Blog: London Loves

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I headed off for the gig at London Loves at a VERY reasonable time on Saturday night, having sat down and HAD me tea already. NICE. It was an Totally Acoustic type gig, so there wasn't really any need for soundcheck and THUS i was able to arrive at 9am to find Team London Loves in the basement of the Albany setting up tables. There was also a Man Trying To Look Stern just SITTING in the corner watching them do it, which was a bit odd - later on he would turn out to be "security", which mean he would walk to different corners of the room and LOOK at people, then NOD sternly as if to say "Yes, i see you are behaving ACCEPTABLY now, with your indie dancing and your drinking of cider, but if there is any TROUBLE, you can expect to be GLARED at - so be told!"

Anyway, all seemed to be going well except for a rather grim ODOUR emanating from the toilets - we took it in turn to do the joke about somebody having a cigarette to hide it but eventually someone went and got some CANDLES which did the job very nicely, ALSO made the room look NICE.

I lurked around upstairs and got some beer - at which point the barmaid rather astonishingly said "What can I get you, FOUR EYES?" I was too flabbergasted to say anything at the time, and just BLURTED my Beer Order, and i THINK that, being An American, she didn't realise quite how UNPLEASANT a term that is, but it was still RATHER surprising!

I had a chat with young James (TEAM LL) upstairs and also Mr John Kell, then we moved downstairs to find a) LOADS of people and b) a slightly excited/worried Denny (TEAM LL) looking a bit flustered. He GATHERED me into the back kitchen to tell me that SOMEONE had come to SEE ME! I must have looked a bit confused - OK, it's not like LOTS of people come to see me, but occasionally it has been known! - then he RESTATED his position - it turned out it was the chap from The Free Fringe, who Steve had mentioned the gig to when organising our Venue Recce (more of which later). This, I thought, was really rather nice of him!

So, we hung around for a bit as the room filled up further until it was time for me to go on and do THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)

The Gay Train

Do The Indie Kid

Billy Jones Is Dead

It Only Works Because You're Here

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Easily Impressed

Boom Shake The Room

I had a REALLY good time - I'd thought VERY vaguely about doing some older songs (as I'd had a request for We'll See What We Can Do and had LEARNED it up) but I decided that as this was - brilliantly - a room full of people who had pretty much entirely never heard me before, and more importantly were out on a Saturday night for DANCING FUN, I had better do some of the more FUN/LOUD/FUN ones. So i did!

I also TALKED quite a bit, half to see how it would go and half because doing a gig SANS microphone tends to ENCOURAGE such behaviour, and nobody seemed to mind - tho i do seem to go into a sort of BERTIE WOOSTER-esque self-caracuture when I do this at any length. Anyway, people seemed to like it and bought CDs, and Free Fringe chap seemed rather enthusiastic - he actually seemed like a dead nice chap, tho he expressed FEARS about being able to fit our one week SLOT into his gigs.

After that there was time for another BEER and some CHAT before Mr Kell SENSIBLY said he'd better get home and I realised that I TOO ought to do that, for tomorrow i was off to EDINBURGH - it's in a different country!

posted 12/2/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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You were MEGA!
posted 15/2/2008 by James

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