Blog: Totally Acoustic

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Last night was the final episode of this series of Totally Acoustic and though there were no actual EMERGENCIES with the venue this time, the actual LINE-UP had been the most fraught with difficulty.

I say "fraught" - it was just a bit hard to NAIL DOWN people really. Mr G Gargan had been booked right from the start, TRANSMUTING into his new guise as part of More Bad Times a couple of weeks ago, but i went thru SEVERAL options for the final act before, yesterday, just emailing a couple of people who were coming anyway and saying "I don't suppose you fancy doing half a set do you?" As it happens, this worked GRATE.

On stage first, as ever, was ME (and, often, Steve) and we did THIS:

Totally Acoustic

Things'll Be Different When I'm In Charge

I'm Saying Yes

Clubbing In The Week

Let's Have A Go

We Did It Anyway

Theme From Dinosaur Planet

The Lesson Of The Smiths

As with Sunday I got CHATTED to the MAX and ended up being on for AGES, YAKKING away and Making Points. It was HUGE fun, getting a bit EMOTIONAL during the world premiere of We Did It Anyway and especially enjoying a couple of old songs I hadn't done for AGES. Also, the sections of Moon Horse a) seemed to work b) felt good to be doing and ALREADY messing about a bit in. I think that the fortnight in Edinburgh is going to be FINE!

After us we had the first of our semi-setters, the marvellous return of Mr Tim Eveleigh, who was unaccountably NERVOUS - so he said afterwards anyway, it didn't seem that way from the set. He claimed not to have performed his first song for AGES but it was still in MY brain from the last time I'd heard it, and will probably be in the brain of THE WORLD when it gets on the podcast.

After a short break we had More Bad Times, who speedily managed to CHARM the entire room in much the same way as they'd done to me the other week in Brixton. They are GRATE - they do a combination of ramshackle FUN that seems to be being made up as they go along, but then sneak in beautiful and TOUCHING songs that just happen to have some SWEARING in them. They are KIND OF like an English/Italian ANSWER to The Bobby McGees... SORT OF. Except not like that at all. But ACE!

And then we finished off by fulfilling the secret THIRD purpose of Totally Acoustic (the first two being the get lovely people playing with other lovely people, and to give me an extra opportunity to SHOW OFF), which is to save me the trouble of going to OTHER gigs to see people I'd like to see by getting them to come to ME. Cunning huh? I have a LIST of people I'm going to ask to play the NEXT series of shows and "A Fine Day For Sailing" have been on it from the start because I keep HEARING people online say how good they are, but have never actually got round to seeing them for myself. I was thus PLEASED last week when Thom from them got in touch to see if they could play in future and I was able to REVEAL my plan to do just that - so when I saw on Facebook that they were coming along for a band OUTING I immediately LEAPT at the chance to get them on.

And this was an excellent idea because they - or at least Matt and Sharon from them, in this STRIPPED DOWN version - were EXACTLY the sort of band i LOVE having at Totally Acoustic. GRATE songs done with FUN, some LARFS between songs but not afraid to do a really gentle quiet song which made the whole room go SILENT. They were BRILL, and I'll definitely be getting them back again for a proper set if i can!

And that was the series DONE - all that remained was to lurk around for a while having a chat and a beer to put the SEAL on it all. This series had been a DELIGHT to do, both for the gigs and the podcasts, and I'm ALREADY looking forward to the next batch. We've got a couple of SPECIALS up in Edinburgh during August, then hopefully back in London Town around October/November time, maybe even at a new venue!

Exciting times ahoy, but LOVELY times achieved already - thanks LOADS to everyone who came along to one of the shows and who's downloaded a podcast. This show'll be up later today, then we've got the SPECIAL series round-up in a fortnight. It's going to be AMAZING!

posted 4/5/2011 by MJ Hibbett

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