsessive documenter of the 'underground' (in whatever capacity that still exists) in London. His flat was literally floor to ceiling with minidiscs and cassette tapes recording all manner of events, gigs and encounters. Really amazing guy
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Yeah, Ron's always been the unpredictable element in Morphogenesis, sometimes to the annoyance of other members. Have good memories of his impromptu 'social interventions' at LMC gigs, handing out instruments and setting up a mini PA outside the venue. He was (hopefully still is) an obsessive documenter of the 'underground' (in whatever capacity that still exists) in London. His flat was literally floor to ceiling with minidiscs and cassette tapes recording all manner of events, gigs and encounters. Really amazing guy
That's very cool - they'd not really entered into my world until that night.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Garage has just aged better.

I mean I don't think this is it. Otherwise taken on its own as its own genre of experimentation, of pushing at the limits, as creating a mutant, jungle has aged better than garage. But house is a big part of London culture, like it or loathe it. That's why garage seems to have aged better, because house never went away and had a resurgence in the 2010s.
 
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