A long way from home today! This came about through keeping in touch with Ian Babington, one of the main players from the Monochrome Museum glory days. Ian was kind enough to offer me this gig in aid of the Young Minds charity, and since I've never really done one of my own gigs outside the West Midlands, it was too good an opportunity to turn down...
Not wanting to mess this one up, I kicked off with the Bitterness/Get Out Of My Head combo. I was amazed at the fact that even though the size of the audience was modest (7 people at best,) they were all watching me attentively as I was playing my songs. I've only come across that before at the Yardbird in Birmingham and it's definitely not something I'm used to! But yeah, we'll have some more of that. Apart from a few fluffed chords, I played the songs well, all the better because people were actually listening to me. That went a long way to making me feel like it mattered.
The next song was interesting, and is one of the few times where an impulse decision to play a song actually worked out OK. I decided to play Let's Start A Band by Amy MacDonald, having been singing it to myself all the way up the M6. I'd never really played that song on my own before - at all, not even rehearsed. I know it because it comes up in Perception, so being the guitar player from that band I know the chords to it, and for how often Hannah misses practice I often end up singing it as well so I know all the words. It was a risky move, but it actually went really well and definitely one to break out again in the right atmosphere!
I did Storm From the North next, after announcing that it was about my old band Crashpoint, and that I wouldn't embarrass anybody by asking them if they'd heard of the band! Again, I fluffed the last part and covered it up by noodling around on the guitar until I remembered the words, and funnily enough it all seemed to work. It's always nice for it to be one of the songs people remember, in this case having it described to me as "The Sea Shanty One." Thinking about it, this song takes me back to the Nightwish gig back in '08, when they were touring Dark Passion Play and put The Poet and The Pendulum as the 'mid-set epic.' For how many parts there are to that song, the middle of the set is probably a good place to put it, where the crowd are hooked and will at that point be interested enough to digest some more abstract material, and it's the same with Storm From The North. It's about as progressive as I get and I think in future I'll be putting this song in the middle, where it can do it's job providing variation from what I've been playing up to that point, while people are still interested...
Moving swifty on, I had a go at Believe. For a song I wrote almost 5 years ago, it's still going strong, and in front of an audience that really was appreciating the music, it went down very well. I played it OK, that's about all I've got to say about that one...
One of the guys in the audience (who turns out to work in Dudley, of all places,) was wearing a Feeder Tshirt, and I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to play a Feeder song in front of someone who wants to hear one! I played High, which is probably the best song of theirs to play at a gig like this because it doesn't necessarily rely on the heavy guitars, but is interesting enough for it to be played on acoustic with one guitar and one voice. It was nice to see people singing along to it as well!
Too late, I realised I'd forgotten to play Girl's Names (I'd have done it instead of Believe if I'd remembered,) but after a gig like this there was only one way I was going to end it, and that was by playing We Will Survive. Not much to say about how I played it; it's all getting tighter! What was interesting was being asked by Ian whether that song was my own, and on telling him it was, (notwithstanding the not-so-obvious fact that I copied most of the music off DragonForce) being told "Well, if writing hooks is the game, you're winning!"
All in all a very good gig and probably the best solo gig that I've done. It felt a lot better for the audience, to be honest. I'd rather play to 7 people who were listening to me than 50 people who weren't. I remember my therapist telling me about The Police's first gig in America. I don't know if it's true or it's an urban myth, but apparently that first gig 8 people turned up to it. The Police did the same show that they'd do to 10,000 people, and good for them, because those 8 people turned out to be New York's most influential journalists and The Police shot up to fame in a very small space of time. Whether that will ever happen to me I don't know, but I think the real message of that is, if the people you saw enjoyed your show, it doesn't matter how many of them there are. It's a bit of a same that I've got to go all the way to Leicester to manage it... but it was a great laugh and I'd happily do it again. Hopefully I'll see you all again soon!
Very honest, great review.
ReplyDeleteJohn m