Jeays Christmas Extravaganza

2001-12-06

The Bedford

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.