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BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:2bc8e1c6-4456-4c51-8ab2-13f149193c59@360exp.net
SEQUENCE:29842553
DTSTAMP:20260928T022712Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260927T235345Z
DTSTART:20261009T173000Z
DTEND:20261009T210000Z
SUMMARY:Mark Fry performs Dreaming with Alice
LOCATION:EartH
DESCRIPTION:This event will take place in EartH Theatre.\n\n**Mark Fry and 
 guests perform his 1972 cult album Dreaming with Alice\, live in full for 
 the first time ever. With performances by Ian Button\, Isaac I Ockenden\, 
 Daisy Rickman\, Iain Ross\, Ella Russell (The New Eves) and David Sheppard
 \; live visuals by Oh Kestrel Film\; and support from Bridget Hayden & the
  Apparitions and Neil Luck.**\n\nNow-Again Reserve: “9/10: A masterpiece
  of psychedelic whimsy… Lovingly packaged with extra material from highl
 y listenable mid-70s sessions.” — Uncut\, August 2021\n\n“The lithe
 \, spindrift guitar work of Dreaming With Alice achieves a sense of quinte
 ssence.” — The Wire\, July 2007\n\nAfter leaving school in 1970 I set 
 off for Italy to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence
 . Italy in the 1970s was a turbulent place. I was lucky to find the art sc
 hool open more than two or three days a week. Either it was on strike or c
 losed for the celebration of a saint’s day. It was very chaotic. I began
  to feel restless and as though I was missing out on Italy. I left the Acc
 ademia after one year.\n\nLaura Papi\, a family friend\, encouraged me to 
 do more with the songs I had been writing in Florence and to think about p
 utting together an album. One day she gave me a present of a little Grundi
 g tape recorder. I couldn’t double-track\, but it inspired me to keep wr
 iting songs.\n\nIn the autumn of 1971 we went down to Rome where Laura\, t
 ogether with her friend the actor Franco Leo\, had managed to arrange an a
 udition for me at RCA. I remember sitting on the edge of a big office chai
 r in front of some very austere-looking men in suits\, playing my songs.\n
 \nWhen I had finished they asked me to go outside and wait. I thought\, 
 “Oh well\, that’s that.” A few minutes later\, the door opened and I
  was presented with a ten-year contract with IT Dischi\, a subsidiary of R
 CA. It felt like a life sentence\, but I signed on the dotted line.\n\nIT 
 Dischi put me into some small studios in Rome to start laying down the son
 gs. Every week for a month I set off from Florence on my 250cc Ducati moto
 rbike. I had a kind of Easy Rider chromed hoop welded on to the back in or
 der to strap my guitar on for the journey. But when I arrived at the studi
 os after many hours on the autostrada\, the guitar was almost impossible t
 o tune and my hands were terribly cramped.\n\nThe sound engineer was an an
 gling enthusiast and he seemed more interested in fly-fishing than in reco
 rding. I remember watching him through the control room window. When the r
 ed light came on and I started to play\, he would put his legs up on the m
 ixing desk and disappear behind a fishing manual. I became despondent\; it
  wasn’t working.\n\nBut IT Dischi came to my rescue and introduced me to
  some Scottish musicians who\, like me\, had signed a chunk of their lives
  away. They had made a little home studio in their basement flat in Rome\,
  and it was there\, with their help\, that Dreaming With Alice eventually 
 came to life on two 4-track Revox tape recorders over the space of a coupl
 e of weeks.\n\nThe studio wasn’t very well soundproofed so we couldn’t
  use drums\, but I think in the end that was a good thing. I remember hear
 ing Song For Wilde being rewound and thinking that backwards it sounded li
 ke a mysterious Celtic reel. I thought IT Dischi would never agree to incl
 uding it\, but they did. I don’t think I realised at the time that allow
 ing artists a lot of freedom was part of their ethos.\n\nRome was a very e
 xciting place to be at that time. Fellini‘s recent film Satyricon had ca
 used a sensation. Pasolini was at Cinecitta filming Decameron. Laura knew 
 quite a few directors and actors and we often went down to the studios. Fr
 anco was appearing in Carmelo Bene‘s extraordinary film Salome which inc
 luded a scene of him carrying a naked girl up a flight of stairs towards a
  screen made of 50\,000 plastic roses. Italians had – and still have –
  a great love of the surreal. An unknown English boy with very long hair s
 inging songs about witches eating watermelon seemed to appeal to them. Dar
 io Fo\, who used to come round to Laura’s house with a whole crowd of ar
 tists\, actors and writers\, asked me to join his theatre company\, an off
 er I didn’t take up which I’ve regretted ever since.\n\nAfter the reco
 rding IT Dischi introduced me to the great Lucio Dalla\, who at the time w
 as also signed to RCA. He was going on tour in Italy that summer and IT Di
 schi thought that adding me into the tour would be a good way of promoting
  my album. Lucio and I had an immediate rapport and I joined his band. He 
 was already a tremendous star\, a highly regarded and influential songwrit
 er. He became a kind of guru for me.\n\nWe travelled far down into Calabri
 a and around Sicily\, playing at huge outdoor festivals. The further south
  we played the more we could feel the political fervour. Lucio was a popul
 ar hero in the south. We would play a little warm-up number before he came
  on. When he finally appeared the crowd roared. He would punch the air\, a
 nd tens of thousands reciprocated the gesture with cries of “Lucio! Luci
 o!”. In the middle of these highly charged sets\, Lucio would introduce 
 me as his “amico inglese” and I would play Lute and Flute\, which IT D
 ischi thought of as “the single”.\n\nShortly after the tour of Italy I
  went back to England. I thought if I was going to take the music seriousl
 y I would have to try it there.\n\nDreaming With Alice was released in Ita
 ly after I had left the country. I received a few copies of the album in t
 he post and I remember wishing that the photo on the cover hadn’t been s
 o severely cropped. In the original I’m playing my guitar alongside my l
 ittle brother Wilde who is strumming away on his miniature toy guitar.\n\n
 I wasn’t aware of any reviews. I think there was just one pressing of Al
 ice. Many years later I was amazed to find\, via the internet\, that it ha
 d been bootlegged (at least twice) and had become something of a cult reco
 rd. In 2006\, music writer and record sleuth Richard Morton Jack tracked m
 e down and set the wheels in motion with another release. Some years later
 \, record label owner and collector Egon Alapatt got in touch and I was de
 lighted when in 2020 his LA-based Now-Again Records released an all-analog
 ue vinyl transfer from the original master tapes.” Mark Fry\n\nFor more 
 information on access at EartH\, please see our FAQs here: https://bit.ly/
 44dzl75 or contact us at access@earthackney.co.uk\n\nEartH is a social ent
 erprise committed to supporting new musicians\, with music studios in the 
 venue that are completely free for young artists to use. When you attend a
  show in EartH Theatre\, head to the back of the space to rent a cushion f
 or just £2. Not only will you get to sit more comfortably\, but all proce
 eds go towards funding Studio 36. Find out more here: https://earthackney.
 co.uk/about/studio-36/\n\nBoletos: https://dice.fm/event/xeddb3-mark-fry-p
 erforms-dreaming-with-alice-9th-oct-earth-london-tickets
URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/2bc8e1c6-4456-4c51-8ab2-13f149193c5
 9
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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