A report from the heady days of 2012 when we were all young and innocent and fresh and anything seemed possible.
Gig Report Sunday 19th November
Camden Head Islington.
Before Gig
It has been years since I last had
a proper 9 to 5 job and yet Sundays still feel the same to me. Whatever I do on
Sunday. I always feel I should be doing something more productive. Tonight I
have booked in to do new material at the Camden Head Islington. New material
gigs require a different level of commitment. With regular gigs I can always turn up and perform something from the Stephen Carlin back catalogue. With new material gigs I
actually have to write the new stuff and then go to the bother of learning it and
for added hassle then try and make it sound unlearned and spontaneous.
It doesn’t matter how much time I
have spent preparing and rehearsing new material. As the gig approaches I have
less and less faith in the new stuff. It’s not so much that I think it isn’t
good as I think there is nothing there in the first place – just words. Then my
memory begins to fail and I am able to recall less and less of the stuff I no
longer believe in. By the time I
take to the stage I am able to inject a genuine air of spontaneity because I am
literally making it up as I go along.
I intend to do new material about
the following subjects:
- People who cobble together vague internet based
spirituality .
- The futility of Rich people playing the national
lottery and its associated problems.
- The futility of the Starwars franchise
- Why is it Ok to ridicule the stupid? After all it
is not their fault.
5. Saying “off anywhere nice?” to
somebody who tells you they are going on holiday
I am suffering from a cold, caught,
I believe, on Thursday night, but which only manifested itself on Friday night.
The cold is now in full swing. I am worried about my hydration levels. I have
heard that every time you cough, you cough water particles into the air
depleting hydration levels. I have a pint of water but I want to reserve some
to take on stage as a stage in case I start coughing. I also don’t want to go
to the bar get another drink while
the audience are milling around. They seem to be able to sniff you out at a
hundred paces. “Are you a comedian? Are you funny? Have you been on anything?
Is night any good? etc” . Basically I need to reserve water but I enjoy
drinking it. I drink all the water leaving nothing for the stage. I don’t
listen to the opening bit of the show when the compere is warming up the
audience.I am too busy trying to remember the material I cant remember.
During Gig.
I have a plan for my gig. I will
open it with a bit of tried and tested material and then close it with a bit of
tried and tested material and the middle shall be new stuff. This will help me
gauge the new stuff in some kind of context.
I open with the drinking stuff and
while the audience laugh in all the right places it feels lack lustre and doesn’t give me the momentum I want
to launch into the new stuff. Oh well here we go.
First up is people who build up
vague spirituality. The audience are patient with this but it is light on
laughs. The best bit is probably where I say that (in relation to meditation)
it is never a good idea to empty to your mind as I went to school with people
like that.
Its only when I segue into the
lottery stuff by saying “Spiritality isn’t for the Rich its for poor people who
have nothing else” that I feel I am starting to find an attitude. And I start
listing all the things rich people have and I am literally making up the list
as I go along. And it is when I am grasping for examples that it comes alive
and it sounds like I may believe
what I am saying. I start trying
to describe how a poor person with no experience of money may spend a lottery
win unwisely and its in these descriptive bits I am really enjoying.
Immediately afterwards I am conscious of what I should have said but didn’t.
That makes its useful. Also during this section I appear to have contempt for both
rich and poor and this fits well with my petty borgeoise character. Am I petty
borgeoise?
On to starwars. Before the gig I
looked up what “The Force” was in
relation to Jedi Knights. Apparently it is a ubiquitous force that “surrounds
us and penetrates us.” As I impart
this information to the audience by way of a set up, it gets the biggest laugh
of my set - for reasons unbeknown to me. And I don’t think it is the double
entendre of “penetrates” The laughter starts before I get to that word. I don’t
know. What do they want? Do they just want facts??
Then a section on “why is it ok to
ridicule the stupid?” I feel this routine has the biggest potential. I need
more concrete examples of stupidity and at the end it I go off on a tangent
about people who don’t read books but I think this is the wrong direction and
will have to rewrite. But there is huge potential in ridculing he stupid. I do
it. We all do it.
The material on Saying “off
anywhere nice” doesn’t really work. Its under written and I don’t have enough
to say on it.
I end up on the section about being
offered a sweet by a kid and its at this point that my performance clicks into
a different level and I see how I should have been doing it all along.
After Gig
Tonight I was too absorbed with
material and not enough with performance.
Immediately after coming offstage I
start listening back to the recording of the gig. This makes me appear self absorbed and egotistical and is therefore completely normal
behaviour for a backstage area of a stand up comedy gig.
I sounded almost out of character
at the start of the set and listening back to it I feel the audience were too
generous with their laughter. That’s the trouble with audiences they are never
giving the right amount of laughter.
I sounded to quote Alan Partridge “clinically fed up”
During the drinking stuff I
actually said “retire from comedy”
instead of “retire from drinking” Freudian slip aside, this should have made
the punchline unworkable. However the punchline did work despite making no
sense. Therefore what were the audience thinking? Is logic actually necessary
in comedy? How many other
occasions have I said the wrong word and been unaware of it?
Audiences emit a strange sound if
you mention Jimmy Savile. It is a sound I have never heard before. Like a wounded animal that knows it
deserves to be wounded. I think the sound includes a hint of guilt as if we are
all somehow partially responsible for letting him get away with it.
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