I did my first bit of performing of the year last week playing keys for Annie at Folkroom Records' biweekly night near Kings Cross. I forgot how heavy and annoying my keyboard is, but I have repurposed an old laptop bag to carry my pedals and leads in some semblance of order so I feel a little bit more professional. Small things. It was nice to play, but the audience were pretty vocal the whole time. I've rarely had much fondness for London audiences (or acts) at the lower level - the acts are almost never very good but take themselves incredibly seriously and the audiences either have no clue about music or are weirdos. There are weirdos everywhere obviously. This audience was pretty typical as a whole, but a lot of the people were nice. We played well, despite not really practicing in ages. I have a melodica part now, and was a bit nervous about it, not really having played one before. It takes a lot of breath.
The snow is very annoying eh? I've managed not to fall over at all so far this year but getting anywhere is very slow. I keep ending up in the middle of big patches of ice, losing confidence and just standing there helpless while various small children whizz by laughing.
Annie and I are traipsing off round the country tomorrow for about 10 days doing a series of gigs, which is pretty exciting. I'll be playing keys a lot and doing solo sets about half the time. They may well be all the solo gigs I do for the foreseeable so I hope people buy a lot of CDs. They're only going to get harder to sell as people care less and less about them and I have so many left! It's a shame that there's no market for actual physical things any more. Unless they involve Mumford and Sons or knitting.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is already this year's Masterchef Australia. It's so gripping watching grown women behave like school kids and marvelling at how strange plastic surgery looks, even super expensive plastic surgery. The whole of the first series was a single confusing argument. With that and Hollyoaks it's a miracle anything gets done on a Sunday.