Right, new website. Bloggy. Comment away, and check the photo gallery especially, where we’ve started to put up loads of our photos from past events and exhibitions. We’ll keep adding to this and tweaking bits over the coming month but to all intents and purposes this is it, so have a tour, and keep coming back as we add new bits. At last!
Sat 7th June | St Bride’s Church, Percy Street, Liverpool | 7-11pm | £5*
The ‘Anticlimax’ issue aside, we’ve been a bit quiet so far this year. That’s because all of Team Mercy have been locked away in a church every Friday night - with Wave Machines and the minds of some of Liverpool’s most respected directors, curators, musicians, digiticians, designers and artists - drinking warm cans of beer and getting all excited. And waiting for a letter from the Arts Council.
The good news, is that said letter arrived and we have the go-ahead to run a series of 4 events that utilise the singular atmosphere and spectacular surroundings of Liverpool’s only church-that-looks-like-a-temple (St Bride’s) to our own devious ends - Wave If You’re Really There is our mission to present the best live literature, music and performance art in an environment conducive to having a brilliant time and telling your cousins how mad Liverpool is … amen to that.
Featuring
WAVE MACHINES (Chess Club)
‘The cleanest and purest of sublime art-pop’ - Art Rocker
www.myspace.com/mywavemachine
SLOW CLUB (Moshi Moshi)
‘Gut-wrenchingly beautiful’ - The Guardian
UNIVOCALISM Tim Clare / Joe Dunthorne / Ross Sutherland
Three of the UK’s most acclaimed writers perform their lecture and series of poems written in only one vowel.
THE BELL Nathan Jones / Wave Machines
Brand new collaborative poetry, music and digital art piece from your hosts. The freshest perspective in spoken word since the invention of the soapbox.
Plus: THE INVESTIGATION TO FIND OUT WHAT IS THERE AND ISN’T THERE
Performance art project by Kathryn Cooper.
Plus: Visuals by Phil Communication and Emily Voelker
Music from Igor Hax (binary jam)
and Art Direction by Scott Spencer
We’re so massively excited about these shows, and we hope you will be too. Entry will only be open to ticket holders, which you can buy online from this site (we will deliver them to you within a week of the show) or in person from one of our shady operatives - just give us a call in the office on 0151-708-9781 or bug Nathan on 07877-660-150 and we’ll come and hunt you down.
Future WIYRT dates - a Biennial triple-header, 6th September / 18th october / 29th November
Mercy’s team of poets, journalists and creatives are now taking on copywriting pitches.
We’ve already this year created a characteristic new style for Urban Splash, for their giant Liverpool homecoming project, and have lended a substantial hand to Uniform in their current rebranding. We have also reprised our role with Diesel, supplying music, art and style content for their online Cult programme.
Please direct all enquiries to doug@mercydesign.co.uk or nathan@showmercy.co.uk
Hello everyone, at the risk of seeming narcisistic to the point of banality, I’d like to draw your attention to the following websites, which contain all the footage Sam Meech did of our performance at The Bluecoat… Cwm Bie Yer, The Barman, and Live to Learn the Language.
There’s some great camerawork and if you listen carefully, you can hear my tongue-smacks from having such a dry mouth. Feel free to distribute word about our prowess…
Nathan and Wave Machines shizzle, with extra juice
After our sell-out performance at Tate Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, Mercy’s band of the moment are back with their awe-inspiring interpretations of Nathan Jones’ poetry.
Synth-stanza, vibra-verse, shouty-shouty, ballarinadry, lyrithmical sonnicts, cymbolic villanellectro…? you got it. Ha! Villanellectro.
PLUS live digital visuals from Phil Communication & Emily Voelker
Anyway, it’s right in the middle of the day at Bluecoat’s openning, in the small performance room… get there a little bit early to hear us pissing about with the speakers and reserve your seat with a leaflet.
O, and there will be copies of the latest Mercy around too.
Just to remind you that the shit is going down in Tate this evening. IT’S ON.
Ross G has arrived safely in town with his bag of paranoias, Wave Machines have been packing away their equipment since early yesterday morning, DJ Marcus Soukup AKA Igor Hax is practising his swirling eye-brow trick, Mercy’s AntiClimax Issue arrived last night, damp with disgusting ink, Phil and Emily have figured out how to get the NO INPUT screen showing on the projector, and Carl Rohumaa is speeding up the M5 making explosion noises with his cheeks as I type.
We’re very excited. And so, it seems, is everyone else. There’s a whole plethora of filmcrews and journalists, artizans, friends, countrybumpkins, fatcats and gossipmongers coming down for the free drink and to catch a glimpse of Joe’s gigglesack, and we already have confirmation that my mother and father will be on the scene. Be on your best behavior everyone.
Here’s the line-up one more time:
In the Lecture Theatre:
6:00 Virgin Shroud 1993, Dorothy Cross
7:00-8:00 Camelia e le Dragon, Niki de Saint Phalle
In the Café:
7:00 Kaya
7:30-9:00 Mercy Launch, w/Binary Jam DJs
7:50 & 8:50 Guitar and Pyro, Carl Rohumaa
In the Hospitality Suite:
8:00 It Looks Like You’re Writing a Letter, Ross Sutherland
8:30-9:00 Live to Learn the Lanaguage, Nathan Jones w/ Wave Machines, Phil Communication and Emily Voelker
plus The Alternative Turner Prize exhibition and announcements
Don’t be late.
Be at ‘Late at TATE’.
sorry.
xx
Here we go … First issue of 2008, ‘Anticlimax’, is back from the printers with a record low of mistakes, bad credits, typos and print fuckups. Huzzah!
Featuring work by Stephen Chan, Graphique Club, Ross Sutherland, Bobby Newall, Hugo James, Kenn Goodall, Roger Osborne, Kenn Taylor, Doug Mercy, Kathryn Cooper, Shane Gladstone, Richard Fairhead, Jonathan Greenbank, Eva Datta, Juliana Charltonova, Jennifer Anne Isabel Poole, Joe Mercy, Nathan Mercy and Naughty Babies. Whew!
We’ll give it an official release at the Tate Liverpool show tomorrow night, even more reason to show up. If you are babysitting or going on a bad date, then fear not: we’ll get it distributed to the usual stockists by the end of the week. x
2008 in Liverpool is 6 weeks old at the time of writing, and already any chance of writing some ‘hilarious’ sarcastic comments about it have been utterly topped by reality: months, years, of build up, the pomp and the ceremony, the piéce de résistance - a golden son brought ‘home’ to sing to us from the roof of one of Liverpool’s grandest buildings - then he goes and dicks it right up. Brilliant.
We’re all for honesty and controversy from our pop stars but it is a bit much to start slagging off the city - you know the one, the one you say you supposedly “never let down” in your shit song - when said city has endured great expense to get you and your rubbish mate to come and entertain us. Cheers la.
While we’re on about the opening weekend, who was that guy who never bothered to learn his lines presenting the thing from a scrumpled-up piece of paper? They should have got Craig Charles to present it, he needs a break.
Funnily enough we only set the theme for the next issue (Anticlimax) with our tongues-in-cheek, truth is we were sort of excited - then we get those big banners on the tower block outside Lime Street for example, fucking travesty of bad design and roll-call of clichés they are… carnival whore? Check. DJ? Check. Superlambbanana? Check. Odd yoga-type gents? Check. And then they have the cheek to put words like ‘nonconformist’ and ‘rebellious’ all over the damn things. Pisses us off. One positive though, is that it does look like an advert for a manga movie from really far off. The other positive is that they’re really shit, and we knew they would be.
Seems like everyone wants a piece of us now that 08 has kicked in, we’re getting more press than you can shake a cat at. We showed some Germans around Liverpool in the pissing rain and went on a bit about how it’s not exactly Berlin but people are still doing cool stuff - but then got all defensive when they started to be a bit underwhelmed and everything. Anyways, it went in the German Financial Times of all things.
Apparently I said to her “Although people here are working class, they can still handle modern art. They don’t view it as conceptional bullshit, but as something that keeps the city alive”, which doesn’t sound like me, but it does sound quite cool, so I’ll take it.
We’re on Radio 4 this morning (this morning being Tuesday 15th), in a documentary called Zine Scene - which is hosted by none other than Jarvis Cocker. Fabulous. It’s on at 11.30am. The show also features our favouritest other ‘zine, GO from Sheffield. We love them. It’s a two-parter so be sure to get on it next Tuesday too (22nd), same time, and both shows - as is always the BBC way - will be available on the website for 7 days after broadcast, to hear again.