Another lovely night at my quarterly-ish alternative music and comedy night, headlined on this occasion by local blues-rock band The Roebucks, celebrating their recent signing to Goo Records.
Everyone was brilliant and lovely, but I made probably one mistake: being in half the acts. Thank god I got the brilliant Leslie Bloom to host, otherwise the whole thing would have started to look somewhat monomaniacal.
I felt under-prepared in all aspects. Poorly timed omni-flu meant a distinct lack of rehearsals, and it was a relief that most of my sketch buddies were able to arrive early and practice in various hotel rooms and cafes.
We had prepared a special set of overwhelmingly spooky and spooky-adjacent sketches, but we were performing on a much smaller stage than usual, and weren’t quite sure how we were going to made the thing work.
Props and sound cues we attempted to keep to a minimum, and Kat, who works at the Red Fish Fine Art and Coffee Shop, drew us a ghost with an sexy butt and an arrow through his head. We were ready.
Ish.
The Roebucks arrived at the venue first, joined by the guy who had just signed him to their label. As they were unloading, he came up and shook my hand:
“This Machine Kills Wasps is a Half Man Half Biscuit reference, isn’t it? I knew I’d get on with the guy running this night.”
Lovely chap, and he enjoyably explained how he clearly wasn’t in the band because he was far too old.
“Oh I don’t know – who were that band that toured with their own Dad on guitar?”
“The Mystery Jets. Yeah, worth avoiding.”
We had Guy the Sound Guy back as our Sound Guy – a reassuring presence. He helped Next Level Sketch with our lighting and sound cue needs, and we vaguely ran through how we would make them work with the limited space of the room. We didn’t get a chance to do a full run through though, or even a tech prompt check – sorry guys.
This was partly due to The Roebucks being a tad late, and partly due to the competing pyramid of needs in terms of sounchecking music and comedy. I knew Guy would find our few tunes and sound prompts a doddle compared to getting the bands to sound right, and so it proved – but I wish my sketch guys had got more time up there.
Ah well. Live and hopefully learn.
My lack of time management also meant a planned photoshoot for The Highchurches had to be curtailed – we’ll get some professional photos eventually.
It was suddenly half seven. Members of the Brighton Folk Choir had already started leaking in, a reminder I didn’t actually have anyone doing the door. So… I did the door, again thanking my lucky stars that past-James had been sensible enough to book a host (cheers, Leslie).
I gave Leslie and Guy a nod, and we were underway… only five minutes’ late. I ushered people into our increasingly sweaty room as Victoria Melody started us off, dressed in full reenactment garb.
I first met Victoria when she booked our folk choir to perform at her Diggers events at the Brighton Festival in the summer; here, she was truthful, frank, and charming – a perfect opener for an intentionally discombobulating night.
Next up, was Next Level Sketch. The sketch group I’m in. Oh shit: I’m in the sketch group that I’m in!
Fortunately the door was less busy at this point, and was able to go on stage and prepare the ground for an audience that had, in some cases, never seen or even heard of sketch comedy before – especially the young pals of The Roebucks.
Our set started with Sir Wife Starmer’s husband, Sir Kier Starmer. His arrival to the stage was greeted with boos – fair – and it took about half of his spooky Hallowed Ween speech for much of the audience to realise that this was a thoroughly piss-taking representation. I do think they enjoyed it though – and, it being a solo character act, I was even happier to have explained what sketch comedy is, lest the audience expect 25 minutes of Kier Starmer impressions.
Instead, we did some spooky sketches. It was kind of surreal to combine this with door duties, and I especially enjoyed explaining from the stage to one belated guest that they didn’t need to worry about someone checking their ticket, because I was the person checking the tickets, and I was otherwise engaged.
Our material was mainly new, and specifically tailored to spooky times. I enjoyed being the tour guide in Josephine’s ghost date sketch, and being on fire for Paul Creasy’s troublingly accurate documentary sketch about the 1970s.
Our set finished with a sketch of my own, Weekend At Bernie’s: The Musical.
This was an exceptionally stupid sketch, even by my standards. But it worked well, especially thanks to the performances of Cara and Josephine as Larry and Dickie, the young bucks who just wanted to ignore the death of their boss and have a lovely time with bikini-clad women in The Hamptons.
Shout out too, to Dan, who was an excellent corpse.
We were, supposedly, followed by Mark Silcox, but a furtive glance at Instagram during our set indicated to me that the BBC Man Like Mobeen star was running late.
Mercifully I was able to communicate this to Leslie, and we ended the first half early, despite the jarring shift in tone being temporarily compromised.
Mark appeared, we shook hands. He went on stage and was immediately brilliant.
He unleashed his deadpan madness on the audience, and then, suddenly, it was time for the Brighton Folk Choir.
We made everyone close their eyes while we did a spooky hum-based warm up, then emerged to do Soul Cakes and Death and The Lady.
During the latter, legendary choir member Ruth started wanging a skull around, and matters took on a faintly surreal aesthetic.
Time for The Highchurches.
Having already been on stage with both Next Level Sketch and the choir, I have never feel more relaxed singing a few songs.
So relaxed, that I immediately fucked up our first number, Harvest Moon, mistaking it for another song by me in G (Harvest Moon).
What I’d love to think is this cockup relaxed my band, reminding them that mistakes are never as terrible as they think, and that it was done intentionally. But no: I just buggered it up.
The set went really well, especially our cover of The Monster Mash.
Finishing the night were the fabulous Roebucks, who play effervescent blues-rock far beyond their years.
I sat down next to a friend, gazed generally around, and saw people having a good time.
My work here was done.
xxx
P.s. please come to our next show – early bird tickets available here!
jamesofwalsh 