As noted elsewhere, the William Shakespeare Globe Theatre
Room (or some such construction) at the Bedford is the most extraordinary room
- circular, with a balcony running around the top, and a number of "heraldic"
motifs. It may well have been the Round Table Room at some point, and reminds
me of a low rent version of Eyes Wide Shut, and observation I offer to
the audience from the stage.

After the doors open at 8:00, people start filing in from
the front bar, and at 8:30, Robb Johnson goes onstage. he does a very fine set,
including a (suitably political) post-9.11 song, which has apparantly been the
source of conniptions on the Pete Atkin mailing list (during his set Ben, Janna
and Blair arrive from the front bar - audience members of my very own. Hurrah!)
and I try to irrigate myself with grapefruit juice and soda, my beer substitute
(nothing too sweet or caffienated, something I learned in the early days of
teetotalosity after bouncing off the walls of a few venues). Indeed, one of
these drinks is bought for me by the redubtable Chris Schüler.

After Robb, there's The Speech Painter (a.k.a. Geoff), who
launches into his martial arts wordplay, but I'm wandering to and from the loo
in a state of distraction: feeling a bit nervous, because I don't know what
I'm going to do. Well, I know the songs, the order (more or less), the words
and tunes, but have no idea what I'm going to do with my hands or which guitar
I'm going to use for twiddly solo bits, although I have identified a way of
putting a strap on the classical, so that's a step towards it. I am bearing
in mind the possibility that it might not be a total success.

I begin to lurk around the side of the stage.

Phil gives an introduction in which he states that he found
us begging for coins on the streets and gave us plush musical jobs and this
is how we repay him, the bastards. So that's a good start. I witter for a bit
and the remember to tell Dave to start and he does.

The really weird thing about abandoning your instrument just
to sing (apart from trying too work out what to do with one's hands, which is a remarkably pressing concern, particularly as I don't want to wave my arms about too much and look like a Jeays-impersonator, and there's only room for one first-division arm-waver around here. I find my hand sneaking onto my hip, striking me with a fear that I resemble a chubby Larry Grayson. Looking gay is one thing, but there are limits and Larry Grayson lies beyond them. Ian McKellen or David Hockney I could probably deal with) is that there is a huge chunk of awareness that one normally uses on putting one's fingers in the correct place and plucking the correct strings that are now liberated for things like being very aware of all the members of the audience. Particularly the ones who appear to be having conversations. Conversations that seem to be more entertaining than what I'm doing, or at least with better jokes. This is pure paranoia, of course, but I hadn't been expecting it.

So I do The Things You Get, Unison (I play the riff on guitar for this one and hold onto it for noodling on the next couple), The Secret Agent's Dream, Little Games and Iodine. After Little Games I get a very strong sense of they-are-with-me-ness, and Iodine is an amazing experience. Dropping the guitar is completely liberating.

To judge by what the people I speak to after the performance say it was a tremendous success. Indeed, such a success that I really must repeat the experiment at some point soon. And of course I have failed to bring mailing list cards of any description at all. Pah.

Then a break.

Then the Jeays set. Being the christmas gig, There is no set list, but rather Phil draws raffle tickets from a bag and the winner gets to choose a song. As is traditional this degenerates into a shouting match, but all the old favourites (and one or two new ones) get played, as well as songs that I've never played before. It transpires durng the second song that I play on it that the low E on the bass is a quarter-tone sharp, meaning that I have to adjust my fingering until I can fix the tuning (it being a fretless bass). We're on for what seems like weeks, but turns out to have been two hours - twice the length of any previous Jeays set to my knowledge. It's midnight, and I'm very tired.

So I'm on third today, which is a promotion of sorts. I also get eight in which is pretty good for me here. There are people awaiting the following band and even those left over from the first couple.

I've been here since 7:00, not really needing a soundcheck, but enjoying watching everyone else's. It's also good to be able to sit with my guitar and noodle, acclimatising myself to the whole environment.

I'm sort of hovering near the door in case someone with a flier turns up, so manage to meetngreet my own personal guests (Denise, Terry, Phil, Jules, Rich, Tessa and Osvalda. Rachel arrives during the set - I love the exclusive redundancy of that list of names), not being entirely compos.

It's quite difficult to tell when the previous act are going to finish, since they spend a lot of time changing instruments. I can't say that I blame them - I used to be like that once, and would given the opportunity, the transport and the income stream) probably be even worse - but I think they ran over, meaning that subsequent sets (starting with mine) are shortened somewhat. It does feel short - I do Secret Agent, Unison, Little Games, Waltz Without Touching and would have launched into Mr Wrong but yer man came up and told me I had one song left. I may be wrong and I may have forgotten one but that adds up to twenty to twenty-five minutes. There was the extended riff on learning all my German from the War Library comics as well, but even so.

Ah, well. I've been an MC, I know how it is when someone over-runs.

Seems to go down well though. Someone (Jules) does a very loud Shhh during Secret Agent , so people listen. There's less of a barrage of noise as well, more individual voices in the gloom.

Occasional nice effects - the guitar is feeding back through the monitors on D, so at the end of Unison, which has a pedal D n the bass, I can let the ring, play the chords over the top quieter and quieter and then as the D is still ringing launch straight into Little Games.

Afterwards (as many other audience members have toddled off) sit upstairs with Terry, Denise, Phil and Jules and chat, which is nice. There ought to be a place in venues that people can go for a quiet chat if they want to (that used to be one of Bunjies' strong points - the performance area and the chat area were close enough together that people could move easily from one to the other, and I think if attention-giving was more voluntary, then people give attention more generously. I may be wrong though.

It does set some plans in motion in my head, though.

("What, as opposed to plans set in motion in your toes? Tch!")

David had called this morning to ask if I'd fill in for
Davide Sanna, who was supposed to be playing this evening, but had to remain
in sardinia, and so I, of course, jumped at the opportunity.

