Our Future In Celluloid

WE are working on a film project that has been toyed with for a while, but its only now with a little horse trading that it seems as though we can move forward.

That's right Boys and Girls! The BoHo Scarecrow movie is now go. Said horse trading has been done with business partner over at Kruger One, and I am heading into the movie business. Its going to be a bit like Filth & The Fury meets Magical Mystery Tour.

Film, if not my first wife, was my bedfellow for some yours. I studied it at University, particularly British non-realism and West coast avant-garde. Beyond that, I continued my odyssey on time and process based image projections, with my thesis on Gustav Metzger. I met Metzger and Boyle Family too.

This project has two distinct goals:

1) Produce an engaging promotional film for The BoHo Scarecrow project.

2) Generate video content for live performance projection.

And what of the New Year?

I'm rather keen to go into detox for a few months and have a holiday from drinking. I also want to stop smoking. My body needs the rest, and my pocket needs the money. Not least because I'd like to head out to L.A in the Summer and go on tour.

What a decade its been! My life is unrecognizable. Much better prepared for the new decade. A new epoch, for me I think. This is supposed to be the decade when I finally make a lot of money. In ten years time, I am supposed to be rich enough to start funding other people's vanity projects.

Regardless, Happy New Year.

Your friend,

The BoHo Scarecrow

The Christmas Tide

SO, we've nearly made it through another year. A new decade is just around the corner.

Despite my misgivings, last Sunday's show turned out to be a bit of a cracker. I was joined on stage by Fiddler Dan, who I jammed with at the Underwriter a couple of months back. He trecked all the way up from Croydon to play the gig. Had never heard the songs or rehearsed them. Halfway through the set we were backed by a drummer I found on the night called Jake. Jake turned out to be a bit of a pro.

My voice was shot for most of the gig. It was a show that I really didn't want to play. I felt empty inside beforehand. The cancellation at Monto really hit me hard, and emotionally the last few months have been a bit of a roller coaster.

But it came together as a whole. It was one of the most fun gigs that I've had for a while. The energy was tremendous particularly when Jake joined us. I have edited a couple of the songs together for you. Hope that you enjoy them.

Someone described the video as "magnificent", someone else said that it was "glorious", but most of all, my dear friend Tiff said that it was Buffets style, no rehearsal and all heart. I think that this is what rock n roll is always about. Its the spirit of what I want to do.

I like this type of chaos. When my old band The Light split after a few shows, I think that it had got too tight. The old magnificent madness of musicians getting together and simply rocking out, wasn't there. What BoHo Scarecrow offers is that kind of innocence, it isn't naivity, but the scope to take risks. The risks is where the adrenalin and the energy comes from.

Hope that you enjoy it. It all happens at 1 minute 59 seconds, btw.

The BoHo Scarecrow



Direct Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8oB5ARO9Wk

So, you thought you might like to go to the show?

NEED to start putting my house in order for tonight's show.

I really have no idea what will happen. Dan the fiddler says that he's going to turn up and play. I have my finger crossed on that one.

I wrote in my last post about viewing this gig with trepidation. I still do. I seem to be running through a crisis of confidence.

But I also have a lot of anger building up in my gut. I hope that I will find a way to channel this tonight. Anger is a poison. I hate it. It needs to be purged.

I may also, finally, meet the mysterious Mobile Oracle tonight. This person I have never met nor know what they look like, might be in attendance. The deal is this, if she's there I have to pick her out of the crowd using only my instinct. Scarecrow senses.

I have no idea what will happen. I do sense the end of an era though. The snow we have in London at the moment, blown in from north is but the second coldest thing in town. The other is harder countenance. Nothing is more frustrating than when people assume they know or understand what drives the artist to make art or what drives the performer to perform. The guess of the dilletente always assumes that trials and tribulations must feed the creative process. It does not. The story goes way, way back. You have no idea. You, have no idea.

"STOP! I want to go home. Take off this Uniform and leave the show. And I'm waiting in this cell because I have to know. Have I been guilty, all this time?"

Pause

LOOKING forward to Sunday's show, not without trepidation though. I don't think that my heads been quite right recently about music, but there are cogs and wheels whirring in the background. I think that it will be a good show. Could have some surprises if a few ideas come off.

I have no idea if they or I will come off anytime soon. I seem to have turned into something of a passenger, but with a fair wind I will be fronting a new band as a side project soon and auditioning BoHo Scarecrow drummers over the Christmas break too.

I have put my house in order on a number of fronts in the last few weeks. Part of this was squaring things up with the bank manager, and so I have a lot more freedom of spirit in that direction than I have had for years. But its framework, and now I have to live within it.

