03/10/07
The mystical land of Caspia -
Categories: Last night was the first Fat Tuesday of the new season. This meant that I spent all of yesterday fretting about everything to do with setting up, acts, audience etc worried that it would be a car crash of an evening. Running a club is a very personal risk I find. If for some reason the night doesn't go right, I get sad about it for ages, blaming myself for poor organisation or something I haven't done.
For a first night of the season though, last night was great. Setting up was fine, and despite the fact that - as per every time we return to the venue - all the equipment was hidden in different places and the new light I bought didn't fit on the stand we have, we got everything done in good time. What started to scare me was that by 8ish, there wasn't a soul in the bar downstairs. We had advertised the way we usually do, had been recommended in London Lite, and had a truly great line-up, so no reason for an empty gig. What I hadn't realised though was that Arsenal were playing. Having a gig in Islington sadly means that Arsenal are more important than a lot of other factors. Footie fans obviously don't turn up, but also non-footie fans stay in to avoid twatty footy fans who ruin everything.
So in the end we got 26 in. Not a great amount considering we were selling out before the summer, but they were such a nice bunch of 26 people that they made the night great. As Andrew Lawrence put it 'it seemed full' because those 26 laughed so loudly and enjoyed it so much.
And all the acts were brilliant last night, which does help, and we got 10 new email addresses for the list, so all in all a success. I also actually enjoyed MCing the gig last night. Not least because one of the audience members swore he was from the sunken Island of Caspia. Now he lied about several things, including being a vampire hunter (definitely not true. Or if it is true, then he would have to do something on the side as its not very profitable). He also said his name was Raphael which I am not sure of either. But he had an obscure accent and kept insisting that he was from a tiny island that recently sank. Now this prompted several fun bits of banter ranging from Indiana Jones to Narnia, all of which were great fun. However I cant help but be a bit suckered into his ploy. I have wikipedia'd Caspia and it doesn't come up with anything, so it cant be true (as we know, Wikipedia is the truth) but I cant help but think that he might be the sole survivor of an extinct race of people. If this is true I should have locked him at the venue and sent him to a museum. In retrospect I realise I could have missed my real calling in life.
Last week was filled with ridiculously long drives and I'm pleased to say this week is all not too far from London. Although my weekend will be based in Loughborough. I cant help but feel I must have done something to deserve that.
Had a nice one in Chester last Saturday. Alexanders Jazz Theatre is always a lovely gig, and I enjoyed doing my first 30mins there. The crowd were enjoyably rowdy, which was great. However, about 15 mins in, two small groups of people decided to talk really loudly. One group I heckled and heckled and eventually got the whole audience to shout at until they shut up. This seemed to work. The other group though were truly obnoxious people. I will never understand the motivation of paying to see a show then chatting all the way through it. One of them, a morbidly obese woman, had a laughing fit about something, so I decided to engage and find out what it was. She rudely replied with 'its not you, don't worry, you're not funny'. Now that's a vicious heckle. I retorted, but refrained from any insult about her fatness, which I now regret. I felt at the time it would have been cheap. But she was so rude I feel I should have at least said, ' You're not skinny and you should worry', or something funny along those lines. Why do the best heckle retorts always come to you when you are off stage? Never ever fair.
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