Blog: Scaledown

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I went out on Friday night to do something relatively RARE for me these days - a GIG!

I was due to play at Scaledown, a regular night where they have six or so acts on doing fifteen minute sets. I was rather looking forward to it, partly because I'd actually PRACTICED and partly because my pal Mr S Wilkinson was coming along too. I reckoned that the audience was going to be pretty much ALL people I didn't know (I was right), which is all very jolly for meeting new people, but sometimes you want to have somebody there who you can have a right old YACK with.

Which we did. At some LENGTH, so much so that we unfortunately missed a couple of the other acts, which I always feel a bit bad about. I was otherwise on BEST BEHAVIOUR tho, returning to an old trick of alterating pints of BEER with pints of DIET COKE, thus not getting TOO drunk and also getting very slighty ZAZZED.

It was a good job i DID pursue this policy, as things were running slightly late - when I arrived I was pleased to find that,I could just do the whole thing without any amplification, but did NOTE that part of the reason for the late running might just be because there was a band in the middle with four members, ALL of whom were fully miked up, both instrumentally and vocally. It was actually quite heartwarming tho - they'd been booked by the guy doing the sound who made no secret of how much he LOVED them and was DELIGHTED to have got them playing. Only a CHURL would complain about such HIGH GLEE, and in the end it was only about ten o'clock when it was my turn to go on and do THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

Don't, Darren, Don't

(theme from) Dinosaur Planet

The Lesson Of The Smiths

I had a LOT of fun. I LOVE playing to rooms like this, where there's loads of people who have never heard me before but are willing, EAGER even, to be won over. I have to say there WERE a couple of people who seemed very INTENT on NOT being gathered in, so I did what i ALWAYS do in these situations, and focussed on their girlfriends. When I am PROFESSOR OF ROCKOLOGY this will probably be my TOP TIP for anyone faced with a crowd containing people who wish to sit at the front, looking STERN: ALWAYS smile at their girlfriends. This nearly always works (for some reason The People In The Next Band Who Don't Want You To Do Well nearly always forget to BRIEF their girlfriends on being stoney faced), not only a) getting extra members of the audience on board b) MASSIVELY WINDING UP the stoney face but especially c) making me VERY HAPPY INDEED.

And this was only a couple of people, of course, everybody else was WELL up for it and I had a WHALE of a time. I love gigs where, as I say, people WANT to have fun and are prepared to be entertained by a midly drunk man BELLOWING at them, and Simon and I returned to our beers with pleasure, to enjoy several more pints and chat with some of the aforementioned lovely people who wandered by for a chat. I love doing gigs, gigs are GRATE!

posted 22/3/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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