It was really nice and relaxed, and I did another mammoth
stint (about 18 songs altogether, most of which were recorded on Minidisk for
me to torture myself with later). This time, old/disinterred songs include Circle/Line
and It. According to the Minidisk, my pitching was drifting way off,
but I think this was to do with lack of diaphragm support under the notes, laxness
in the breathing. That is to say, not a natural incompetence, but one I can
address. I can hear on notes that I pay especial attention to, how pitch-crapness
tends not to happen (even quite difficult ones), so there's a whole area of
meditation there on attention and the use of attention and all that. As always.

The more I play here, the more I enjoy it. It's just quite
fun pulling odd songs out of the ether, and it seems less pressured
in that way than a "proper" gig. hence the fact that I can resurrect
all those old songs and play brand new ones, running ongs into each other without
worrying about whether the audience are going to clap or not (they're too busy
drinking coffee). Tinderbox provides a mixed economy - coffee, merchandise,
internet terminals and occasional music, and although the bright lighting may
not seem instantly tune-friendly, but does work quite well at the end of the
day.

I forgot to bring my camera with me, hence not snaps. Sorry.

Can't do anything coherent on this one. Things to say:

1. Quieter than the last one, but then not during a major arts festival so
   that's to be expected.


2. Several performances from the likes of Peter Michael Rowan (who manages
   to produce a violin from some Secret Violin Place. I wonder if all cafe's
   have them. Is it stated in the bylaws that all places for the consumption
   of coffee and sundries must have a violin somewhere on the premises?
   
3. And Pam of course.
   
4. Also performances from Eko, Frank and Stuart.


5. The pot plants are in the basement (where we were performing last time.
   This was not necessary this time on account of the cafe being quieter (since
   there isn't actually a major international arts festival going on at the moment),
   and the upstairs being much warmer than the downstairs. The coffe machines
   are very loud though.


6. I coerce Peter into trying to violin solo over the single chord of Waltz
   Without Touching. This might have been an imposition because it's dead
   modal, and a bit of an unfair thing to drop on a chap.


7. I do a bunch of stuff, beginning with The Things You Get and ending
   with Comforting Lie.


8. A member of the audience, Meg (I believe), cross-examines me on the significance
   of some of the lines in my songs. I am worryingly unsure about what they mean
   - in terms of the exact significance of The Things You Get this may
   be becuase it's several years since I thought about what it's about. I may
   even have changed my mind since then.


9. We are eventually ejected because the staff have a party to go to.

Or the valiant but sadly doomed attempt to take on the Massed Noisemakers of old Camden Town

There are two branches of the Purple Turtle that I know of, neither of which is particularly conducive to ... well, anything really, or at least anything that doesn't involve being paralytically drunk. There used to be an open mike at the other branch (on the Essex Road in Islington) on Sunday afternoons, where I first encountered how a raging noise where no one seemed to be paying any attention could actually be quite fun rather than oppressive. As long as one can hear oneself.

This was the first time I've played in a venue that has a vending maching for Pheromone Wipes ("To Attract Women") in the Gents. Right next to the condom machine. To a certain extent, therefore, the establishment might be said to be exploiting the eternal optimism of the drunkard in search of sexual gratification. But no news there, really.

Anyway I've always thought that the decor looked like the set from the Tomorrow People circa 1972, but I seem to be in a minority there.

That said, it was only tonight that I noticed the torture implements scattered nochalantly around the place.

Joe's evening is called L.O.D.S.O.S. which stands for Lots of Different Sorts of Stuff, a sentiment I can appreciate.

As I arrived, the chap doing the sound was just finishing up a couple of numbers - Steve possibly, sorry, I'm terrible with names - and then Joe did a couple, and then a singer called Ngozi did some stuff - quieter, sensitive sorts of thing, which had a bit of a battle in the context. Then it was me. As Joe played some suitably diverse records, I tuned up and warmed my
fingers up.

Perhaps because I'd had a while to warm up I played pretty well (ironically, really). Certainly if I'd played as well last Monday, I'd have been a lot happier. I played: Secret Agent, Where Did It All Go Right, Mr Wrong, Waltz Without Touching (followed immediately by Little Games), Unison and Comforting Lie. I'm sure I've forgotten something. There was some interesting feedback during WWT, and it teetered on the brink it on other occasions.

There was a cluster of people over by the bar being appreciative, and another table to my left. This was nice.

And after me, it was Dave Russell, who was mighty as usual, although he was finally something that the drinkers could not ignore and a certain amount of foot-based voting took place, until there was finally just us, the knot of people who'd come specifically for the night, cheering enthusiastically. His version of Bus Stop in particular, was noise terror of the highest order, the guitar being dubbed and panned and what not - I've seen people trying that before and it doesn't necessarily work, but on this occasion it was fairly devastating.

Oh and then I went home to bed.

I arrive late - 7:15 - and perhaps a bit flustered. I have a decaf cappuchino and the first of many glasses of water and try to prepare mentally.

Please note - not the schoolboy use of the word "mental".

It's much noisier than last time - I suspect that there's a 5;30 to 8:00 clientele and then it goes quiet. Since everybody who is there to see me (David, Charlotte, SAC, Aiden McGee) is there for the long haul I start slowly with vaguer and more difficult ones (Free Time is the first, and that might have been a mistake, because I trip over the notes and it's not a very confident start). Actually, what I played after that, I'm not sure. but there were all the new ones, and a lot of old ones, some of which I was playing inadvertantly. For example, towards the end I played Going Down the Country, which I wrote when I arrived in London twelve years ago. But having played the first chords I have to follow it through. I am genuinely very nervous that I will completely blank on the chords.

Anyway, I'm try to concentrate on singing around the soreness in my throat which developed this afternoon.

