Jeays Christmas Extravaganza

2002-12-03

The Battersea Barge
Nine Elms Lane
(behind the FedEx building)
London, SW8 5BP

My arrival is so delayed that I reach the venue with some of the audience, which is rather crap, really.

There follows an extended period of attempting to assemble the gear (I put together the bass amp and plug the guitar into my Acoustic DI, then am told by the sound man that I should plug both straight into the PA, however it seems to be less than optimally possible to have guitar and bass and piano playing at the same time, in particular the piano is non-apparant. We seem to get it all together, though).

Then, a bit late, we start - first Lucy Rathbone performing standards and show tunes in various characters, then The Speech Painter, then me. I pop outside to tune up, but of course it's visible-breath cold outside, and hot under the lights so I get the chance for what I refer to as "elementary physics demonstration". The tuning settles down eventually. I play The Things You Get, Mr Wrong, the newish one I played at The Old Coffee House and (a request) Sensitive Boy to finish. As usual hugely enjoyable.

Short break (during which we establish that the ideal setup is the one I first thought of - bass into the amp and guitar through the acoustic DI). As usual it's a request show which throws up some unusual ones (Faust's a Singer for example, which I don't think I've ever done live before) and go on every late.

I sell a bunch of CDs, with a promise of a free upgrade to the 24 bit version should it become available (that is to say when I find the time and the masters at the same juncture).