21/01/08
Too Fat? -
Categories: I have been truly struggling to get out of bed this past week. I was wondering if these past few weeks have been where I finally catch up on sleep from last Edinburgh as its my first real break since. More realistically though I think its a combination of weather and the fact that I have had no reason to most days, and even when I did, it wasn't to do something until after midday. What also may be hindering my alertness could be that even when I've had gigs, I've decided to play Wii until 3am once I've got home. There is something comforting about doing this that reminds me of being a student again. Now all I need to do is drink every night of the week, pretend that I know lots of things when I don't and maintain a sheltered social life and it'll almost be the same.
Part of my need for sleep may well be caused by the stress of last week's Fat Tuesday gig. As luck would have it we had been mentioned in half a ton of papers and on the radio. We had one hell of a line-up too. So I shouldn't have been surprised when ticket demand for the gig suddenly became quite high, and consequently it became over crowded to an uncomfortable level. Most club promoters would probably be very pleased that their club had become this popular, but I just found it overly stressful and was unable to enjoy the gig. Thanks to Ticketmaster being hugely unhelpful we can only 'reserve' tickets via email which doesn't really work except with a small crowd. Even with turning away all people on the night, all the phone calls the venue had been getting and a further 60 people on email, we still had to turn away people that had reserved because they had got there too late to get a seat.
The gig was great and all the acts stormed it. Despite this though, health and safety was a constant issue ( I kindly asked the crowd 'not to start a fire please') and even with the hordes I made very little profit. The bar (who are very supportive of Fat Tuesday) are now nagging us to do the show in the larger room downstairs. However, they have little knowledge of comedy clubs and do not realise that a room with a big bar alongside the side will really never work. Also, I don't want to run a bigger gig and not just because I'm lazy. The reason acts like doing it and our audiences regularly come back is because its small and intimate. Whether there is 20 or 90 people in the room has an energy to it. So what do we do? Sell out and become a bigger club? The pros of this would be that we'd get more dosh and could get even better acts. The cons of course would be that when we don't sell enough tickets then the room becomes tough to play.
Aside from this I hate running a club. Things like the numbers issue is annoying. General booking politics are annoying The amount of emails I get from open spots who have been going for a week, have three minutes of material and want to do a 20 set at FT are annoying. But the pay off of a great night is priceless. I love MCing it too. Its my gig and I can confidently say I know exactly how to play it. Lastly, and most importantly, we've been running for 3 and a half years now, a lot of hard work has gone into making it a good gig, and I don't trust anyone else to do it!
Ultimately I'll probably change nothing and complain again when it all goes wrong. Ho hum.
Our kittens have found the furry hot water bottle that my girlfriends mum got her for Christmas and they are licking and cleaning it as though its another cat. Is it possible for a cat to be mentally ill or deluded?
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