Gig 51: Comedy Night @ The Ferry Tavern, Warrington – 28th April 2012

April 29, 2012 3 Comments

Last night’s gig was unusual in three main respects:

1) I only found out about it at 3pm on the day, when the organiser asked if anybody was free on Facebook. This is my second ever most impromptu gig after Gig 4.

2) It was only my second hometown gig (the other was Gig 5) and by far the closest to where I live. It took me 7 minutes to drive home. Seven. And, yes, I timed it. Amazing.
3) It was the first time one of my family has seen me perform. More on that later.

I was out doing improv when I confirmed the gig, so it was all slightly last minute, but I had a set (more or less) ready to go for another planned gig. I did a run through on my drive home and I felt confident that I knew my running order. I got home with about an hour to go before I had to leave again, but I felt I needed to squeeze in another run through of my material. I always get a bit nervous before playing a new venue (because you don’t know what to expect), and this was exacerbated by it being last minute and had put myself in the firing line by volunteering for it. Oh, and my brother was going to be there.

It took me a long time to let anyone I know come and watch me perform. It’s hard enough to get up there in the first place without the added pressure of people wanting you to do well. Just because you know someone – even someone you know well – doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be into your style of comedy. It’s an awkwardness I really don’t need when trying to concentrate on getting through my ten minutes. I have relaxed this stance as I’ve gained more confidence, but I’ve never had a family member in attendance. My brother had text me yesterday morning to ask if I had a gig, and I said I hadn’t. Because I hadn’t. But then I got a gig. It felt like fate telling me that I should finally let him come and watch me. So I did. This would have been fine if he hadn’t turned up having drunk a few too many. If there’s one thing I learned from watching live comedy over the years it’s that drunk people and comedy don’t mix. Anyway, in the end, he was well behaved, but I was pretty stressed out and it wasn’t ideal pre-gig preparation.

Thankfully, I managed to pull myself together and I was pleased with my performance. The venue was a local pub, so the audience was an intriguing mix, including quite a few older clientele. I don’t really have a plan-b set to wheel out for old folks, so I just had to go with what I had and try to sell it. My set was:

1. “Stretched cat” – quickly followed by…
2. The “lawyer-advised” Joke Book variant (see Gig 38 for details) – I sneaked the Loyd Grossman, which I tried in Gig 49, in here in place of one of the others. The jokes are intentionally cheesey and I really played this up, and targeted different audience members to deliver them to.
3. “This really shifty bloke came up to me…” – I’ve not done this since Gig 42, so I thought I’d throw it back in.
4. ”Can’t fight the Moonlight”
5. Peter Andre
6. Fergie Swap – Another return following Gig 49.
7. Arnie
8. “And then I…” – This is a new bit. I’m not sure how it went, so I’ll give it another try.
9. Dennis Hollyoaks – In fairness, this was never going to work with the audience, but I, again, didn’t have the wherewithal to not go with it. I did reference their indifference to the material in its climax, so I was at least pleased with that.
10. “Who’d win in a fight..” – This bit debuted in Gig 49. It didn’t really work, but this is a bit which is entirely about the delivery, and it might take a few attempts to find out quite how to do it (or whether I should just not do it).
11. “So she lost her job…”
12. One Day in Liverpool – Although I performed this last week (Gig 50), it was In character and I’ve been trying to sneak it back into straight stand up for ages. It didn’t really go down as well as it has in the past – despite the seemingly appropriate subject matter.

It was a difficult gig to judge. I don’t think I died, and got plenty of laughs, but there were also a bunch of people who didn’t even remotely crack a smile. From a performance perspective, I was confident and I had fun in playing around with both the material and the audience. Overall, it was a fun gig.

And I got home in 7 minutes. SEVEN!

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 46a: Comedy Unplugged @ Fuel Cafe Bar, Withington – 8th April 2012

April 11, 2012 2 Comments

Those of you with a real interest in my gig diary (i.e. me) will remember my post following the last Comedysportz showcase (Gig 41a) in which I said I preferred performing Longform improv (as opposed to shortform). Well, last night gave me opportunity to exercise that preference at Comedy Unplugged; a gig arranged by Comedysportz and performed by my fellow workshoppers.  A quick note for the uninitiated; shortform improv generally consists of short scenes which take the form of a game (think Whose Line is it Anyway). Longform is, well, longer. It also consists of a series of short scenes, but they’re usually interlinked in some way, for example creating an overarching story.

