Find yourself a box to hide in

Published on Wed 17 Mar 2010

There are some posters outside the gym round the corner from my house showing a particularly pneumatic woman standing facing away from you and a pretty weak cheek-based pun in order to try and tempt you to join (I'm not sure if it implies you'll end up looking like that or meeting people who look like that, but I guess either would do). Well, there were, until this happened to one of them, over the course of two days. The writing in blue one day and the response the next. I can see both points of view.

I feel like I've been too busy to write for the last week or so, but I can't think what I've done really - a Travis Waltons practice, watching a fair bit of football both at the pub and at The Abbey (Cambridge beat Histon on Saturday - it was the first local derby I'd managed to get to, because normally they have the home fixture on Boxing Day when I'm in London, and Histon, for some reason, seems to be too far to go) and a fair amount of work.

On Friday I did a gig at The Portland supporting Chris T-T and had a properly great time. Jazz, who was also doing the sound (and wearing one of the few "At Least I'm Not Paul Goodwin" T-shirts still in working order) was on first and was great. He played "Hey Jealousy" and reminded me that The Gin Blossoms are on my list of acts I've not seen and want to (it currently stands at them, Springsteen and Aerosmith) so I checked to see if any of my jaunts to America this year coincide with a show, but they don't. And none of the shows are anywhere I could possibly justify going. Sort it out The Gin Blossoms.

I felt better about my bit that I have for ages - it felt like the crowd were actually on my side. It makes such a difference to me when I think that the clapping is genuine rather than polite. My between song talking was more bumbling than ususal, and I did manage to drop my plectrum into my guitar (that seems to happen more often recently), but the whole thing was really encouraging, lots of people said nice things to me afterwards, and I felt fairly good about myself right through until the end of Saturday night (which turned into a lesson in why you should just stay at home when you're feeling good so that nobody can spoil it for you). I'm not playing much these days, but the gigs I am doing do seem to be decent ones. I do wish I had some more stuff sorted out though. Setlist: Take it All, Muscle Memory, Watertight, This Place is Dead Anyway, Radio Silence, The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, So Finally a Love Song, Edinburgh.

Chris T-T mostly played songs off his new album, which was great, but was never going to be quite as much fun as a show when I know nearly every word. Though obviously you can't know every word having never heard the songs. He seemed to have a few technical struggles, which was a shame because it seemed to get to him a bit, even though I couldn't hear what was wrong. We did get What if My Heart Never Heals, Tomorrow Morning and English Earth for an encore, which would've been worth the entrance fee on its own. Not that I had to pay to get in (though I had bought a ticket before I found out I was playing). Oh, I nearly forgot, he told the audience I was like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. I'll take that - Eeyore is the best one.

On Monday I went to see Justin Grounds at the Junction, largely because Emily was supporting with her band (which includes Jonny who played the drums in Summerhouse when I was playing clumsy keys). And because I wanted an excuse to go to Nando's. Emily's band (Shallow Falls) sounded really good, and it was lovely to see Jonny play again.

I'd not listened to anything by Justin Grounds until the afternoon, though I'd heard the name, and the stuff on Spotify is really, really good - extremely atmospheric. It reminded me a little of Joseph Arthur's earlier stuff. I hadn't realised that he's from here, and that gave the gig a bit of a family atmosphere, which could've been nice but I kind of felt there were lots of people there because they used to know him rather than they like the music, and there was a lot of forced laughter at jokes that were intended to produce smirks. He seems to be doing well enough that he doesn't need patronising. I wasn't sure how the recordings, which do seem to rely on instrumentation and atmosphere as much as songs, would translate to a solo show. In the event it was nearly brilliant, but wasn't quite. He tried to recreate them using loops and I think the complicated laptop and millions of pedals setup he had meant that he was controlling the levels of everything himself and didn't always get it right, and also if you're looping violins and get the tuning even a tiny bit wrong, it becomes more obvious than it would otherwise be by being present for the rest of the song. I dunno. I did enjoy it a lot, but I wonder if on another night, or with a band, or if we'd been somewhere we could stand up, it'd have been jaw-dropping.

Like the rest of the country with no particular connection to Ireland, I normally go somewhere and drink Guinness on St Patrick's Night. I have no friends tonight, so I'm staying in and watching even more football (Barcelona appear to be stupidly good) before getting an early night. Apart from anything else, I wouldn't want to run into any leprechauns - look what they do to people: