Month: April 2024

Day 277

Tuesday April 9

Maja got back late last night and we’re straight out the next night, which is tonight.

Another Ramshackle Collective at Ten To One, and damn those comedians are really upping their game. Even jokes we’re familiar with are starting to sound new. Routines are being honed to the point where, in a few cases, what were whole sections of an act are now just two or three lines. Even throwaway lines. This is crafting happening almost in real time in front of your eyes. It might also help that we haven’t been here for a few weeks, so improvements and changes become even clearer. But this is far and away the best evening we’ve had in here so far and they’ve all been great. But really, two or three acts in here tonight are better than acts that have been part of events I’ve paid to see. One of them closes tonight’s show, which means we don’t. But then, we didn’t say we were definitely coming and this guy was here first and got to be given the privilege so absolutely fair enough. His name is Baron Fortitude and he’s here prior to his upcoming performance at the final of the UK Musical Comedy Awards. I can say now he didn’t place in the top three, but that only speaks to what must have been the overall quality of the whole lineup.

As it is, we get to close the second section of tonight’s show and we do so with Freefall, How You Rock’n’Roll and Six Sense Lover. Den is great at introducing everyone and bigging them up and making sure they get a great and welcome reception and reaction. For us, she hints at what might be coming by saying to an expectant audience, ‘Hold onto your hats. It’s The Diaries.’ With that, we’re up and running. Unfortunately, there’s no video of this one, not anything we’re going to put up anyway, because there’s just too much hustle and bustle in front of the camera which was in the only place we could put it. But that’s just a mark of how successful and popular this night is beginning to become so we’ll happily take that.

Day 284

Tuesday April 16

Another entry in what is becoming more or less our weekly report on our goings-on at The Ramshackle Collective at The Ten To One Club in Tottenham. Oh, Den steps up for us tonight. She really steps up for us tonight. I said a few appearances ago that our part in the evening felt like an event. Well tonight it steps up even more. We’re closing the evening again, which Den tells us almost as soon as we arrive which is just brilliant and hugely appreciated. Between now and then, we sit back and enjoy another evening of music and comedy, again seeing all kinds of development here and there. Then it’s our turn and the atmosphere just changes to electric. This is up there with the time we walked into The Pull Inn in Ireland to Now Hustle and everyone already knew who we were and the room exploded in excitement that The Diaries had just walked in off the street unannounced. 

Oh, that was special. Of course our last show at The Trap and one or two more there, especially the time it was almost demanded that we  play after that fantastic Status Quo tribute show. We’d just popped in for a quiet pint or two, unexpectedly found the place hopping with a great live show, joyfully throwing ourselves into that environment. When we found ourselves contributing to the whole thing as we performed our biggest, most demanded and anticipated show up to that point. I think tonight has to join that list as the cheering starts BEFORE we play. Of course it’s no new thing for people to be encouraged to clap and cheer and give encouragement for acts coming to the stage, and hosts will often exhort people to go wild and clap and cheer and generally give a big welcome for whoever’s coming next. But this is a whole different level to that. This feels spontaneous and just up from out of the air. And real. Another thing we’re starting to see in here is that when people are there for the first time, they’re being told, ‘You have to stay and see The Diaries.’ And more often than not, they do. As I said, the cheers and whistles are reverberating off the walls even as we’re taking to the stage. Then Den rises to what has suddenly become something of an occasion and, like a boxing announcer, waves her fist in the air and declares, ‘On the sixteenth of April twenty twenty-four, please welcome … The Diaries.’ And the place is just up for it. We don’t even have Ant in tonight, the main man who owns the bar and who often acts as something of a cheerleader for us. We’ve got quite a few people in here for the first time tonight and everyone, it seems, is just carried off and away on the wave that seems to build and veer up at the stage as we reach it. We hadn’t planned for this reaction, or preaction if you will, but what we had planned rises perfectly to the expectation that we are now very much under. To be fair, if we hadn’t planned this, we probably would have done our turnaround on a dime again and done something like this anyway. But Maja is ready. And so am I. ‘Go!’ she shouts. And we’re off and away. Into Make Me Shine. A few seconds into this and the hand clapping starts and cheers fly up into the air. This is a song that explodes into a double chorus, the very business end of the song springing up, instantly fully formed. But then after that, the verse kind of takes it into somewhere bigger again. When that first verse comes up, the excitement raises in the room again and the cheers and calls and claps come even more urgently. And so it is as we go through the other songs in tonight’s planned repertoire, running through Talk About The Weather and I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). With that, Den come on stage and declares another triumphant evening over. But Maja’s not having that. She calls out that Den has to close the evening with her own anthemic song Take Your Bra Off. We think that’s what it’s called. Which is a fist waving singalong celebration of the comfort women feel at the end of the day when they’re finally able to remove this uncomfortable thing. ‘Take your bra off/ Take your bra off woman/ Take your bra off/ Liberate your bosom.’ I told you she was big on the surreal social commentary. Well, surreal doesn’t quite fit here, but maybe a unique take on social commentary. This is another brilliant song in her repertoire and rounds the evening off perfectly. But this time, Maja joins her on stage and the two of them blast it out as they celebrate the joy that is to be ‘In In In!!’

