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.
