Plastic Elephant
“The object we’re offering for your basement is a small plastic elephant. We both have one, and they’re just over 3cm from trunk to tail.
These elephants came into our lives on Friday 3rd April 2010. We were queueing for a gig at Bush Hall in London when a man dressed in 18th century costume walked up and offered each of us an elephant from a metal box. He told us there were a few elephant-elephants in there, and if we were lucky we might get one. We found this comment utterly baffling, but he seemed friendly – and harmless. So, like many others in the queue, we both took an elephant.
Part-way through the gig, we discovered what an elephant-elephant actually was, and realised that neither of us had got one. For a complete understanding, you really need to listen to the album “Evelyn Evelyn” by Evelyn Evelyn.
The album is wonderful, pretty dark and completely bonkers but we hadn’t heard any of it before the gig. “Evelyn Evelyn” were actually Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley wearing one large dress, playing the part of conjoined twin sisters. The album tells their extraordinary (fictional) life story. At one point the twin sisters ended up in a circus with Bimba and Kimba, the world’s only known conjoined twin elephants, sitting on their backs and playing their ukulele to the adoring crowds. Bimba and Kimba were affectionately referred to as Elephant Elephant. So, at last, that mystery was solved!
It turned out that the “giver of elephants”, Robin, was involved in the performance, helping to tell the story of Evelyn Evelyn between songs.
A few days before the gig, an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajökull had erupted, disrupting flights all over Europe. As a result, Evelyn Evelyn’s support band were stranded with no hope of reaching London, so an enterprising duo named Bitter Ruin offered their services as a replacement. We were so impressed by their performance that we decided we definitely wanted to see them again.
We started going to see Bitter Ruin whenever we could, and they completely transformed our gig-going habits. Up until that point we’d tended to go to medium or large venues, and didn’t go to gigs very often. Bitter Ruin played a lot of small venues, in fact sometimes they weren’t really venues at all. We even saw one gig on a rooftop in Hackney! We got used to seeing them every few weeks – once on two consecutive nights.
Through their clever use of social media, they built their fanbase into more of a community and kept us engaged. When they decided to crowdfund their next album, we decided to contribute. As part of the crowdfunder they decided to do a house gig. We weren’t in a
position to host it, but fortunately the couple who did were within easy travelling distance, so we were able to go.
It was a magical gig, wonderfully hosted by Mike and Sue. Bitter Ruin clearly wanted to do something a bit special for us, so they came up with a novel approach for deciding which songs to play and in what order. It was called “Pin the tail on the Setlist”.
They’d written the names of their songs on a large sheet of paper, and before each song was played, it had to be chosen. A member of the audience was blindfolded and had to select the song by pinning a marker to it, guided by the audience shouting “left a bit”, “down a bit” and so on. Then, after all the music, we had the joy of Sue’s amazing cooking.
It turned out that Mike and Sue hosted regular house gigs, and we started to go to them. We began to make friends with them and the regular attendees (including Robin, giver of elephants) – and there was always Sue’s cooking to look forward to. Through these house gigs we discovered some wonderful performers, including Gabby Young, Eliza Rickman and, of course, She Makes War.
A month after we saw Gabby Young’s band at Mike and Sue’s, we went to see them at one of the Royal Albert Hall’s smaller performance spaces. As we were going in we passed Gabby’s violinist, Millie, who recognised us and said hello. We reckoned that would be the only occasion in our lives when we would walk into the Royal Albert Hall and be recognised by one of the performers we were about to see. So far, we’ve been right!
A few years ago we went to one of Robin’s birthday parties. At one point the conversation turned to the topic of how people met Robin. Quite a few people answered “I was queuing for Evelyn Evelyn and he gave me an elephant”.
Through following musicians we discovered at Mike and Sue’s, we’ve discovered other bands that we now love. We’ve been to various gigs where if it hadn’t been for the eruption of an Icelandic volcano, enabling Bitter Ruin to support Evelyn Evelyn, we wouldn’t have been there.
Things moved on: Bitter Ruin split up in 2014. Covid came. We stopped going to gigs. However, the music continued. We started going to online gigs instead, including Laura’s Penfriend gigs. Now it feels as if we’re at the start of a new chapter. We’ve gently started going to real life gigs again, and Bitter Ruin have reunited and recorded a new album which we’re eagerly waiting to hear.
And of course, there’s the excitement of the new Penfriend album, “House of Stories”.
Through all this, our little elephant has stood beside our computer (the other little elephant is “somewhere safe” – i.e. we’re not sure where). It stands there as a reminder of music, musical exploration and discovery, and making new friends.”
Chris and Fiona
Would you like to read another story?
Come back to the basement…