I have suffered with something of a Monday Blues malaise today, as if everything I have done has sort of taken more force than usual to do. My brain is working on a hundred and one things that I would like to get going & done, whilst my time is taken up with other things that make it impossible to kickstart projects.
I have found that it doesn't take much to have me extremely busy, and in the space of a few weeks I have set up bundles of things that need updating & tweaking. The first one is my YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/mrjohnmacleod, which I am keeping fed with a few demoes every so often & a series entitled, modestly, "John MacLeod Speaks To The Internet", which I intend to keep up on a weekly basis. The intention is for you to ask me a question or two (about anything, music or whimsy) and I will answer it, and at the end, play a song inspired by one or more of your questions. I am sure there will be the odd holiday from it, as one couldn't keep it going for weeks on end, but it's nevertheless something I intend to keep up.
I have also been meddling with my website and made a version of it that is accessible on mobiles. So now, if you go to http://www.wix.com/mrjohnmacleod.music, if you're reading this on a smartphone, that is, you'll be whisked to my page, instead of an error message telling you that Flash is no installed on your phone. Swanky, eh?
So they are my plugs. Take some time to investigate them while I hop downstairs and make myself a cuppa. Back in a mo.
I have returned, with tea! Did you enjoy the links? There will be questions later, so don't think you've gotten away with a mere cursory glance! I'm sure you have questions for me, too - ones that, were you to ask me on my YouTube "show", would sound like "Why have you set these things up?" or "What makes you so relentless in your pursuit of getting us to listen to you?" And the answer, my friends, is optimism.
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| The Artrix Theatre, Bromsgrove, http://www.artrix.co.uk/ |
I was lucky enough, recently, to be asked by my friend Jack to play as support for his band, Our Mutual Friend, at the Artrix Theatre in Bromsgrove. The gig happened on the last Sunday in July, and I should just say that they were brilliant. They filled about an hour and a half's entertainment almost effortlessly, were very entertaining, and were musically excellent and charming. As were the second support act, Lakota Sioux, who should also be checked out.
Now, I have a nasty habit. I don't know whether it's worse than picking your nose, stealing chewing gum or interfering with yourself on Tube station escalators, but it's a nasty habit nontheless, and it's this: I romantically idealise everything. Before I meet someone in town, I imagine how the night will be. When I go to anything, I picture the ideal outcome in my head & am often left slightly jaded when it doesn't pan out exactly that way. It's a silly thing & I'm often pretty good at turning it off these days. However there is one niche aspect of my life where this always happens: concerts. When I'm about to play a gig, I want it to be perfect. Everyone listens, everyone laughs, everyone becomes a part of this intimate half-hour of me & my songs. It is, for the most part, an unrealistic expectation and should, realistically, have a halt called to it, but it happens every time.
Which isn't to say I don't like the unexpected moments that happen when I am behind a microphone. (My subconscious recalls a gig about which I wrote on this very blog, in which I was heckled in Fenton by three drunkards, and also the time I was playing an open mic & whilst playing the outro to "I Didn't Mean To Fall For You" a man stepped right up to me and shouted in my ear: "WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING THAT, CAN YOU TELL EVERYONE ABOUT AN OPEN MIC I RUN ON THE FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH IN MOW COP?!" Bafflingly, I obliged.) But there are times when all a chap wants is for everyone to listen. This is the circumstance I pray for and so very rarely get. I recently played my regular open mic & got so frustrated and the level of noise in the place that I shouted my way through all my songs, I suddenly could not sing them.
And so, in the run-up to the Artrix show, I battled the "Ideal" that my brain was presenting to me, scared stiff of having to face disappointment on a larger scale, but this proved to be the one occasion where the expectations of my demanding head were actually met.
It was delightful - the best day ever. Some of my friends came to see the show too (and drive us there & back, which makes them the Heroes Of The Day), and to have their company for an afternoon made me up something rotten. I went in to soundcheck at half-past five and was greeted by so many personable people. The stage crew, sound technicians, theatre staff, the bands - all were super-polite & friendly. There was much setting up happening for the bands, so while they were busy, I took the opportunity to put flyers on all the seats. I did well, too, and was chatting with Jack as I did my dirty promo work.
"We wondered whether we should put leaflets out, but we figured everyone who's coming knows us, as they'll all be from here," he said, "which isn't an advantage you have when you've come from Stoke."
"True," I said, and then felt a tickle in my head that said there was a point coming, "You know why I do this?" I asked.
"Why?"
"Optimism. For someone to do music like this, either alone or in a band, you need buckets of optimism, and you need to cling onto it despite the disappointments that inevitably happen when you're a musician. If I assume that no one would take a leaflet so as to find me on Twitter or Facebook, and therefore don't bother, no one will ever hear of me. If I plaster the place with flyers and just one person takes a leaflet and gets in touch with me on the internet to say they enjoyed my gig and do I have any recordings, then my day is made. It was worth it." I was starting to feel a bit evangelical at this point, so I clammed up & carried on leafleting.
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| A selection of my promotional handiwork |
I did my soundcheck and played some covers in different styles (I do some fingerpicky, some strumming, and one song on my other DADGAD-tuned guitar), and the sound technicians praised my main guitar, agreeing with me that there is very little that one needs to do with it once plugged in (I'm not kidding, you could plug it into an ear trumpet connected by some showertubing and a box of cow manure and it would still sound like it was being played in Heaven by a man with glory for fingers), then retired to a dressing room (THERE WERE DRESSING ROOMS) and popped into the bathroom (THE DRESSING ROOM HAD A BATHROOM) and whilst in there, two things happened:
1. I noticed a shower in there. No cubicle, just a shower and a drain in the floor to collect the water. Fleetwood Mac would have loved it.
2. A voice boomed over the PA that said "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TAKE YOUR SEATS, JOHN MACLEOD WILL BE ONSTAGE IN FIVE MINUTES."
This shit just got real, folks.
My two favourite things about the gig were walking onstage, and walking off, as both were done to applause, which feels completely different in a theatre compared to in a pub. Something about the way the building absorbs the sound, and the silence that usually abides in the auditorium just focusses it to a far greater degree. My first few songs were lively, and the fourth was "Imagine If We Fell In Love", and as it started, the tech guys tweaked the lights so that they went from red to blue, in order to accentuate the atmosphere. At this point, if it would have been possible to put down my guitar, climb to the back of the theatre and hug them, I would have. But it would have ruined their work.
In between songs I told one or two stories (including my amazement at the dressing room shower, and also mentioning the back pocket of chewing gum I had discovered the day before - "You don't often pay to hear someone tell you they're wearing dirty trousers, do you?" to which a voice from the audience cried "Yes!"), and there were plenty of appreciative chuckles in those moments, even the one where I played the opening chord of a song about seventeen times because I kept interrupting my train of thought with something equally silly. As Jack's dad said after the show, "He did say you could talk..."
But I came away from that knowing I had found my ideal style of gig. Theatres are more home to the subtleties and nuances of concerts, the small moments where you bare some of the inner workings of your soul to everyone in a song, then relax the atmosphere again with a dry witticism. In a pub, unless you're very lucky, it is ALL about entertaining, and competing with the games of snooker, the loud conversations, the drinkers - there is little room for subtlety unless you are lucky enough to hold the attention of 75% of the room. In a theatre, the gig becomes a small showcase for you. This does not mean you don't have to entertain, far from it, but you entertain on your own terms - that forty minutes was MY forty minutes to do MY set, as opposed to bending somewhat to the pubs will (or fighting it, some nights), and it was fun, beautiful, exciting and thrilling.
And thoughts of that night, gentle reader, has been carrying me through the last three weeks. I do so very much love playing songs, and I hope I can gether all of you into one place one day & sing at you, not to mention talk utter bobbins with you, as I hope it would be fun for us all. You'd be appreciative, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?
In the meantime, someone in my neighbourhood has been letting off fireworks, and initially I was wondering if it would turn into a fetching display which I could watch from my bedroom window. It never happened, and instead there was a series of staccato bangs and it all went quiet. Ah well.
I will bid you adieu until whatever day of September I next choose to update this lengthy text-portal of nonsense, and I hope you have enjoyed reading it. But before I go, I told you that there would be questions based on my links, didn't I? So find below the questions, and there may be prizes for the first set of correct answers (no cheating, there!)
1. What are the precise contents of the Media Room?
2. To whom do I recommend you in the top right corner of the home page?
3. How long is John Macleod Speaks To The Internet, Episode One?
4. In Episode Two, what colour is my wristband?
5. Which of my influential musicians is 3rd from bottom of the list?
6. On the wix.com site, what is criteria number three on the list of reasons to contact me?
Answer those questions and see what you could win!
Until next time, chaps & chapesses, take care.
John.xx
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