GARGANTUA at SVA Site Festival, Stroud

Photograph by Rebecca Vaughan

GARGANTUA: An Excessive Entertainment by Ergo Phizmiz & Friends

plays at SVA Festival, Stroud, May 25th 2013 at 8pm. Info HERE.

Photographs of GARGANTUA by Rebecca Vaughan

Rebecca Vaughan kindly popped in and took these rather tasty photos of GARGANTUA: An Excessive Entertainment by Ergo Phizmiz & Friends. Many thanks. Delicious.

Crowdfunding for GARGANTUA hops over £500

The last minute super-duper emergency Crowdfunding plan for GARGANTUA: An Excessive Entertainment by Ergo Phizmiz, has just exceeded £500. 

Huge, huge thanks to all contributors. You've all been e-mailed..and surprises and treats will be showered upon you soon.

You are absolute utter marvels and I love each and every one of you big slurps and sloppy kisses. One day may we drink Vodka Martinis together in the French Riviera, like characters from an espionage film.

For those who'd still like to contribute (and it's still very, very welcome as pretty much every member of the cast is fucking broke and, you know, I'd like to pay these remarkable artists as much as I can, and at the moment I'm not in a position to pay them anything, but most of our basic costs are now covered), you can do so by going here.

People who follow my Twitter will be relieved to know I won't be posting about this Crowdfunding quite as much now, but I might pop in a few sneaky ones.

I offer you all big naughty bowls of love and soup.

Ergo.

My generously nostrilled self as The Virgin Mary in "Gargantua".

Any little fish can swim,
any little bird can fly,
any little dog, or any little cat,
can do a bit of this, or just a bit of that,
any little horse can neigh,
and any little cow can moo,
but I can't do anything at all but just love you.
(Noel Coward)

GARGANTUA Podcast 1 : SHIT

The first in a series of podcasts about the making of GARGANTUA: An Excessive Entertainment. Featuring Flora Cavalino Bertolli, Martha Moopette, Simon Mathewson, Aunty Georgia, and Ergo Phizmiz. Edited & Produced by Simon Mathewson.

GARGANTUA last ditch Crowdfunding

Please help support GARGANTUA by paying £2 or what you want for THE PETE WATERMAN RAP single, or donating via Paypal.

And you want extra treats? Well...

Contributions of £10 or over receive a copy of The Keystone Cut Ups DVD.

Contributions of £20 or over receive a original Ergo Phizmiz collage from the 2012 "Families, Intimate Situations, Opium Architecture and the Behemoth" exhibition.

Contributions of £50 or over receive both the above delicious trinkets of dreams.

Contributions of £100 or over receive an Ergo Phizmiz cover version of any song you would like.

Contributions of £1000 or over receive an Ergo Phizmiz cover version of any album you would like.

You can buy the single, for any amount you want, after the below image....

Out now! A digital single of two tracks from Ergo Phizmiz's excessive entertainment GARGANTUA.

Some Weird Characters Were Hanging Around Town Yesterday...

A bit of a rest 

Click READ MORE below to see all of the other beautiful photos...

Ergo Phizmiz Begs for Money. Always a stylish way to live.

Having checked his bank balance yesterday and started thoroughly worrying, here is a last ditch attempt at a spot of Crowdfunding.



 
You can support GARGANTUA by paying £2 or whatever you want for The Pete Waterman Rap via Bandcamp HERE.

And see that big DONATE button to your right? You can sign into your Paypal account and help fund this show there.

Please, please help spread the word. You are a genius, a legend, a scholar, and very sexy to boot. Thankyou.

GARGANTUA Trailer 5

GARGANTUA on Late Junction, BBC Radio 3

The splendid folks at Late Junction, BBC Radio 3, broadcast a specially created 8 minute montage of Ergo Phizmiz's excessive entertainment GARGANTUA, and thoroughly pimped the tour in the process. Tip of hat.

Hear the programme on BBC iPlayer HERE.

