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).

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 had to combine the two spaces in one venue – a disused shop – rather than two separate locations. This was just about the best thing that could’ve happened as it made the venue a hub where people came to hang out and drink and the audiences for the two spaces cross-pollinated each other. They also managed to squeeze in a gallery space and a micro-space for one-to-one performances, adding to the overall creative allure.

The venue shift meant that our space, the Noodle Palace, was basically the garage – the pros arch of the stage being a roller shutter opening into the shop’s back warehouse, but the guys did a great job of decorating the space with Asian parasols hanging from the ceiling and an array of noodly appliances and lanterns adorning the shelves. The Bok Choy Ballroom was the larger room in the former shop-front where in addition to the regular shows JumpClimb programmed mixed-bill late night variety shows, some of which Dan and I performed spots at as well. These nights were often hosted by Tomas Ford, who in addition to performing his show, An Audience With Tomas Ford, was also promoting our venue as well as running around performing at and promoting various other gigs and events. Tom is one of the most alarming performers I’ve ever spent an hour with in a darkened room. His brand of electric cabaret is weird, hilarious, unsettling, parodic and heartfelt all at the same time. He has a way of making you feel at risk and yet in totally safe hands simultaneously, never knowing quite what he might do to the audience next but feeling fairly reassured that while he’ll take you to the edge with him he’ll stop short of throwing you all over entirely. We left feeling exhilarated, up-lifted and ultimately redeemed by the experience! He’s coming to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer so look out for him. And maim for a ticket if you have to.

Another member of the JumpClimb family (and cheesy as it sounds, that’s how they felt) was our sound guy Alex, who wasn’t really a sound guy but a brilliant musician doing a bit of moonlighting. Alex is in an amazing band called Mulder with his musical partner Owen, and we were lucky enough to share a stage with them at one of the Bok Choy’s late-night music nights. This was the result of a very messy drunken jam we had the previous night where I started dropping one of my poems over a chord sequence Alex was playing and we decided it should go in their set the next night, as well as a collaboration between me, Dan and a drummer called Dave, (who also happened to have a voice far too beautiful for a man who hits things with sticks). On photographic duties that night was Owen’s partner Gerry, who apart from being a generally very beautiful person is also damn handy with a shutter and made a lovely-looking video of our show for us.

Our shows went really well in Perth, and after a couple of quiet nights early on in the run our audiences were really strong and seemed to be increasingly made up of people who’d come on the recommendations of friends who’d already seen the show and knew it would be their cup of tea. Which was nice. We got some great reviews, including this one from the West Australian and this one from excellent poet-in-her-own-right, Jackson. We were also nominated for the performance award and came first runner-up so were very happy with that, and over the moon for JumpClimb who won best venue and Tom for winning best cabaret. Nice one boys, and hope to see you again next time…

I won’t do exhaustive descriptions of the other great acts that were on at the Noodle Palace/Bok Choy Ballroom but they included

An Audience with Tomas Ford – Obvs

It’s Me Dayne – One of the weirdest and most awkward, but also funniest, hours of stand-up I’ve seen, presented by the socially difficult Dayne Rathbone

Pat Burtscher’s Breaking Even – We didn’t get to see Pat’s show unfortunately but saw him do some brilliant sets at the variety nights. Laid-back (unless dealing with one particularly troublesome heckler by screaming in her face), existential in a stoner kind of way and very funny, despite being Canadian.

Nick Sun - Again we didn’t see Nick’s full show but I got to see him do a headline set in Melbourne and he was great. He’s very far from mainstream, which is what I like, weird, awkward, difficult and painfully aware of the fundamental ridiculousness of getting up on a stage to make people laugh. Brilliant.

Drag – A show featuring three drag queens fronted by the sensational diva Swish, who, in addition to some great songs and set pieces and a narrator giving a run-down of the history of drag and queer performance, completely expose themselves by removing their wigs and make-up on stage and talking about their own lives and personal experiences. Unexpectedly moving as well as raucously entertaining.

One of the best things about the Australian fringes, being somewhat smaller than Edinburgh, Perth particularly, is that they have a central bar or club where all the artists tend to hang out together. In Perth the Fringe Central was also where a lot of the performance tents were, including two Spiegeltents, and the best thing about both Perth and Adelaide was that as an artist you get a pass which gets you free entry to most shows. This meant that as well as getting drunk with some brilliant people we also got to see some of their shows – in particular the brilliantly contemptuous and sardonic ‘French’ comic Marcel Lucont, and incredible burlesque/cabaret shows like Trixie and Monkey and the Wau Wau Sisters.

