my life as a artist
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good flood and mud buddies
Sunday 1st July 2007 8:37 PM
Apologies, oh faithful and loyal blog-checkers, for the recent lack of contribution. Over the last two weeks I've been flirting with the non-cyber world to the point of rutting. I've been on a savage journey through the sodden seas of Somerset and the muddy mire of Mid-Wales, performing at the Glastonbury festival and the Workhouse festival respectively, respectably and respectfully.
I've got tinnitus, sleep deprivation and calf muscles like a Nepalese sherpa, but I know it would have been much worse if I hadn't gone in for some serious pre-festival training during the previous week. I stopped washing, brought the porta-potti in from the shed and put it in the middle of the caravan, had four sound systems playing different music at the same time, covered the floor with eighteen inches of crunchy peanut butter and started getting stoned straight after breakfast.
At Glastonbury, on Friday, attendances at the fringe events were low. It seems everybody was there to watch the famous bands on the big stages, like the Arctic Chiefs, the Stereograms or Coldcream or whatever. At midnight in the cabaret marquee (capacity 4,000) there were about fifty people. Usually, at that time, there's a dangerous, foul-mouthed comic, abusing and rebel-rousing a heaving, steaming mass of out-of-it, into-it people. This time it looked like a cancelled scout jamboree.
I did a gig in the early evening in the same tent. There was about six or seven hundred in but they felt virtual. Had the ticketing system ensured a festival full of robotic techno-nerds or were they all first-timers, not used to smoking pot in the afternoon? Reassuringly, there were three openly laughing people sat right in front of me. I think their presence stopped me from saying, 'Obviously, this stuff works better in front of a live audience…'
To my surprise I got an encore. Apparently they were being quietly appreciative. 'You were really funny…. It was all I could do to keep from laughing'. Half an hour later I was on stage again, doing ten minutes for a radio 4 thing called 'four in a field'.
Because it was a comedy programme coming from the Glastonbury festival, and because I'm over fifty years old now, I asked the producer if it was OK to mention a certain fondness for cannabis, and he said no. Ah well. As it happens, I can be funny without mentioning cannabis, but sadly, on this particular occasion, I wasn't.
On the Saturday the fringe venues started perking up, as people discovered the myriad, muddy and magical delights of the green fields, and the benefit, to both the bowels and the eternal soul, of a plate of proper food from the Buddhafields café.
On the Sunday I got an unscheduled gig, which happily fell an hour before another unscheduled gig by the splendid Bill Bailey, thus ensuring a packed tent, full of people who don't mind hippies. Mmm, lovely. Taking a tip from Dame Burly Chassis, I did the gig in a loose, firm-thigh-revealing chiffon number and a pair of diamond encrusted wellies, and mainly stuck to show tunes.
Me and Nick, my brother in blood and mud, got an early night so we could make a daring dawn escape on the Monday morning. Ear-plugs are no match for sound systems that can make your internal organs bounce up and down in your ribcage, so next year we're taking lead caskets. As we drifted off to sleep we could hear the Who, even though the pyramid stage was miles and miles and miles…….
Comments
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Only just found this - it's really funny!
Ever thought of being a comedian?
No really, I think you'd be good at it.
Posted by Steve , on Friday 6th July 2007, 7:36 PM
Glad to see you survived...I SAID GLAD TO SEE YOU SURVIVED!!
Posted by Les Miserable , on Monday 2nd July 2007, 6:32 PM
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