I resurected the Lyric Wall over the week on the encouragement of the Mobile Oracle, who mysteriously and benignly seems to be guiding me at the moment. A strange relationship, but good to see what I have written recently next to me up on my wall. It has been an intense, engaging and often inspiring couple of months. Painful though too. I have had disappointments and know that I need simply to push through to Spring and survive.

I am enjoying some simple pleasures. Things like cleaning with my new flat mates. Lovely people. Bright and full of energy. I went out for dinner with my ex yesterday, and had a fantastic mexican nosh up near Covent Garden. It was first rate. I'm blessed to have kept a good relationship there.

The show on Sunday is at the Zenith Bar in Islington. Its a free show with voluntary donations to charity. One song keeps on running through my head, In Portland Gaol, the theme and origin of which I still seem find so painfully relevant.

You know, I have had the most tremendous amount of luck. I was discussing this with the Mobile Oracle a couple of days ago. I really can't complain. Who am I to argue if the package is a little torn. But I miss people. I miss Ken and Jill over in Ireland. I miss ex girlfriends and lovers. I seem to meet a fantastic number of people, but it is very difficult to build robust friendships. Most of all at the moment, I am trying to renew the relationships within my own family. We have been too distant; there is so much madness in the world today, so much pain and anger. I see it in people's faces and wish that I could take it away from them. Maybe not as altruistic as might first seem, I believe that I am seeking to replace my own.

We have snow in London today. Christmas is rapidly approaching and with it the end of the first decade of this millenium. I sit here and wonder what it will bring.

"Will there be music or will there be war, who will walk through the Mirror Door?"

Scarecrow Manifesto Two

The Boho Scarecrow is more than one man.

BoHo Scarecrow is an event and multi-media rock n roll project.

BoHo Scarecrow uses film, light projections, situationism, theatre and art to compliment the visceral power of rock n roll.

The BoHo Scarecrow invites musicians, artists, film makers, racounteurs and other assorted breeds of creatives to join.

BoHo Scarecrow is intended to demonstrate that ROCK MUSIC IS A LOW FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT CAPABLE OF DELIVERING HIGH ART.

The BoHo Scarecrow is a pin badge, a slogan and a response.

BoHo Scarecrow's ambition is to deliver an environment in which Total Art can be conceptualised, formulated, executed and experienced.

BoHo Scarecrow's anti-thesis is singularity.

BoHo Scarecrow is open to engagement with all available economic systems as long as they enable the realisation of BoHo Scarecrow goals and don't screw either our brothers or our sisters.

BoHo Scarecrow identifies art and music as a WEAPON for the catalysing of spiritual advancement through congregation and the exploration Inner-Space.

BoHo Scarecrow hopes that love will conquer all.

BoHo Scarecrow wants to love you, and hopes that you'll love BoHo Scarecrow too.

The BoHo Scarecrow is flesh and blood.

The BoHo Scarecrow will regenerate...

The November Wave

THERE is something strange for me about this time in November. I alluded to this in my last post. Its about dealing with the echoes of what has passed before and is personally very challenging.

I had something of a moment of epiphany yesterday and was hit by a wave of emotions and memories. Its all part of what I have been trying to feed into The Light Gate for some time. These are difficult moments for me. Self-doubt, fear of abandonment, emotional fragility they all come crashing in to sweep me out to sea. I can barely speak when this comes over me; it is a debilitating experience. I struggle to listen to music, when it comes on. Its a sense of overload. Memory almost full.

I read through the literary prologue that I had written some time ago for The Light Gate and concluded that it simply doesn't work. I wrote it before I put myself in the boots of Edward Sun and must rewrite. It must come from the first person. I am nervous about what I will write. I need a collaborator, an ally. If only I could resurrect my old pal, John Bousfield. He was one of the most spiritually advanced souls I have ever met.



"BEACON #001 Calling Johnny B...come in please..."

The truth is at times like these I am a very demanding soul. I expect too much from myself and others. The walls of my ego are paper thin and crumple under the slightest pressure. I just want to get back to basics, go out and sing someone else's old songs old R&B and soul numbers, not have to play guitar. I'm talking with someone about this at the moment. It will run in tandem with everything else that I do. I am useless unless I am occupied.

So, short of changing my name and running off to somewhere nobody knows me, it seems that I will have to fight my way out from where I am. I've done it before, and I'll do it again. Tie me to the mast, and let the storm come. There's a coda in a song I wrote, that I have sung many times. It fits, doesn't it?! It isn't about the kind of money or currency, you might think of. There is no more valuable currency than unconditional love.