And the only one I don't get round to doing is The Secret Agent's Dream as well as some of the longer ones, and actually quite a few songs, now I come to think of it, but Secret Agent was the standout omission . It's an interesting experience, definitely rougher than last time (David recorded it on his minidisc, so I'll be able to hear exactly how rough it is when I get round to buying a minidisc player), and it's quite difficult to concentrate with people passing in front of your nose every five seconds. Let me rephrase that. On second thoughts, I'll let it lie. But you know what I mean. I try to do the as-yet-unnamed instrumental and make a bit of a pig's ear of it.

After a couple of songs Ben occupies the booth to my right, and about halfway through, Ciara and..er... Mr Ciara (I'm terrible with names) are sitting at the end. Soon after that I kick into Little Games and feel a bit more confident, despite cocking it up a bit. In fact, every song bears the tell-tale cocking up that happens when a recording device is present (see also the Whistle Binkies gig in August), but that just means that I should do it more and get used to it. One final new one (as yet untitled) gets its debut as well, with me having to read three lines of the lyrics off a piece of paper.

Sorry it's not in chronological order. I'm a bit confused.

I take all the pictures at the end and a nice American lady takes mine, so there I am, a bit blurred, but I was feeling a bit blurred anyway..

[A week later, Aiden McGee sent me the following notes re the same performance - to give an alternative perspective from my rather Eeyore-ish one.]

JP has a wonderful physical stillness in playing - the only body movement (other than hands) that can be detected is a slight ' back and left ' [is this a reference to JFK? - jp] change in posture, which means that the occasional lyric is lost. I imagine this happens to 90% of guitarists; it is intriguing here as it is the only variation on the very relaxed, minimal movements.

The ' one chord song ' evokes the mournful nature poems of Thomas Hardy. Spare and telling.

JP seems to be dissatisfied with gig. The broad canvass of it is very good - I personally don't read much into the occasional slips or his thinking aloud about not playing well - he suits the venue well & knows how to communicate to the audience, so he shouldn't worry too much about technical perfection. I found myself nodding a lot at how good the comments sounded and how easy it was to appreciate consecutive songs - a sure sign of building up a good vibe. If he slowed down the pace of some songs a fraction and thus gave himself a little more time to think one verse ahead, he would probably attain that virtually flawless level without sounding any less soph and smooth - he's a country mile ahead of most the crowd in terms of natural technique and practical ability anyway. Just trying to be more deliberate really helps (or so I have found.)

The shorter songs are very good - suit the spare and telling style (see above).

When The River Rises much better than at open mike before.

Any gig where I am in utterly objective, analytical mood and reduced to jotting down ' very good ', ' fine ' ' brilliant ' for each song can't be that tainted by failure!! But the one thing that has stuck in my memory for the week since is the solo in ' Little Games.'

I think it was said of Concierto de Aranjuez that it was effective and popular because it corresponded exactly to how a listener imagined a Spanish guitar conert to be. No less a compliment can be paid to that solo in Little Games - it is exactly how one would idealistically envisage a bossa nova/classical sequence on a classical guitar, but it also appears perfectly in the context of a very poignant and evocative song - more than enough anticipations are met...

What I kept on thinking about when I heard stuff like When The River Rises, Country Shack and Drift Away was the Huckleberry Finn (or, more traditionally, Robinson Crusoe) idyll. There is that strong element in JP's narratives of people who bear no others harm, but who still want to be free of being accountable to others and able to enjoy nature-rooted solace - pure independents in the way that Mark Twain conceived Huck. The idea of just being able to be free and drift away to something more simple evokes Huck, Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper playing pirates on the island - and there is also that Mark Twain/William Golding feel of something sinister (and vaguely superstitious) hanging over proceedings of the innocent - as in JP's lyric about ' The Beastie.' I think JP is a Golding fan? Made me think of those other great Twain vignettes: Tom and Huck witnessing Injun Joe killing Dr Robinson/Tom Sawyer and Becky trapped in the caves/Tom, Huck and Joe ' coming back from the dead.' Like Twain, JP's ' innocents ' and ' grown ups ' (especially the Daddy figure in Little Games - a JP Aunt Polly?!) are depicted realistically and with humour - they are vulnerable, prone to bizarre situations, but not unduly mocked by the narrator.

I set off to Nadine's, but when I get there and go downstairs there's no sign of anybody. No PA, no nothing. I call up Zaid. I'm supposed to be at the Bedford Arms in Clapham. He told me the wrong place. I manage to catch Simon and give him his CD (and he seems happy enough with that), but I hope nobody else came to see me. If they did, I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault. My motto for the day.

I'm feeling sort of beginnings-of-fluey, so I get a big bottle of mineral water to try to flush the poisons out and reirrigate myself.

So I get on the tube and go down to the Bedford Arms, a much noisier venue than Nadines. I'm on last.

This is Zarathustra's and it is, indeed, something of a Nietzchian evening.

It feels like quite a strain -- the PA is almost distorting with a lot of bass and mid frequencies, very difficult to project through. Because it's the main body of a pub, there is a barrage of noise, but people are sitting close enough and paying enough attention that I forget to just settle back into myself and build a bubble, instead I'm trying too connect with people. Who knows, maybe I do. The thing is I can't tell.

I do feel exposed– I don't feel confident enough to take photographs from the stage area, I am aware of imposing myself onto the other, explicitly drinking, clientele. And tonight they outnumber the audience clientele. Occasionally someone does wander over to the edge of the bar to take a look, but I can't tell whether they are enjoying or whether they are following the same instict that draws people to a car crash. That's not to say that the playing is bad, but that it has to fight with the ambience of the pub. Sometimes it feels like I'm winning at least a foothold in the general consciousness, but then I play a bum note or drop a lyric and I lose them again.

