Following hot on the heels of many lovely reviews (including a four-star from the Herald for an improvised show we had to do when Houston was unavailable), your Overlords and future rulers of this damp rock are proud...nay, chuffed....to announce that the winners of the 2008 "Spirit Of The Fringe" award are....
Stop crying at the back, it didn't work for Paltrow and it won't work for you. In keeping with tradition however, and to emphasise something that was ommitted by the press reports, we would like to thank the following, who also won it. Seriously. If it wasn't for them the entire show would be two brothers tearing each other's skin off on stage.
Houston, also a Martian but not a Kielty.
Marianne Sellar andDerek Elsby, our plants, performers, horse, wench and general script tinkerers.
Carol Metcalfe and The Bridewell Theatre Company for general organisation, editing, production and funding.
Jan Andrew Henderson and City of the Dead Walking Tours for funding, publicity and giving us the time off to do something completely different about the kirkyard.
Chris Grady and the rest at Musical Theatre @ George Square for setting up a brand new and highly successful venue within table-carrying distance of MarsHQ.
And last, but by no means least, all of the people who came to see an hour of our brains spilling out onto the floor of a small portakabin...thank you all.
Oh...and our landlord, who came to see the show and got told off for putting his feet on a table he owns. Sorry. We'll fix it.
Evening News report here Original press release here
Mars HQ. Sunday. 4pm. As John prepares to leave the flat to appease his Invisible Sky God for another week, Houston interviews the surprise guest star of our show - our living room table.
"It's weird, you know..." it says, in its pallid, wooden tone; "I don't remember ever being outside before. As long as I can remember I've been in the living room being eaten and smoked on... and then, only a few weeks ago, people began standing and singing on me."
"And how did that feel?"
"I'm not sure... I was surprised.. I felt edgy, you know? I mean, lots of things were going through my wood... I was worried for a start, that I might break under the weight of John who has returned from the USA rather fat and pasty. I resent being put on peoples back and carried to the venue, but I must say I enjoy the rush of the performance. It's new, you know? It's a real thrill."
"And what do you do in the show?"
"Well, lots of things really... I'm a table, obviously... a few different tables actually... I worry a little about type casting, but I do more than that. At one stage I'm a coffin... and then I'm the slab of Dr Knox the famous anatomist. They move me around quite alot, and sometimes I'm off stage catching my breath. It's fun."
"And what are you up to next?"
"Well, I think its back to the flat for me. Where else will they eat their food and put their ashtrays. I just hope that they fix my frayed end soon."
The Fringe is still be-camped just outside the front door of MarsHQ and just won't leave us alone. We've been dragged up on stage by BBC Radio Scotland (sandwiched between a Noel Coward act and a tribute to a recently deceased Palestinian poet), and accidentally fell into the middle of Mervyn Stutter's Pick Of The Fringe.
The Tattoo is getting louder too. It used to be a brief explosion around half ten (actually, exactly at half ten, it gave us the chance to get into positions to catch the falling ornaments....by "ornaments" of course, we mean remote control Daleks), but now it's had stuff added. There was an extra volley last night, and a barrage, and we distinctly heard a fussilade. And we Martians like our sleep.
"They look as though they might be a country and western group, or maybe a folk group, or even a heavy metal group who have lost most of their gear.... The whole thing, with wonderfully adapted lyrics, is musical parody taken to dizzying heights of bad taste, leaving its audience helpless with shocked, amazed delight and the sort of laughter that's almost too painful to cope with...a witty 50 minutes of excellently delivered deadpan comedy that contains within it a delirious passage where time seems to stop, the world seems transformed and which no one who sees it will ever forget – five stars in anybody's language. " Victor Hallett * * * * *
We should also extent our "aw, shucks" to the members of the public who went to the effort of commenting on our entry in the edfringe.com program. None of them are plants as far as we know, we save the plants for the show...
