My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 26/05/02 - Johnny Gogogogo's Living Room, Leeds

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As you may have noticed, I play a lot of gigs that are not entirely overwhelmed with people. "Sparse" would be one way to describe them. "Pretty much empty" would be another. The NICE thing about this is that I am very very easily excited by the prospect of gigs where there's GUARANTEED to be an audience, even if it doesn't reach double figures.

So it was than when Mr Johnny Gogogogo (not his real name, apparently - Steve Gogogogo?) invited me up to Leeds to play at his Barbecue I gladly accepted - he'd explicitly stated there'd be at LEAST four or five people there! Come the day was whizzing Northwards by train with my guitar tucked into the overhead shelving space and as we travelled I couldn't help but notice the darkening skies and, just past Sheffield, torrents of rain beginning to fall.

When I arrived at his house things had eased off a bit and people were gathering hopefully in the back garden around the fizzling barbecue, tentatively supping on cans of lager and realising that maybe they hadn't needed to bring their sunglasses. We stood around having a chat and as spit after spot of rain blatted down on us we soon realised that a barbecue was not going to be an option today. The lack of barbecue is always pretty much FINE with me - even when I ate meat I never really understood the appeal, if I wanted to stand around shivering while eating undercooked food covered in insects I'd half defrost a sausage, roll it in ants from the bin, then stand near the fridge. At least I'd be able to watch telly that way.

Anyway, we went inside and had a much more Traditional British event: a GRILL. It was quicker, it was easier, and by HECK it was a lot warmer, and soon we were gathered in the Living Room where I was sufficiently beered up to be goaded into singing. To be honest, that isn't ever a LOT beered up!

The only slight problem with this was that not ALL of Johnny's housemates were particularly keen on the idea. They hadn't minded so much when he was having some pals out in the back garden for the afternoon, but when they invaded the front room there were objections, and when they then started making a RIGHT BLOODY RACKET there were bound to be repercussions. Happily, and in line with the Traditional nature of events so far, this manifested itself in TUTTING and IGNORING. The best example of this was when one of the housemates came into the living room MID-SET to collect her car keys. GLARING sideways at Johnny she picked her way over the people sat on the floor, NUDGED past me, IGNORED the fact that I was sat singing at full pelt about The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B), picked up her keys, and then HUFFED her way out again, not saying a word and CERTAINLY not acknowledging that anything was going on.

I carried on with the bellowing undeterred. I am NOTHING if not A Complete Professional, though I bet if it'd happened to BONO he would have CRIED.

After the gig - and yes, I did do an encore, even though I had to edge round the side of the telly to establish that I'd gone "offstage" and wouldn't be coming out from behind it until they shouted for more - there was time for more beer before getting the train home where I happily contemplated the fact that, even though I'd gone all that way to play in someone's living room, I'd still played to more people (and pissed off less people) than at most of my normal gigs.

If I was after fame and fortune it would have depressed me, but as I wasn't I celebrated with the warm Last Of The Four Pack can of beer that had been my payment on parting. HOORAH!

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