I play Secret Agent's Dream, Little Games, and then go straight to Comforting Lie, and Iodine, and then because I need to do one more song, and it seems that I need another loud one (because the volume of the background conversation is so high) I play State of the Art. Any good work I may have done with the first songs was undone there - it's an old song, a bit clunky and I didn't play it that well. I became aware (unusually) that I have standards and that SotA isn't quite up to them. When I finish playing the volume of conversation drops, because they don't have to talk over me any more. I sould have done better. If I ever hoped to play at the King's Head or Whistle Binkies or some other noisy drinking hole, this should act as a reminder that I have a lot of work to do.

But that, at least, is my responsibility if not my fault.

A bit of a quiet night – when I arrive there's just Kath, Lyndsey and her Significant Other and a floorspot (and the FS is just finishing). Kath goes on next and while she's performing several others drift in, including Simon Seligman and another chpa who introduces himself as John Fallon (who I have corresponded with via the VAC forum).

Simon does a couple of verses and then Lindsey Shields goes on, brought over specially from New Zealand. I hope she'll be playing more while she's over here. She's very good, great vocals, finely written and transparent (clear, not overwrought) lyrics. So much so that the unenlightened, undeveloped part of my brain that specialises in Id-stuff begins to worry that perhaps with Kath and Linsey I might be a bit outclassed. Luckily the more enlightened and developed part is on hand to remind me that that would be missing the point, not only of performin, but of life itself. It's not about competition, I have realised. So I win.

During Lindsey's set more people have arrived so now there is a good room-half-full (or room-half-empty if you prefer). A short break (during which I take most of the pictures above), and then I'm on.

All the usual suspects, Mr Wrong, A Hundred Horses representing the more recent songs; The Sea being the older stuff. No Iodine, which is interesting (I wonder whether I rely on that song, that I might be building its RainSong qualities up a bit). The muggy weather (and my muggy state of being) mean that my singing is a bit underpowered and I have difficulty keeping the intonation afloat (a couple of times there I send some notes out and have no idea how in tune they are or not, or even what note I am singing. That's definitely a tiredness thing).

Sensitive Boy seems to go down quite well, indeed one of the barmaids who came to collect glasses during it actually stayed until the end of the song. The fact that I choose to play three songs in a row that finish on artificial harmonics (A Hundred Horses, Sensitive Boy and Where Did It All Go Right?) irritates me a bit, if only because I don't feel entirely in control – I'm missing those little details that ought to be on top of.

A lot of fun, though. I exchange CDs with Lindsey, which is nice (my CDs may not be million-sellers, but they work quite well as currency).

A bit quiet, but then it is a Thursday afternoon. When I arrive, one Stuart Blance is playing – it's 2:30, and I'm on at 5:00. I sit and check out the various performers, and go on to an audience of four, inlcuding one paying customer. It's fun, though. I enjoy it. I suppose I do about an hour altogether. Merri-May Gill, who's the next act, arrives about three-quarters of the way through the set with her manager and percussionist.

M-M G is a bit of a whirlwind. I'm so glad that I didn't have to follow her. Actually, she's a reminder of how complacent I can be in terms of the being an entertainer thing. Being a nice middle-class English boy, I suffer from the "I'm going to play a few songs now, if that's alright with you chaps" inferiority complex, which (although it's nothing compared to the local Edinburgh Calvinist "This will probably be crap but I'll give it a try" inferiority complex, which is absolutely crippling) does me no favours. People actually want to be entertained, and Ms Gill (in common with a lot of Australian performers) goes out and entertains them. It does give me a lot to think about, on top of the laughing and generally being entertained.

I slip away to get a pizza around the corner (all the take aways here do pizza, which is dead civilised, I have to say, because it means that you can get some decent veggie take-away food. Contrary to popular belief, these are not deepfried, even if this is Scotland) and run into a couple of Peggy Vestas on the way (they played on Tuesday). Nice to meet them again - the last time I saw them was backstage at the Ross bandstand last year.

I stay for a few more acts and then get back to the flat (just a step away, as it turns out) where I go comatose.

Thanks to my current state as a strange attractor
for chaos, we arrive late, just as the breaks is ending. This means that we
miss all the floorspots (inlcuding Dave Russell and Aiden McGee and several
others I'd have like to have seen).

It seems like quite a quiet night (or at least not
an overflowing night. Mainly this would be because with my recent email difficulties
I haven't been able to send out reminders about the gig. But it's not a problem
– the faces who are there are at least friendly ones.

Kath Tait is first up after the break, and I notice
that a lot of her set is newer stuff - The Cyclist From Hell, The
Wrong Train, Bollocks! I've Got Too Many Lovers – which is nice.
The fact that the audience is often the same does tend to make some of us on
this circuit guilty about playing the same songs over and over. For my part,
the set is broadly drawn from the older material, because that's what I could
give Steve to listen to. The percussionist factor will hopefully give it a twist,
though.

While Nina Finburgh is performing (she does characters
to classical music – that's the only way I can explain it. It's sort of
like a revue act, and very fine), I tune up the guitar.

We're on.

Originally billeda s a trio, it's me and Steve Beaver.
Steve's mostly playing a snare drum in different ways (brushes, stick rapping
on the rim, snare on, snare off, etc) and a shaker (on Little Games).

It is a very different experience, having someone
else to concentrate on. Normally my consciousness will be split between what
my left hand is doing, what my right hand is doing, what my mouth is doing and
everything else (audience behaviour more often than not). With Steve playing
there is another, very powerful influence, situated somewhere to my left –
on occasion I have to perform and be aware of timing shifts, and if we go out
of time, will he adapt to me or shall I adapt to him? Some ralls are a bit strange,
but that's to be expected, I suppose. So not the tightest unit on the face of
the earth, but that really doesn't matter, our intentions are in the right place.

I've written and used a set list for the first time
since 1996:

The Things You Get

Mr Wrong

The Secret Agent's Dream

Idiot Child

Where Did It All Go Right??