Because of the large number of performers involved, the night was split between several groups. The format of the evening was a La Ronde followed by a series of three Armandos, finishing with a final La Ronde (don’t worry, I’ll attempt to explain what these are shortly).

My first involvement was to perform a monologue for one of the other group’s Armandos. The audience gives the monologist a suggestion and they come up with an improvised talk (3 – 4 minutes), from which the players note keywords as inspiration for a series of short scenes. I’ve done this before (Gig 22) and it seemed to go OK on that occasion.

This time my suggestion was “tombola”. Now, the thing with these monologues is that you’re supposed to talk about some real life incident inspired by your suggestion. Immediately I remembered that my dad had made a tombola drum for school when I was a kid, so I felt obliged to talk about that. But this wasn’t the most interesting of stories. I wasn’t particularly fluid, but I think I managed to get away with it, just through my delivery. I eventually told a story from school (that wasn’t overly interesting) that was only linked to “tombola” in that it was something from my childhood.

I don’t think it was a roaring success, but I probably just about got away with it. I think if my dad hadn’t made a tombola drum then I could have gone on something of a flight of fancy about the whole tombola concept (as surely nobody could expect me to reel off a tombola-based anecdote). It’s just the luck of the draw, as you would expect from something with random audience suggestions!

Next up (for me) was the La Ronde which would finish the evening. There were five performers and there were a series of two-person scenes. After two minutes one person would leave the scene to be replaced by another, and then this is repeated until everyone has been in two scenes (when the first person to leave re-enters). A second round of one minute scenes takes place and then it’s completed with a round of 30 second scenes.

Each player stays as the same character throughout the game, so a (usually weird) narrative emerges as the scenes unfold. La Ronde was easily my favourite thing that we did in the Comedysportz workshops. As a performer, the beauty of the format is that you get to create a larger than life character and see it develop in a series of different scenes. As an audience member, the strength of the format is that you’re drawn in by the story as much as you are by the funny bits.

Ours was the simple story of pushy mums, basketball scholarships, teenage pregnancy and a thwarted dream to become Las Vegas’s first male showgirl due to the chunkiness of his (my) legs. You have to admit that is one hell of a story. Go on. Admit it. ADMIT IT!

I really enjoyed performing it, but I was so wrapped up in it that I don’t know if I was actually any good or not. To be honest, for large portions of it I actually forgot that there was an audience there at all. I don’t know if that makes me committed to my art, or just a bit odd.

One thing I noticed is that I always feel happiest by immediately starting with a strong character and basing the scenes entirely on that. But, because we had to start with an audience suggestion – which on this occasion was “basketball” – I was slightly too preoccupied on that, and felt that I was floundering a bit in this first scene in trying to define who my character was other than just “son who wasn’t very good at basketball”.  My performance was feeling a little bit too bland until I watched the others in my group develop the pushy mum\teenage pregnancy\rival basketball player plotlines, and then this gave me the steer to know exactly where my character was going to go (he was going to Las Vegas to dance).

It was a really fun evening, and the standard was really high from all involved. Hopefully we’ll get to perform some more public shows soon…watch this space.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 46: Can’t Sing, Can’t Dance, Don’t Care Open Mic @ The Gillygate, York – 4th April 2012

April 7, 2012 1 Comment

Sunday: Chortlon! Monday: Leeds! Tuesday: Tyldesley!  Where would Wednesday take me on my exotic tour of the North?  It would take me to York.  The clue was in the title of the post, wasn’t it?  If it came as a surprise, then you’re really not paying attention.

As I’ve been off work all this week, I was able to combine this gig with a stop over for the night, mooching around fudge shops and a trip to Betty’s Tea Rooms.  The combination of spending most of the afternoon on a slow moving motorway (caused by snow…stupid country) followed by traipsing around shops meant that I was knackered by early evening and without much time to prepare.  Luckily, I was going to be performing the exact same set as the night before (Gig 45), so I didn’t really need to do much prep.

