Blog: Totally Acoustic In Fitzrovia

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With all the other arrangements, rehearsals and occurrences occuring in the ongoing situation that is ME, I hadn't really thought too much about last night's Totally Acoustic. This became clear when I set off and, halfway there, realised I'd forgotten to print out the lyrics for the theme song - CuRSES!

Things picked up almost immediately, however, when I bumped into The Lyrics On My Songsheet and we headed off to our new venue, The King And Queen, together, stopping briefly at a MOPED shop to find that a) people who work in MOPED shops are dead helpful and b) they're generally called SCOOTERS these days - who knew? We Were the first to arrive and, at last, I had a little bit of a PANIC. This was a whole new VENUE for Totally Acoustic, what if it didn't work out? What if nobody came? What if it all went HORRIBLY WRONG?

The panic didn't last long as Delightful Chums began arriving and soon it was time to go upstairs (noticing as we did that the pub had put our POSTER on the door - EXCELLENT!) and work out how to set up the room. I think we did it MOSTLY right, in the CABARET style, but it may require some FINESSING in future (SPOILERS!).

We sat around having a chat, marvelling at the way that all manner of seemingly unconnected people turned out to be PALS, and soon it was WAY past time for me to get the evening going, which I did in the following fashion:

Totally Acoustic

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

Good Luck In Your New Job

A Little Bit

We Did It Anyway

Lazarus

It all worked out pretty well I think - I'd consulted previous podcasts to try and make sure I was doing SOME songs that hadn't been on it before and I think they were all right, and it was DELIGHTFUL to get Mr S Hewitt on for the last two songs. We Did It Anyway took a LONG time to get going due to HAPPY BICKERING re: the listing for our gig in BALHAM (Steve Hewitt's Moon Horse) and we finished with Steve accompanying me on KAZOO for Lazarus, a song which came up on the MyPod shuffle the other night and made me realise it has been YEARS since I did it at a gig.

Next up were A Fine Day For Sailing, who were BLOODY WONDERFUL. There's just so many songs! There was NEW STUFF galore, all of which was GRATE, but "Ballad Of The Bedsit" is the one that LODGED in my BRANE. Actually, not just mine - for the rest of the evening you could hear people inadvertently singing it, and this morning myself AND The Melody Of My Song were BOTH still singing it. It's ACE - here, have a LISTEN:



Our final act was Mr David Barnett, doing his first solo show, apparently, for over TWENTY FIVE YEARS! Well, I say "solo" - before he started I'd been a bit worried about cramming everyone in who WANTED to get in, as the room was FULL, but he seemed to have about half the audience playing with him by the end! It was BRILL - I'd heard him do "Slag For Love" with Mr Keith Top Of The Pops at a previous gig, but this time it was all his songs. These were songs, he said, that various other bands had dismissed as "too funny" but they were all ACE - full of STORIES as well as INSIGHT and TUNES. He seemed PLEASED afterwards and words were spoken about putting together a band - I really hope he does, it was, and WOULD BE, brilliant!

With that all done things turned to the traditional CHAT, and once again The King And Queen turned out to be an EXCELLENT venue for this - having a nice big open ROOM for the main bar meant people were able to spread about a bit and MINGLE like it was some kind of DO, rather than returning to the GROUPS they came with.

It was LOVELY and, after a beer or two, some LARFS and some HUGZ, I STRODE out into the Fitzrovia night, the Post Office Tower smiling benevolently down on me, thinking how lucky I am to be able to DO things like this with such GRATE people in such nice places. I'm going back next week to see the landlord and, if all goes well, we shall return in a) GLORY b) THE AUTUMN to start regular nights there. HOORAH!

posted 15/7/2011 by MJ Hibbett

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