Wow, it's been nearly a week since I wrote anything, mostly because I've not done a great deal. I enjoyed the Morning People gig on Tuesday, I think because I managed to position myself round a corner where I couldn't be seen by most of the audience (I seem to be having one of those weeks where I want to hide away from everything) and could watch the news on the telly, which made playing much more relaxing than usual. The telly had computer generated subtitles which threw up some amusing errors. The football commentary which had gone before was priceless, for example Ronaldo totally mishit a shot and the subtitles went "and Ronaldo's poor effort crosses the line for a goal" and then about 45 seconds later "kick". There were a fair few instances of totally the wrong word appearing ("university" instead of, I guess, either "universally" or "Rooney was shitty").
I then managed to do nothing much, bar working and a bit of unsuccessful recording until yesterday, when I got a call at lunchtime asking if I was up for doing a set at the Boathouse as one of the acts had pulled out. I'm pretty much always up for playing, so I said yes, even though I know from much experience that last minute gigs are always deserted. And so it proved, but I'm glad I went. Rob Jackson played first and it was gorgeous as usual. Then it was my turn. As I already mentioned, I'm having a wanting to hide away kind of week, and doubts started creeping in almost immediately that people would probably prefer it if I wasn't playing (I've been getting that a lot recently), so I kept my half hour set down to about 20 minutes. Setlist: Phosphorus Burn (with lots of guitar messing up), Watertight, Alabaster, Portobello in the Afternoon, So Finally a Love Song.
The headliners, Roger Tarry, had come all the way from Bristol (and were driving straight back), so I'm glad there were at least a few of us there to watch, and they made a very nice noise and seemed like really nice guys.
I've had a brilliant day today. A jovial pub lunch at the Alex with Rob, Tom Conway, Rishi from Karmadillo and the BJP guys, which lasted until just before the Man U Chelsea game kicked off. The game was entertaining because I didn't really care who won - I just wanted to see goals and injuries. There were a couple of goals (both scored by Saha if you ask me), but no real injuries (except maybe Ronaldo, who Ashley Cole cynically took out towards the end because he kept going past him). Andy Gray did a fair amount of calling Didier Drogba a cheat, which was nice to hear, though how you single out any given Chelsea player as more of a cheat than the others is a bit beyond me.
After the football I went to a "Twisted Folk" night at the Junction Shed. The first band (Cape May) were OK, a bit pretentious (playing to the crowd), but they had their moments and the sound in the room is brilliant.
Jeffrey Lewis, the second act was cool. At first I thought he was one of these people that does weird songs because he can't think of anything good, and a fair bit of the set was spent going "riiiight..." and "that swannee whistle the drummer has is getting a bit tiring isn't it" but he did one song narrating a slide show of cartoons that was funny and heart warming and one about meeting Will Oldham on a train that was superb and totally struck a chord (because it was really about being a failed musician and making the point that it might all be better if "we were all just uncreative drones, no dead childhood dreams to haunt us, a decent job, a decent home" read the whole thing here, it really is very good). There was another one about jumping into the East River that has lodged in my brain, and his between song talking was excellent too. Oh, and his bass player was triggering samples on a little casio keyboard with his feet, which was better than it sounds. God, I wish I was quirky. Quirky is the new good.
I'd heard great things about Nina Nastasia, but left unconvinced. Mostly because her set was ruined by her idiot of a keyboard player being hopelessly inappropriate all the time, either doing stupid atonal things that, to be fair, probably made a fair proportion of the audience go "ooh how unconventional", but spoiled the song nevertheless, or by playing big tinkling scales over quiet songs, which showed off his prowess, but spoiled the song nevertheless. And he looked like an Open University maths professor. I swear he was wearing sandals and socks. I got more and more angry with him as the gig went on and paid less and less attention to the rest of the band, instead spending my time hating him. The first song had given me tingles, and there were some sonically brilliant moments (specifically the blissful seconds when the keys were silent, or when they were drowned out by the beautiful sounding cello, accordian and drums), but I can't really remember anything about it all. I'd go and see her again though, just to make sure.
I put a tenner on Australia to win the cricket the other day on the grounds that it was a certainty, and, despite the crap odds, it was better interest than you get in the bank, and it'd be well worth a tenner if they didn't win. We're in with a very small chance still (though I think Pietersen's just gone), so my patented controlling-the-future-with-reverse-betting technique may yet pay off again. Oh, bugger, someone else has just gone too. Ho hum.