All done and a general hang out begins as the various acts get to mingle a bit more and talk to each other. This is where all the detail swapping and future show arranging and general community happens. And in among it all we meet Gabriel, who’s done his own stand up in here for the first time, lighting the place up with a spontaneous sounding infectious energy and a captivating innocence while at the same time hurtling very quickly towards the edge. He’s running his own open mic on Thursday next week in Finsbury Park and would love us to come. This is on the route of the first of the two buses we take to get here. He says he’s already decided to make us the main event. Brilliant. Thankyou very much. We’ll be there.

And here is that show complete with fantastic reception and introduction from Den.

Day 293

Tuesday April 23

Mark:

I’m going to blast through this Tuesday night as we have our now regular outing to The Ramshackle Collective night at the Ten To One Cocktail bar in Tottenham. It’s amazing we’ve found a regular place to play and have been getting such brilliant receptions. That continues tonight although we begin a little slower than usual, opting for Sand Bang to get things started. Then How You Rock’n’Roll and I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). Now we’re up for this Thursday with Gabriel’s thing.

Day 295

Thursday April 25

Mark:

We have no idea what we’re walking into tonight but oh, does it turn into an amazing experience. Quite a small bar in what appears to be a high end restaurant place specialising in desserts by day and a bar by night. Gabriel’s got a few of the performers to come down from the Ramshackle Collective night, a decent extra cast of performers, and not a bad audience turnout. This is in Finsbury Park, north London, just one bus away from us, which is also the number 29, one of the most regular buses in London so not far off from getting a taxi really.

Gabriel’s welcomes as people arrive are massively effusive and it’s really nice to see that we know a few people here, especially as we’ve arrived decently early to be able to  settle in and hang out. And he very actively encourages mingling, saying that one of the aims of the evening should be that we all leave with a new friend. I think we do, as me and Maja mingle and chat with different people all night. You really can just go up to someone or sit down at a table and bang, you’re chatting like friends. We’re getting a similar feeling with Ten To One actually, and Ant’s event with Tom in Walthamstowe a few weeks ago had a similarly inclusive vibe. Seriously, more bars should be like this.

Gabriel  comperes with his own fantastically high energy, also performing a little seemingly off the cuff and frenetic stand-up between each act. And he puts us on very much towards the end when atmosphere levels in here are about at their highest. When it comes to our turn, he addresses the audience and says, ‘Guys, you have no idea what you’re about to experience.’ And then our name. Yes, a little bemusement from quite a few people, but we’re ready. Poised, Maja calls out, ‘Go!’ With that, we smash into Make Me Shine and the place just takes off. Oh, they’re into this. Even the guys behind the bar are joining in. Yes, they all seem to be thinking. Gabriel was right. They were not ready for this. When the song finishes, the eruption of cheers and applause is so loud I almost want to cover my ears. Just enormous. And we keep it right up there as we follow with Talk About The Weather, then I Like You (Better When You’re Naked) which people are still singing long after we’ve finished. What a fantastic night. 

And here’s the whole thing from that night.

Day 300

Tuesday April 30

Tonight’s a little strange for us. It’s The Ramshackle Collective again and we’re feeling like it’s time to try new things. A new song to start tonight, or at least a new song for this venue. Maybe we’re complacent, maybe we’re tired, maybe we’re just a little off. But a few too many loose moments leave us feeling not completely the best about it all afterwards. But Ant says it’s his favourite show of ours he’s seen. And similarly we get a great reaction from Rick when he sees the whole video. One of the reasons for this is the freshness and originality of our entrance. We tell Den how we’re going to start so that we can have the stage prepped and ready. With that we go to the back of the room and wait for our introduction. When it comes, we slowly walk out and through the room, getting a clap going and then beginning with the A capella Bang Bang, a song we wrote the night before our first gig at The Trap, and then performed the next day at our first gig in The Trap. It’s just kind of fallen off our radar a bit, but Maja suggested today that we bring it back, and so we do.

We’re deep in and it’s all gone off as well as we could possibly have wished with everyone joining in the clapping and the two of us making our way down the bar and singing it out. Then I get to the stage, pick up the guitar, and bang out a rhythmic snare type sound to take things up just that tiny level more. The idea here is that we finish the last chorus then I immediately bash out the intro to the next song, The Cat which has a big frenetic guitar intro. Except we finish the last chorus and I somehow manage to forget that we’ve already done the last verse, so I pull us back into that again. It’s semi trainwreck territory as Maja realises what’s going on and hesitatingly comes in again. With us going through this last verse, it also means we now have to do another chorus to re-outro the thing. In all, a very messy end to what had been such a promising beginning. 

If I can plead any mitigation it could be that I just had too many other things to remember. Once on the stage, first I had to put the capo on the guitar so that it was ready for the first song. Yes I could have put it on earlier, but that would have meant a capo just clamped to immobile strings for up to half an hour or maybe more. Not ideal. But no problem to put it on just after arriving on stage. Except I also have to plug the wireless in because the guitar won’t sit on the stand with the transmitter plugged in. To do this I have to go to the mixing desk, check where the faders are from the soundcheck we did earlier so that we could make our big entrance. So I’ve checked where the faders are, I’ve then taken them to zero, plugged the wireless in and put the faders back where they were. All this while continuing to sing at the same time. Maybe it’s no surprise I forgot we’d already done the last verse. It’s just also possible that this bubble so soon in sets the tone for the rest of the performance. Either making us uneasy, shaking the confidence a little, or doing that thing where you make a mistake and dwell on it, or make a mistake and continue to try to make up for it, so get tense, or too conscious or something and, self fulfilling prophesies and all that, another mistake or two drops in and so on and all that. It’s not really that bad, but enough that we notice and the flow just might not be quite what we would want. 

But there’s a huge but after all this. Ant is emphatic afterwards that this has been our best show yet in his place. Then Rick sees the video afterwards and without any prompting, says that this is his favourite performance of ours. And he’s seen everything. Everywhere. Wow. OK. What do we know?

There’s one more mildly strange thing that happens. We’d entered with Bang Bang, taking that as one of our three songs. So we get up, play The Cat after that, Followed by Rock’n’Roll Tree. We finish Rock’n’Roll Tree and we’re kind of starting to set our stuff down. But no-one in the venue moves. There’s no call for an encore or anything, but everyone’s just looking at us in some kind of anticipation like we’re not done. This really feels like an encore without being an encore. Or maybe Bang Bang was just seen as our way of getting to the stage and so what we’ve done only counts as two songs. I have no idea. We hadn’t planned for this but that’s OK. Into this temporary corridor of uncertainty a call comes out for I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). Well, what else can we do? If you’re privileged enough to have a song requested, there’s only one thing you can do. Here we go.

We do get video of all this, but so far we haven’t put any of it up. Only private so that it’s there for us to show people maybe, which is how Rick saw it. He knows us well, knows our songs, is a very experienced performer and writer himself so knows what he’s watching and how to listen to and watch things properly. So that’s all fine. But this one for public consumption? Not so sure. As we’ve seen, the performances are off with at least one big mistake and clear stage confusion – not good at all – and also with the way we made our entrance, we tried to film the angle down the bar as we came in, and then Maja tried to move the camera angle to the stage as she reached it, but some objects on the table got in the way and she was concentrating on singing and looking at the camera image and stage, and with a microphone in one hand, only had one hand free as it was. And of course very limited time because this was supposed to be an instant operation. So that fiddling is going on and then the framing of the stage isn’t all that good either as a result. So yeah. Probably won’t be putting this one up. But, from what we gather, the experience of the show in the room was really good. The best yet, as we heard from Ant. That can be the case at times with live performances. There are even cases of famous live albums from major bands being received really quite negatively from people who know what they’re talking about. The line of thought here often goes that it’s possible the experience in the room at the time was so good that the decision makers decided to put that show out; the experience from the stage, and the experience of those in the room can be amazing, you want to share it with the world, then the cold hard reality of hearing the recording can be something quite different. It happens. It’s also why so many of the live albums you hear are fixed after the performance in the studio, just as you would patch in and fix a mistake in an actual studio recording. Yep. For big big productions which are intended as live albums, all the instruments are tracked as though in an album recording, and then individually fixed afterwards. So if you’re in a band, the next time someone says something like, ‘Can’t you rock out and play or sing without mistakes? XXX band/ musician/ vocalist does it on their live albums/videos, go listen.’ Well guess what. XXX band/ musician/ vocalist didn’t. It just sounds like they did. Well of course sometimes they probably did to be fair, but you know where I’m coming from. But no, of course this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all practice or rehearse to minimise live mistakes. I guess it just means we should be a little kinder to ourselves and others when they do happen.