Blog: Festival Of The Spoken Nerd

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I went to a COMEDY GIG the other night - although it started off with me sat in a pub with Mr S Hewitt LECTURING him at some length about the plot of MOON HORSE. Last time I did this we both ended up looking a bit confused and lost, but now I have RE-JIGGED it we both got QUITE EXCITED. Well, I got quite excited, Steve mostly got HYSTERICALLY AFEARED. If you happened to be in The Fitzrovia Area the other night and heard someone screeching, manically, "I'd forgotten about THE RAP!" then that was us. Sorry.

Anyway, we soon hightailed it round the corner to The Green Man, to attend The London Air-Accordian Society's special event "The Festival Of The Spoken Word". It's a regular night run by the ACE Helen Arney, who we saw in Edinburgh a couple of times, and is very MUCH one of these new fangled Indie Comedy Nights. They don't seem to CALL them specifically "Indie" comedy nights, as far as i can tell, but that's very much what they are - independent, run for fun, and of a slightly BOOKISH bent.

You'd think, really, there'd be more crossover between the music and comedy sides of things wouldn't you? I wonder why there isn't? I know that _I_ rarely go to comedy nights, just because my Going Out Time is so very taken up with ROCK, but maybe that's true of everybody. Does anybody know? Or IS there a huge crossover going on that I don't know about? APART FROM LATITUDE, Everyone Who Just Said That.

ANYWAY (again) we went upstairs to find everything DEAD POLITE - it was, in fact, pretty much how people seem to THINK Indie Gigs are, but aren't really i.e. lots of quite polite people looking slightly awkward but willing for GOOD TIMES to occur. It was the POLITENESS that threw me a bit, as everyone calmly found seats and sat down to a light chat before SHUSHING immediately the event started.

The first half was THEMED on sound, and as well as some GAGS featured quite a lot of EXPLAINING which was ACE - by jiminy, if science at SCHOOL was taught like this we would be a nation of MEGA BRANES, it was GRATE! My favourite bit was when one of the tutors... sorry, COMEDIANS, demonstrated the shape of sound waves with SAND on a vibrating sheet of tin VIA an overhead projector. I could FEEL my 'O' Level Physics grade INCREASING with every passing second!

The second half was two COMEDIANS, Martin White who does the Dave Gorman show, playing ACCORDIAN rather excitingly, and a chap from We Are Klang who did Normal Stand-Up in an EXCELLENT style. It was, i must say, all round pretty brilliant and, as usual when I go to comedy gigs, made me think "I wish I went to comedy gigs more often" KNOWING full well that I probably won't.

But why, i ask again, IS that? Are Comedy and ROCK doomed to be like two pleasant but otherwise engaged NEIGHBOURS, always saying hello in the street but never popping round for tea? Or is it just ME?

posted 21/10/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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