"Well, it wasn't like I didn't try enough,
When I tried to kick all that bad stuff.
But there is only one thing you can do for me,
Please Lord, give me the key,
Or I will get up from this floor,
I will stick my boot right through your door.
Its like staring down the barrel of a gun,
every time I see the sunrise come.

Did you see where my money went?
Did you see where my money went?"




"Taken at the 100 Club, May 2008. These are the moments worth going through the waves and storms for".















"My ex-PA, Jillybean, and Kenny The Ken back in July, two of my dearest friends. If the tectonic plates could suddenly shift to bring Cork back to Crouch End, then all would be well. A couple of rocks! "

Tear Down The Wall

I've been away. Thinking a lot though. These are the best and worst days.

I had intended to post the prologue of The Light Gate opera here last week, as it was the anniversary of the sub-conscious germ that seeded itself five years ago. I felt distracted, in a good way and this might appear over the coming weekend.

What about work? I finished a mix for Beacon ~002. Still some overdubs to do. Had a long, long conversation with my friend Nick Sykes last weeked (aka the legendary Nico No U-Turn). He told me that my Tascam 2488 looked like a science experiment and advised that for a technical dilletente such as I, that I should go out and get Garage Band for a Mac. He's right, of course. I think that I've known this for a while too.

Blues. I have listened to a lot of blues, for the first time in a long while. When my show got cancelled by Monto Water Rats at the last minute, I headed to Charlotte Street Blues, where my friend Garage Thomas was DJing. Nothing like the blues. Its kicked me off again. I love the sheer simplicity of the form, but more than that, the blues comes from the heart. I am not a good blues musician. As Muddy Waters once said, "those white boys sure want to play the blues bad, and believe me, they do."

When I am in my right mind, I feel inspired. Like all apparently narcisstic musicians spawned by the internet age, I am subject to constant doubts about what I do. But I am confident in my convictions. These are not, and never have been, about getting laid. I've spoken in interviews before about the psychological fault lines that drive us performers to the stage. I don't need to restate anything here.

What I have come to realise though, is that my music should be event based. We no longer listen to albums. We skip through songs as though they are fragments cast into the ether of aural pleasure. I have no interest in merely obtaining a cash paying audience (I haven't seen any fucking Austrian Emporers in Crouch End recently), but what I am interested in, is congregation. To, be here now. To share experience.

You see, there are many musicians and writers in my shoes right now superficially speaking. But I can see the specificity amongst us. I can see the differences. I have no issue with taking my own flawed bent in terms of what and how approach music. So, the idea of an event based approach fits. I learnt that from performing Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher: A Mini Opera in Regents Park. I am doing the same with The Light Gate. You have to be there.

And then there is the day today. I live in a little house. In a well healed part of town. I go to gallery openings and drink wine, whilst passing niceities with whoever I meet. I listen to a lot of bullshit and question motives. The most unsettling feeling, really. You could cut through my motives with a paper knife.

I wonder where the superfical gloss stops and the hearts begin.

But sit down with me, I'll talk mine through with you...you can question my motives anytime, any place. I'll lay them all on the line for you. "Tear down the wall".

What about you?

The BoHo Scarecrow

Show Cancelled

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Blame Monto Water Rats.

Probably going to post a BoHo Broadcast here over the weekend.

This Friday - Live @ Hoxton Underbelly

Hi,

Just had an interesting turn of events. Monto Water Rats, who promote at 229 have asked to relocate the show for this Friday to Hoxton Underbelly, which is at 11 Hoxton Square.

Doors @ 7pm. Stage time: 7:30pm. Nearest tube is Old Street. Liverpool Street is quite close too. FREE ENTRY FOR BoHo BUDDIES. Just ask me.

I agreed to shift it because it sounds like a better place to play. Better profile. More than that, I can also get an unlimited number of BoHo Buddies in for FREE.

You just need to email me at thebohoscarecrow@googlemail.com, or drop me through a message on the myspace (myspace.com/tommatchett)or add yourself to attend the event on Facebook by clicking here.

Hope that you can make it. Also hope that no-one gets confused with the change of venue.

Your friend,

The BoHo Scarecrow

BoHo Broadcast Three Video Blgo

Please send you comments in. Still struggling a bit with video production...but nonetheless...behold!!! Its BoHo Broadcast Three! Shamelessly self-promoting The BoHo Scarecrow Live at 229 in Great Portland Street, this Friday. 6th November.

Crystal Glass Gates Filled With Light

The Light Gate

On the counter-point of darkness
Stand my glass gates
On foundations of light,

That guide with a brilliant beam
Holds the blinded navigator
Still searching for his sight,

And this magic light show
Has now begun
Like a razor sharp laser
Brighter than the sun.