Little Games

Sensitive Boy (dropped for reasons of time)

Iodine

Comforting Lie

Some things change significantly –on The Things
You Get there's more drive, and I don't have to power it along; on Where
Did It All Go Right, with Steve going through the (normally quite sparse)
bridge section, I can just sit back and sing, dropping in chords as I see fit,
or not if that's what I want; Little Games comes out a lot slower, but
that gives me more space to interpret the songs.

People's reactions – Phil J, Kath T, Brinsley
S – are very positive indeed, and I think this is definitely a project
that I will continue with, and I'll go looking for a bassist again. The main
problem will be remunerating the musicians for their time (given my dismal record
of promoting myself). It did remind me of things that I enjoy about solo performance,
but I'll take it as a suggestion to me that I should perform more rather than
differently.

Tinderbox is a coffee shop on Upper Street, just
up the road from the Angel (and just around the corner from Moriarty's, where
the VAC takes place on Wednesdays and Thursdays). The VAC have organised a short
series of gigs here to test the wateers, and I'm one of the for people chosen
to play. Four! That's a tremendous honour.

It's not a hokey little mint-tea-and-homemade-scones
sort of place. It's not a Lianachan,
but all chrome and shiny surfaces. Which isn't a problem - it's just that "coffee
shop" usually brings particular felicitous images to mind - teacosies,
wobbly wooden furniture and cosiness. It's still nice, though, teacosies or
no.

There is a microphone set up and the mixer it's connected
to is plumbed into the main music speakers - pumped into the main body of the
coffe shop and, indeed, out into the street at the door. There'll be no escaping
me tonight.

A small but perfectly formed contingent from the VAC
have come to see me – Dave S and Steve C, of course; Alastair; Joan and
a Nice Australian Woman*. There are also occasional
people sitting around, not deliberately waiting for the music to begin, but
that is the gist. When the music starts they will, hopefully, realise that that's
what they've been waiting for.

So I can either do two half-hour sets or one hour-long
one. I plump for the two sets, because it seems like a good idea at the time.
Dave and Steve check the balance in all the other speakers around the shop.
I say "hello" into the mic, and theres a complaingin voice over to
my left. I have to brak it to her that I'll be making noises at her for a half
an hour at least (she does leave during the first song). And I'm off playing
Little Games. I'm not sure what else I play - over sets of this duration,
it all becomes a blur. I know that I do Secret Agent and Mr Wrong
quite early on, and have to tell myself not to play all the ones I've done
recently and are comfortable with at the beginning, or the set will be a bit
saggy.

I do Home (not performed that for a while),
and try to do Bledloe Ridge but have occasional blank spots (a bit obvous
during an instrumental) so lead directly intoThe Sea. There's a very
nice and smiley couple, a serious-looking man (who does seem to be enjoying
it) and Alastair and Joan to my left, David and N.A.W. to my right, and Steve
is in front of me and there are some other people there for a while. There's
not a single cohesive audience-thing, but that's cool, because I wasn't expecting
it. As Nietschtian experiences go, I've had worse.

David suggested doing a cover, but I only know four
(the same four that I've known for fifteen years). I do my version of Pennies
From Heaven onthe grounds that it only has five chords (as long as you
count D, Dmaj7 and D7 as the same chord, which I suppose I shouldn't).

I finish the first set, promise coming attractions
for the second half - Tragic Sandwich-Making Accident, Babies paying attention
to their toes, Long Song, either torch song or Apocalyptic Bossa Nova –
and sit around feeling very self-conscious. I look at the track listing on the
CDs to remind me of which songs I've done and which not. I also run through
some bits quietly to get them under my fingers - there's nothing worse than
seeing a bit in a song coming up with no idea at all how one is supposed to
play it, hoping that your fingers know how it's done, but also knowing tat thinking
about it will make that impossible. Except being nailed to a cow. That's probably
worse.

I go over and say hello to the nice couple, explaining
that I'm not so good at person-to-person discourse.

Joan and the serious-looking bloke leave before the
second set. Dinner calls, I'm sure.

I kick off with Where Did It All Go Right? ("Always
good for an ironic twist, that one"), and do run into some energy difficulties
after that. Partly this is because there is now no one sitting in front of me
at all, and I appear to be playing to the magazine rack. Taking the break probably
was a tactical mistake, but I can never tell these things in advance (after
all I could have made a similar mistake the other way round, and have done –
stretched people's attention spans with overlong-for-the-context sets).

I try 100 Horses as an energy booster, and
it only works intermittently.The baby introduction for Hard to be a God
has some effect. I then go for Automatic (the promised "long one"
- probably better in a noisy ambience than Obvious) and draw to a close
with Iodine and Comforting Lie like I almost always do.

I don't sell any CDs, but it doesn't matter. I have
fun anyway,and that's the main thing.

*I know we've been introduced
at some point, but I have the very worst memory in the world for names. Usually
I can fake it (I never use someone's name in conversation, for example –
I know from personal experience** that the rapport
you are supposed to develop by constantly referring to someone by name can be
mitigated somewhat if you get that name wrong). If you are that nice Australian
woman, please email me with your name,
I promise to remember it this time, I'll put it in here and no one will be any
the wiser, least of all me.

Note, added 6/9/01: The nice Australian woman is called
Charlotte, and she is in fact Danish, which (geographically at least) is as
Unaustralian as it is possible to get. Previous assessments of niceness are
unaffected by this discovery.

**My first name is Andrew.
But that's also my father's name, so I've always been called John - my second
name. People in positions of relative authority, who have got my name from a
form I've filled in and who repeat one's first name as a sort of drawing-in,
stroking mantra thing will inevitably call me Andrew, because that's first on
the form. Consequently, rather than drawing me in, the effect is to alienate
me somewhat - not in an existentialist, oh-god-what's-the-point sort of way,
but rather a Brechtian kind of alienation. I become aware that I'm witnessing
a performance rather than participating in a conversation.

They carry on doing this, even if I tell them they're
getting my name wrong. I suppose they find having to switch tacks disorienting.