I won’t sicken you with stories of the great beaches, restaurants and bars we frequented with friends old and new in Perth, you can take that as read. But I will close this round-up by mentioning giving thanks to two other events in Perth that kindly gave me gigs while I was there. The first was Perth Poetry Club, where I featured at one of their monthly afternoon poetry readings in the sweaty back room of the Moon Cafe. Also featuring that afternoon was the brilliant and beautiful Emily Andersen who, despite being at the same venue in Edinburgh last summer, I had not got a chance to see. She was performing pieces from her show Love in the Key of Britpop, which is a gorgeous spoken-word love story about an Aussie girl and an English boy and their ultimately doomed visa marriage, threaded together by a shared love of music. Emily told me I wouldn’t like it because it was, in her words, ‘girly poetry’, but it was far from it and made me determined to see the full show, which I did. And very lovely it was too.

The other gig I did while I was there was a hip hop night called Sicnote at Mojo’s in Fremantle. Also on the bill that night were a great electro producer/DJ called Rhythm & Stealth and an amazing MC called Mathas – who is one of the most intelligent, theatrical and well-crafted rappers I’ve heard in ages. He also produces almost all his own beats, which are awesome, and performs his set on a set! Check him out if you like a good slice of alternative, left-field but still bloody banging hip hop.

Right that’s more than enough waffle from me, more in part 2… Adelaide!

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!

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 Love Peak, an Atwoodian dystopia where love is a depleting commodity – the lyrics could err towards melodrama. But this danger is swiftly kept in check with pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek wit.

The show resists the temptation (clearly present, given the corporeal topic) to revert to cheap shots about mammary glands and, as Mellor puts it, “knob jokes”.

There were the mandatory few in the aptly titled Naming of Parts. The humour in it was not the highlight of the evening or the defining feature.

For those who love poetry, they will find a modern form that indulges their appreciation for the literary craft. For the many who don’t, there is so much more to this performance to enjoy.

Maybe the next time someone precursors a date with “it IS poetry”, they’ll be using it as a point of encouragement.

Anthropoetry, presented by Ben Mellor, runs January 31, February 1-3, and 6-10 at 7.45pm at the Noodle Palace in Mt Lawley. Tickets are available from fringeworld.com.au.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How 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 talent and attitude that makes him one of the most intriguing spoken word artists out there…

Mellor and Steele provide a formidable double act… the synergy between poet and musician is key’

**** (The Flaneur)

The show will receive its Australian premiere at Fringe World, Perth in Jan/Feb 2013, before going on the Adelaide Fringe in Feb/March. The piece will be touring the UK in Spring, Summer and Autumn 2013. For details please see gigs listing. For booking enquiries, please drop us a line through our contact page.

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!

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 the body is in common expressions: he “welcomes [us] to his neck of the woods” in a gloriously confident radio voice that continues the theme wittily to draw in the audience.
His political poems are the strongest pieces: The fabulous ‘HeadState’, explores the mind’s power and disturbances with a fantastic analogy of politics, governments where centre-left and centre-right both fuck the poor, where “top-down mental structures collapse mental economy”. ‘Tax Pastiche’ for the Digestive system deals with ‘Pastygate’ and is a fantastically acerbic political broadcast in the style of a food ad, full of “saccharine additives to make [the govt] look less unsavoury”. The Mammary Glands are treated to “News in Briefs”, inspired by the somewhat amusing change of speech bubbles in recent years on Page 3 girls to spout a political standpoint (Tim Ireland discusses this at Bloggerheads), which was a nice take on sexism and objectification.
The Heart continues a political bent more subtly, set in a “utopia realised” where there’s no hunger and the energy crisis is solved; love is the only scarce commodity. With no way to reproduce it, love falls into decline, reserves bought up (“a third off hugs!”) and the character must face a world where all the love’s used up. This is powerful, however, the horrific alternative given, where “adultery ceased to be taboo”, and apathetic teens were “casually [calling] abortion clinics if late”, is massively slut-shaming; unfortunate given that the world-building would work well enough without it.
Without this focus, the work is less powerful, although still enjoyable. The weakest piece was ‘Face Look’, a palindromic cinquain, playing on the beauty of symmetry. The Diaphragm is given a rhythm of breathing through the layering of his own voice, but the built backing track & explanation of how breathing works took too long for the eventual poem and it was perhaps the least polished work. But it had some nice ideas, such the assertion that “breath remains fragile as freedom”.
Of course, we end on Genitalia, although he promises there will be more as the run continues. His poem “Naming Of Parts”, is a take on the Henry Reed poem, which shares its name with a 1992 study of genders and their respective colloquialisms: from the military-like penis-euphemisms to a new-agey place of “lady gardens”. It could perhaps have done without the female side at all, given that the play on gun-maintenance and phallic imagery was a rife enough playground (“slide rapidly, back and forwards…”) and having both sides made it unnecessarily gender essentialist.
The show is professional and well put together, with a strong sense of narrative. The set pieces are mostly excellent and the informative and humorous patter between them makes this easily a 4 star show though with minor changes could score 5. Also, it’s free, so there’s no excuse not to see it.

