Skip to main content

A Bit of a Stew.

I'll keep it brief, as it's bloody late. Or early, depending on how you look at it. 

Tonight, our Stewart Lee installment of Mostly Comedy finally came around. It's a gig that was months in the making. We announced it back in February, selling out in less than a week. Then, Stew's availability changed, meaning we had to reschedule wholesale to September. Ever since, barely a day has gone by without a request for tickets. It's easily the most demand we've had since the club began. 

Running a comedy club can be fickle. Last night's London gig was cancelled, despite an excellent line-up headed by Red Dwarf's Norman Lovett. Tonight, we were packed to the rafters. While we cancelled last night, it wasn't an entirely wasted effort. Stewart Lee happened to be doing a set in the main house of the venue, so we bumped into him, managed to getting the awkward meeting-him-for-the-first time bit out of the way. We also overheard Norman chatting to him and praising our gig, so that helped soften the affair. 

Tonight, we had the dubious honour of following Stewart, as he had to get back home. All in all, it went well. I'll fill in more detail tomorrow, when it's not so late. 

The highlight for me was hearing him refer to our club by name during the set, and privately thinking to myself "I thought of that". Sometimes, you just can't predict how life will turn out. 

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

Not The Bayeux One.

The Carole King album Tapestry has been my 'getting-ready-in-the-morning' soundtrack for the past few weeks.  It's been a favourite album ever since I was a student, which makes for a pleasantly gentle way to usher in the start of a day. I've always been a fan of a well-crafted song, which is something of a Carole King hallmark, ever since she started writing with her first husband in the early Sixties. Tapestry may be an unimaginative choice for a favourite LP, as it suggests I haven't delved that far into her career, but it's still an undoubted classic; anything with '(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman', 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' and 'You've Got A Friend' on it can't really fail; if nothing else, it proves she likes writing songs with long titles.  Next month, she's set to perform the album live in its entirety for the first time at a gig in Hyde Park, which I would have loved to have gone to, if it weren...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...