|
Phil Doran – Alphabetti Spaghetti '...energetic, fast-paced, wild, and thoroughly entertaining... quite wonderful... delightfully wacky without the usual avant garde pretense... at once edgy, insightful, excruciating and amusingly true to life....knockabout funny and uniquely weird ...poetic stories that stretch the boundaries of fiction.' Phil Doran is Magic Phil. Magic Phil is The Spaghetti Faction. The Spaghetti Faction is an anarchic, multi faceted, badly behaved, subversive, anti-rock'n'roll ruleless but far from clueless collection of performance poems which have been simultaneously inspiring, revolting, delighting, fighting, arming, charming and catapulting over the heads of a mixed bag of audiences for several years now. And Alphabetti Spaghetti is a timely written record of these barbed Bolshie words and rabblesome rhymes. Phil Doran is a rebel, an anarchist, a genius, a misfit, a talented wordsmith who won't toe the line or shoe the horse he's been given. He obviously loves words, loves to play with them, make them jar against each other and scream in submission or play meekly, thoughtfully or sensually, hilariously or uncomfortably, doing his subversive bidding. His work doesn't obey the creative writing handbook, the dull ABC of audience bored to cheers, but has its own seditious logic which bursts into flames as it leaves the singed paper. Whether he's performing live at the myriad of mixed venues he either delights or disgusts, or being decoded from the page in the cerebral clutter of your own bathroom, his poetical prose pieces have a life and a vitality that makes them worth the tussle of understanding.
Collecting all this work in one volume impresses you with the wideness of his interests, the broad sweep of his engagement, the totality of his vision. Whether he's dealing with The Wizard of Oz and mental health, cold callers and pregnancy, Cinderella and risk assessments, Espresso Buddhists, Father Christmas, The Spitting Vicar of Trumpington, Mrs Chomsky or The Gingerbread Manager, he raises a smile of reluctant recognition which can be fanned into a furious determination to make a change, of a sort that won't be dispensed below the scanner. His are allegorical tales told with a mix of ribald disgust at the mad system we live under, and a humane compassion for those whose lives are made ridiculous, redundant or ruined by it. But at the same time the wild word association, the incredible play of puns and consumer cliché and idle pop culture make this collection, just like a Spaghetti Faction gig, entertaining, energising and inspiring. Probably not to be devoured all in one sitting, these pages contain some truly alternative underground nourishment for those wanting to escape the brain-dead monotony of mainstream culture, a life of whirring hamster wheels and The Peopled Republic of Aldi. A Suspect Package. Tales Through the Godhole. Inappropriate Material. Words as Weapons. Rosey R*E*P*E*A*T |
