On my way to work on Wednesday, I had a call offering me a gig, which will be tonight. I am going to be compering a night of punk music, with some comedy in between and then some punk music at the end.
Now, comedy doesn’t work on a music night. It simply doesn’t. The audience just aren’t tuned into comedy-mode and will likely be talking throughout the sets. To make proceedings more interesting, there will be a large group of people out celebrating a girl’s birthday, this was initially described as a hen-do.
So, what made me decide to put myself through this? I don’t entirely know, but it was partly Paul Langton’s fault. He put my name forward for it, and he’s also performing and probably won’t enjoy it. As I know from Edinburgh, when Paul doesn’t enjoy a gig, I take it upon myself to take his share of the enjoyment and end up having a lot of fun; sometimes the audience joins me in this, sometimes they don’t.
Plus, I didn’t have anything else planned for the weekend so thought I’d give it a go. I am fully expecting it to be horrific, but there is a chance that I may find it enjoyable. Stepping outside the comfort zone is always good to do. And at the very least, I will likely be having a good few beers with Langton afterwards, as well as a new gig story for you to read about here.
Elsewhere in comedy this week, I have had two other gigs. At the first one on Thursday, I was trying out an amended version of some new material I’ve been trying. I have changed a particular word, a very rude word, widely considered to be the rudest word there is. The replacement word is still rude, but sounds funnier and has actually opened up an avenue of jokes I was unaware existed. It’s too early to say if they are good jokes in this avenue, but they at least resemble jokes and managed to get laughs when debuted.
Then, last night I had another gig where I was using older material. It was also fun, but the first couple of minutes of my set largely tanked. However, it improved and from a fairly quiet audience, I was given a round of applause for some material that had never had a round of applause before. I count this as a victory.
Now, time to brace myself for tonight’s battle.