RosieBell

After the gig

So it was worth it - the rehearsals, the practice at home, the horrible stomach-twisting and cold-sweat nerves I get before performing.  We played a blinder, and went down a storm.  There were a load of bands playing that I've seen over the years, and they were all rocking at the top of their game.  It was a grand memorial gig.  Fritz would have really liked it. 

Kudos to the organisers.  Every band started on time with none of the usual delays.  The sound engineer was excellent.  A brilliant night.

Review of the gig here.

The first act I saw were Fraktured Fingers – an amalgam of (I think) Frak and Nicotine Fingers. Appropriately enough the first song that I heard all night was written by Fritz and it kicked off a hugely enjoyable half hour or so of punky/new wave pop.

After the gig

It happens every time.  Before a gig, even one that is only spouting verse to about 20 people in a pub, I’m sick with nerves, hands sweaty and intestines tied into knots.  I swear I shall never do another gig, ever.  It’s not worth the feeling that you’re about to attend your execution.  Get up on stage and I’m bold and brassy, able to ignore the heckling old drunk who turns up to every second performance in a Southside pub; after  my spot I’m high as a kite, adrenaline pouring throughout my veins, and snap up the offer to do another performance soon.

I’m chuffed to do something, however small, in the festival and the three friends who came to the gig are each doing something as well - H  reading her work at the Scottish Poetry Library, Carl showing some pieces at the Artspace, Craigmillar and Norman doing wave form loops at St John’s Church. 

Buses, Drink and Rock and Roll

I did two gigs at the venue at Linsays at 15 Brunswick Street.  It's a nice space. The upstairs bar where we played is in the comfy living room genre of drinking places, with soft chairs, big bay windows and pictures of ships on the walls. 

The first gig was for ACE (Autonomous Centre Edinburgh), and was full, lively and good fun.  I even won in the raffle some whisky tumblers hand-painted with Celtic designs.  I did two sets and they seemed to go down all right.

The second was ill-omened.  I pushed my keys on their upright trolley to catch the bus and lying behind the bus-stop was a bloke totally zonked out.  That's not uncommon in this city and the few people waiting for the bus were ignoring him.  I looked at him, wondering if I should call an ambulance or not, since sometimes unconscious guys are not dead drunk but ill, then a middle-aged bloke came along and started to poke him, saying, "he's responding".  The zonked guy had money clenched in his fingers.  I asked the middle-aged bloke whether I should call an ambulance.  "They won't want to know," he said, and then he and another guy who turned up then pulled the guy into a leaning rather than a prone position, with the kind helpfulness, and the "there you are pal" comments that Edinburgh citizens can show to drunks.  My bus came along and I left them to it. 

More and noisier signs of the stages of drink could be heard as I got on the bus, dragging my keys.  The back seats were loud with lads shouting, "We are the boys."  The bus was fairly full and I didn't feel up to pushing my way to the space left for wheelchairs and buggies which is where I normally place my keys, but stayed right up at the front by the driver.  When we got to the end of Princes Street the lads advanced down the bus, a tall wide-eyed leader exuberantly half shouting, half singing, "We are the boys," while others in his pack said, shut up, keep it down or joined in.  I cowered back as far as I could to be out of their way but the descendant of berserking Vikings pushed past waving his arms and singing and stood on my foot.  "We are the boys " (to me) "Sorry"  (to the world or at least Edinburgh) "We are the boys" and on they went rejoicing.  Ah well, all is not lost to barbarism.

I had caught a different bus (the 22) the night before and had found the place easily from where it dropped me on Leith Walk. I had it in my head that from this bus (the 26) I would get off at Easter Road and would find the street there but I had figured wrongly and ended up marching like a refugee pushing the trolley back to Leith Walk, up a block or two and along again.  And because the pre-gig nerves magnify any small vexation into a major disaster, I was in a state of hysteria which only the very good Abbots Ale that Linsays serves could calm me from.

When my friends turned up they all growled it was a hard place to find, especially one whom I had told airily that he could get there via Easter Road.  However having found it they agreed it is a relaxing place with an easy vibe, great for a gig.

