White Mischief Steampunk event: Journey to the centre of the earth

I went down to London for the White Mischief steampunk event at the Scala, Kings cross. The theme was Vernian again: Journey to the centre of the Earth. I didnt take many pix but there are some other people's pix on Flickr if you search for White Mischief.

Another great event with the usual eclectic mixture of audience and performers. I particularly liked The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing: http://www.myspace.com/blamedfornothing as I had missed seeing their History of British Industry at the Edinburgh festival. They really put the punk into steampunk and also the steam - a great song about the famous Stephenson and Stevenson families and also a funny one about Charles darwin.

Other features were trapeze artists, the Illumini, an escapologist (but not as good as the old guy who used to be at Tower Hill doing such things), some amazingly unerotic burlesquers, and the Correspondents - I dont know how it is possible to dance and sing so fast for so long - surely chemical help must be involved. Costumes of the audience lots of fun as always.

I am starting out with the family's biggest windup gramophone because I now realise these wonderful machines were my first introduction to steampunk, when I was a small kid in the 1950s. I cannot remember a time when I havent had one. The lovely big one in the picture is still at my dad's house until I can figure a way to bring it home to Scotland by train. It weighs a tonne and the horn is of course enormous and fairly fragile, being papier mache with fake snake paper on it. The shape of the horn was designed for hifi sound reproduction and a really amazing loudness. We have often had to shove pullovers and cushions in the horn to keep from annoying the entire street.

I have 3 portable windups and one transition one which operates more or less like a windup but is actually electrically operated. I have had (now sadly gone the way of many windups in the 1970s when no one repaired them) a lovely cabinet machine but this big one was a gift to the family from a colleague of my father's. She lived in a tiny house and couldnt take this in when her own mum died. Most of my parents 78s were jazz and blues but mine are mostly swing, crooners and musicals' hits. The first record ever bought for me, when I was preschool, was a 78 of Perry Como's most famous hit: Catch a Falling Star. I also had lots of childrens novelty songs on 78, such as "Two little tom tits were tweeting" and of course teddy bears picnic. When I was in nursery school in the late 50s, the end of the day was always a windup playing 78s of our choice, while we waited for our mums to fetch us. Now my kids are intrigued and one of my wee portables occupies the coffee table in the living room.