The venue was the classic “small room in the back of an old man’s pub” and felt just about right for my mood.  There were six acts performing on the night and I was on last.  As already mentioned, I did exactly the same set as the night before.  The only notable difference was that I managed to get my “telephone books” bit in, that I’d wimped out of the previous day.  Thankfully it got a laugh, but it was interesting that the laugh only came because I left a long enough pause after delivering it.  The Pause is a weapon that I’m learning to deploy more and more effectively as my confidence and delivery improve.  I think it’s probably a natural instinct, when you first start performing, to rush onto the next bit of material if an immediate laugh doesn’t come.  Having the instinct and nerve to wait for it to come is something I think you can only get with practice.

I also managed to wring out more laughs from my Dennis Hollyoaks story.  Partly this was due to me having more confidence that the audience might get it, but I think it was largely because I threw in more asides as I read it out.  My “personal bit” still appears to be a conundrum, but I think I need to sit down and try a re-write of the whole segment before I can really pass judgement.

Overall, it was neither the best or worst gig that I’ve ever done, but it went well enough for me to not feel depressed, and I felt like I learned something from the experience.  If you want to request a spot at this gig, click here.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 39: SAS Comedy @ Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 10th March 2012

March 13, 2012 4 Comments

Regular readers of this blog – should such a thing exist – will know about my twin obsessions of SAS Comedy and Bobby’s Snacks.   Saturday saw the two collide as I unleashed the debut performance of “Clive’s Consumer Queries”.

The basis of the act came from my ongoing blog posts about Bobby’s Snacks (read them, here), in particular the ones that featured outlandish descriptions of some of Bobby’s (excellent) products. I transcribed these posts and read them out at the last Magical Animals (Gig 34), whilst dishing out the said snacks to the audience. I don’t know exactly why I did this, other than wanting to see what happened.

It wasn’t a roaring success – the performance was hampered by a tight 4-minute slot and my descriptions being far too wordy – but I felt like there was something in it. What I felt it needed was more time to breathe, a looser structure and an idiotic character to hold it all together. Where better to put this into practice than SAS?

(Answer: Nowhere. Nowhere else would be better to do this.)

The framing device I came up with, if you will allow me to be wanky for a minute, was Clive’s Consumer Queries – a ‘hit’ internet-based consumer affairs show, presented by Clive Bunny. My preparation mainly consisted of thinking about it quite a lot. The bulk of the set would still be describing the snacks, but I knew I’d have to do this off-paper. The plan was to make a note of two or three key points for each variety, from the blog posts, and then improvise around this. I also had some ideas on what I’d say\do to set the thing up.

I had another busy week, so only actually got to do any actual practice on the day of the gig itself, and much of that was taken up deciding what to wear. I felt comfortable enough that I new what I was going to say, and that I’d be able to make some stuff up, but I just wasn’t sure that the prepared material was actually funny rather than just amusing.

As I was waiting to go on, I actually thought of a few extra things to say, and I mentally prepared myself to go on. The key with this sort of thing is making sure the character is big\daft enough and sticking with it. The thought of getting on stage started to get me excited (and I just couldn’t hide it).

Erm, boringly, it went really well. The prepared stuff worked. The stuff I thought of backstage worked. The stuff I came up with on stage worked. It’s a terrible anti-climax for this as a post, but it’s true. The improvisational aspect of it was what really made it come alive, with me doing things that I really didn’t expect to. Much of the success was down to physicality and the spontanaeity, rather than having to have thought of jokes. It’s this kind of approach that really makes character comedy special.

I really love performing in character, especially as the ones I do are basically just an excuse to act daft. In a weird way, pretending to be somebody else allows me to deliver a clear representation of who I am.

Ooooh… intellectual.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 38: Beat The Frog @ Frog & Bucket, Preston – 7th March 2012

March 12, 2012 7 Comments

The last time I performed at Preston’s Beat The Frog (Gig 31) – just over a month ago –  I had been left clueless (and a little despondent) at how I would approach it next time.  I didn’t feel that I had the skill or the material to win the audience over with my current straight set.  I conceived of four possible options:

1) Do it in character.

2) Don’t prepare any material and just see what happened.

3) Try and write a set of material that I thought they might like.

4) Just try my usual stuff again.

Interestingly, I didn’t have “don’t do it” as an option.  Although I had questioned whether this particular night would be of any use to my development, I still hadn’t decided and thought the best way to find out would be to do it anyway.  Of the options I did consider:

1) I would have quite liked to have tried Den Kodd (Gig 33 & Gig 36), but as there’s not really a back stage area, I wasn’t sure of the logistics of doing my “Den Kodd” hair and inserting his teeth without anybody noticing, and I didn’t want to lose the impact of his initial appearance.

