Performing
Currently, Liver & Lights are performing as Bones & the Aft (John Bently Voice, Ian McKean Guitar)
Johnnie B, Billy Bones, John Bently, Joe Soake, Hank Soake, The Beastmaster and the Billyman......
An important element of all the Liver & Lights projects so far has been their translation into live performance. Recently, I have been performing under the guise of Bones & The Aft, my impassioned doggerel enriched by former Balaam & The Angel and Twenty Flight Rockers guitarist Ian Mckean and other musicians as we need them and our set expands...
Incidentally, Ian and I first played together as thirteen year olds in 1971, when we were thrown out of our very first gig at the Church of Scotland New Years Eve party in Aldershot for inciting teenage girls with our lewd thrustingsÉ
The real Liver & Lights performance story starts in 1987 when Magnus Irvin, then gallery manager of Art Work Space in the City of London, allowed me to lock the doors and turn off all the lights during the Private View of Liver & Lights No 7. Illumined only by a few sputtering candles clutched by nervous assistants, Joe Soake harangued art lovers in his coat of many pound shop torches.
This character evolved over many years into my alter ego Joe Soake/The Billyman/Hank: a ranting, homeless alcoholic hollering antimaterialist invective into the bottomless pit of Thatcherism. Joe was not a creation, but a loving re-creation, as have been all my subsequent stage personas, of a real homeless person who lived on the street near my house at the time, in 1980's Deptford.
Throught the nineties performances became more regular and more central to the publications, often utilising the acting skills of my brother Peter Bently and Circus Senso trapeze artist Sue Kingerlee. In 1991 at the Eagle Gallery during The Beastmaster (L&L No. 11), we were gloriously embellished for the first time by the skills of Mardyah Tucker (Violin) and Harvey Eagles (Cello and Electronica).
Harvey Eagles and I became a duo for most of the nineties, performing musically illustrated versions of the books in pubs, poetry clubs, rock clubs, squats, art galleries, museums, working men's clubs and once in a public library much to the dismay of the deafened readers.
In the last decade most of the books have been launched to coincide with events featuring The After Rabbit, a collective of musical mavericks collaborating in the construction of many unforgettable genre defying live shows. The core line-up alongside myself on voice and costumes being composer and all round musical genius Alan Outram, on junkshop synths and melodica, (aka Woodcraft Folk), his brother Phil Outram on drums (formerly with Eighties gloomsters Perfect Disaster) and young Ollie Briggs (aka Ivan Ink and Pen) on guitar.
Other less regular but no less valued members have been Oliver Cherer (aka Dollboy) on synths, theramin and violin bowed saw and my son Arthur Bently on guitar. In one notable 'Rabbit event we invited the audience to create a musical instrument and come and play it with us, expanding the band to fifty people for the night. We were outlandish, home-baked and often misshapen.
We were never the same twice; we thrilled, we dared we entertained. We told the truth and we told it loud......
Bones & The Aft are no less than a continuation; a further development of these passionately held ideals.
John Bently Feb. 2011
"It has a very human heart to it, the work, and - despite John's impeccable punk history - rarely shouts. It talks straight, looks you in the eye, occasionally whispers and can even sigh"
Mike Nicholson.www.zineweeklyblogspot.com
"Perfectly integrated to give a vivid impression of a world where inebriation and inspiration combine to extract spiritual treasure from the mud of existence"
Dr Stephanie Brown. AN Magazine
