Sometimes when I'm doing gigs, it all seems to come together. This was one of those nights...
I kicked off with Get Out Of My Head again as usual, but this time I decided to start it with the 'drum' beat on my guitar while singing the first verse and chorus. I didn't hit the first chord quite as well as I should have done, but for those who have heard me play that song before (and there were at least 6 of you there!) it should have been a refreshing change to keep things interesting. It did seem to go down very well!
Bitterness was next, and I was told by Amy afterwards that this one was very good indeed. Apart from fluffing up one of the chords I didn't notice anything different, but I don't expect I had to; this one's a crowd pleaser that I really ought to do at every show. I interrupted the song with the quiet part by telling the audience of my fears of my hand going through the guitar when I do the 'bang bang bang' bit; it will be as good an excuse as any to get a new one, but it will be a shame if that happens to my Dad's old Hondo! This is one of the songs that lends itself well to a band environment, and I remember jamming it with Cj in the latter days of Crashpoint; that part would have been done by the kick drum. Funnily enough Elliot turned up later and when he asked me what I played, he identified this song by singing the 'Hey now' bit... catchy!
Then, fulfilling it's role as the mid-set epic, I played Storm from the North, after explaining briefly to the audience of how the song came about, and that writing about how I'll never be a band with my former bandmates again is kind of ironic since I'm now in a new band with Cj and another band with Rich. But, we'll never be Crashpoint again, that's my point... and I also decided to have a bit of fun with it and go into the introduction to Nothing Else Matters when the song goes slow again. Sam thought it was really funny once he realised what I was doing, this could have taken longer than it was supposed to because I didn't play it very well. I won't do that too often; it has to be the right kind of demographic to get the joke and it would only really work if I'd played my own song to the same crowd enough times for them to realise that I AM only joking and not trying to rip off Metallica. But it was good fun when I did.
While I was 'finishing off' with We Will Survive I had a bit of a think about what to do afterwards; people seemed to be playing 5 songs tonight rather than the usual 4 so not wanting to be left out I wanted to play something else at the end of the set. I'm happy to say that the fact that my mind wandered did not hinder my performance at all; I'm finally in a position where I can play this song all the way through!
The song I finished with was Just A Day by Feeder, because after playing a set like that I was in far too good a mood to play anything else! I hadn't practiced this for a while, certainly not with the intention of playing it live; the mistakes were there and I know it. But it's good fun and I delivered it with the conviction that it needs to make it a good performance nonetheless.
All in all very pleased with how it went tonight. If only all gigs went this good...
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