2) Although I would like to try this at some point as an experiment, it felt too much like giving up, under the circumstances.

3) They say that you should just write stuff that you think is personally funny, but I did think of trying a different style as an experiment.  I ran through some ideas of more observational stuff, and which bits of my existing material I might be able to convert.  I soon gave up when I realised that everything just ended up in my usual style anyway.

4) Realistically, it was always going to be option 4, wasn’t it?

Basically, I looked through my material and tried to pick bits that weren’t too obtuse, leaving out bits that were, and making sure I framed it all by explicitly making clear that my act was like this on purpose.  It had only been three weeks since my last straight stand up gig, but it felt like forever, and my material felt quite alien to me.  As I tried to pick a set, I felt as if I had no material, and it was a horrible feeling, but I managed to concoct something that I was willing to try, even if I didn’t hold out much hope for success.

I didn’t feel great in the lead up to the night.  It was perhaps the first gig I’ve done where I hadn’t had any enthusiasm for it beforehand.  To make matters worse, my previous gig (Gig 37) hadn’t gone great and on the day of BTF I was hit with a wave of epic tiredness that made me just want to go home to bed.  I knew I couldn’t do that, though, and got myself up to Preston.

The venue wasn’t as busy as last time – although still with a very healthy crowd in attendance – and I felt like I might have a better reception from those who were there.   This was based purely on gut instinct from scanning a room, so I don’t know how valid an opinion it actually was.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, I did have a better reception.  They didn’t say how long I lasted, but it must have been over 4 minutes.  Going off my timed run throughs, it could have been very close to five minutes.  Close, but no cigar… although that’s not quite the full story.   My set list for the night was:

1. “Stretched cat” – this is becoming a standard opener for me.  It works as a joke, but also indicates the kind of material I’m going to do.

2. The “lawyer-advised” Joke Book variant.  I’ve used the “joke book” in many forms.  Essentially I’ve got a book full of lame jokes and I use the book as a device to get them over.  On this occasion, I decided to address the fact that some people might not ‘get’ the opening joke – although I’m sure the vast majority did – specifically that it was supposed to appear to be going wrong and that I might do something else similar.  By addressing this early on, I was hoping to give the audience confidence that any apparent mistakes were actually part of the act.  I then suggested that my lawyer advised me to read out some pre-preapared jokes as a way of assuaging any fears they had about my competence.  By doing this, I was able to use some easily recognisable jokes, but in a slightly unusual way.

3.  ”Can’t fight the Moonlight” – now a regular bit.

4.  Peter Andre – This was a brand new bit, which was just a throwaway one-liner that I thought of in work.  It’s not spectacular, but I liked that it was very short and completely unrelated to anything else.   Importantly, it got a laugh.

5.  Arnie.  This is the first time I’ve done the Arnie bit without immediately going into the “controversial incomplete joke” bit.  I thought this would be a bridge too far and would almost certainly have gotten me gonged off.

6. “So she lost her job…”  - another bit I’ve done a few times before.  It seemed to go down OK.

7.  One Day in Liverpool.  This is the point that I got gonged off.  I was going to go into my short play, and to do that I had get the microphone back in the stand.  I’ve noticed with BTF that if a card or two are up and there’s anything approaching a pause\hesitation then the remaining cards shoot up, so I knew that this could be a key moment, especially as two cards were already up.  I probably faffed about too much at this point – partly because when I’d done timed run throughs, it had been about 6 minutes to get to that point, so I hadn’t expected to have to do it – and the final card unsurprisingly was held up.

So, I was frogged off and I was, quite literally, a loser.  Yet, it really didn’t feel like that.  There were people who were in fits of laughter, and quite a few people came up to me afterwards to say how much they had loved it.  Overall the reaction had seemed pretty good, despite the inevitable bunch of people who weren’t into it.  It felt like a win.

I don’t entirely know what to make of it all.  I’m still not entirely convinced about doing gong shows, but it at least showed that there is something for me to get out of them.  Who would have thought it?

