Some dickhead set off the fire alarm at the Carlton Hotel midway through my gig last night! Just as I was getting to the end of ‘What A Wonderful World’, the damn thing went off and we all had to vacate the building!
Other than that, it was another fine gig. The audience was 26 – that’s how many were there, not their combined age – which I was really happy with on a non 2 for 1 Tuesday. i was expecting about half that. And they seemed to really enjoy it too. Seems like word is getting out, finally.
It was especially good to have that many people in, given that I started flyering two hours later than usual, TSP was tied up with friends for a lot of the day (well, she was busy – I’m not sure what kind of kinky stuff they got up to, to be honest), and then it rained so I missed out on another hour or so of flyering later on.
The one bit of flyering that I hate the most is dealing with drunks. It’s particularly tragic when you get someone who is completely shitfaced at 4 in the afternoon, who comes up thinking they are really funny and says something really really stupid. I’m pretty sure that kicking people in the plums when you’re out flyering in Edinburgh is technically illegal, so I’ve refrained from dispensing with them that way. I just back away slowly and try and spin round to talk to someone else…
The other foxing thing when flyering is the nature of people’s verbal responses, ranging for cool gutteral sounds of either acceptance or rejection through to such gems as ‘No, I’m alright thanks’ – well, I’m not trying to sort your life out, just give you a sodding flyer!! even better, ‘No, you’re alright’ – I know I’m alright, what are you my therapist?? Though worst of all is just the withering look, like I’ve just offered them a plate of poo. It’s a flyer, you’re walking down the royal mile in Edinburgh during the festival, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU EXPECTING????
For the most part though, it’s nice that my flyer works – way more people look at it then take one, with one variation on the accepting monosyllabic weirdness sound. This is good news. Having a great flyer that has all the info you need is so vital it’s not funny. I’ve had quite a few people ask great questions like whether or not the concept for the flyer was mine, implying that I told a designer what to do, when if fact I did the whole thing. this year I didn’t also do the photography, which I did last year (well, I did the one on the front – the one on the back was that lovely yellow and black one that Dominic Bentham took at the Troubadour gig). It’s nice to have people assume it was a pro – it’s like the one time (which obviously had now become lots of times in Stevie folklore) when someone asked TSP where she had her hair cut, when in fact it was me that did it. They couldn’t believe it. or something. Maybe it was small-talk, but I like to think they were hoping to go to the same salon.
TAGS – Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Solo Bass, Steve Lawson.