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Blog: Surprising Ramsgate
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Once that was done Al the soundman recommended a curry house as being "really good". He was not wrong, in fact Flavours Of Kumar turned out to be BLOODY BRILLIANT. I thus staggered back to my hotel FULL of delicious food, and then an hour or so later wobbled back towards the venue still full, where Al escorted me surreptiously into the GREEN ROOM under the stage. I felt like a SPY!
The party was going on upstairs, so the ORCHESTRATER of the surprise was able to sneak down to say hello and BRIEF me on the plan. He then went off to gather people and bring them down to the GIG ROOM, where they were promised SPEECHES.
I stood downstairs listening to this all going on, FILLED with TREPIDATION. I'd been worrying about this gig for WEEKS - I have done birthday parties before, also WEDDINGS, and they are always a bit tricky. On the one hand, you have a ready made audience who sort of have to watch you, as you're there on the request of their HOSTS, but then I know from my own experience of being on the other side that they'd usually prefer to be having a good old chat with their pals. Also, what with me being me, it's a pretty good bet that nobody will have ever heard of you and not necessarily be interested in finding out!
All of these thoughts and more were going through my head as I was introduced and EMERGED from beneath the stage to do THIS:
20 Things To Do Before You're 30
Clubbing In The Week
Bad Back
I Think I Did OK
My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once
The Aeroplane Over The Sea
It Only Works Because You're here
The Lesson Of The Smiths
Boom Shake The Room
As you can see, I very much went for songs that had JOKES in and that were UPBEAT - 100% BANGERS, you might say, it is not for me to comment - with the addition of The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel as a REQUEST. I've never really listened to Neutral Milk Hotel before and found I rather liked them, although it was a bit unnerving to realise that quite a LOT of other bands I'd seen over the years had clearly been listening to them a GREAT deal!!
Happily this plan WORKED, helped enormously by the fact that the audience were LOVELY. The fact that most people didn't have a clue who I was worked in my favour, as that meant they hadn't heard any of my GRATE JOKES before, and also as stated they were DELIGHTFUL so completely WENT with it all. I was rather nervous to start with but as it went along I realised that it was all going to be FINE and by the end I was having a LOVELY time!
I say "most people" hadn't heard my stuff before because, apart from the hosts, there were a couple of poeple who very much HAD i.e. Penny and Matt, previously of SHEFFIELD. Penny has put me on at about 3 MILLION gigs, notably several of her own big BIRTHDAY parties, but i hadn't seen them for ages so it was lovely to lurk about and have a chat. I also ended up having a chat with loads of OTHER people, who were all dead nice, which meant that I was there until QUITE LATE and the fact that I staggered back home again was nothing to do with the curry this time!
It was, all in all, a fantastic evening, although the morning that followed all that curry and beer was distincly less so!
posted 24/10/2022 by MJ Hibbett
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Comments:
why do ALL your posts have TWELVE likes on them?
posted 16/11/2022 by puzzled
This one has four as far as I can see, so it's EITHER that I set it all up wrong OR mysterious forces beyond our control. I know which one my money's on!
posted 16/11/2022 by MJ Hibbett
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