The mixing desk then failed and everyone had to do their acoustic best.  The talented Lisa Paton kicked off.  She has a voice that can do delicate and rocky, has a neat way with lyrics and is also very cute, so you can anticipate future success for her.   Roddy Renfrew, who had lugged along his hefty weighted keys, couldn't play them and instead performed unplugged a stand up comedy routine and some satirical songs on guitar.  Roddy has an endearing personality and a nice line in rueful self-deprecation .  Others performed, the place emptied and by the time my turn came there were about 10 people there.   I was hooked for sound with a microphone coming through one speaker and the keys coming through another so if you positioned yourself exactly in the middle it might sound okay, otherwise you took your pick, keys or vocal.  However people seemed to enjoy it, I sold a CD, chatted to my friends and went home in a good temper.

Gig at the Tron

If don't have a gig coming up, I'm down in the dumps.  If I do have one coming up, I try to put it to the back of my mind so that the pre-gig nerves won't start kicking in until about three hours beforehand.  That's when I become so miserable that I wish lightening strikes and earthquakes would honourably prevent me from playing.

I mentioned to the compere that I was nervous.  So to my annoyance he passed this on to the audience.  You never admit that to them.  It makes you sound ten years old - have pity and be merciful to her, she is doing her wee best. 

I played my set and it went down okay as far as I could see.  Some people chatted, others played close attention and smiled or laughed at the right bits.

After playing your adrenalin settles and you are in a state of relaxed well-being like after vigorous physical exercise.  I sprawled on a sofa, ear plugs in, and listened to the bands, Tourrettes and The Lords of Bastard, who were doing rock, part Nirvana-like and part punk, and both had skilled lead guitarists/lead singers.  The problem with ear plugs is that they don't just quieten the noise, they filter it, so you lose some frequencies and the whole sound of the band.  But I thought I could hear complex guitar.

"She looks bored," said the lead guitarist of Lords of Bastard, indicating me lounging on the sofa.  (He had been heckling the compere - I thought it was a bit much that he heckled from as well as at the stage).  I wasn't, just overwhelmingly content.   The nerves, the high of playing, then the feeling of being utterly spent.  I can see how you can get addicted to performing.

Full Moon and Forest

If I played more often I would play better and suffer less from pre-gig nerves. Or at least I would get two gigs for the price of one attack of cold sweats and jumpy stomach. The Full Moon gig was pretty sparse and as I played someone called out, "Coco Rosie. You should listen to them, you’d love them." Then later in mid-song he placed an envelope with "Coco Rosie" on my keys, which was a bit distracting. Etiquette tips for audience members:-

1. No songwriter/singer likes to be told they are like someone else. We all think of ourselves as totally original and unique.
2. No performer likes to have an envelope placed on their instrument while they are playing even if the instrument is a set of Yamaha keys and looks more like a machine than a musical instrument. Though if the envelope had contained 5 £10 notes it would have been received graciously.

And except for names I can’t see or hear any resemblance between me and Coco Rosie.

Gig - 25 January 2007

Well, there I was the proud featured artist of the night at Out of the Bedroom - performing after some excellent musicians, skilled and innovative on their instruments.  I have to rely on my material rather than my musical abilities (voice with a range of 12 notes, no sense of rhythm, erratic keyboardship).  And of course I was in my usual dark pre-gig state, miserable with stage fright.  I was duetting 4 numbers with Norman Lamont, who had brought along his guitar, a set of effects like the control deck of the Starship Enterprise and an amp.  But the amp did not want to play - riders were probably not to its liking back stage - he tried a mic against the amp which then caused it to make a sound, and I quote him from his own website, "like a cat being fisted in a jet engine." My keys then jammed in sympathy and howled and screamed - had to switch them off and switch them on again.  After 4 numbers I was alone on the stage and played away happily - fortunately stage fright disappears as soon as I am on the stage sticking bits of cardboard under the keyboard stand to stop it wobbling.  Oh, and I sold 2 CDs.  Norman sold 4 copies of his new CD.