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 36: Crack Up Comedy @ The Nip and Tipple, Whalley Range, Manchester – 19th February 2012

February 20, 2012 2 Comments

You may remember from my diary entry for Gig 33 that I originally created the character of Den Kodd in preparation for a gig that I later found out that I wasn’t going to be performing at. Well, even later still, I found out that I would be performing at it after all, and that’s what I did last night.  Hooray.

Due to a last minute change, I was asked the day before if I could do it and I jumped at the chance.  I hadn’t been feeling too well all weekend – just a cold, in case you’re worried – so didn’t feel like preparing too much.  I re-jigged the running order of the gags, and swapped a new one in for one that didn’t work last time.  I had a quick run through in the afternoon and that was that.

In terms of my performance, there wasn’t that much to talk about, and, in many ways, that’s something worth talking about.  It all felt incredibly easy.  I had no nerves, was looking forward to it, enjoyed the performance and was able to enjoy the other acts.  It’s probably the performance that I’ve been most relaxed over.  Although it didn’t go down quite as well as at SAS, I still got plenty of laughs, and didn’t feel out of place.  There’s things that I would improve upon, but it was only my second time doing that character.  It seems telling that I enjoy myself most at those nights where it’s a bit different and that straight stand up isn’t all that’s on offer.  I think it’s going to take me a while to process what to do with that information, and how I could use it to my advantage as a performer.

I don’t usually talk about the other acts in my diary posts, but it was an honour to be part of such a great bill.  It was the first of a new monthly comedy night at The Nip & Tipple, and although the audience was small, it was appreciative and the room was great.  It was a cracking line-up of character comedy: Peter Slater (from the amazing SAS Comedy) MCed as Bernard Bananas, with Rod Shepherd: Conspiracy Theorist and me\Den Kodd\Terry in the first half.  The second half was an extended set by Spanish lothario, Wilfredo, who I had seen in Edinburgh.  It’s the first time that he’d performed in the North of England, so I don’t think the audience knew what to expect but they were easily won over by his questionable charms (definitely go and see him if you get the chance to – he’s a great act).  Hopefully word of mouth will spread about the night and will help establish it as a great night for local comedy.  If you’re a lover of comedy and you’re in the area, then you owe it to yourself to make this night work.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 35: Open for Laughs @ Bar 1:22, Huddersfield – 16th February 2012

February 19, 2012 2 Comments

Open for Laughs was my fourth gig in 8 days, and, stupidly, the fourth different routine. As I’d already performed at this gig in October (Gig 18) and January (Gig 25), doing similar sets at both, it seemed like a good opportunity to give an airing to the new material from Gig 27. I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to prepare, and I was increasingly knackered as the week went on, but I felt I knew the material well enough to not cock up, but with enough of an element of doubt for something interesting to happen.

My opener was going to be my Roy Walker joke, previously described as “a long (90 seconds-ish) jokeless, serious story capped off with a fairly lame punchline.” This description doesn’t exactly sell it, but I definitely know what I wanted to achieve with it and how it might be funny. Starting with such an inherently risky bit, however, did mean that I was going to have to play it just right or I’d just look like I was just terrible. My main concern was if a high percentage of the audience were too young to know who Roy was, then it would just be a long, unfunny story and it would be almost impossible to make work. My plan was to poll the audience at the beginning and if the consensus didn’t know who he was then I’d sulkily go into my joke book as an alternative.

As the show started the MC (Lovely Lee Moore) talked to a table of 4 seventeen year-old lads sat at the front. They didn’t know who Roy Castle was – despite him coming from Huddersfield – so I didn’t hold out much hope for their knowledge of Mr Walker. I was third on the bill, so I had a little time to decide what to do. The majority of the audience probably would have known enough about RW to give the bit a go, but because the lads’ youth (and lack of 80s pop culture knowledge) had already been discussed, I felt like I would have to address it. I concocted a plan where I would spend so long talking about the fact that they wouldn’t get it, that I wouldn’t have time to actually do it and faux-exasperatedly be forced into to an abridged version. And making a big deal out of how the abridged version would make even less sense than in full. I didn’t know whether it would be funny, but I was excited to see how it would pan out.

Just before I went on, three guys arrived and sat at the back. They gave a somewhat prickly response when Lee spoke to them, and they gave off the vibe of being unimpressed by what was going on. I thought there was a chance they would heckle (they didn’t), and I was a little distracted with what approach I would take should they interrupt. I don’t really know how much of an effect this distraction had on my performance, but I was conscious enough of it to mention it, so I think it must have done something.

