mostly david ephgrave

I gigged at the Hope & Anchor in Islington tonight, thus ending my week of performing at venues I used to play with my band Big Day Out.  ‎ It's a lovely venue for comedy. It's a lot less dingy than it was fifteen years ago (a Trip Advisor review if ever I heard one). They now have a theatre space on the first floor, as well as the venue in the basement. I'd be interested to see it's like. I suppose I could have asked if I could peek inside, but I'm British and we never do that.  As I walked up to the front door I had a flashback of being dropped outside it by my band's first manager, Martin, and lugging our hefty amps down the stairs. It seems like a lifetime ago; just under half a lifetime in my case. My world's so different now. My career has taken a tangential route. It makes me wonder what I'll be fifteen years from now; a gymnast, perhaps? Maybe not, at forty-nine.  The audience had thinned out by the time I got on. They were smile...

In the next week, I’ll perform stand-up at two London venues I played regularly with my old band Big Day Out, which will be an interesting experience. I would never have anticipated I’d do this when I visited them first time around, though what we did wasn’t hugely different. Big Day Out were serious about music, less so about performance. The Supernaturals’ lead guitarist (90s namedrop) once remarked that if our amps packed in mid-set we’d get by doing half an hour’s stand-up. This was almost a premonition – though I had two band members, a handful of songs and a shedload of instruments to protect me back then. Now I just have a mic and my mind, plus a few accompanying body parts. It’s a more exposing scenario. The venues in question are the Hope & Anchor and The Water Rats. Both hold a lot of memories. We launched our CD ‘Seven Heavenly Lemony Lemons at a Seven-Eleven in Devon’ at The Water Rats. A coachload of people came from Hitchin to sup...