East Steel at Woodlesford

While Millie, Chloe and I swan it with swans in Staffordshire,

Bex rocks Woodlesford Primary School with East Steel and Steel Rising.

Players ares Bex, Vicky, Trish, Anne, Lynn, Pippa, Wanda, Gill, Josie, George and Kirsty. It rains; they start inside; it stops raining, they move outside.



Moving  a steelband outside inside is not exactly like moving a choir from one place to another. Just mentioning that. It is no mean feat. One minute you are trying to feel the music, getting the buzz from the audience; the next you are a roadie, carting around several kilos of heavy metal [not the musical variety]. With our unpredictable weather these activities are inevitable, but it makes playing music hard. Just putting that out there.

Foxwood Steel and Steel Rising at Rosebank Millennium Green

 

Just down the road is Rosebank Millennium Green and on Sunday 23 August they are having a street party, which we join in with.

 

 

 

We were me [Victoria], Bex, Yi Bai, Fehmina, Wanda, Georgia, Charlotte, Kirsty, and until the massive outburst of rain at the end, we were having a ball. Maya danced; Bex did headstands. We provided shaky and rattly for the kids to join with at the last couple of songs.

 

It was a relaxed low-key local event organised by Hyde Park Source; the Real Junk Food provided nourishment; it combined tall inner-city Victoria terraces with inner-city woodland. And just down the road - well from me, Gig and Fehmina anyway. Loved it.

 

 

 

 

The email read that we "really made a great contribution to the event. I'd forgotten what a lovely full sound a steel band has, and I never thought I'd hear some of those tunes played on steel pans! .  .   .  .  I heard some great feedback about your performance and I know the children loved joining in at the end".

 

 

 

Anyway rain certainly did stop play; I did a Gandalf impression in the Foxwood banner, and we all went back home to dry off.  

 

Wanda and Kirsty abandoned dryness altogether, and hit the end of back belle Vue Road, carrying the regulation gigging bucket.

 

Gandalf

And next up, dear reader, we will all be playing Leeds Carnival at Rhythms Carnival Village. All of us - East Steel, Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows and Foxwood Steel. That has got to be better than Foxwood nervously popping up at Savile Park!

Steel Rising with regulation bucket

Foxwood Steel and Steel Rising at Manchester Carnival: The Manchester Five

Rick was really pleased to find he could drive back to Manchester again. Not.

 

 

 

 

I dropped him again near a train station and headed back to Alexandra Park for Round Two, expecting locked gates and jobsworths and not being disappointed.

 

 

 

 

At Gate 1 I told them I was a steelband booked to play in the park. The kind security lady told me I couldn't come into the carpark and that I should have got there before 11 a.m. That I had just driven over from Leeds washed over her. I drove round a bit and found a parking space close by. That was a parallel park and a half! Quite cheered me up.

 

 

 

I phoned Damien, and the other four players and I found each other. Yes, four: Wanda, Vicky, Kirsty and Yi Bai. Eventually Damien got us into the carpark [quite enjoyable] but driving to the performance spot was not happening. Here's Wanda wheeling the music down, and below Vicky lining up cases on the set back down.

 

But then it was a kinda magic. People came up and played our tambourines. One lady brought her own cowbell. People danced and a visitor from Blackpool phoned up later to book us there, and said we were the "jewel in the crown". The film-maker rushed off to get a new battery, and then we hugged a bit. He said [oh why did I think I would just remember their names], "I was looking around the arena, thinking where are the steelbands and here you are."

 

 

 

 

Anyway Yi Bai braved the van journey back with me [it was Gary yesterday], and I only had a ten-minute panic attack coming out of Rochdale, and Yi Bai didn't even notice.

 

One day.

 

From here down it's just pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Huddersfield Carnival Beckons and I think back to not playing Leeds

Well Debs,

It was Rick's birthday actually, and all the family was round, which included several Smalls, so it's hard to say whether braving the freezing cold for the Huddersfield train on Sunday afternoon was a sacrifice or not. [I know what you'd choose, despite your obvious predilection for sunny climes].

Leeds 2004

I arrived early, as the Trans-Pennine train timetable didn't seem to be based around the Carnival's committe meetings. So I passed a chirpy cup of tea doing some Spanish homework in the Head of Steam. [Ah, memories of going home with your mobile the night before you flew back to Abu Dabi!]

backstage Leeds 2006

Leeds 2006

But, like Manchester Carnival, Huddersfield has always welcomed Foxwood Steel [aka Foxwood Steel Bandits], to its streets and arena, while our home town of Leeds has been closing the doors for over a decade now.  In Leeds we played on ever-increasingly small floats [2000 till 2004] until there were no floats for us. Then we got the main stage as the parade went round us.

