Soi that’s gig number one out of the way, and it seemed to go pretty well. Not a big crowd by anyone’s reckoning (17), but above the Edinburgh average (11), and more than I had on my first day last year! It’s very odd becoming one of over a thousand acts vying for people’s attention and money, when usually I’m the only thing on on an evening in that venue, and just have to be better the TV and worth the drive to the venue. When you’re up against the cream of British comedy and some fine music as well, it’s all a bit more daunting.
Still, the gig itself went well – as it was a fairly small and intimate crowd, I was able to experiment with a new addition to the show, a bit of audience participation. Here, I got various members of the audience to come and make percussion sounds into a mic, which were recorded into a blank loop of about 6 seconds long, with the output turned down. So neither the audience or I could tell what was happening as the sounds were being recorded (they had no idea what was going to happen at all). I then picked up a bass, turned up the volume and started to play along with the rhythm that came out of their sampled noises – 6 sounds in all, forming a particularly weird and stilted funk rhythm, which I was fairly easily able to shape into a groove and start layering. A hugely successful addition to the show, and one I’m going to have fun with each night – it’s nice to have something completely new to add to the set.
Didn’t get round to playing the John Martyn cover – really need to have a bash at that tonight, if I remember. Did the tune for Eric, which went well, and ‘What A Wonderful World’ which has become a staple of the set over the last couple of months, but wasn’t in the set last year. So I’m happy with the amount of new material.
The links all seemed to go OK – the Snoop Dogg story went down v. well as usual, and I even explained (for the first time ever onstage) the story behind MMFSOG – just seemed to fit with the general comedic thread.
All in all not a bad first night – a few things to tighten up, and certainly room to move things around a bit, but I’m definitely happy with how things went.
the one thing I forgot to mention was the text-review thing, where you can text a star rating for a show, by sending them the show code and a rating – there are little cards explaining this in every venue, so please pick one up and vote for the show if you were there (the show code is BASS)