I kicked off by explaining what I had planned to do, but that the youngsters were making me think twice about it. I sneaked in a Roy Castle reference which got a laugh – but obviously not by the teenagers – and I felt in control of this bit. I wasn’t necessarily getting loads of laughs, but I was taking it in the direction I wanted to. I then
complained that I’d have to do the abridged version of the bit and was too bumbling in trying to work out which bits I needed to tell and which to drop. In many ways, bumbling could really have worked here, but just not the way that I did it – this is something I can’t really quantify. Although a few people laughed at the rather lame pay-off to the story, I think perhaps I hadn’t made it clear enough that it was being done on purpose. I do like to do bits which intentionally have a component of incompetence, but I’ve found that I really have to underline the intention in order to keep the audience on-side.

After Roy Walker, I launched into “personal bit”, followed by the new “personal bit 2″. Although there were decent laughs peppered throughout the rest of the set, I never really felt like the audience were with me. It was a startling contrast to when I had done “personal bit” only a week earlier at Gig 32 – and indeed to the previous times I’d performed it at Open for Laughs. This means I now really don’t know which bits really work out of either of the two personal sections. Is the material weak but I can sometimes make it work through performance? Is the material fine, but sometimes I blow it by how the rest of the performance goes? Is it just one of those things that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, depending on the audience? I really don’t know.

In hindsight, I should probably have done the Roy Walker bit as originally intended, and then made the deal out of how the lads wouldn’t have got it after I had finished. I think this would have declared my intent more strongly.  I think I need to ensure that if I’m going to persist with material that could easily be interpreted as unintentionally shoddy (and I am), that I make sure the audience know that I know what I’m doing – even if they don’t actually like it. There’s just so much to learn to get this right.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 33: SAS Comedy @ Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 11th February 2012

February 13, 2012 5 Comments

I say it every time, and I sound like a broken record, but I bloody love SAS Comedy.  This month I was performing as Den Kodd.

The genesis of the character started in November last year when I received an email from the lethal duo of Victoria and Uncle Dave saying that I’d been they’d booked me for a gig in February, which was great news.  However, further on in the message was the line “You are Den Dodd and you will be supported by the Daddy Men.”  At first, I freaked out at the prospect of performing a character that I didn’t actually do and had no material for.  But it seemed like a really good gig to be involved with, so I resolved that I’d be able to come up with something.

My basic plan fell into place pretty quickly. I’d essentially be a reluctant Ken Dodd tribute act called Den Kodd.  I’d use the gags from my joke book and fill out the set with asides about how much Den didn’t like comedy and didn’t understand it.  The gig was planned for the day after SAS, so I planned to do a test run there (assuming I would be allowed to!).

In January I found out that I wouldn’t be doing the original gig, but was still wanted to do the character at SAS.  I also knew that I’d need to buy some fake teeth if I was going to fully evoke the essence of Dodd, so, you know, I bought some.  The second I popped the peggies in my gob, I instantly transformed into a somewhat sleazy, scouse bloke whose main goal in life was to unnerve my girlfriend.  This character was soon to take on a life of his own as Terry, “star” of a couple of YouTube videos that I’ve posted (see here and here).  It soon became clear that I wouldn’t be performing as Den Kodd; I’d be performing as Terry who would be performing as Den Kodd.

I had a gig on Thursday (Gig 32) and a busy week generally, so I didn’t feel like I’d had enough time to prepare.  I slightly freaked out on Wednesday night because I felt I had too much to do, but once Thursday was out of the way I managed to relax enough and was pretty confident on what I’d be doing.  I was going to use 18 jokes from the “Joke Book”, many of which I had used at Gig 1, also at SAS.  Although I knew the jokes, there was no way I was going to be able to remember an order, so I jotted down a word for each and had them on a small slip of paper to jog my memory.  As Den was intended to be a bit shambolic, it felt like an appropriate compromise.  I only really had a couple of run throughs, but felt pretty confident in improvising as Terry and had an idea of things I might say.

