Last night’s gig was a good gig on a plate, with a plentiful, receptive audience and several acts doing very well indeed.
Unfortunately, I was trialling one of the remaining cogs in what I’m hoping will be an effective Edinburgh wheel. But based on last night’s reaction, there is more work that needs to be done before it can function as cog, let alone function properly within the wheel.
It wasn’t a death; I would just put my set somewhere between average and mediocre, a disappointing shade of beige. There were laughs, but not as loud or as regular as were on offer.
But in many ways, the disappointments and frustrations with new material are a good thing; they leave you but with no option but to make improvements, try some new things and then hopefully get laughs as result. If not, you feel dejected once more and make some more changes, try those out and the cycle continues until you get the material to where it needs to be, either that or you drop it and deny that it ever existed. But with this particular bit of material, I know there is something there; I just need to keep chipping away at it.
At the start of the year, I received a similar reaction to last night for a new bit I was trying out. I went away and did some rewrites and that bit of material has been serving me rather well of later, after several trials and several errors. If I hadn’t gone through this unpleasant progress, I wouldn’t have hammered it into the decent shape that it currently is.
I have a gig tomorrow night, so I will make a few alterations to my new Edinburgh cog and give it another whirl. There is no other way.