Blog: Lightyear Foundation

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Last night I was playing at the "MindChaos" night, an evening of STUFF in aid of The Lightyear Foundation, a science-type charity who do work in GHANA.

It was a hot, muggy evening when I arrived and found that, yes, this WAS the pub where I saw I,Ludicrous play to about five people a few years ago. There were more people in this evening, but someone seemed to have imported a JOB LOT of Stereotypical Annoying People In Pubs. Many old favourites were there - Woman who laughs INCREDIBLY LOUDLY "HAHAHAHA! HA!" at EVERYTHING - hello old friend! People who have no idea how A BAR works and get annoyed that they don't get served while standing NOT AT THE BAR - nice to see you again! And when I said "No, this lady was in front of me" and indicated one of the above, why, it was our chum Person Who Doesn't Say Thanks Or Even Acknowledge That You've Done This, Even Though It's Their Own Silly Fault. Later on, when the football started, we were even treated to a GROUP of People Standing Right In Front Of The Telly And Wondering Why People Are Looking At Them AND People Putting Their Chairs RIGHT Across The Pub So Nobody Can Get Past. JOYOUS!

This GRUMPINESS aside the actual pub itself, The Miller, was dead nice - I had a LOVELY pint of beer and the Thai Food was ACE. It was while consuming the above that one of the organisers said hello, and said she'd been excited to see me at the Museums Showoff gig. "A Musical Act based on SCIENCE!" she exclaimed. URK! I suddenly remembered that THAT was the idea behind the booking, so fell upon my setlist with new INTENT - what songs did I have that I could convincingly say were science based?

What with one thing and another the evening kicked off a little late - FOOTBALL and SUNSHINE were the reasons - and I did THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B)

A Little Bit

It Only Works Because You're here

The Perfect Love Song

Strangely Attractive

Hey Hey 16K

The Lesson Of The Smiths

As you can, I started off with The Faster Songs and realised (AGAIN - I really should make a note of this) that this WASN'T a ROCK audience and that, counter-intuitively, playing LOUDER makes this kind of audience TURN OFF and start chatting and/or looking at their phones. HENCE the change to three LIGHTER songs, which was a GRATE idea, as everyone SHUSHED, and watched, and I could see DELIGHTED faces all around the crowd. PHEW!

Happy with how it was going I delved into CHAT, and managed to totally DERAIL an attempt on Programming Is A Poetry For Our Time by thinking about how RUBBISH SPSS is. Ooh, it got me so annoyed (I was about to mention something to do with it after the song) that i COMPLETELY FORGOT the first line, and couldn't get it back at all! I apologised for this and carried on, and nobody seemed to mind. Excellent!

Also excellent was Dr Steve Cross who came on after me and did an AMAZING thing where he got the whole audience to pretend a GOAL had been scored in The Football, to confuse people actually watching it downstairs. I don't think I'm explaining its full majesty, but it was HILARIOUS!

I must confess I missed the next bit, as I could not resist watching the THRILLING football match - people of the future! This was the one where Italy beat Germany 2-1 with a couple of GRATE Balotelli goals. The fun was only increased by the fact that the pub was FULL of drunk, cheering Italians. It was brill!

And so ended a delightful evening of football on one floor and SCIENCE on the other. It was EVER THUS!

posted 29/6/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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