My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 10/12/01 - The University Of Leicester, Leicester

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If you've spent as much time as I have at poorly attended gigs one phrase you will have heard a LOT is "Well, it's good practice." This is generally said by the bass player (or whoever else is de facto band leader) in a semi-desperate bid to persuade the rest of the band that it wasn't a complete waste of time and that they should not, PLEASE, spend the next week moaning about it on email and blaming ME for the fact that nobody turned up.

As I say, I've heard it a lot. Unfortunately the statement is usually true in that it's very good practice for loads MORE poorly attended and/or disappointing gigs. The only decent thing to do in these situations is NOT to think of these sort of gigs as anything else but an excellent an excuse to stay out and get HORRIBLY also BRILLIANTLY DRUNK. Only very rarely is there an occasion when this sort of experience is of any real value.

This was one of those occasions. I have spent my entire "career" working for Universities because, basically, once you've worked in Higher Education for more than a few months you're pretty much ruined for proper jobs forever. THUS most University Departments tend to contain a surprisingly large amount of aspiring actors, musicians, novelists, poets and so forth ("layabouts" is the collective noun) who started working there as a temporary job while they waited for their "real" career to kick off and woke up one morning twenty years later to find out they suddenly knew a surprising amount about the Research Assessment Exercise.

Like all University Departments ours would occasional get all ENTHUSIASTIC, as someone decided - hey! - we hardly ever get together, so let's mix a social occasion with a chance to swap ideas and have some fun!! Whoever decides this is usually NEW and so don't realise that there are MANY GOOD REASONS why University Departments tend not to socialise (e.g. alongside the layabouts there is an equal number of LOONIES) and rarely have much grip on what constitutes "fun". One year it was decided that rather than the traditional 12.30pm Pub Crawl on the last day we'd have our Christmas Do a fortnight before Christmas, in the evening, in our LECTURE ROOM. A bottle of wine was purchased, two packets of crisps, and someone borrowed their daughter's cassette player. Good times and festivity failed to occur.

The NEXT year it was decided that we'd try again, with a RESEARCH DAY followed by a GIG! Yes, a GIG! One of the Professors had noticed that several people played instruments and so we were asked/TOLD to do short sets at the end of the day whilst everybody tucked into the sausage rolls. Now, if you've read any of the previous 49 instalments of this, you'll know that I'm a shy retiring person who really would prefer NOT to be the centre of attention, but after a lot of gentle persuasion (Professor: "Who shall we get to play?" Me: "ME! OOH! OOH! ME!") I agreed to perform.

Come the big day I wiled away the hours of FASCINATING LECTURES (NB SARCASM: I work in Medical Statistics, which while worthy, does not exactly set the world alight with glamour) thinking about what I'd play. Should I stick to covers and quiet songs, or dare I do one of the songs I'd written SPECIFICALLY about my job? Should I keep it low key, or maybe - RADICAL NEW IDEA - show off a bit? My decision was made almost IMMEDIATELY when I gathered at the back of the room with my co-performers, BOTH of whom were very much of the Folk Music Persuasion.

They looked DISMISSIVELY at my - admittedly CHEAP, but fully functional - guitar, and spoke together LOFTILY of how they were going to "EDUCATE" the gathered crowd. "I'm planning mostly traditional blues" said one. "Mmm, yes, I thought I'd try out some instrumentals" said the other, and THIS is where my YEARS of "practice" came into play. If there is one thing I have learnt about playing to people who have NOT come specifically to see you, it is that you have to GRAB their attention right from the start. Pissing about with blues or instrumentals is a one-way ticket to DEAFENING CHATTER TOWN, so I quickly volunteered to go on FIRST.

They both seemed to view this as only right, bearing in mind my clearly inferior finger picking techniques. I guessed that they were the type of folkies who only EVER play at folk clubs, where most of the audience are other FOLK ARTISTES who are probably playing later on, so have an INVESTMENT in clapping and saying they are GOOD, and so unlike me had never felt the wrath of An Audience Bored.

This sort of thing applies to ALL forms of music of course ("Experimental" Music is especially prone to it), but having an acoustic guitar meant I had come up against a LOT of 4x4 Nick Drakes, and so - I am slightly ashamed to admit - I decided to make an extra SPECIAL effort to get the audience as excited as possible before the other two got onto the stage. THUS was The Uber Set prepared.

The Uber Set! This is my own personal term for [as near as I get to] an ALL WINNERS set, where every song in it has been tested to breaking point at MANY MANY gigs and found to be, if not a crowd PLEASER, at least a crowd LISTENER. These are the ones with light SWEARING, JOKES, and SINGALONG bits, the ones that I can usually rely on to make and audience shush up a bit and, at appropriate moments, even CLAP. As well as showing me which sort of songs produced this effect, the years of rubbish gigs had actually caused me to WRITE more of them, for precisely this sort of occasion. I rallied my songs together, and prepared to ROCK.

I took to the stage and immediately launched into "Work's All Right (when it's a proper job)" a job EXPLICITLY about my job and the people I worked with. They LAPPED it up, and when I then did "Clubbing In The Week" (largely about having to go to work when hungover, and thus a GUARANTEE of RUEFUL SMILES) I knew that I HAD them. It was one of those rare occasions when the stars align and years of practice actually PAY OFF, so that the shouting and singing was making SO MUCH NOISE that the people in the next lecture hall COMPLAINED.

One of our Deputy Heads Of Department was TOLD OFF at some length by Estates, and so just before my last song he had to nervously approach the front and say "Er... Mark, the Estates Department have had some complaints, and wondered if we might just turn it down?" I looked at my audience. "Are we going to let THE MAN tell us what to do?" I bellowed. Thirty over-excited academics shouted back "NO!"

It was totally utterly completely BRILLIANT, and I strode off stage to applause and a whole buffet table of FREE WINE! That pretty much NEVER happens!

I felt a little guilty about so brazenly BARN STORMING, as in real life they were actually perfectly nice people, especially when the next chap came on to do his set. He had clearly NEVER played outside the folk clubs, and so was visibly upset when, two minutes in to his first six minute display of vocal free finger picking, people realised there WASN'T going to be any singing along this time and started chatting instead. As stated previously, he WAS a nice chap in normal life, so I went and hid behind a series of Research Posters so as not to be seen chatting. The Professor after him, the one who'd been preparing some educational blues, could be seen hastily re-setlisting. When she came on 45 minutes later she began by saying "Here's a cover version", and launching into The Beach Boys.

I do love a good singalong!

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