Last night I made my way once again to The King & Queen in London's fashionable Fitzrovia area of London, for an evening of ROCK!
For LO! Totally Acoustic was BACK! I've avoided FORMALLY saying this previously for various reasons, largely to do with the hassle of trying to do regular dates, working out who to book, and then all the gubbins around the podcast, but I realise now that I can just do it occasionally when I've GOT someone who can play, and not worry about the rest of it. INDEED this gig had only been booked because the band White Town got in touch through their emissary Mr F A Machine to ask about doing one, so it is them what I have to thank for this realisation! In fact, Mr J Mishra is Getting The Band Back Together in a very similar fashion i.e. doing gigs when it looks like it'll be fun, so that's DOUBLE inspiration!
Anyway, I arrived at the King & Queen to find that it now has what looks like a STUDENT clientele, who had all decided to stand RIGHT IN THE DOORWAY so you literally had to push your way through them to get in. Later on several people said to me "You should write a song about that!" I ALREADY HAVE, I replied.
Upstairs I found Frankie, Jyoti and Mr I Turner already in residence, and we were soon joined by Mr S Hewitt and a whole HEAP of lovely people, and also a couple of lovely DOGS, courtesy of The Cresswells. Seeing all these various CHUMS - including Mr T "The Tiger" McClure, who had RACED to be there - reminded me of why I really enjoy doing Totally Acoustic, and very much affirmed in my mind that it was worth doing it again.
Soon it was time to kick off, and we began in the traditional manner with the Totally Acoustic theme tune before I launched into action with the following:
The reason I played these particular songs was that I'd realised I had an album coming out soon, and so I really ought to do some songs from it. However, I had NEVER played the first two songs in front of an audience before, so rather than risk it all going HORRIBLY WRONG I printed myself some LARGE TYPE lyric sheets, which worked out really nicely, and aside from distracting myself with thoughts of Open Top Bus Tours in A Museum Of One Thing it all went pretty well.
We then had a break before White Town came on and were GRATE. They did a stream of songs which were GORGEOUS, contained within an ongoing narrative of explanation and THORTS from Jyoti - it was fab! This was his first gig for about six years, he said, but there was precisely NO rustiness about it. It was one of those lovely gigs where as soon as it begins you feel like it's all going to be FINE and also FUN. Also also, they did THE HIT just over halfway through, and a) it fit in with the rest of the set of equally gorgeous songs and b) there was a TINGLE around the room as we all gently sang along with an actual NUMBER ONE being sung by its author. That was pretty special! Also, Frankie played the trunpet bit on a blow-into-it keyboard thing, which was ACE!
With only them and me on it all finished at a HIGHLY reasonable time, leaving lots of space for YACKING. Excitingly, when I popped downstairs I overheard a conversation at the bar between three chaps talking about Ron Smith and Massimo Belardinelli so INVEIGLED my way into it by saying, "Excuse me, I am a DOCTOR OF COMICS." All right, I'd had an exciting night, but they didn't seem to mind too much!
Eventually it was time for us all to wend our merry way home after a lovely evening of ROCK and PALS. I'm hoping to do another one of these in a month or two, and have someone very much in mind to drag along to do it, but fear not, I shall be broadcasting details loud and clear as soon as it's arranged!
Podcast? there's a podcast? posted 26/4/2024 by why are we not told these things?
Your friendly neighbourhood proof-reader here to say "...Frankie played the trunpet bit..." should be "trumpet"? posted 26/4/2024 by Your friendly neighbourhood proof-reader
