guest blogger @IvorTymchak has a cool time at Temple Works Spoken Word evening . . .
Attila the Stockbroker
The stripped down ambience of the Temple Works Painters bar was a fitting venue to see the punk legend that is Attila the Stockbroker. Even the room temperature seemed to acknowledge the impoverished heritage of those times by maintaining a bleak and steady six degrees centigrade. Attila declared himself to be at home in such desperate conditions.
But first I have to mention Patrik Fitzgerald who was the support act. To hold an audiences attention for any length of time with just a guitar and a voice requires a considerable amount of talent and charm. Patrik may have some talent but as each of his songs relentlessly followed one another without so much as a ‘thank you’ in between, his charm was non existent. After twenty minutes of his unremitting melancholy I’d had enough. Alas, he continued his set for some considerable time after that. Pity.
Atilla on the other hand, had charm in abundance and with just his voice and a mandola he kept the partisan audience engrossed in his performance.
Having never seen Atilla before but for decades absolutely loving his stage name, I tried to figure out what his his popular appeal was. His sometimes corny poetry had the same easy accessibility as that of the brilliant Roger McGough and some of his scatological songs reminded me of Mitch Benn’s acerbic wit. At heart though, Atilla is an old fashioned folk singer with a burning passion and his ballad of William Redfern, with its story of social injustice revealed the motivating power that has sustained him for over three decades of touring… his anger.
I noticed one couple in the audience faithfully singing along to every word of his songs, clearly lifelong fans.
He has that wonderful ability to cleverly articulate common grievances and injustices suffered by everyday people. His chorus of “Maggots 1, Maggie 0” personifies this (although technically, it’s not the maggots that eat you up, it’s bacteria, assuming of course that her body has not been dumped in a wooded part of an abandoned coal mining village). Couple that with a like-able personality and you have a decent package of rousing activist entertainment.
To echo Attila, and as he invariably signaled the end of one of his works, “Cheers!”
Ivor Tymchak