I was a little nervous on the way over to Manchester, but I totally relaxed as the show started and was just really looking forward to giving it a go.  The hair\teeth combination I had going on meant that people were laughing before I started, and luckily it continued throughout.  The jokes worked well; the character of Den Kodd was almost made for them.  I was also inhabited by the spirit of Terry and his endless quest to shut up his (imaginary) noisy neighbours.  Lots of the ad-libs worked really well, especially when I corrected my pronunciation of book (from buck to the traditionally scouse “buke”).   All in all, it couldn’t have gone much better.  And, yes, I know I wrote the same about last month’s SAS Comedy (Gig 26).

The last two gigs have certainly wiped out the memory of the previous two stinkers (Gig 30 & Gig 31).  It’s also made me think more about the type of comedy that I want to do, as I mentioned in the write up of Gig 31.  Perhaps I should try a bit of character comedy at my next assault on Beat the Frog…

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 32: Radio Fallout Comedy Night @ The Railway Venue, Bromley Cross, Bolton – 9th February 2012

February 10, 2012 4 Comments

Some of you (and by “some of you” I mean “me”) may remember my infamous Gig 8a; a night with so few audience members that it didn’t count as an actual gig.  Last night looked like it was heading the same way. At 8:15 – the scheduled start time – there were two people in attendance. The comics all braced themselves for the prospect of performing for each other; something none of us really wanted to do. Then, due to the good grace of some crazy comedy god, it turned into a lovely gig of the loveliest proportions. It appears miracles can (and do) happen.

My preparation this week was relatively lax. I’d decided to go pretty much with the same set that died on its, and my, arse in Winsford (Gig 30); the only change was that I’d open with “stretched cat” instead of “I’m sat at a desk…” My reasons for sticking to it was partly because I had a busy week lined up (and so couldn’t face sorting something new), and partly to try and prove to myself that it did work as a set. I only had time to do a few run-throughs while driving about, so hadn’t timed myself. I knew this might be a slight issue as my re-jigged “incomplete joke” had lengthened quite a bit. This made me think about keeping an eye on my watch – something I don’t usually do – and assessing the points in the set where I could potentially drop bits. This is a skill I definitely need to learn – the more you improvise and mess around, the more your timing goes – so it was a good place to start as any.

The other thing I wanted to concentrate on, with regards to performance, was to make sure that I took my time and that I really sold it. I don’t know how much the failure at Gig 30 was down to me getting rattled and then rushing and not committing to the material.

So, it was showtime and there were two fellas in the audience. Two of the comics had travelled all the way from Newcastle and so were understandably dismayed with the prospect of effectively playing to the other acts. It wasn’t something that I was particularly thrilled with either. It seemed like a no-win situation given that my last couple of gigs hadn’t gone well, but the organisers had been good enough to give me a gig and, like the others, I was committed to giving it my best anyway.

The decision was made to delay the start – as seems traditional at comedy nights – and eventually a few more people trickled in. It got to a point where there were about 10 audience members, which is pretty much the minimum for giving it a go. I was a little concerned at this point as these 10 people seemed to cover every possible demographic and I wasn’t sure quite sure how it would play. Then, from seemingly nowhere, there were about 30 people in attendance, and with the venue being perfect for comedy – raised stage, low ceiling and the audience all tucked in tight – it looked like we had a gig after all.

The show was effectively split into 4 sections: two acts in the first three followed by the headliner. I was on second in the third section and by that point it was clear that the audience were really warm and very receptive to different styles of comedy. So I did my stuff and it went really well (sure, this sentence is a bit of an anti-climax, but screw you). I really took my time with it and made sure I didn’t talk over the laughs (yes, I got enough laughs for that to be an issue). As a result, I totally over-ran and had to end up ditched the part of “personal bit 2″ I was going to do, and “One Day in Liverpool).  But, I felt I was it control of droppping the material, so that was a win.

An excellent night was capped off by headliner Lewis Charlesworth, who literally blew the roof off the place (not literally). And so we all went home happy.

Ah, isn’t it great when you’re not rubbish?

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gig 30: Buzzin’ @ De Bees Music Bar, Winsford – 29th January 2012

January 30, 2012 8 Comments

I’ve had a string of really successful gigs recently, so I knew that I was well overdue to die on my arse. And, boy, did I ever die on my arse last night. Obviously, this isn’t the greatest thing to happen, but it should, at least, make for a slightly more interesting blog post.

