Thursday, January 28, 2010

Solo @ San Fran 27/01/2010


Intro
Dog with a bone
Over you
How do I live (without you) ?
Foolish man
Was it something I said?
Jesus & the man
Not my best show, but focusing on the positives. 'Intro' is always an arresting way to start so I had people's attention. The next track was a new one 'Dog with a bone'. It's a good song but has some intricate guitar work that needs to be heard properly to be appreciated. I didn't think the guitar was loud enough & it felt like it was being missed & sure enough, the people I'd grabbed with the opening track started to drift away. You can always tell when an audience has shifted focus & it definately happened during this track. You can't let it throw you though so I played through, the song got stronger in it's second half but by then I'd lost half of the audience. Literally. They walked out! 'Over you' suffered from the lack of momentum from the previous song & it wasn't till I slowed right down with 'How do I live?' that I started to feel reconnected to the audience. It's a lovely slow number about a friend of mine who fell in love with a women while he was on holiday. It has one of my favourite lyrics in it:
"I'd paint your picture/but what good would colour be to me?"
'Was it something I said?' is another song I enjoy playing which isn't particularly suited to the band so it was nice to break that out. I'm planning on visiting the above mentioned friend later this year & recording a solo record. These tracks will all be recorded then. I finished with 'Jesus & the man' which is a song based on the film 'Apocalypse now'. It's quite a confronting song with the film character Kurtz renamed 'Jesus'. For those unfamiliar with the film Colonel Kurtz is killed by another soldier, Captain Willard (renamed 'the man' in the song) after he locates Kurtz in his compound in Cambodia. It's a surreal, vivid & confronting film about madness & the hypocrisy of war. It's also a stunning film & I wrote this song within a day of seeing it, it came very easily. I love playing it but it's not the easiest song to listen to & if you didn't know the back story to the song you'd just be hearing about Jesus being killed. Definately open to mis-interpretation. But I was determined to play it because as a piece of art/music it's a powerful piece that deserves to be heard. & the point of art isn't always to be nice & safe, sometimes it's uncomfortable & confronting so I definately put this track in that category. But it doesn't make it any less valid.

Colonel Walter.E.Kurtz


Anyway, enough justifying my song choices, overall it was good to be playing again, my voice got through ok, it took a few songs to warm up but it was fine by the end.

Next up is a slot with my friend Caleb as 'The late greats'. We play covers, he does most of the singing so I get to sit back & work on my guitar playing & backing vocals. It's nice to just be the support guy sometimes. : )
Till then..

1 comment:

Crafty Tuesday said...

Great movie!

And I'm looking forward to the Mojo thing.

A