Blog: The Season Finale

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On Thursday I strolled through a rather Christmassy London Town towards the King & Queen, where we were having the Season Finale of this series of Totally Acoustic. I was RIGHT looking forward to it, but was a little taken aback to arrive and find the downstairs of the pub RAMMED. I suppose it WAS "little Friday" in Office Party season but still, it was a STRUGGLE to FITE my way through to the back of the room, where Mr and Mrs Hewitt were squished up by the door.

It didn't take long for us to move up to the less steamy, more spacious upstairs area, which was MUCH nicer, though it did mean that I had to keep going back downstairs to get a) people b) BEER. Every time I went downstairs two things happened - I FOUND somebody just coming in, and BUMPED the people standing in front of the door. I felt a bit guilty about this latter the first few times it happened, but eventually thought "Hang on, you're standing right in front of a DOOR. Being bumped is pretty inevitable."

Our ACTS, Frankie Machine and Chris T-T arrived in good time, as did the audience, and by about 7:45pm I was ready to go on and do THIS:

Totally Acoustic

Easy Christmas

Thank Goodness For Christmas

Mental Judo

The Flashing Santa

I Got You What You Want For Christmas

The Advent Calendar Of FACT

It was, according to all informed sources, slightly ramshackle. Normally I am TOTALLY PROFESSIONAL so the only explanation for this is that I did mostly Christmas songs which, for some reason, I only seem to do about once a year and so don't know very well. I'd printed out the words but had done so in a much too tiny font size, so had to keep stopping to look! The only non-Christmas song, Mental Judo, was done as a request, so I needed the words even MORE. The highlight of the set though was The Flashing Santa. I've never done it live before because it features HARD CHORDS which were written and performed by Mr FA Machine so, as he was in the room, I got him to play for me. It was rather nice!

After a short break Frankie himself came on, and was BLOODY MARVELLOUS. It felt like AGES since I'd last seen him play and he informed me later that that's probably because it's been AGES since he's played at ALL - his last gig was 18 months ago! He did a TONNE of gorgeous, thoughtful, funny, emotional songs including my favourite "How Great Thou Art" (which I'm totally nicking for The Validators if he doesn't record it soon) and some GRATE new ones. It was brill!

And then we closed the show, the series, and indeed the ROCKING YEAR with a fantastic set from Chris T-T. He's dead good, is Chris, as soon as he starts playing you know you're in safe hands for a STIRRING set of thought provocation and, occasionally, bears of little brain. As I said in my intro, he's one of the few ARTISTES that I still happily pay Actual CA$H to go and see of my own volition, and it was an honour to have him back.

With all that done we headed downstairs for the traditional post-gig CHAT and also WHISKY. It had been a beautiful, Christmassy evening - there was a Christmas Tree upstairs, we had mince pies and everyone took turns wearing the SNOWMAN HAT I'd bought on the way - and it continued in a similar vein until closing time, when we strolled up to Kings Cross with Frankie, who was hotelling nearby.

It was a rather SPARKLY end to a rather delightful, if occasionally stressful, series of Totally Acoustic. We're back for the next series in February, with a SMASHING line up of acts, but in the meantime you can listen to the podcast for THIS show HERE, and we'll have an extra show of highlights next month!

posted 16/12/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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