Going Solo
I've not been great lately. Been suffering from quite bad mood swings and terrible depression lately, to the point where I got sent home from work on Friday. I kinda feel like I'm going through the motions at the moment, but sometimes that's what you have to do to get through to a place where you're OK again. I go to see my doctor on Wednesday, and I'm going to ask to have my meds changed or increased.
Got through the weekend, did some recording with Marianna on Saturday, which was fun, and had a good old gossip/bitch session. And then Sunday was my first solo gig in a couple of years.
I was terrified. Yeah, I get horrible nerves before gigs anyway, and even though it was at my local (The Windmill) with loads of my mates up front cheering me on, it was still traumatic. Nothing ever goes according to plan. Changeovers and retunings which take 10 seconds at home seem to take *ages* when you're onstage. I forgot words left and right - even to songs which I've known for years. And to make it even worse, the stage was almost pitch dark, and I could barely see my guitar to play it - making for lots of unneccessarily flubbed notes.
And god, the empty black hole of silence when you're doing stuff between songs, and there's no one else there to pick up the slack and say something. I was too scared to look at the audience, so I spent a lot of the show with my eyes closed. (At least on the easy songs.) Eyes closed, not talking to the audience - it wasn't what I feel is right to do onstage. I guess I'll never be a proper Shoegazer, then.
But hey, it was a learning experience. I learned that I don't like playing shows by myself. Even if I'm the world's biggest control freak, I need other people there onstage with me. It was a good chance to debut new songs (and some ancient revivals) and work out whether they work in a live setting. Some did, some didn't. The ones that did will end up as Shimuras songs.
Ah, and one added bonus - there was a really lovely band that played after us, called The Bronsteins. Really gentle, pretty, K Records type stuff, naive pop with lovely harmonies and pretty melodies. So I went up to their singer after the show, and told her how much I liked her band - and she looked at me, and said "I know you from somewhere..." And it turned out that she was Melinda from The Channel Six! (I once wrote song about one of them.) So that was a wonderful blast from the past.
Got through the weekend, did some recording with Marianna on Saturday, which was fun, and had a good old gossip/bitch session. And then Sunday was my first solo gig in a couple of years.
I was terrified. Yeah, I get horrible nerves before gigs anyway, and even though it was at my local (The Windmill) with loads of my mates up front cheering me on, it was still traumatic. Nothing ever goes according to plan. Changeovers and retunings which take 10 seconds at home seem to take *ages* when you're onstage. I forgot words left and right - even to songs which I've known for years. And to make it even worse, the stage was almost pitch dark, and I could barely see my guitar to play it - making for lots of unneccessarily flubbed notes.
And god, the empty black hole of silence when you're doing stuff between songs, and there's no one else there to pick up the slack and say something. I was too scared to look at the audience, so I spent a lot of the show with my eyes closed. (At least on the easy songs.) Eyes closed, not talking to the audience - it wasn't what I feel is right to do onstage. I guess I'll never be a proper Shoegazer, then.
But hey, it was a learning experience. I learned that I don't like playing shows by myself. Even if I'm the world's biggest control freak, I need other people there onstage with me. It was a good chance to debut new songs (and some ancient revivals) and work out whether they work in a live setting. Some did, some didn't. The ones that did will end up as Shimuras songs.
Ah, and one added bonus - there was a really lovely band that played after us, called The Bronsteins. Really gentle, pretty, K Records type stuff, naive pop with lovely harmonies and pretty melodies. So I went up to their singer after the show, and told her how much I liked her band - and she looked at me, and said "I know you from somewhere..." And it turned out that she was Melinda from The Channel Six! (I once wrote song about one of them.) So that was a wonderful blast from the past.
posted by Masonic Boom | 1:39 pm
2 Comments:
[quote]I learned that I don't like playing shows by myself. Even if I'm the world's biggest control freak, I need other people there onstage with me.[/quote]
You could always construct an army of automatons.
"Going Solo"
I thought this was going to be about masturbation, after that online dating post.
Yeah, the pressure of playing sounds quite intense. This is a bit ILM-ish, but I remember seeing various ex-Beatles saying that of the things they learnt from their meeting with Elvis is how much better it was to be part of a group rather than a solo performer.
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