Anyway, I can never remember peoples names, one of
the many reasons I'm crap at selling.

This was a nice one.

Originally I was supposed to me MCing this night. Then Veronique decided that she wanted to do more nights at the same time that I thought that MCing this particular venue wasn't for me. This left tonight in a sort of limbo, since I hadn't booked it and she went ahead and booked March, forgetting tonight, and it was left sort of blank.

When I met her last week at the Kashmir Klub, she said she didn't have an act and I said that I'd do it if she wanted, since (karmically at least) if someone was going to have to play to an empty room because the night hadn't been promoted at all, it should be me.

I arrived at about nine o'clock, and the last few floorspots were going on, so I got to see the mighty Dave Russell. After the break there was the first main act (who was very good, but whose name I can't remember. Curse my cheap, plastic memory! Perhaps someone can remind me, and I can fill it in here retrospectively). The poet hadn't turned up. Veronique played a song, hoping that she would just burst dramatically through the door. But she didn't. So I went on earlier than expected.

I started with Little Games and took it from there. My fingers seemed to behave themselves for the first time in public since I came back from Italy. Occasional glitches, but merely corroborative detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. As it were. Since I didn't have to worry about my hands, I could check the energy in the room - fairly positive, except for a (possibly foreign, non-english speaking?) couple to my right. I couldn't tell whether they were enjoying it or not, and I certainly seemed to lose them during the introductions. Although this might have been that they didn't enjoy my jokes.

It's interesting the disparity between the looks on people's faces (or at least my ability to read the looks on their faces) and their actual attitude and energy level. If I looked at the audience I began to wonder what they were thinking, reading their facial expressions as potentially bored or hostile or similarly unsupportive. Not look at them, try to feel the energy instead, and I got a completely different picture. There were gaps in the energy - for example the foreign couple (who left after about half an hour, and the gap in the energy disappeared, which suggests some negativity on their part, although perhaps they have a foreign energy, the language of which I do not speak), the fact that the room was not packed, anyway - but outright negativity would cause a disturbance that can disrupt positive attention coming from other quarters. For example, the relatively small, isolated amount of negative energy at the VAC a couple of weeks ago drowned out the genuinely supportive, positive energy that was coming from the rest of the room. On of my Tasks seems to be to learn how to deal with this without flinching.

Because I went on early (and because the poet never did turn up), I played a longer set than I normally would at this venue. When there isn't a particular time limit, I can relax into it. I played a lot of the stuff that isn't yet recorded - Mr Wrong (which went fine, no riots this time) Obvious or 100 Horses - which makes me feel more confident about the new stuff I'm trying to write at the moment. Of the rest, I noticed that only the essential Iodine came from Plucked, otherwise it was Where Did It All Go Right?, The Secret Agent's Dream, Sensitive Boy, Comforting Lie. The usual gang of reprobates. So perhaps I'm leaving the Plucked material behind (although Steve Beaver, a percussionist I'll be working with, has done some work on those songs, and made them interesting to play again, so we'll see).

Upward and onward.

I do enjoy doing longer sets, though, and think that I'm a better act while doing them. Given two or three songs, or half an hour, and I tend to stick to shorter, more reliable songs. At forty-five minutes to an hour I can add in more unusual material, play with the structure more. However, given that I lack the talent for attracting groups of people to see me, I can't really demand huge quantities of time.

Which suggests several things that I can work on - either addressing shorter sets as ends in themselves, or getting better at attracting Bums On Seats. Or both. Or some other option, that I haven't realised is there, yet.

The gig left me feeling warm and euphoric, despite the fact that it kept me up well past my bedtime. I have noticed that the headline spot at the Soundwave is a Charmed Place, that bestows positive vibes on many people who play it, and as such is actually an honour to play. A particular honour on a night when I was not rushed to finish the set (because of the normal weight of floorspots at the Soundwave, such temporal luxury is an especial treat)

Curiouser and curiouser.

The story goes like this:

I'm trying to work up a new song, Mr Wrong,
which I'm still a bit shaky on the words for. I go along to the VAC to give
it a try, taking the words on with me as a crib sheet. But the only place I
can put them is on the floor, so that I can't see them anyway. I mention this
- I have an odd habit of being as open as I can be with the audience about the
strange little things that freak me out, because it often means that they don't
freak me out any more - saying that I have a piece of paper, but it isn't really
very useful because I can't really see it, but that I derive great comfort from
it "like Neville Chamberlain did from his piece of paper - and we all know what
a success that was".

And then the band who'd been on immediately before
me, who seem a bit tanked up, frankly, start heckling me from the back. I just
try to carry on (considering that I'm doing the song that I am least able to
do in my sleep, this is not the simplest of tasks, but it's either that or stop
altogether), and they get louder and more obstreperous. The audience in general
applaud quite warmly considering my actual playing must have been pretty bad.
Referring to an earlier performer who'd cut her finger ("so that's my excuse",
she said), I say that my fingers are fine, so I have no excuse (except
maybe to say "the dog ate my talent"). Most of the band have left by now, except
the singer, who's getting very worked up indeed. This is a very pissed young
man, in both the British and American senses, hurling random abuse. At me.

Steve Chin, one of the people who run VAC, tries to
reason with him, but in vain. Then he tries to get him to leave. I've gone for
Comforting Lie, which I really ought to be able to play in my sleep by
now. Unwisely, I answer back ("at last, the folk scene has its own Bez" - the
singer does that shambling walking-on-the-spot dance favoured by such luminaries
as Bez and Thingy Brown out of the Stone Roses), which was not only likely to
make him more aggressive but was also Bad Karma - never be rude to to other
performers, even if they are a complete pain in the arse, it'll only reflect
badly on you. He resists Steve for a bit and then goes downstairs. I do the
rest of the song.

