Gig 53 Covers Night.

First up, hope you had a good Christmas. I haven't been blogging because I've been sick for most of the hols and have hence failed to do anything useful with the precious time off. But, to bring you up to date- a good gig to take away the taste of the last one, though this was more of an acting excercise. Covers night at LLC so I did emo philips. I'd chosen Emo becasue I'd discovered I can do a pretty good impersonation of his odd sing-song voice, so I decided to go with the approach of replicating him exactly (or as near as damn it). I even bought a wig. I think it worked. People who had seen him before said it was pretty much like watching the real Emo, and like the real Emo ther audience reaction was splt 50/50 between 'cool' and 'What the hell....?'

Gig 52. Oh the humanity!

Oh dear. What I hoped would be the second in a string of gigs for a local promoter has totally put the kybosh on the whole idea. It was bloody awful. I think my nerves probably showed, which makes the audience nervous, they lose faith and expect you to be rubbish. Then I was rubbish, no laughs at the usually safe A-team joke, and things went from bad to worse. Without the laughs I lost track and had to actually stop until I remembered the next bit. I had hoped to win them round with the last song but it never happened. Arse. What's worse is this has happened because I've ignored my own advice... I did a similarly bad msical set in Manchester and told myself...

I don't want to be on a stage unless I'm 80% sure the material is going to work.

- but still I'd used a fair amount of stuff I like myself, but which has never really been proven. (Such as; Another famous riff was Hendrix playing the star spangled banner at woodsrock. An interesting fact about that, it was actually a cover - he didn't even write it.)

From now on I will only do tried and tested material at unfamiliar venues, and only add new material which has worked perfectly at local venues. Most beginners will just do their best 10 when they get a gig- Why I feel the need to try new stuff, I don't know. From now on I'm doing a travelling 10 and sticking to it unless I've already done the same stuff at that venue 3 times.

Anyway, hopefully tonight's LLC will give me a confidence boost. It's covers night so I'm being Emo Philips.



It's not my material, but hopefully I can be proud of my performance- after all, it's how you tell 'em.

LLC- lowest numbers, most fun.

Just a quick one in a tea break again- so no time to waffle and add pictures - but I thought I should make the effort because I've realised I've been doing this for over a year. However, as I rarely manage a full week and never write at weekends I average about 10 entries a month, so a year of blogs isn't as impressive as it first sounds. Hence today's effort.

But I do have something to talk about. Last night's LLC was a weird one - 3 people turned up, and as we didn't have that many acts either there was no way to pretend there was a real audience. But we did it anyway. Al took the mic off the stage and set it at the back next to our little group. As we couldn't be arsed to go back to do the music I just sang the supergrass intro riff which is our coming on stage music.

And it was fun. Al says it was the most enjoyable one yet. And for us it was, without the stress of taking money, queing acts, watching time or even worrying about being funny I had a great night. Of course, maybe sitting around chatting is simply more fun than watching a proper comedy show. That might be why sometimes only 3 people turn up.

Gig 51. Stockton Arc.

A quick, tea break entry for a quite important gig. The benefit of Al Dawes being in spain (beyond the obvious one of being rid of the fat twart) is that when promoter Pete Vincent is looking for someone to fill 10 minutes he gets a bit futher down his list. To me in fact. So I found myself following compere Steffan Peddie on to the stage at the Stockton Arc. A proper theatre, there was a grand piano onstage for gawd's sake. (Which in retrospect I should have used- I must learn 'Darwin!-The Musical' properly.) All in all an OK gig, they laughed at the 'gags'- but didn't go with the weird rambles so much. Possibly because in that setting I didn't have the confidence I have at the LLC and didn't sell them quite as well. Anyway, I got another gig in Middlesborough out of it so I must have done Ok.
And I'll be ready for next time...



A 1,2,3, 4... Oh Mr. Darwin...

Gig 50 - Movies LLC.

Whoops. Nearly 2 weeks without an entry. Well, before tomorrow's show rolls round I'd better tell you about last weel's LLC. I did under 5 minutes, just introducing the comeptition, but there were some nice moments so I'm calling it a gig. There was a nice sense that we were playing off eacy other. James Christopher, our visiting compere from York, for example, felt like a compere this week rather than another act. He merged the movies theme with some audience banter, trying to come up with Arnie style 'death puns' based on the crowd's occupations... for a printer 'You have been erased' and for an I.T. support officer 'Die nerd!' So when I went on I started with a better alternative, imagine the I.T. guy's gun had jammed, Arnie says 'Did you try turning it off and on again?' -It's even funnier in a bad Austrian accent.

For the rest of the bit I was basically introducing the competition - 'Budget Movies'. The examples of films re-made on the cheap included 'The Empire Strikes' - 90 minutes of Stormtroopers on a picket line.

'We're not finishing this Death Star until management meet our demands!'

Vader -'You will obey, or I will destory you!'

'That's the trouble with this place, all stick and no bloody carrot. I'm off to join the rebellion, they're on Hoth - you can ski as much as you like!'

I followed up with 'The tax return of the Jedi' -a camp Luke wondering if occassional use of a light saber to swish about and cut the heads off dandelions counts as 'entertainment expenses'. I then apologised for doing Star Wars stuff 3 weeks running. When James went back on stage he had a great follow up...

'Nice to hear Pete's done Star Wars material for 3 weeks, so in 15 years he'll be back doing another 3 weeks of material- but so bad it sours the memory of the original.'