On Saturday I headed off to distant NEW CROSS, where I was due to play at the 20th birthday celebrations for Joyzine. Joyzine has been a constant source of, well, JOY, in my ROCKING LIFE for all of those two decades, through gigs, reviews, mentions, the radio show, and ALL SORTS, so I was utterly delighted to have been asked to go and play.
I arrived to find Paul From Joyzine looking surprisingly NOT TERRIFIED for a man who was organising not one but TWO consecutive all-dayers. He took me through to look at The Garden Stage where I'd be playing, which turned out to be very much an actual GARDEN, and then I was garlanded with a wrist band which entitled me to a 50% discount on EVERYTHING. I fully support this sort of action on the part of venues, and every time I bought a beer it felt like it WAS about twenty years ago, price-wise!
While venturing to the bar I bumped into the wonderful Mr Dave Green and we fell into discussion about topics various, as is our wont, in the garden. After a while I had to tear myself away to do a quick soundcheck, and I was VERY pleased to be able to debut A Song For The Soundcheck, which I had finished writing the day before EXPRESSLY for this purpose. It was GRATE!
We then waited a few minutes for people to come out to the back, and then after an intro from Paul I launched into my set, THUS:
As you can see, it was very much a HITS SET, which was a WISE choice because as far as I could gather approx 90% of the audience had never ever seen me before. It's been a while (nearly a year in fact) since I've done a NORMAL gig of this sort so I had to remember how it's supposed to work, and I think it went all right. The nice thing about playing for people who are hearing the songs for the first time is that they (hopefully) LARF in specific places, and I always think "Oh yeah, that IS quite a good bit". I BABBLED ON a bit due to nervousnessness but otherwise it was a LOT of fun. Gigs are GRATE!
After that Dave and I wandered into the main room and watched Deux Furieuses, who were BRILLIANT. It was JUST guitar and drums but CRIKEY, what guitars and drums they were! It was VERY LOUD and VERY EXCITING and we both felt that they were AMAZING!
After that it was time for me to head off, so I said farewell to Dave and anybody else I could find and then headed off back to East London. That was a LOT of fun to do, does anybody ELSE have an anniversary coming up I can do??
