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May
5thShaggy Doggerel
Shaggy Doggerel is the new show from ‘award-winning’ duo, Mellor & Steele (aka me and Dan). We will be premiering the show at the Edinburgh Fringe 2013, as part of PBH’s Free Fringe, at Fingers Piano Bar, 61A Frederick St. More details will be available shortly from my gigs page, but basically it’s on every day (except Mondays) at 5.30pm – 6.30pm, from 3rd – 24th August. This is the blurb: Superman and Lois do battle with a uterine super-villain; Peter discovers there’s more to the wolf than the stories tell; a philandering footballer suffers the grisly consequences of seducing a team of WAGs… Combining spoken word, comedy, music, storytelling and hip-hop, award-winning duo Mellor & Steele spin deliciously dark yarns both familiar and strange. You’ll bark with laughter and take paws for thought. Acclaim for previous show, Anthropoetry: **** The Scotsman **** Broadway Baby **** Sabotage **** Flaneur Fringe Weekly Award Winner, Adelaide; Performance Award runner-up, Fringeworld, Perth More details, extracts of the show, tour dates etc. to follow (once we’ve actually written it).
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May
1stAustralia Round-Up pt1: Perth
I’ve been back at home a few weeks now and although various trips around the country since I returned have meant I haven’t properly finished unpacking yet, let alone begun to deal with the fallout and debris (financial, professional, emotional) of being away, I’ve realised that a proper blog post about our travels is long overdue. This is partly in case anyone’s interested in what we got up to while we were away, but primarily to signpost people to the brilliant artists that we met while we were out there, so that hopefully you will look out for them if and when they visit these shores, or you visit theirs. So this is the Perth bit: The Perth Fringe Festival, or Fringeworld as they would much rather you called it, is only a baby – this is their third year – but it’s roughly doubled in size and popularity every year and looks set to become a mainstay of the Perth cultural calendar. As, I hope, will the venue that we performed at – The Noodle Palace/Bok Choy Ballroom. Aaron & Fletch from JumpClimb were first-timers to running a venue this year, but with the management of a number of bands and acts plus the annual Beaufort St festival, which this year drew over 100,000 punters to its massive one-day party, they were bound to make a decent stab at it. A last minute fall-out with the owner of the noodle factory that inspired the venue’s names meant the boys [...]
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Feb
3rdSecond Perth Review!
We’re about half way through 0ur run at Fringe World, Perth, and feel like we’re starting to hit our stride now… So considering this review was from our first night I think we got off quite lightly! REVIEW: Anthropoetry The West Australian January 31, 2013, 1:10 pm PERFORMANCE Anthropoetry (UK) Presented by Ben Mellor Noodle Palace, Mt Lawley Review: Isabel Inkster Before taking my date to this show, I found myself warning her: “Now, it IS a poetry show. . .” It is a shame that in the current scene in Perth, even poetry lovers feel the need to make excuses for the art form. Ben Mellor’s Anthropoetry, however, needs no disclaimer. It certainly is poetry, but leaving the performance limited to that description would not recognise the comedy, scientific spin, and musical prowess that is equally present in Anthropoetry. Ben Mellor (BBC Radio 4 Slam Champion), supported by the essential musical contributions of Dan Steele, presents a collection of stand-up poetry linked by the theme of anthropometry – or the measurement of the body. What strikes most is Mellor’s manipulations of language and his penchant for puns, combined with a clearly well-researched body (pardon my own effort) of scientific knowledge to provide the “backbone” of his poetry’s purpose. Steele wields a guitar, loop pedal and samples to provide an engaging soundtrack that pulls the performance together in a way that the loose theme of “the body” may not. At more earnest moments – for instance in the beginning of [...]
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Feb
2ndFirst Perth Review!
We’ve opened Anthropoetry at Fringe World, Perth and have been running for three nights. Opening night was typically frenetic and fired on nervous energy but we had a great audience who left us buzzing. We also picked up a great review from Perth poet Jackson, who I hope to see in action before we leave town… I’ve posted the review below, but have a look at her blog too… Gotta go and do another show now, will post some more news soon… Deft, left and definitely def: Ben Mellor’s ‘Anthropoetry’ at FringeWorld Last night I took the number 22 bus up Beaufort Street to FringeWorld venue Noodle Palace for the opening night of Anthropoetry, written and performed by UK poet Ben Mellor and his musical sideman Dan Steele. Anthropoetry is billed as ‘a humorous, musical, spoken word journey around the human anatomy, attempting to get the measure of modern life.’ Let me be honest here: after reading that I was expecting to cringe. I was expecting lots of groan-worthy anatomical puns. I was expecting words spoken too fast to take in, competing unsuccessfully with too-loud music. I was expecting an overdramatised performance of forgettable poetry whose impact depended on the performer’s charisma more than the words. I was also expecting a boringly long show in an uncomfortable venue with terrible sound. It wasn’t like that at all. The sound was excellent. Local artist management company JumpClimb have done a great job of setting up an intimate theatre in a back [...]