Leeds 2006

Well, when I say, main stage, the first we got was the main patch-of-mud. Luckily the sun took pity on us, hardened the mud and amplified our plucky little bands [Foxwood and top Sparrows]. Next years we got the stage [thanks to Ian, and for whose support, thanks].

I thought the stage would be the graveyard slot, but in the end people came back into the arena to hear us, and hey, they didn't need to! The following year we found that Walt's mates were doing the sound and so it turned out that John Shepard and his wife danced to us in their front garden somewhere in Avenue Hill.

Leeds 2008

Sadly there was always some complication or double booking. We always came back, with the Doves, with Steel Rising, with South Steel, all Leeds school or community bands. Meantime the West Indian Centre's own band, New World was on the float - Harehills Avenue, Harehills Lane, Roundhay Road, Barrack Road, Chapeltown Road. My float favourite was coming up Harehills Lane with the Fforde Greene in sight. Then I always caught sight of my friends, Vicki and Roger. And waved and waved and waved with the sheer excitement of playing my home town carnival.

Leeds 2006

Actually I always thought there was room for more than one steel band at a big northern Carnival. One year there was us, New World and Huddersfield's North Stars. But in the end, the mainstage, miked up and not squashed between two sound systems was great. And it meant we could put all our bands together.

Leeds 2009

me and the reporter from Radio Five the morning after!

Well, until 2011 when they wanted the stage for the New World juniors. Me, John [Webster] and Vicky went to meet them and offered to bring our own float. We had twenty five disappointed players who had built their summer holidays around playing their own town Carnival.  And I had met a couple of drivers with all the right licences and even lorries at Brotherton Byram Carnival who were up for it.

Anyway, we were all set for Leeds on a float again, then London was burning; Manchester was burning and Leeds had a small disturbance in Chapeltown. The Carnival Committee opined that it would be too risky to put live music on their parade. Myself I couldn't see that a live steelband would be more likely to cause a riot than fifteen huge sound systems.

Nostalgia London 2012

The Yorkshire Evening Post didn't buy it; Radio Five Live didn't buy it, Look North didn't buy it, and Morgan wanted to know why we were spending his 21st birthday playing tunes on Woodhouse Moor. See the clip:

Lionel Sophie as Greeks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-14599380 . [steel bands barred from Leeds carnival floats]. This is more publicity from Look North for not playing Carnival than we ever got for playing it. I got interviewed on my back street the day after Mig's party with Georgia playing pan as accompaniment. The reporter drove all the way from Manchester for five minutes with us. I told him he was bonkers to do that for a story that involved something that somebody was not doing.




Huddersfield Town Centre 2007

As far as I remember there weren't any riots in 2012, but we still didn't get asked to play again, so me and Sophie went off to Notting Hill and dressed up as Romans, or was it Greeks, for Nostalgia. And sadly for New World in Leeds- half of their float didn't arrive so, no steelbands at all at a traditional West Indian Carnival.

Lizzie quizzical on a float in Huddersfield

So Debs, no contest. Not only did I go the meeting on a cold Sunday afternoon; but I was early for it, and, if there is anything I can do for a town that still wants to include traditional live music in its Carnival I will.

Here's two of my favourite Hudderfields: town centre 2007, and float 2008 [or 09?], as we leave Hudawi Cente and approach the Town Centre.

Foxwood Steel play Manchester Carnival

Rick drove the van [with Bex], cars were me [plus Tim and Ashley], Lizzie [plus Gig, Katie and Vicky] and Alli [plus] Karen; on the train were Amy, Sophie, Varshika and Fehmina.And you, Debs, coming from Huddersfield. Plan A was for a small group of us to leave early, arrive early, set up in the perfect and agreed spot, then once the architecture is right, we know where the next-comers can slot in.  And hey! No need for Plan B.

By twelve noon we have two kits set up under the gazebo [preserving drummers from sunstroke] and the pans in a semi-circle from big bass to tenor bass.  Here is a picture of Sophie and Georgia doing impressions of each other while we are setting up.

Natalie has arm-in-sling and decided ["gutted"] against one-armed bass playing, so Tim is main drummer, with Varshika joining him towards the end.

I have a forty song setlish [setlist/wishlist] and we manage about thirty of these.  The sun comes up, the ground is dry; as the parade leaves and folks return to the arena they gather around sitting on the grass.

Damien [organiser] had got a little PA for us but there’s some problems with us using it. At first the sound systems on the stage and from the adjacent youth arena threaten to engulf us but they die away as we embark on three and a half  hours of our favourite tunes.  In memory of Robin and Whitney this year we have introduced Words and I Will Always Love You as well as reviving Tragedy.  In honour of the Jubilee we are trashing the once-lovely Diamonds are Forever by playing it calypso style, and in hour of the Olympics we [forget to] play Chariots of Fire. Hmmm.

