Back with the gigs again!
I let myself down a little bit with this one at the Wharf Bar. I really wanted to play some of my new songs but if I'm honest I hadn't practiced my set anywhere near enough this week. All I could do therefore was to fall back on my usual material...
Kicked off with Bitterness, which is never a bad idea. There were quite a few people in the Wharf tonight who I'd never seen before and I think they were taken by surprise by the acoustic guy opening the show with a spiteful rock song! I got a nice big round of applause for that one. Didn't do the fast strums too well, which I put down to the fact that I'd had very little time to warm my hands up, but other than that OK.
I was going to do Girl's Names straight after that but then I remembered that they're in the same key and move more or less at the same speed which is never a good idea, so I went ahead and played Get Out Of My Head instead. This actually went down quite well; it can be a bit hit and miss but I think it's a good song and I reckon the greater majority of the audience thought that as well.
Then I introduced myself and did Wide Open Space by Mansun. Not sure how well this one went. Better than last time, and a lot of the audience were about the right age to recognise it, but it was as though most of them couldn't understand why I was playing a song like that in the middle of my own stuff. I might break that one out at a longer gig but for now I'll think I'll put that one to bed, (as though I ever repeat any of my covers in the same venue...)
Next was Dear Mr Manager. To be honest I think I chose the wrong gig for this song, it was a 'younger' audience and less likely to be appreciative of my speculating how badly working in retail could have ended for me. Plus it's a quiet song and a huge shift in dynamic, which had an effect on the rest of the set. Still, I played it without mucking it up, which isn't common...
THEN I played Girl's Names. I think I played this one OK, but one of the guys in the audience who's seen me before told me that this particular song lacked my usual energy. I don't know about that, but again after Dear Mr Manager it's a massive shift in dynamic which for a gig that small probably doesn't work all that well. Actually, now that I think about it, I've been playing that song for so long now that there's a certain level of familiarity to it to the point where I felt myself switching off when I'm playing it. That's not good...
Ended up with We Will Survive, there was only really one song I was going to end with! I think by then the novelty of the acousitic guy singing rock songs had worn off and the crowd were looking to get some bands on, but hey, this song rarely goes down badly and tonight was no exception. It was as good as could be expected!
So then we bailed out early (not being funny but a 4-band show was supposed to end at 10:20, one of the bands didn't turn up and the last band were still setting up at 10:40,) and journeyed up to Codsall for Sam's birthday party. What I didn't expect was for Sam to have set up a stage at the back of a huge garden for an impromtu gig. And, as so often happens, I got called up to do a slot... and Kayla asking me to play Get Out Of My Head by describing the lyrics to me was, I have to admit, a surreal experience!
I'm not going to go song by song here, this was a desperate attempt to recall some happy/party songs. I kicked off with A Little Respect by Erasure/Wheatus, which never fails to raise a smile and got people dancing which is all good! Then I played Summer of '69, you cannot go wrong with that! 500 Miles by The Proclaimers was next; an impromptu decision and helped out with the words by Sam and Dave, but if ever a party's going flat, all you've got to do is play that song and you're away. I finished up with Hotel Yorba by The White Stripes. Of course it wasn't until I got off the stage that I remembered I could have done Word Up, or On A Day Like This... but hey, there's always next time, right?
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