ALTERNATIVE MUSIC INTERVIEW
But here you’ll get a mixed male and female crowd aged between 18 and 60. Seeing that for the first time blew me away and showed me there are real possibilities in this city. • Pardon, To Tu is a fantastic place and that’s especially true if you have a record to present or promote. Eufemia I consider as a meeting spot to experiment. If you’ve got a bass player and a drummer who’ve never played before it’s the kind of place that will tell you, “sure, give it a go.” That’s exciting as you never know what will happen. And there’s also Chmury which is getting more and more professional all the time. Those are the three venues that are really on my radar. I also have a lot of time for CDQ and Mózg. CDQ has a beautiful and underused chamber, and I actually like that they don’t have a bar – you know people are there specifically for your music. Mózg, in the meantime, has a good location, astounding acoustics and a great layout. It still feels like it hasn’t taken-off properly but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned into the next big thing.
THE FACE OF ALTERNATIVE
Head of the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra, and former member of Spiritualized, saxophonist Ray Dickaty shares his thoughts about the role venues play…
• What’s the most important thing about a venue? Its atmosphere. Of course acoustics are important, but they’re also part of the atmosphere. Having spent years trying to find the right sax and the right mouthpiece, I want to play as acoustically as possible so that the sound is replicated and relayed accurately – it’s hard to make sax sound good when the sound is going through loads of wires. • Crowd numbers don’t mean much to me. It’s great to walk out in front of a full house but I would always rather perform in front of an attentive audience. If you ask me how Polish crowds differ, then I’d say in age. I’m surprised how young they are sometimes. It’s genuinely exciting to see that they’re willing to explore music. Improvisation is a bit of a dirty word in Britain: people think of bearded blokes smoking a pipe.
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Warsaw Insider | APRIL 2016
• The most hostile place I’ve played at was the Joiners Arms in Salford: the locals called it The Broken Arms. When we arrived nicotine was practically dripping from the walls and two old guys were fighting. For gigs like that you need to build up an attitude to feel invincible. We decided to go on stage and be as obnoxious as possible: ‘we hate you and we’re going to kill you with noise!’ I’ve grown older and mellowed out, but even when I was playing with Spiritualized we needed to have that feeling, especially when we were supporting an inappropriate band. Sometimes a venue can be too friendly; a bit of edge and distance is better than having people waving at you from the audience shouting they’ll buy you a drink after. • If there’s a dream gig I’ve played, that would be the Bluebird Theater in Denver with Spiritualized. We had been touring for so long we knew the songs backwards and it was just one of those nights were the instruments felt like they were playing themselves. • What bugs me is that alternative musicians aren’t getting the recognition they deserve from the jazz press and radio. They’re the ones you’ll hear moaning that nothing is happening in local jazz but how do they know? Now it’s true, that sometimes in the less mainstream venues the music you’ll hear will be shit, but other times amazing things happen.