Sorry, but it's time for the traditional Festival CD. This year there's a bunch of new stuff, including "I don't believe in faeries" and "Friday the 13th", some stuff from the present show, a couple of remastered tracks as featured in "Sundowe" and a couple of old classic for those who might of missed them. There's a grand total of 14 tracks, it's only a fiver and you can get it from us on the High Street (usually between 1 and 2 depending on weather and sickness) or from the show at George Square, 7.30-8.30 most days. If you would like to order one by post then please PM us.
Hi. We're the The Martians. You may have bought our last album, "How to save 90% on your tax bill whilst learning Armenian". It appears there might have been some problems with that particular tiitle. Apparently "How to deal with alien abduction" didn't go down well either, especially in Sonoma, California. We're really sorry, and if you can return them to us, along with the custom oil painting of our good selves that was included in the deal, and we'll provide you with a copy of the new CD . It's different.
But still, slowly, and surely, we inflict ourselves upon you...
So there's going to be a new CD out. Soon. We're looking at ways of throwing them to you, and new stuff and old-school classics that really deserve to be resureccted Martian Stylee and it's all quite exciting. There's going to be some new Martian stuff, and it's going to be either more Martian than you've ever heard before or just something slightly more twisted. We're not entirely sure, we're still trying to work out if the potential for a good tune outweighs the prosecution lawyers. We'll see...but we don't like Faeries, we'll just leave it at that shall we?
Love, The Martians x
PS Greyfriars Twisted Tales Review Corner Three Weeks "The Martians have landed, and we should listen to what they have to say. Or rather sing...This is an anti-musical for the masses...I cried with laughter. Twice." ***** The Scotsman "This is the first year the terrifically talented combo behind this show, The Martians, have appeared at the Fringe. It won't be the last...the show they're performing in a Portakabin in George Square should make some of the acts at bigger venues hang their heads in shame, while they eat their hearts out with envy. The Martians have landed." ***
Calm down, stop getting all excited. Yes, it's true that your Martian godlikes have a new record, but it's not what you're thinking. It's not round, there's no holes in it, and it crashes mp3 players if you're within half a mile as you read this.
The other kind of record, the "personal best" version of that dreadfully ambiguous word. Trust us, we've made that mistake before. With a discus.
In this case however, it's more of a personal worst.
Martian projects develop in a rather organic way...there's a small seed that is planted, which grows along with other seeds. Any that peek too high above the others are swiftly battered back down with a pair of size ten graveyard boots. But eventually, the strongest, most irritating, most interesting ideas infiltrate our brains. And they start...
to....
seep.......
....all over the couch. At this point the ideas either grow small wings and fly, or find themselves being pounced on and torn to shreds by angry Martians. We've got much experience of rippings ideas to shreds, usually each others. Three of the Kielty Brothers got identical "Does not play well with others" in a single year at school.
So that's our new record. We've gone from the first tiny seeds to a shredding frenzy in a record time of 1.4 seconds. Thank you, we've quite proud of that one.
Anyway, enough of the suspense, we do kind of have a new record out after all.
Actually, it's more of an interview with three live Martians, two live tracks, broadcast from MarsHQ, this afternoon for the Bafta nominated TPN:The Edinburgh Fringe.
Some of our more eager fanbase (check it out, we officially have a fanbase) will have heard us being interviewed by the marvelous Ewan Spence before, and he's also featured some of our tracks on both his TPN:Rock show and the transatlantic Accident Mash shows. Just click on the logo above for the show, which is now live.
Water discovered on Mars. Official. Keep your grubby robotic mits off our stuff.
We hate rehearsals. In fact, we hate them nearly as much as geoff. The only positive point about rehearsals is that they annoy geoof slightly more than they annoy us. And he's got the hiccups at the moment, roughly once every twelve seconds, and that annoys us all the more.
Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that we've done a festival show and we hate geoff and he did a picture. It's up there, under the new and shiny "Shows" menu.
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wooooo hooooooo well done thanx for the cds autographs and free cd thair great my friends are even bidder fans now and thair starting to think about the stalking carrer the show was brilliant the music of the cds are great too
magic realy i thaught only evil existed on this website