The gate towers
Are light shafts
They illuminate and burn
Like a beacon to the lost
Make the clock mechanism reverse,
Re-start and turn,

As the stars fall
And the angels yearn
As our hearts fold
With love and pain
That cannot be discerned.

Until the gates crash open
As the word is spoken
We’ll find answers,
Defrost the future,
Leave the past frozen.

These gates of glass will fall,
and the light will open.





IT is some time since I began working on The Light Gate. I remember a two day period - amongst my last living in Camden - when I began to try and scratch the surface of how I could follow the charming recordings that I had pieced together for Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher: A Mini Opera.

I learnt a lot from recording those and crafting a finished project. But there it was. I had produced. Delivered. Job done.

And what followed was frustration. I became unwell, a lot of my past emerged and enveloped me in an emotional hinterland of sorts for three years. This in actual fact has proven to be the genesis of the Light Gate. What I had in 2006/7 was concept. What I did not have was heart. The lead protagonist of my tale Edison aka Edward Sun, was a vacuum of sorts. I thought, "why should anyone care about this soul?".

At the time I was consciously trying to avoid being self-conscious in my writing.

Then I came to a realisation. I realised that I had plenty of sources from which to draw that would enable Edison to be a surreal mirror character, and enable Edward Sun - his co-efficient in the gross consciousness - to be real. What I did, was decide to give him my own DNA. I decided that I would put my experiences in him, and realised quickly that in doing so that the trigger of his leap into surreal was in fact driven by my own experiences.

This was -and still is- a risky game. I can be shot down. I have had to draw upon some acutely painful experiences to give him substance.

The lyric guide above was the first thing that I wrote for the opera. It is intended to set a scene. A scenario where all the light in the world has been taken captive in a set of crystal glass gates, but that shines out across the wasted land of our urban existence to draw Edison - The Navigator - to them. Light at the end of the tunnel. But it is also about a duty to our common 'man'. It is the decidedly unsexy proposition in rock n roll, that we have responsibility. That what we do has consequences and that in dark situations, we can be the only one to make a difference.

I want to make something clear. I do not see myself in that position. All I do is write songs. I have no urge to be someones hero. I am here to serve. That is enough. My reward is having a way of taking my own journey through the creative process of writing this. This is my therapy. Writing is a compulsion and will eventually save me.

I will be writing on this blog in the coming weeks, months, years about a whole array of projects. This will include of course my beloved Light Gate project, but expect more from The Chevron Action Flasher, because I am taking this indoors with film projections following the highly successful experiment at The Treehouse Gallery in Regent's Park.

Expect also updates on the album that I have not forgotten about - Amazing Unfinished Rock n Roll Odyssey - which stalled a little but is very important to me. I feel compelled to seal off part of my past and step into the future. That future is a world of glass gates filled with lights, beacons, radio masts, and light shows.

There is going to be a lot to come. I am on a precipice of sorts. I am calling for collaborators. I can offer things that I could not offer two or three years ago. That is what growing old does for you. I went through it and came out the other side. One day we will fly.

The BoHo Scarecrow

The BoHo Scarecrow

Hello! Nothing more to say than, I thought it was about time to give The BoHo Scarecrow a home of its own. I used blogger avidly before as TomOfTheChange, but packed it up as Myspace suddenly happened and has subsequently died. We are going back to the future, like the spiritual machines that we are.

What to expect?

I will be publishing written extracts and music from my current obsession, which is the writing of The Light Gate opera. I am also working on completing the album 'Amazing Unfinished Rock n Roll Odyssey', which is comprised of music from ideas and lives from the past.

Expect video blogs and BoHo Broadcasts. Occassional musings. Thisblog will run in tandem with the prospective launch of The BoHo Scarecrow Radio Hour. But I will almost certainly keep that Matchett fella out of this as much as possible. I've learnt that over the years. Will bung in the odd link to things I like.

Interested to see what will fly, though I carry no expectations.

BoHo Scarecrow calls for collaborators; artists, film makers, writers, futurists, performers, impressarios, musicians, designers, publicists, technologists, speakers. BoHo Scarecrow wants your interaction. BoHo Scarecrow builds through collaboration. BoHo Scarecrow seeks to develop an creative eco-system in which each participating practioner is enabled to realise their own personal creative projects, in addition to BoHo Scarecrow collective goals. BoHo Scarecrow will provide infrastructure to enable real and virtual platforms for creation, performance and distribution of art, music and film.

More to come. Peace, love and Ray 'Fucking' Kurzweil!

The BoHo Scarecrow