Medway Does Americana: Videos

Thanks again to everyone who came to the Barge last week to help us raise money to keep The Medway Broadside online and afloat for another year. As well as playing, Rew shot some hand-held footage of all the performers, and you can now see a song from each of them below. It was quite an evening. You can probably tell that :0)

Unframed Again: Sunday 7th August

We enjoyed last year’s Unframed exhibition at the Barge so much that we thought we’d do it again.  Click on the poster to download it, spread the word and join us for a portable, accessible exhibition by local photographers wrapped up in a family friendly afternoon of live acoustic music from Didi Bergman and Survivors of Suki. Check out the Facebook event here.

Medway Happenings 2011

Click on the poster to download it.

Medway Eyes    The Medway Broadside    Oxjam    Facebook Event

A Postcard to Belgrade

Saturday 16th July sees The Singing Loins play the BELEF festival in Serbia.

They asked Medway Eyes to compile a slideshow of photos by Phil Dillon, Sweet Fanny Adams and Alex Turner (Monaxle) to be shown on a huge screen behind them while they play their set.

We made them this postcard from Medway. This is the short version, ten times faster than the version to be played at the gig.  Why not see how many Medway places and people you can recognise?

Phil, Fanny and Alex on Flickr

The Singing Loins online

BELEF

The Len Price 3 Unplugged

Great news! The Len Price 3 have always fancied doing an acoustic gig and will be playing at the Barge on April 16th with support from Groovy Uncle and The Bresslaws. The gig is a fundraiser for Medway Eyes and The Medway Broadside, so bring plenty of loose change, as neither we nor the Broadside receive any funding – instead we are volunteer run and completely independent.

For those who might like a memento of the gig to take home, there will be a strictly limited number of prints available on the night from the photo shoots for the band’s Pictures album.

We’re curious to hear how all three artists’ songs will sound pared down to their acoustic essentials, and we reckon you will be too. See you on the 16th…

Medway Eyes Does Britpop

Saturday 6th November sees us back at the Barge in Gillingham for our last Oxjam fundraiser of 2010, where we’ll be celebrating the best of Britpop which, you may recall, was the UK’s last great bid for musical dominance. Back in the Nineties it was all M People, Spice Girls and Grunge, and previously dance music had ruled the waves. Now it was time for proper tunes you could whistle as you did the Lambeth Walk down to the newsagents to buy your copy of Loaded magazine, or surfed the tide of New Labour pre-millenial optimism on your way to procure your first ever DVD from the Virgin Megastore. Or something like that.

Like all of Medway Eyes’ Barge bashes, we reckon this will be big. Even bigger than the mobile phone you had during the great Blur vs Oasis made up media war of 1994, so get there early to bagsy a table. The live music will start some time between 8:30 and 9:00.

Please do your bit by coming along with a pocketful of change for Oxjam, by spreading the word and by clicking on the poster to download and share it.

As ever, our line up is subject to change. We’re relaxed and groovy like that. Expect some bonus performers.

See you on Saturday.

Meeting the Greens

Some of you will recognise the chap in the blue shirt from our last post about the Bridge Podcast. His name is Steve Keevil and he’s running for election as a councillor in River ward.

Steve invited Medway Eyes (that’s Rew and Anna on the left) to meet Keith Taylor, the Green MEP for the South East (foot on stump) and members of the Medway Green Party to talk about the new bus station that is to be built on the Paddock.  Trees have already been felled in preparation for this, despite reports that only 360 of Medway’s 250,000 population have actually been consulted about this (and even then, 69% of those canvassed didn’t want the station to be built on the Paddock). We discussed this lack of consultation and the environmental impact of the project.  We were surprised to learn that Medway Renaissance and SEEDA are no more (something that we hadn’t seen in the local press) and pleased to discover how Brussels can sometimes help to bring councils to account.

We took the Greens for a walk along Desolation Row to discuss our ongoing multimedia project, the area’s history, empty shops and the tragedy of the Theatre Royal. There was general agreement that what we were walking through didn’t feel like a city, and we went on to discuss the individual character of each of Medway’s distinct towns.

It was interesting to discover how much we all had in common, something that party politics will never quite be able to grasp – at least not while infantile point scoring, careerism and ideology are deemed more important than dialogue.

One last note:  At no point did the Greens ever preach policy at us or ask if they could count on our votes, and we – not being party political – found that very refreshing.

Sight Unseen Exhibition

Following the success of the Tidal Flow exhibition of 2009, Medway Eyes returns to the Riverside Country Park in Gillingham in June with a new photographic exhibition that accentuates the unseen and provides a fresh take on the familiar.

Sight Unseen runs for three weeks and opens with a family friendly day of two halves; the exhibition opening and a picnic at the Riverside Country Park followed by live music at the Barge until teatime.

We hope to see you there.

Medway Eyes Website

Riverside Country Park

The Barge

Back To The Seventies: Line Up Confirmed

Well, as confirmed as these things ever get anyway.  Click through to download and to find out about the original image.

Back to the Seventies