Sometimes I am envious of music gigs. There are certain things you can do to kick of a show when you are a band that you just can’t do as a solo stand-up. You can try, but its never the same. My friend Mat started his final university stand-up show by walking through a smoke filled door frame to the tune of Queen’s ‘Princes of the Universe’, which was pretty good. But that’s the closest you can probably get, without being the Boosh or Brand or someone like that. I mean you could definitely try but I can’t help feeling that if I walked onto the stage at the Glee in the same way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started last night, I’d lose the audience from the top. Their first thought as they saw the giant inflatable eyeball on the backdrop and then my luminous spirally headgear would be what a pretentious cock. Then as all the glitter cannons started to fire I would suspect several of the stag-dos would just walk out, with the glitter entertaining all the hens until I started telling jokes at which point the anti-climax would make them leave too, but not before one of them shouted a bit, accidentally ate some glitter and vommed all over the table.
The audience last night had no such thoughts about Karen O’s entrance last night. Karen has the aura of a rock goddess. The eyeball staring at the crowd, I had 10 seconds of nearly guffawing at the glow in the dark mask, which I thought, would be very useful for cyclists at night. Then she started singing their new track ‘Heads Will Roll’, and suddenly it didn’t matter that she was wearing what appeared to be giant multi-coloured spaghetti hoops on her back or that she danced as though she was doing odd yoga stretches. She didn’t care, so neither did anyone else. The show was absolutely awesome. They sang all the songs I hoped they would, and I had to really restrain myself from belting out ‘Gold Lion’ along with them. It was only last night that listening to the lyrics I really have no clue what they mean, but Karen O is clearly a nutjob (in a great way) and so when she sings ‘Gold Lion gonna tell me where the light is’, I can only assume she has a large pet gold lion that shows her where her light switches are around the house. I would like that. I’d like a pet lion to begin with. I’m sure it would get along great with my cats. I’d call him Lional Richie or Mane-ual. Or Mufasa. Or Derrick. Or Ra-Ra-Rasputin. And then when I came home drunk late and night and fumbled for the light switch he could just growl ‘Its over there.’ That would be great.
Thanks to my friend Ryan I had a freebie to last night’s show. It wasn’t just a usual freebie, it was the sort that meant I could go in via the stage door which is always exciting. This also meant I could use the VIP bar and sit in a chair where I could see everything. This solved two of my main gripes about gigs in that I got served easily everytime and I could see everything without some tall twat standing directly in front of me. There was a little part of me that felt I was missing out by not standing near the front, jumping around like a loon. There was a smaller part of me that thought, ‘hey where is the generic tall guy that ruins everything?’ like perhaps it wasn’t the same without him. However, the biggest part of me thought, ‘Hooray I’m sitting down, my legs don’t hurt, I can see everything and Richard Ayoade is sitting behind me!’ That was all very rock. More rock infact that Stonehenge. Which is suppose is stone and not rock and so therefore its fairly easy to be more rock than that. More rock than the rock of Gibraltar is perhaps better. That’s a pretty big rock. I like comparing bands to geographical locations or sights. It gives you a great idea of just how good or bad they are. Lady Gaga for example is less rock than Swindon town centre. Oddly Swindon Town centre has a great poker face.
Its an important event today. That’s right, my preview. Oh and the marathon. As I have written in a previous post, I have utmost respect for everyone running the marathon today, although I am still consistently glad I’m not doing it. Every year I entertain the thought that maybe I could do it, but really really don’t want to. There are lots of things in this category. I could bungee jump, but I really really don’t want to. I could cut parts of my arm off, but I really really don’t want to. This list can go on for quite some time. Anyway I wouldn’t have had time to run it today because I am working on my show for tonight’s preview, which is more important than raising money for extremely brilliant charities who help dying people. Or not. I have worked quite a bit on it since the last time I did it, but I’m not sure if it’ll be better or just more of a mess. I am still yet to find an ending for the show which is a bit of a problem as it needs one. Unlike a cool track I can’t just fade the end out which would be helpful. I was wondering if I such take a performance arty route and halfway through a sentence, very unexpectedly, maybe I could just stop and walk off. It would be original to say the least. And when I say original, I mean shit. Maybe I’ll just do 50 minutes of the show and then for 5 minutes at the end I will don a luminous mask, fire some glitter cannons and sing ‘Gold Lion’.
