Bandstand

Spontaneously, yesterday, I went to see the Irrepressibles play on a bandstand in Leyton. They were dressed in costumes made of hundreds of flip-top bin bags- the thin white ones- and they were playing totally acoustically on the bandstand in Coronation Gardens to a small crowd of people, including a very puzzled-looking elderly Indian woman with a tartan shopping trolley, a tramp or two, and a dog.
Morning; it was a bit cloudy and breezy, but the wind blew the sound backwards and forwards and it all blended in with the sound of the trees waving about in the background. It was so lovely: you had to listen really hard to hear everything. Such a delicate sound. The wind got into their bin-bags and puffed them up so it looked like a bunch of clouds had floated down and become trapped under the roof of the bandstand. Strings, woodwind (what gorgeous sound an oboe makes), double bass , xylophone, sax, guitar, and Jamie's wild voice like the voice of nature mourning the banalities of little towns like Leyton, all that grey traffic, struggling shops and litter. What an utterly moving way to spend a Sunday morning, tucked under the armpit of Leyton Orient Football Ground, where normally you hear a completely different sort of acoustic singing, a completely different expression of manhood!