MyGen
Profile Generator
MyGen
Profile Generator
MyGen
Profile Generator
'A cross between the music of Ian Dury, Brecht and Weill, an
Irish pub
band and a 1950's skiffle group. Songs of urban-alienation with plenty
of
fierce spontaneous playing.' (THE GUARDIAN.)
Although NIGEL BURCH started performing at the age of 10 in his
first
band The Blackouts his serious(?) career began writing and performing
in the
seventies and eighties with a number of new-wave/punk outfits such as
The
Outpatients and Figures of Fun. During this period they shared the bill
with
bands such as The Damned, Sham 69, The Members and Crass. In the
mid-eighties - solo and armed only with a ukulele and a scary pair of
tonsils (billed as "The Troubadour Of Urban Angst") he stormed
the
stages of the pub/club/cabaret scene like some demented neo-George
Formby.
He appeared alongside the likes of John Cooper Clarke and Patrik Fitzgerald
and
released a stark and uncompromising solo vinyl album called "Fascists
In The
Snug Bar". (Faintly amusing - The Morning Star.) He continued to
perform his set of strange and unsettling songs, now occasionally
accompanied by string-players and percussionists. Later he assembled
around
him a collection of musicians from a variety of backgrounds and
disciplines.
In 1997, with an expanded sound that included such instruments as
the
violin, double bass, cello and drums this eccentric ensemble now known
as
NIGEL BURCH AND THE FLEA-PIT ORCHESTRA played their first
performance. The banjulele bashing bard and his musical misfits play
twisted
skiffle and bar-room ballads - Cockney-Weimar cabaret style. Gritty
inner-city ditties you can drink and dance to - punkdiddley Brechtian
hoedown, spit-and sawdust vaudeville: The Existential Knees-Up.
Humorous and
horrible, poignant and debauched. In London they have played The
Hackney
Empire, The Borderline, The 100 Club, The Spitz, King's Head Theatre
Pub,
The Klinker, The 12 Bar Club, The Hope & Anchor, The Buffalo Bar, The
Arcola
Theatre plus countless other pubs and clubs and anarchists's balls.
They
have also toured in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Moscow -
where they are very popular, seeming to appeal to the Russian alcoholic
sensibility.
The band has appeared three times on BBC London radio once on the
Peter
Currin Show and twice on the Mel And Sue Show. Nigel has appeared solo
on
Viva Radio and resonance.fm. They have been featured on the Round the
World
play-list on Spirit FM and make a live appearance in the up-and-coming
short
film Percy Circus. They were interviewed for Moscow TV and an interview
with
Nigel Burch appeared in The St Petersburg Times in an article called
Songs
For When You Want To Weep And Waltz. Burch has also acted in both
musical
theatre (once as one of Santa's secret agents in The Legend Of
Chocolate
with The Sofa Trio) and in a number of short films - most recently
making a
very brief appearance as a harem guard in the dark erotic fantasy
Prayer
Cushions Of The Flesh. The CD BOTTLE SUCKER featuring Flea-Pit favourites such as
'Love
Letters Down The Toilet',' Me And All The Other Vegetables' and 'I Used
To
Be Mad' is available from gigs and on request. The follow-up CD MR
DOO-LALLY
will be released shortly and includes 'The Pub With No Name', 'Bad To
My
Body' and of course 'Mr Doo-Lally'. Nigel Burch is also a published
poet/illustrator and his work has appeared in a number of magazines
including DOG, Iron, Ape, The Rialto, Liar Republic alongside Irvine
Welsh
and Billy Childish, amongst others. His first collection was called
Sentimental Monster (Echo Room Press). Charles Bukowski described his
writing as "the best cure for a hangover I ever lucked across."
As a
graphic artist he has shown his work in England, Germany, U.S.A,
Switzerland
and Austria. His last London exhibition was at The Stairwell Gallery
and
called "Old Hat." See: www.fleapitorchestra.co.uk for details
of
band and solo gigs.
