The Last Ever Crank Gig?
Most bands form at cool places like Cobham Community Art College or some kind of Fame School in South London. But not Crank. They met at Poke.
Their first performance was at the final ClubPub. If you weren't there it was good. Very good. And noisy. So very very noisy. (There's some photos and links here).
Now it's time for their final performance. Ever. Probably.
Like all the best bands Crank have been cut off in their prime through tragic circumstances: Nico is moving back to Sweden and Dave is buggering off to do whatever it is that the f**king saviour of f**king Rock and Roll does when they're not in the server room sorting stuff out.
It's the last chance saloon folks...
Thursday 17th July: 19.30 - late.
The Gramaphone Bar
60-62 Commercial Street,
London E1 6LT
Download the flyer (if you print it out it might be worth something one day).
The Smallest Room in the Office
We've got some new toilets. Perhaps TMI for some. But they're really nice toilets. Our lovley friends at Household designed them for us. We sort of bartered the new loos for a new website.
They're the experts on toilet design (well spaces of all kinds really) so I nicked the description of the toilets off their site:
Each loo is personalised to reflect the mood of the user. There is a Dressing Room, Book Club, Workout (for the mind), Auditorium, Gallery and Glass house.
I love the thought of being a 'user' in this situation. And I have to say I'm very much enjoying user-testing each of the themed rooms.
RIP ClubPub
ClubPub has finally been laid to rest. Wigs were coiffured. Trousers were tightened. Guitars were crafted. The final evening saw an unscheduled guitar rock challenge that would have put most 14 year-old bedroom guitar gods to shame. Then the real heroes arrived - with the debut of Poke's own rock gods band - Crank - a LOUD, heavy-hitting set that made your ears bleed, yet beg for more. Awesome.
As if that wasn't enough Vasco and Dickon tuned out of rock through rave into acid with the arrival of ClubPub legend Acid Malc who delivered a storming acid infused Techno bosh-a-thon. Then Iain played music that offended the venue so much they decided to close early.
What next? Who knows? Who cares?
Those that were there can truly say "We came, we saw, we rocked a bit".
For a history of ClubPub in photos explore the clubpub tag on Flickr.
If I'd have known you were coming...
Although it might look from our blog like all we ever do is work (and sometimes it feels a bit like that too), we do tend to have sporadic burst of fun while we're at it.
Here's some photos from the (ir)regular cake baking contest that went on recently.
Organising the bake-off wasn't that hard. Apart from the 6 weeks it took to decide what the rules were. Of which most of the time was spent re-visiting the old cake vs. biscuit debate.
But as we all now know:
A cake goes hard as it ages, a biscuit goes soft...
Or something like that.
Designs of the Year
The Design Museum are running an exhibition called Designs of the Year. It's on from 13th Feb - 27th April.
They say:
Designs of the Year presents 100 projects nominated by a group of internationally respected design experts, curators, critics, practitioners and enthusiasts.
These projects fall within seven categories: architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport.
I've got no idea who we should thank, but the Orange Unlimited site has ended up in there. Which is really exciting for us.
You should go and check it out, not to see the Never Ending webpage (you can see that here), but to see all the other great stuff that we're really proud to be sitting alongside:
- Gary Hustwit's Helvetica documentary
- Streetcar
- The Nintendo Wii
- OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)
- The new Fiat 500
Find out more at the Design Museum Site.
Aussie ClubPub
We've got a new approach for promoting ClubPub. Instead of telling you when it's coming up we're going to post photos showing what a great time people had instead. That way it might encourage more people to sign-up for the ClubPub mailing list (the only reliable way to find out when the next one's going to be).
The theme was Australia day. If the photos lead you to believe something else, sorry.
There's also a second lovely set of photos from the night (all arty and black and white and stuff) over here.
Halloween Clubpub
When:
Wednesday 31 October, 7ish-late
Where:
The Electricity Showrooms, 39A Hoxton Square
(near 333/Mother Bar just by Old St/Hoxton St)
More:
www.clubpub.org
Tacheback 2007
For the last 3 years Poke have supported Everyman's annual sponsored moustache growing month. Well when we say Poke have supported it what we mean is that we haven't fired anyone for gross facial misconduct during the slightly embarrassing first couple of weeks of 'tache growth.