A Fine Body of Verse Broadway Baby Rating: Star Rating: 4/5

I went into Anthropoetry not sure what to expect. Poetry read aloud can be thrilling or deathly dull. But Ben Mellor’s verse was a surprise delight. A well-structured thoughtfully created series of works vitally affirmed poetry as a spoken medium. Mellor, looking a little like Jack Whitehall’s older, less annoying brother, engaged a busy crowd at Finger’s Piano Bar with an ease and humour that never failed to impress. His dealing with one particularly odious heckler, with barely a raise of tone, was something established comedians dream of doing.
The idea of Anthropoetry, comes from Anthropometrics, the measurement of human body parts to validate dodgy racial theories. Mellor instead uses parts of the body to provide a framework for his poetic musings. ‘Peak Love’ imagines a world where the commodity of affection is in sharp decline. The digestive system provides a trampoline from which to examine how law and order is formed and – like the Pasty Budget fiasco – abused by those in power to the detriment of those down below. Other body parts similarly follow, each with their own distinctive character and use of non-verbal noises. On a musing about the respiratory system, the various noises made run over each other, like a drum loop. On the digestive, musical backer Dan Steele’s stomach rumbling became a disturbing backdrop. Steele’s musical arrangements were impressive throughout, always understated yet contributing greatly to the overall mood.
Mellor did overextend himself at points. When his verses turned to polemic, they became a bit more like a New Statesman editorial. In particular I found one peace on the breast, where he mocked The Sun for using Page 3 girls to promote Rupert Murdoch’s ‘neoliberal cockbile’ slightly hypocritical as the whole poem’s purpose seemed designed to level an assault against Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks. Mellor worked much better when his poems, like his piece on the brain, retained a polemical aspect but remained a bit more aloof. However his poetry is a joy to listen to, and very much benefits from being spoken aloud and at the cost of precisely nothing, is worth a punt by poetry enthusiasts and newcomers alike.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe Review – Anthropoetry
by Steve on Aug 10, 2012 • 10:58 pm Leave a comment
Share

javascript:exec_pinmarklet();
From The Flaneur:
Anthropoetry is a journey through the body with performance poet and BBC Radio 4 slam champion Ben Mellor as our guide. Starting from the top down, we get poems in relation to the head, respiratory system, heart, breast, stomach and penis.
Mellor is accompanied onstage by the musician Dan Steele, who uses samples, loops, a laptop and an acoustic guitar as a backdrop to Mellor’s poetry. The music fits Mellor’s style and delivery perfectly, creating a fantastic and appropriate musical surrounding to the vocal stylings of our confident and affable performer.
Arriving on stage dressed as a doctor, Mellor takes a couple of poems to really get going, but hits his stride when he unleashes a lyrical gem about the respiratory system. Here the performance element of Mellor’s personality takes over and we see a creative poet in his element. Using a series of loops, Mellor samples his breathing, the sound of his tongue, mouth, teeth and lips to create an original soundscape that he recites his poetry over. The synergy between poet and musician is key, as Mellor and Steele provide a formidable double act that never loose sight of their intentions as poet and musician.
Another highlight is Mellor’s tribute to the breasts and an ode to a right wing page 3 model. Here poetry takes a back seat against a pure hip-hop approach, which is delivered with style and class. Although the comedy aspect of the performance is not as sleek as the poetry and music, both Mellor and Steele are likeable and appealing characters. Even when Ben Mellor forgets to turn off the sampler and finds his voice echoing back at himself, it is difficult to find a fault in his onstage persona.
The talent of both our performers is even more obvious with the last number. Steele takes a seat behind the piano of the bar and Mellor delivers another heartfelt and sincere poem.
Mellor is a versatile performer with a talent and attitude that makes him one of the most intriguing spoken word artists out there. Anthropoetry is an original and fascinating concept and it will be interesting to see what Mellor and Steele come up with for next years fringe.