Preparation for the gig was fairly relaxed as I was largely performing tried and tested material, which I know like the back of my hand (or so I thought). There were a few tweaks to a couple of bits, but overall I was pretty confident with the set list, which was:

1. “I’m sat at a desk..” Previously only performed at Gig 25.
2. My “this really shifty looking bloke came up to me and pointed at my wrist…” bit (previously know as “the joke that unjusticely got me gonged off at Beat The Frog” (Gig 12))
3. The “Can’t Fight The Moonlight” bit.
4. The “Arnie\Controversial-Incomplete Joke” bits that have been in pretty much all my straight stand up sets.  There was a bit of a change to the ending of the “incomplete” part, inspired by last week’s tweaked version for Beat The Frog (Gig 29).
5. New joke “So she lost her job…” Although this was new I’d tried it out on a couple of people and felt confident that it would get some kind of laugh.
6.. My “Personal” bit, plus a bit of “Personal Bit 2″ from Gig 27.  On doing a timed run through, I needed a couple of extra minutes and decided that the first part of “Personal Bit 2″ would fit nicely.  There are a few points in it where there are quite natural breaks, so I could always drop bits depending on how time was running.
7. Short play “One Day in Liverpool.”  This has worked really well in Gig 26 and Gig 28, so I thought I’d give it a whirl in a straight set.  It seemed a nice way to finish.

I got a bit nervous on the afternoon of the gig – I think because it was a gig I’d never done before and there was the element of the unknown. I’d calmed down by the time it came to perform, though, and was really looking forward to it.  There wasn’t a huge audience, but the first three bits went down OK – not great – but I felt it was fine given the audience size.  I then got to the Arnie stuff, which isn’t my cleverest but of material, but generally gets a decent laugh, and it got no reaction whatsoever.  It was certainly disconcerting.  Although it’s amazing your stuff goes down a storm, it’s still perfectly fine when you get muted laughter, but nothing at all is a nightmare.  It makes you realise how much the material relies on some response from the crowd and that without it your rhythm and timing become completely shot.

I ploughed on with the tweaked “incomplete joke”, but I really didn’t get any reaction from this point onwards.  The nadir of the set came early on into the “personal bit”.  As I was starting off, someone on the front row’s phone fell out of his pocket and onto the floor.  I instictively felt like I should reference it, which I did, but it threw my timing and, combined with the blank faces, I think I made a bit of a hash of the subsequent bit.  Directly following on from this is a part where I start explaining my feelings on something and this builds up into something of a rant, but, by this stage, I was sufficiently put off that it didn’t really flow as it should.  The punchline to that rant, is actually the start of the next bit and that also got no reaction.  It was at this point that I forgot what to say next.

Now, I’ve done this section on stage a number of times and probably at least a hundred times in practice.  I could probably do it in my sleep, but on this occasion it completely disappeared.  The fact that I conscious of how well I knew the bit, somehow made things worse, and less likely that I would remember. I was genuinely panicking but then I kept repeating the line to stall and because it was the thing to do that made me laugh most.  It perhaps wasn’t the best way to react but I kind of liked the honesty and lack of slickness of it.  My mind was also reeling at this point; I couldn’t decide whether to ditch the thread and try and just do something else or whether to try and stick with it.  The decision was made more difficult because the personal bit all flows, so it’s not like I could skip to a later section of it and it still make sense. In hindsight, I should have perhaps just said that I knew it wasn’t working and then dived into my joke book (which I had in my pocket as a security blanket).  But, I didn’t.  Eventually the line came back to me, but the performance was all very half-hearted from then on.  ”Luckily”, I had used so much time up in forgetting that I didn’t have time to try any of “personal bit 2″.  I ended with the play (to little reaction) and was pleased to get off.

When I died in my first handful of gigs, it was soul-destroying. Now that I have slightly more experience and have done a number of successful gigs, it’s still horrible but I’m able to deal with it relatively easily. I think it does dent the confidence a bit, but it’s also a really good leaning experience. It also highlights how much I still have to learn, particularly in how to deal better with cocking up and having different material to fall back on.  The question that always strikes me in this situation is how can material that has worked so well on other occasions fail so badly? (truly baffling)

It struck me last night that the audience members will have left the gig thinking that I’m awful, and they probably would not be able to believe that the same material has worked really well in front of other audiences.  It’s all a very strange business.

Filed under Comics, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 428 other followers