open mic night
mark.foster3
is what happened last time;
The gig was openend by Kris the landlord's band, Piledriver, a
trash/nu-metal band who played a cracking acoustic medley of Valerie
(monkees) and Papa don't preach with their growling vocalist, Dar Filth,
really going for it.
Terribly Tall Tom's band were good as were lazy eye but they played the gig
straight so they don't get a review.
I covered Video killed the radio star, copacabana, you're pretty good
looking for a girl, word up and Wuthering Heights as well as a few of my own
tracks. My own tracks actually went down better than the covers.
Then Matt Jenkins played a filthy song about wet pussies.
Next band, ParrafinAlien, played a great version of Weezer's the sweater
song which got all the crowd singing along but the highlight of their set
was when one of the guitarists broke the bass E sting on his guitar and had
to play the rest of the set holding the string in his teeth to keep it out
of the way.
Everyone upstaged however by the guy I kicked out of Johnny Wishbone & the
Voodoo Starfish for being too unpredictable. Crazy Ants came on stage with a
long brunette wig, deer stalker, Elvis shades and a full length sheepskin
coat. His first song was Wicked Game which was accompanied by the growler
from piledriver wearing a gimp mask and dancing in the background. He then
started to tell us it was a traditional dance in his home town of Minsk.
Then he played his own song which had the following lyrics;
And the cow goes moo
and the sheep goes baah
and the camel goes spit spit
and the car goes far
which he sung in his finest Georgian accent while the gimp held up drawings
of cows, sheep etc. so we could all join in.
After that, Rich from 21 Against sang a couple of songs with his old band,
Stickman and as is traditional when Pig Ugly are at a gig they finished with
thier drummer, Leigh Hipkiss playing keep on rocking in the free world.
Best gig ever
Mark Foster
insignificant at the time but can turn out to shape the way your life is
going. I always seem to pick the wrong choice. Yesterday's wrong decision
was to sit on the big stool instead of the small one.
I've been learning how to play Don't think twice, it's alright by Bob Dylan
for the last few weeks. It's quite a tricky finger picking tune but I'd
finally got it good enough to be able to play it in front of a crowd. I did
start off by explaining that my version would be slightly different from the
original; Bob does use an awful lot of notes, not very economical, so I only
use about half of them and he never really lets you appreciate one chord
before he's onto the next, so I'd be pausing between chords so the audience
had time to muse on one chord before we're on to the next. Unfortunately a
tricky finger picking song was made even more difficult by having to sit on
a bar stool with nowhere to rest my feet. I kept on loosing my balance,
which affected my concentration and a few notes and lyrics went missing.
After struggling to the end of the first verse I announced that no one liked
Bob Dylan anyway, the miserable old scroat, threw the lyric sheet away and
moved on to the next song.
My new opening tune was one that it's always been said that you shouldn't
cover. One of those generation defining anthems that mean so much to so many
people that someone else trying to take the place of that band are seen as
being worse than Hitler. The fucker's been dead for ten years though, so
what's he going to do about it, send messages from beyond the grave to his
slapper wife to come round and threaten me with her stinky crotch? Just so
as not to piss too many people off I decided to do Smells like teen spirit
in the style of Morrissey, apart from the "hello, hello, hello hello hello,
how low (quizzical look) part which I did in the style of Lesley Phillips.
This went down well, especially the bit about Courtney Love's stinky crotch.
A change of genre for the next tune, Outkast's Hey Ya. I was slightly
disappointed that only one bloke in the crowd new what was cooler than being
cool. Most of them were puzzling about science "I haven't studied cryogenics
yet", "is it endothermic reactions, or is that the other way round?".
Fucking students. Thankfully there were a few sexy chicks who could shake it
like a Polaroid picture.
On to my own songs. I did introduce Monkey Love as "a song about having sex
with monkeys" but it's more of a love story involving a monkey. A
menagerie-a-trios (or is that birds not monkeys?). The song got a few laughs
so I was happy.
Carrying on the bestiality theme, I then played Ballad of a Pink Penguin.
The unexpected twist in the last verse concerning the polar bear got a cheer
but people were starting to lose interest so I had to bring out That fucking
song* to end the set.
My rant about how much I've come to hate the fish song probably had a better
reaction than any of the songs played. I've now realised people love to hear
you swear over a microphone and my next set will just involve me sitting
there swearing for half hour. I thought this was a good opportunity for some
audience participation as more people know the lyrics of the fish song than
Hey Ya. Funny audience though, they were singing along with me until I
stopped for them to join in and they went silent. It took me a while to
explain the lyric to them, "look just say fish every now and again". Great
fun and I'm becoming quite the cult figure with the teenage chicks in the
pub.
*the landlord asked me to record a few of my songs on cd to put on the
jukebox. I thought this maybe a good chance to kill off the fish song once
and for all, so I recorded a 7 minute version. Totally over the top
Progtastic, with a reggae verse. I thought that if it's played too much on
the jukebox, then people would be fed up of hearing it and won't ask me to
play it at the next acoustic night. I was wrong, it was on all the fucking
time. I'd hear it five or six times a night. People who'd never been to an
acoustic night before were now singing along to it. I went to a mate's stag
night on Saturday and when he got on the stage to make a speach, at the end
of the night, someone shouted out "sing the fish song" and he made me get up
on stage.
"mark.foster3" <mark.nosp...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
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