In a twelve months that saw us chucked out of our home town carnival, had us overhear the comment in Huddersfield about who Carnival is for, and read That book by Geraldine Connor which stated that Leeds City Council should be ashamed to have no high quality steelband]; well, after such a disheartening year, Manchester Carnival is a wonderful, wonderful experience. I loved it; we loved it . . .

I was so excited that I decided to attempt to drive the van again on the motorway. Had a panic attack on massive bridge [over two canals and a river] on M60 and then had to drive Tim and Bex home the slow route, setting the Satnav to avoid motorways. Scenic and slow.  Very slow.



Here's a before and after shot of Amy - seen it, been it, got the t shirt. It's official. She's stuck with us for ever, or at least till she decides she is not.

For the record the bands today come from Foxwod Steel [Leeds community steelband], Leeds Silver Doves [older, more experienced and in most cases, better players[!] from city-wide high school, Leeds ArtForms Music Service band: Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows] and Steel Rising [from East Steel: Leeds ArtForms Music Centre steelband, these are long-serving members, who want to push the musical boundaries], plus guest Sparrow Ashley [who is conveniently over 16, plays nearly all the tunes and a bit of kit, and can nearly play all of the melody of Moves Like Jagger.  And you, Debs of course also play for South Steel [ex-students from South Leeds High School]. [So that's five steelbands that Leeds City Council can be proud of.]

In the past we have played on floats at this carnival, but there were serious riots last year in Manchester town centre. At first the police called the parade off, but the organisers argued that they should not be daunted; the police agreed; reinstated the parade, by which time, half the lorry drivers had committed themselves elsewhere [this is my understanding of events], and so we ended up in the arena. We loved it; so did many of the festival-goers; we decided to do it again. And we did.  

Tropical World, Beetroot and Brie

Dear Debs, I’m in trouble for breaking into the Christmas Brie! It went so nicely with the beetroot from the Organic Man that I had been boiling up all day [beetroot not man that is]. Nobody else in the house likes beetroot, organic or not, so the lingering smell of saucepan full of soil and in seemingly imminent danger of burning dry, plus the incident with the Christmas Brie, well it’s the doghouse for me.

I’ve been on tour in Tropical World, Roundhay Park, Leeds, hanging out with the meerkats and the crocodiles, as, of course, you were, Debs. It wasn’t Carriacou, but it was warmer on our little patch of sand inside the tropical house than it was out there on Street Lane.

We, Foxwood Steel Bandits, had a run of five evenings, from Saturday 18th December to Wednesday 22 December. As this was our third year running, and as each evening ran from 5 till 8pm, I was trying to vary things, if only only for the Tropical World staff! By way of a change I invited some other bands to do guest spots. Plus we tried to vary the non-Christmassy stuff, even arranging Telstar for one of the staff, who had asked me if it could be done on pans when we were here 8 or so years ago.

First off on Monday evening was South Steel, ex-pupils from Merlyn Rees and from South Leeds Schools, leader: Charlotte Emery. [Charlotte does all the illustrstions for my songbooks]. They were Charlotte [herself], Debs [yourself], Andy, Caroline, Neil, Sarah, Holly and Kerry.

On Tuesday, advanced music centre steel band, Steel Rising, trod the beach boards. These are four people who have been playing in main music centre band, East Steel, for a decade or so now. Three of them [Alli, Karen, Ruth] started off at East Leeds Music centre [hence the name] and one [Vicky] began at West Leeds Music Centre. These were hosted at Parklands High School and at Pudsey Grangefield Schools, respectively. Now West Leeds Music Centre operates as a satellite at City of Leeds School [Thursday evenings, beginners welcome if you're interested].

Alli, Karen and Ruth work in the health service, and in education; Vicky is a teacher, who is just adding steel pans to her list of subjects taught!

Wednesday, it was six of my newer Silver Sparrows.

This was Claudia, Jenner, Kurt, Millie, Maisie and Nina, coming from Allerton Grange School, City of Leeds School, Abbey Grange School and home schooling. They were taking on pans they'd not seen before and were sight-reading songs we, for obvious reasons, only play for two weeks in the year. This little group had previously done a couple of similar concerts in Little London, so they are getting used to being thrown in the deep end.

One visitor patted me on the arm and said well done for all the good work. Another was overheard asking his companion if some of us were beginners. Well there were indeed some dodgy notes as we tried to extend our repertoire beyond its normal boundaries.

Whatever. Seasonal Greetings to you all.