Day 11

Sunday December 12

Mark:

With Sunday Slip on tonight we just have to try to finish this new song. It would be so cool to have something brand new to play. And finish it we do. This means that when we take to the stage tonight we will be playing a song that only fully came together in the very last minutes before leaving for the show. It really doesn’t get newer than that.

As you may remember, this is taking place at Zum Krokodil. With our debut here last week, and given that we popped in on Thursday night, this is now our third time here. Inadvertently, we seem to have found a regular Berlin venue. And it’s bang in Neukolln.

We get there and meet Wynton and his friend and host for the evening, Liliana. Once we’re signed up, we’re told there’s another half hour or so until things begin, so we take advantage of this for a last minute run through; new songs have a habit of slipping out of your mind when you try to perform them too early in the gestation period. We’re heading off that possibility by going out into the street now for an a capella run through of it by the light of a closed shop across the road. We get through that OK and declare ourselves as ready as can be.

Liliana and Wynton have been doing this for years and it all has a slightly different feel to an open mic; it’s more of an event and we can see how epic it could be, even though the place is very sparsely populated tonight. They have a theme song which clearly kicks the evening off, then Liliana comes out and launches into a stand-up comedy show, involving as many audience members as she can. So that’s what this is about. Not just musicians, but comedians and, as she says now, performers of any kind. She also tells the audience that people use this space to experiment and try out all kinds of new and edgy material that may or may not work. To that end, she requests that this stage is respected as their safe space. Quite brilliant. She then announces that we will be playing first, so up we go for our two songs.

We’ve decided on I Like You Better (When You’re Naked) and of course Run, which we proudly announce as being as new as new could possibly be. As I said, the place is quiet tonight and there’s a slightly flat, end of season feeling to it all. We do OK and feel well listened to and politely received, but the audience clearly isn’t ready to come up to our levels of energy just yet. It’s fair to say that through the evening it never really does as we roll through the rest of the performers and Liliana does her best to keep things upbeat. But when the last person has done their thing, even though there are essentially 45 minutes of stage time left, rather than go for another round, Liliana and Wynton decide to call time on the last Sunday Slip of the year. The atmosphere all round is still a bit flat and people aren’t really hanging around. We call it a night soon after as well, but head home very happy that we finished a whole new song today, and then came out and performed it.