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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Brexit Big Band announces new live dates
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 26 June 2018
Matthew Herbert’s Brexit Big Band have announced a series of shows around the EU – INCLUDING THE UK – over the next few months.
The project was officially launched in March 2017, as the British government triggered Article 50 and started the process of pushing the UK away from the EU. At the same time, the Brexit Big Band began an ever-evolving process of collaboration across the Union. Both the government and the band entered their respective projects without any real idea of what would happen. Things are seemingly working out better for one of them.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks Brexit is going well”, says Herbert. Name-checking some notable Brexiters, he adds. “Jacob Rees-Mogg is telling investors to take their money out of the UK. Nigel Lawson is moving to France. Parts of the Leave campaign broke the law and Nigel Farage has floated the idea of a second referendum”.
“Furthermore”, he continues, referencing recent events in Westminster, “‘take back control’ apparently doesn’t extend to our own parliament, the majority of whom have voted against giving themselves any say over the deal and its consequences”.
The second anniversary of the big European referendum having just passed, he continues: “Two years in and there’s still no plan from the government and we’re only a few months away now [from formally exiting the EU]. It’s embarrassing, disheartening and utterly devoid of a positive vision for the kind of place we might want Britain to be. This is where the Brexit Big Band comes in”.
He then provides a bullet point list of everything the Brexit Big Band has achieved in recent months:
• We have walked the Northern Ireland border, recording sounds as we go.
• We have dismantled a Ford Fiesta into its component parts.
• We have someone swimming the Channel for us.
• We’re recording in a fish and chip shop in Grimsby.
• We are recording the demolition of a British factory.
• We took part in one of the silent marches for Grenfell.
• We’ve written a song in German.
• We’ve made a symphony of endangered animals.
• We’re recording inside a World War Two aircraft.
• We recorded a German passport misbehaving in Nigel Farage’s local pub.
• We’re organising a European kissathon in Trafalgar Square.
• We’re trying to organise a concert on a cross channel ferry.
• And finally, we have turned much of the abuse we got last year into lyrics, including tweets from the Secretary General of UKIP.
In the same period, Theresa May’s only innovation has been to start repeating long debunked claims made during the referendum campaign.
Anyway, we don’t normally publish tour dates outside the UK and Ireland, but on this occasion it seems appropriate to do so. Here’s everywhere you can catch the Brexit Big Band from this week onwards:
29 Jun: Spain, Verranos De La Villa
30 Jun: Switzerland, Montreux Jazz Festival
27 Jul: Berin, Wassermusik Festival
18 Aug: London, Live In The Square, London
17 Oct: Leipzig, Jazztage Festival, Leipzig
25 Nov: Rome, Romaeuropa, Rome
And here’s the band performing at the Barbican last year:
