The Show

Currently Listening: Tomasz Stanko, "On The Green Hill"
Currently Reading: 'Underbelly'

....I'm so exhausted!...
This past week has been sometimes twelve hour days, rehearsing all day with the tour cast for the new Thriller Live World tour starting in a few weeks, then going to do the show in town at night....or it's been the usual weekend of doing two shows back to back on both Saturday and Sunday. I don't want to sound whingey by saying that I'm exhausted, it's just that I don't think I've ever worked as many hours on anything as demanding in my life!
Truth be told, it wasn't so hectic on Sunday though...rockstar guitarist D from the town band and I depped out the show (found someone to fill in for us, for those of you not up with show talk) and went and did our little originals gig at a pub in North London.
Show world and Jazz world are so vastly different, I'd like to write about them more in future entries....playing eight shows a week to audiences of roughly nine hundred, our audience on Sunday night began with two girlfriends of band members (of four in the band), and then progressed to about half a dozen...that's right, it was half a dozen because there were four people that paid, earning us a total sum of £20 (which ended up being, yes that's right, £5 each!).
But it was two sets of all original material, and unusually, it was loads of fun!
Just recently (last week in fact) I decided that for myself, playing gigs of original music is far more satisfying in the days and weeks following, knowing that you got your own thing out there, knowing that the compositions all work and are reasonably enjoyable to listen to and improvise over. These factors keep me optimistic about following through to the next one, and also keep me in a state of forgetfulness about how much of a trial they usually are (no money, tiny audiences, potentially psycho band members, difficult venue, rubbish improvising, general failure of realising any sort of artistic vision, et al)...
But then, last Sunday, a couple of things clicked into place with the playing, the tunes all worked on very little rehearsal, and for moments quite a bit longer than the wink of an eye, there were actually times where I genuinely enjoyed myself. And not enjoyed myself in the usual way at these gigs of maybe getting through a passage of music without making a mistake or playing with a passable time feel, but moments where I enjoyed myself like I was laughing with a friend telling a funny story (there was actually a point where I laughed out loud, along with the music)....so it is possible!...