Interestingly, the fact that I seem to have been cool
under pressure (in fact, I was rabbit-in-headlights paralysed, trying to work
out which way to duck should he throw his beer glass), completely distracts
from the fact that I played very badly indeed (I challenge anybody not to when
people are hurling personal abuse at them, but all the same: "We should learn
to play in our sleep, because usually we do").

When I went into the gents later on, I was followed
in by an old bloke with grey hair and a beard, who starts having a go at me:

"What's your problem?"

(What? I thought.)

"What's your problem?"

(Right now, my only problem appears to be you)

"Why are you so insulting to people?"

(What? Why me? Why is everybody suddenly picking on
me?)

"Why are you so insulting to people"

And the only thing I can think of is:

"Everybody's got to have a hobby."

Bad mistake. Bone to a dog, with a side order of grist
for the mill. I try to leave, he blocks the door.

"So it's your hobby, is it? Being insulting to people?"

(Eh?)

"Give us a kiss."

(Oh, for God's sake...)

He grabs my face, one hand on each cheek. Getting
very aggressive.

"Give us a kiss."

I think this has got wierd enough. The time for polite
incomprehension is past. The time for discretion-is-the-better-part-of-valour
est arrivé.

I force my way out of the toilet.

The singer reappears, saying he wants to talk to me.
What about, exactly? He's got pissed up, spent five minutes hurling abuse at
me and now he wants a quiet chat about... what? Chord progressions? Buying trousers
that fit? What?

"I don't want to hit you, I just want to talk to you...
you pussy!"

Run away. It's Valentine's Day, all the normal people
are tucked up in bed with each other. The world is full of nutters tonight.
Run away.

* * *

I had to work it out for myself. Not a
reflection on Steve, but he didn't tell me why they were so pissed off
until after I had done. They thought that the "Neville Chamberlain" line was
having a go at them - the kid had taken crib-sheets onstage with him.
In fact, I suspect that they interpreted everything I said as a dig at them.
I've been doing this long enough to know that you don't have a go at other performers,
it's a sure way to lose the audience's sympathy, particularly when the audience
are the other performers. The man who molested me in the toilet was the
singer's dad. He probably thought I was gay, because to some people anyone who
isn't a "hard bloke" is a poof. Most of the gay people I know would be mortally
offended if they were associated with as big a slob as me. But he wasn't to
know that. Or, indeed, anything else.

In the real fact, the basic one, the hard truth, they
probably knew I wasn't having a go at them. They just didn't care. The
kid had been on, now it was the old man's turn for his fun - it was him who
detected the "insult", and probably fanned the flames of his son's alcohol-fuelled
paranoia. Proper wind-up, get the poof, lovely.

This is the downside to this city, maybe even this
country. I hope not the whole world. The mindless, pissed-up let's-just-get-off-our-faces-and-have-a-ruck
pointless bollocks that you have to watch out for all the sodding time.

The name of this band was either Sonnet or
Sonet and at the end of day the really sad thing about them was that
they weren't actually that good. At the music thing. Not really, stinkingly
bad, which can be quite interesting sometimes, but not that good in a
way which is just dull. And if the Old Man starts a barny everywhere they go,
then the kid doesn't stand a chance of getting a proper gig anywhere except
the local boozer. Maybe that's all he wants. Maybe he thinks Alan McGee will
wander in off the street and whisk him away to stardom. Maybe he's right, I
don't know.

I don't think so, though. Either way, I don't care.

Good at making a bit of trouble out of nothing at
all, though. That's probably enough for Good Old British Stardom, eh?

Another odd one, I suppose, although the oddness was definitely all my fault. I had a feeling that it would be quiet when I agreed to do it, although I realise there could be an element of self-fulfilling prophecy about that. We arrived at about half-past eight to find downsatirs teeming with people and upstairs empty, apart from David and Stephen (the organisers) and Rich Barnard (a VAC regular and very fine singer-songwriter who'd seen me do a spot there the previous night and was enthused enough to come along). I discovered that the people downstairs had come to see the other act, and felt a bit better. I don't mind playing to a handful of people, but find it a bit embarassing looking the promoter in the eye if I don't attract an audience (probably because I've been that promoter myself, and I know how he feels). This way, I got to play, and he got his audience, and all was pretty good with the world, and God was in, or near, his heaven. A bit later, John Arthur (another V. fine S-S) turned up. So that was five, then. Laura was quite interested in trying to get some of the people from downstairs to come up, but I wasn't sure - often when a group of people go to see a mate perform, they're not really there for the performance at all, but for the social thing (in which I'd just be an interloper), and besides, how seriously were they going to take someone whom nobody had come to see?

So I set off at about 9:00 (after a couple of false starts, David getting his minidisk going - and it would have been a pity not to get all of whatever it was) with The Things You Get, explaining the lack of applause (which there was not, actually - those five people did make a tremendous noise) by saying that it was a packed out "benefit for people with no hands, or who have hands but are unable or unwilling to use them".

Lots of little mistakes (which there always are, and they don't get to me, but it is worth mentioning them), and occasional large areas of glitch - I almost forgot Calm Blue Ocean completely while I was in the middle of it, resulting in more a capella bits than usual. I did my new song - Mr Wrong - which I'll probably continue to do, hopefully without having to sneak the words on with me, just in case I have a lapse of memory.

As I was finishing, since the other act's time was approaching, his loyal fans began to dribble in. Quite a good crowd, actually. They seemed to enjoy him. I made my excuses and left (we were very tired - this rock 'n' roll stay-up-til-eleven-thirty-playing-the-geetar lifestyle does not agree with my new-found sleep patterns).

Pirate Jenny's is a club dedicated to "chanson and badly-behaved music" that has run at the Vortex for several years. It is run by Des de Moor, singer and songwriter, among many other roles. Des booked me to play after seeing me support Katrina Rublowska a few months ago (as well as knowing me as Phil Jeays' guitarist).