GARGANTUA Trailer 4

Out now! Digital single "The Pete Waterman Rap" / "The Sea is Full of Sheep" - Two songs from GARGANTUA

Out now! A digital single of two tracks from Ergo Phizmiz's excessive entertainment GARGANTUA.

GARGANTUA on Late Junction, BBC Radio 3

Tune in to Late Junction on BBC Radio 3, on Wednesday 27th February, to hear an exclusive eight minute collage of original music from GARGANTUA.

GARGANTUA Interview in M Magazine, from the PRS

Ergo Phizmiz has been interview about GARGANTUA for the PRS M Magazine.

"I’ve become interested in very synthetic, artificial music, almost like epic music being badly imitated by automatons. I suppose the music of Gargantua could most succinctly be described, in the time honoured fashion of sticking genres together and hoping for the best, as electronic-miniature-epic-classical-techno-supermidi-opera."

Read the full article at M Magazine online.

GARGANTUA Trailer 3

GARGANTUA Trailer 2

Gargantua Remix by The Superfools

New Mexico's sound-collage magician The Superfools has delivered a tangotastic remix of Ergo Phizmiz's "Gargantua". Feast your ears on this...

What's that you say? You're itching to remix "Gargantua" yourself? Here's how...

Adaptation and Arsewiping...

One of the most commonly asked questions from anybody who discovers that we're working on a partial adaptation of Rabelais' "Gargantua & Pantagruel" is: "Are you doing the arse wiping bit?".

And, of course, we are. In Rabelais' text, it goes a little something like this....

Once I did wipe me with a gentle-woman's velvet mask, and found it to be good; for the softness of the silk was very voluptuous and pleasant to my fundament. Another time with one of their hoods, and in like manner that was comfortable. At another time with a lady's neckerchief, and after that I wiped me with some ear-pieces of hers made of crimson satin, but there was such a number of golden spangles in them (turdy round things, a pox take them) that they fetched away all the skin of my tail with a vengeance. Now I wish St. Antony's fire burn the bum-gut of the goldsmith that made them, and of her that wore them! This hurt I cured by wiping myself with a page's cap, garnished with a feather after the Switzers' fashion.

Afterwards, in dunging behind a bush, I found a March-cat, and with it I wiped my breech, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and exulcerated all my perinee. Of this I recovered the next morning thereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent perfume and scent of the Arabian Benin. After that I wiped me with sage, with fennel, with anet, with marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with beets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my leg. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with my braguette. Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras hangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with a combing-cloth; in all which I found more pleasure than do the mangy dogs when you rub them. Yea, but, said Grangousier, which torchecul did you find to be the best? I was coming to it, said Gargantua, and by-and-by shall you hear the tu autem, and know the whole mystery and knot of the matter. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with thatch-rushes, with flax, with wool, with paper, but,

  Who his foul tail with paper wipes,
  Shall at his ballocks leave some chips.

Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus.

If you are curious how this magnificent piece of Rabelais has been adapted into a form to fit snugly into a musical shape, read on. If you'd rather wait and see, then don't read on. Here, ladies and gentlemen and arsewipers, is the first published text-extract (textract?) of Ergo Phizmiz's "Gargantua", in which the giant baby King Gargantua details his experiments in sphincter hygiene:

I wiped myself with hay, with straw, 
a gentle-woman's velvet mask,

and after that with sage, and fennel,

(not a disagreeable task)
I wiped up with my mother's gloves 
but golden spangles they had in
and surely they scratched away
a portion of my tail skin.
I wiped myself with straw, with flax, 
a carpet and a table-cloth,
a Bible and a handkerchief,
a March-cat and an Atlas moth. 
And after all these myriad wipes
the skin around my bum forlorn
I found the most adept wipe-tool:
it be the neck of a dead swan.
If your bum, post-wipe,
keeps you up all night,
try the neck of a dead swan.

Gargantua Remix by Simon Mathewson

A "Gargantua" remix by Simon Mathewson, co-producer and animator in the production.

Yes, I know, I know, now you're itching to do your own Gargantua remix aren't you? Well, here's how.