Received my tickets this morning to go and see Blur in July. I am a little bit ridiculously excited about it. To be completely honest, I’m not sure what I’m more excited about, whether its seeing Blur live for the first time in years singing all the songs I bloody love, or whether its seeing all the fanbase, now considerably older trying to jump around to Song 2 and getting all out of breath and achey. Either way, it should be pretty impressive. I’ve become a bit of an Albarn fan over the last few years and have been to see the Good, The Bad and the Queen, Monkey and the Africa Express show within a short space of time. I was never able to see the Gorillaz live, but as them being live is an impossibility due to their virtual existence, I would assume I’m not missing out too much. At least that’s what I tell myself. I once saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do a live performance at MGM Studios in Disneyland and let me tell you that for four fictional giant turtle people, they could seriously bust some moves. Well at least according to memory they could. The 9 year old me may have had slightly different ideas to what moves were cool or not than the 28 year old me. Which may also be why I got severe carpet burn on my feet from insisting on attempting to moonwalk in front of everyone on our living room floor.
Had a really good preview last night. Best one yet if I do say so myself. It didn’t look like it was going to be good due to the amount of sugary goods I had on the way up with Tiffany , Paul and Paul. I have managed to abstain from eating ‘road’ food for ages, but when confronted with pringles, wotsits, bbq nuts, danish pastries, eclairs and haribo, it would have been rude for me to say no. So instead I scoffed my face ensuring my blood sugars were about 12 times the amount they should be. I was tripping off my glucose intolerant face. Our journey was further marred by a light going off in Tiff and Paul’s car. None of us being any sort of car experts we just panicked a bit. There was a stop involving checking water, oil and to see if any obvious bits had fallen off. As they hadn’t we continued and luckily we didn’t blow up. Not blowing up is always a bonus as far as I’m concerned. Not that I’ve been blown up before but I can only assume its half as good as not blowing up. Except for the noise you’d make, which would be ten times better than the noise you make when not, unless you are very flatulent which is a whole other area of wrongness.
Mark Olver’s gig Oppo in Bristol is one of the loveliest gigs ever. Its hard to explain why, but something to do with the very regular comedy savvy crowd that Mark has trained over time to be brilliant. You know a gig is amazing when mid-way through they have a maths quiz that has all its own jingles sung by the crowd, on queue. There is something genius about a room of 50+ people shouting ‘In Your Face Bitch’ at the loser, in perfect synchronicity. That and the appreciation and excitement they had at Mark’s new songs for his upcoming musical based on a great 90’s film. I won’t tell you what it is incase you steal it before Mark gets to have his Lloyd Webber moment. And I don’t mean sitting in a big chair and looking all creepy. So all in all they were a great crowd to try my Edinburgh show out on. Most of it went really well and in a good way, they let me know when it really didn’t. I have some definite jokes that can be scrapped fairly sharpish. Overall though it felt like the best run through I’ve had so far. Well nearly. There was one little interruption which at any other gig I would have felt inappropriate, but at Oppo I felt like it was probably the sort of thing the crowd would have felt angry about if they hadn’t been told.
About 30 minutes into my preview, Mark had to stop the show, as two people were shagging in the loos upstairs and he felt everyone should come upstairs and applaud. And so they did. The entire crowd just stood up and went off to the toilets. I was at first a little shocked by this but then realised that it was both impressive and quite nice to have a little breather. A few odd people stayed behind including a women who wanted to see if she was taller than me. She wasn’t. She was 5’2″ and I am 5’5″. Telling her to ‘eat those 3 inches’ was a bit of a mistake. Luckily before that all went sour, the crowd returned. By the time they had got upstairs the couple had gone, which I think says nothing good about the man’s sexual ability. Saying that I suppose knowing that 55 people were coming upstairs to cheer you on would make you want to come and go. I couldn’t work out if I’d be embarrassed or not. I probably would, but I think there would be a small part of me that would like to run past the crowd giving high fives on the way out. It would be the best sort of post-coital response I’ve ever had. Tiff’s show was also ace. I’d heard little bits of it before at Old Rope, but when put all together it formed a really good show with a strong narrative and I reckon she’ll do really well in the ever looming Edinburgh mentalness.
No gig tonight but have a fair few things to do. Have a fairly big gig tomorrow for MIND at the Bloomsbury Theatre. I’ve never played the Bloomsbury before and I’m assuming its size means I can’t really banter so my material had better be on form. I FB’d Charlie Baker as he MC’d the last one, and asked for some tips. His only warning was not to do what he did last time where he introduced Kitson by saying ‘ok go mental for Daniel Kitson!’. That’s both hilarious and a bit scary as I will think about not doing it so much that I probably will. I’ve done it before when I MC’d a show for the Arts Council and had to introduced a visually impaired school playing a musical piece. As they were leaving I said ‘Give it up for that fantastic performance. Blinding stuff, really blinding’. I have never been asked back.