It was actually quite a thrill for me to play the Vortex (particularly the funky old Vortex, which will be closing soon for the venue to move to newer, better appointed,premises) - the Katrina gig was here as well, and I've played here a few times with Phil, but when I arrived, and my name was chalked on the door, that was the particular thrill.

Bit sad, that. Maybe. Bit easily starstruck.

I was feeling a bit underpowered, though - I'd been ill throughout Sunday, lying semiconscous for most of the day, rallying (a bit) for the Jonathan Meades programme on BBC2 (a coincidence - I attribute no curative properties to Mr Meades), and then sleeping until 2:00pm on Monday. So, I was left a bit... yes, underpowered, and unfocused. And it was cold,too. Which is a shame.

Moan, moan. Grumble, grumble.

My set was in the first half - Des, himself kicked off both halves with four-song sets, so it was't completely cold. However, it took a couple of songs to get going. I stumbled into gear with WDIAGR? and Little Games. There was a couple to my left conversing throughout. My underpowered lack of focus (have I mentioned that?) left me a bit oversensitive to this, sadly, and I was very distracted. I hope I played well enough. I know I could have played a lot better. I felt a certain reticence. Not badly behaved enough.

I managed to retrieve some of the energy later, I think, particularly commencing Obvious. There's a lesson here, I think. I tend to fall into a pattern for opening sets - for a long time it was The Things You Get, and then Little Games for a while too, and now "WDIAGR?". They are all good, but I do need to address this issue of grabbing the energy, of some opener that makes people pay attention. Obvious works because it is a drama, and a ritual of a sort (Iodine, which is much shorter, works the same way.) But neither is an opener - they work much better towards the end of the set. Obvious certainly caught the attention tonight. Songs with spoken introductions also worked. I do need to get more of a repertoire of intros that I can reel off without having to rely on native wit (which is a scarce commodity when one is freaked, I can tell you).

Ooomph! needed. Apply within.

And the headliners were Babysnakes, who play reels, jigs, tangos and such musics from all over the world. Very fine, the cold didn't get to them, not underpowered at all, check 'em out. I'm not sure that they realise they are named after a Frank Zappa track, but I may be wrong. I certainly didn't ask.

An odd but not unenjoyable gig to start 2001. A "Real Millennium" celebration at a squat in Islington (or at least right at the Holloway Road end of Liverpool Road). That road block on Liverpool Road is becoming quite irksome indeed, considering. Joe Quillin called me on Saturday and asked if I was already occupied on New Year's Eve, and if not, could he pass my number on to somebody who was organising a little shindig. He would be going off to Crouch Hill for their party. I was expecting a Quiet Night In, but that does not, somehow, count as something to do. Person in question (Dom Spiral) duly called. Yes, I said, I'd be keen to play a set.

On Sunday I called Mr Spiral back to ask for the address, which he told me, adding (before dashing off to organise something, and there was a considerable amount to organise, I must say) that it would start "Nine to Ten. Twenty-four hours".

This gave me some peturbation, not liking the idea that I could be sitting around waiting to play for a whole day. Still, I went over to Laura's for a bath and a shave (I appear not to have any hot water at the moment - not quite as disabling as one might think, but I have to go to other places to bathe and shave), and we finally set off at about half past ten.

It took a couple of passes to find Liverpool Road (I don't know why), but the specific thumping warehouse was considerably easier to identify. Mr Spiral was at the door, and suggested we go upstairs to find the Music and Poetry Room, opposite the Mushroom Room.

The M&P room appeared to be the one with the makeshift stage, behind which was a couple playing CDs on one of those CD DJ decks. They explained that live music would be starting at about 3:00 am.

"!!!", I thought.

Although people were exhorting me to stash it somewhere, I hung onto my guitar for a while (a bit obsessive I admit, but I wanted to get more of a feel for the place before putting it down). Went downstairs to the Main Hall where there was a sort of New Years Eve celebration. The Real Millennium was announced, as though 2000 had been some sort of establishment conspiracy (who knows, perhaps it was).

There was then an amount of jungle (old style messed-up beats jungle, or possibly some modern psychedelic spin-off) and trancy techno. I stashed the guitar behind the speakers and we danced for a while (quite a while by my standards, perhaps an hour). Then we went back upstairs and sat, watching the passers-by, and drinking the very fine chai tea.

Joe turned up, fresh from the "loosely organised" Crouch Hill do, and somewhat loosely organised himself. I got to go on first.

So it was about 3:30 that I set off. The mix was very close to chaos - there was the constant threat of tuned feedback, whenever I held down a string, it would feedback and sustain. This is a groovy effect, but somewhat inimical to the classical guitar. I started with Where Did It All Go Right?, which proved to be ironic, since not only was it palpably not going right, but not one could make out the words anyway. Joe suggested something with a beat, so I did Little Games. That seemed to work better. I then launched into all the louder, faster ones I could think of. Tried throwing in Iodine, when someone commented favourably on my "cheesiness" (I take apparant compliments as I find them), but it fell flat. I did the instrumental that I wrote at Laura's flat last new year, because I was interested to see whether it would work or not, and it did. Leapt straight into Comforting Lie, and then a girl asked if I could play Summertime for her to sing to, and I said I could as long as it was in A minor. Then she asked if I knew Ain't No Sunshine (she started off a capella and then I guessed, more or less correctly, at the chords), and then some kind of blues. Then she was gone, and I did My Funny Valentine (with requisite feedback) and finished.

I must have played for just over half an hour, we left after my set, and before Joe went on (which was a bit rotten on him but Laura and I were definitely flagging), so we got home at about five.

Curious gig, since there were people passing by all the time, so it felt like playing in a corridor in a way. I felt quite relaxed - my the time of the Inpromptu Jazz Set, I was dropping in all sorts of solos and noodling and so forth, and that was quite fun and possibly a New Direction. I did enjoy it, I suppose, although about four people were paying attention to what I was doing and I think three of those may not have been enjoying it. Still, a gigging start to the New Year.