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Jan
17thAnthropoetry CD/MP3 is Live!
The studio version of Anthropoetry is now available to buy from my Shop page. The recording comprises all the poems and music from the show, with shortened links to tie it all together and put the pieces in some sort of context. The CD just comes in a basic cardboard sleeve with track listing printed on the CD as well as the sleeve. It includes a free MP3 download of the album too. It’s a fiver. Download-wise you can download the whole thing for £4, or individual tracks for 50p (the links are free). Track 8, Beat ‘n’ Trachea is also free.
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Jan
17th10 of the Best
Here’s a little self-indulgent playlist I put together of the best poetry performances I could find of myself on YouTube. I didn’t make any of them, but people were kind enough to put me on tape and post me on their online petard. Or something. Here’s some videos basically. Enjoy.
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Jan
17thWelcome to my new site!
Hello, welcome to my new look site! Nice, isn’t it? I think so anyway. It looks a little strange and empty at the moment, as I have yet to upload much content. Most of the posts you’ll see on the front page have been put there by the lovely Roshana Rubin-Mayhew, who gave the site its wonderful makeover, and include examples of the sort of thing you can expect to see in the coming weeks/months/years, together with instructions to Mister Stupid here on how to post stuff on it. So please bear with me, I’m going a bit mental at the moment getting everything ready for my impending Australian tour, and applying for funding for the UK one that will follow it. But I will put new, and old, things up on here in due course, especially now I have the incentive of a new and sexy-looking home for my various scribblings and wafflings. Thanks Ro, and thanks to you, whoever may be reading this.
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Jan
17thAnthropoetryHow do we express our spleen? Whose business do we stick our noses into? When did we start wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and why are we up to our elbows in heels and bums? BBC R4 Slam Champion Ben Mellor takes you on a stand-up poetry and music fuelled tour around the body, attempting to get the measure of modern life through anatomical analogy. With sounds, beats, beeps and whistles by Dan Steele. Anthropoetry is inspired by anthropometry, the study of measuring the human body. Informed by archaic quack medicine and hokey beliefs, combined with searingly topical social and political commentary and some personal body and soul searching, Ben presents a set of brand new spoken word poems and stories that get to the heart, or the bottom, of modern life. Presented with Ben’s trademark mix of free-verse poetry, rap, beatbox and a healthy dose of satirical humour, the text is underscored live by Dan’s use of guitar, keys, drumpad and live-looping technology. The show was premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2012 as part of PBH’s Free Fringe. It received four 4* reviews, including The Scotsman and Broadway Baby, excellent audience feedback, and was featured on Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe. ‘Elegantly crafted rhymes… always engaging’ **** (The Scotsman) A fine body of verse… vitally affirms poetry as a spoken medium… a joy to listen to. **** (Broadway Baby) ‘Slick poetry set to music, and a particularly impressive political and lyrical bent’ **** (Sabotage Reviews) ‘A [...]
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Oct
11thManthropoetry!Yep, so we have some Manchester dates for Anthropoetry, this is ostensibly going to be the same as the Edinburgh version but with some new bits that we didn’t get time to finish in the summer, plus a bit of a tidy and polish. It will also be being filmed and recorded for audio – if we get a decent enough take of either we will produce a bootleg-style cd/dvd. At the moment plans are afoot to take the show to Perth, Adelaide, and, most glamorous of all, Brighton fringe festivals, plus other dates next year, including a prestigious Manchester theatre, though I can’t say which yet… Watch this (poorly maintained) space!
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Oct
4thAnthropoetry ReviewsThis post is not as self-indulgent as it may first seem, although it is still quite self-indulgent. I’m posting a scan of the spoken word feature from The Scotsman in which Anthropoetry got a little tiny mention at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. This is not so much to revel in the glory of my solitary column inch in a national newspaper, but more because the image is very large so when I attach it to emails to try and promote the show it is invariably too large, and I’m tech-shit so don’t know how to resize it and still keep it readable. So I’m posting it here so that I can direct people who want to read it this way. And while I’m at it I may as well go the whole self-indulgent hog and post the other reviews I got too. Next time I post, I hope it’s something more interesting and not so much about me. But given the website is called benmellor.net, I doubt it. Sorry. Anthropoetry by Sabotage Reviews Ben Mellor’s new show is a “journey across human anatomy” with some slick poetry set to music and a particularly impressive political and lyrical bent on topics that (in other hands) could have been puerile. Give it a day or two and he’ll have it all off by heart, but despite occasional glances to the script when I saw it, it was a professional and enjoyable show. He kicks off with a fantastic introduction to how versatile [...]
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