Saturday, June 13, 2009

Hugh Hopper RIP


Sad to hear of the news...I once saw him play, at the Camberwell College of Arts - it was in the middle of the 2006 World Cup. Germany had just beaten Argentina earlier in the evening. Charles Hawyard was on drums, grinning manically; Tymon Dogg was coaxing weird sounds out of weird home-made instruments that looked like huge metronomes zigzagged with strings, creating a sort of weird harp; while a performance artist, face painted in white, walked around the room doing odd movements and smiling demonically to the audience. There were other strange performers too.
In the middle of all this, Hopper quietly played bass, his face inscrutable. I kept thinking that I might have seen a wry smile occasionally play on his lips when viewing the surreal nature of events around him, but I couldn't quite be sure.