Ware! On the opposite bank of the river to those derelict Jacobean gazebos the town aspires to preserve and in the shadows of its sole surving maltings, Tuesday evenings inside Becketts barn at the Amwell end of Ware are dedicated to the anti-spirit of Dada: an Alpine flower transplanted in the rural environs of Hertfordshire and nurtured there at the Bar de le Brunch, an incubus of local intellectual ardour.

At the door its the oily Camoedine assuming the role of three burly gentlemen wearing tuxedos. A fourth exchanges our money for tickets and quotes Kurt Schwitters at us: "There is no such thing as chance" he says. "A door may happen to fall shut, but this is not not by chance. It is a concious experience of the door, the door, the door."

The door falls shut behind us and to the accompaniment of musique concrete amplified to the threshold of pain we take our seats for the cabatet.

Between whiles Mademoiselle Hennings and Mademoselle Leconte sing French and Dannish chansons. Herr Tristan Tzara recites Rumanian poetry. A balalaika orchestra plays delightful folksongs and dances.

The Muscovite Five take the stage. A quintet of anti-friends led vocally by Gina Kremlin, late of the Marine Girls, and backed courteously by Sarah Wilson on guitar, her brother Andy Wilson on drums, saxophone player Madeline Hadley and dashing Mark Flunder providing bass foundation, they execute a short set that distills all the elements of reason and anti-reason, sense and nonsense, design and chance, consciousness and unconsciousness, and brings them together as necessary parts of a whole, which is the central message of Dada.

In a refined contralto Mademoiselle Kremlin tells of ´Distant Flags´: "from the beach to the hills a thousand golden daffodils will bloom today, as Keats would say". It matters not at all that the cockney bard, even if he lisps in numbers, says no such thing, though Wordswoth wanders similary. Free from the tyranny of rationality, of banality, she continues: "if Keats were alive today he would be happy, merry and gay." notwithstanding the uncertainly that one who pens an Ode to Melancholy and speaks of the fever and the fret of the human condition will reincarnate to such joyful conclusions in an age even less pleasant than his own.

The highlight of the night, however, relates the tale of ´Remarkable Harry´who, to the disconecerment of his wife Harriet, sports a moustache in the anti-manner of Sur-Dala-realist Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp's Mona Lisa until "one morning, of cource" and it drops into his bowl of cornflakes, whereupon..."Shave it off Harry, Harriet said. Pull it off, trim it off, cut it off dead, take it off, break it off, Harry my darling, my dearest get rid of it!"

Other items include an instrumental on better behaviour even than the efforts of Pigbag, songs of ´Cameo Carvings´and ´Mauve Beaches´, plus one bearning the title ´Vladimir's Tea Cosy´and containing the sole lyric: "I don't like this song. I don't know a word of it." ending abruptly on this note.

Portion Control, following, describe a trio of young men and their synthesisers who exhaust the possibilities of noise-music in the vein of Edgar Varese and to which I find myself humming that phonetic classic of Hugo Ball's ´O Gadji Beri Bimba´, with particular reference to the line "viola laxato viola zimbrzbim viola uli paluji maloo."

© NME, 1982

Digital assistance and credit: Simon Dell <simon@stroppy.demon.co.uk>