The Missing Column

This should have appeared a few weeks back, but for whatever reason didn’t.

Did you know that there exists a 27 club? Club is perhaps the loosest term, because it is more a collection of musicians who die at the age of 27. I can’t imagine having much fun at a club full of dead musicians. Really I’ve been to plenty of clubs where there are lots of living musicians and not had fun.

Anyway inside this club you would find the corpses of Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors. All of them dead, some from mysterious circumstances, but all have died at the age of 27. Don’t believe me? Have a look at Wikipedia – the 27 Club even has its own page.

The reason this is bothering me is because I turned 27 last week, which I’m sure probably is of no concern to most Evening Express readers. Until I was 27 all I had to bother me and make me feel like I’m wasting my life were the successful people younger than me like Brittney Spears. Now that I’m 27 I suddenly realised that if I died, in possibly mysterious circumstances, all I’d leave behind were some online columns for the Evening, a couple of very funny YouTube videos, two chapters of a children’s book and 47 editions of my really rather fantastic free to download podcast (www.originalfm.com/sunday-showcase-on-original-106-640406).

How does that compare to the back catalogue of Hendrix or Morrison? Robert Johnson, who pretty much invented modern music died when he was 27, admittedly he did sell his soul to the devil at some rural Mississippi crossroads at midnight so he could have mastery of the guitar. The only crossroads I’ve ever waited at at midnight was the one George Street and Hutcheon Street. And even then all I was waiting for was the Green Man so I could go to the bakers. Had the devil been there he could have had my soul for some stovies.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure if I done enough with my life. When my dad was 27 he was already married, mortgaged and had had me. I’m nowhere near marriage, don’t earn nearly enough to buy a house and have trouble feeding and watering myself.

The world has almost ended twice since I started this column. Once when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on and again now where we do seem only another bank collapse away from scratching each other’s eyes out for a loaf of bread. I think it’s a safe bet to say that in the next wee while the world is going to be taken over by robots built by mad men and in fairness I don’t expect to live. I’m not very good at fighting and no one cares enough about me to share their bin scraps. I’m going to spend the remaining time we have on the earth finishing my book. Granted there’ll be nobody around to read it but still it’s a legacy of sorts.

In a wee addendum to this posting I was talking about the 27 club with Producer Dave yesterday and he said, ‘at least if you were to kill yourself it would be understandable, unlike Kurt Cobain’.  Cheered me right up.

Loudmouth…

Aye, so I go and write a blog saying my column hasnae appeared on the Evening Express website and that it’s causing me to go and sit in a corner and cry.  Should probably have checked the website before I posted.

Anyway, if you want to read 450 words slagging off some celebs it’s up here http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/906359?UserKey=

something about gutters and rainbows

Haven’t been updating the blog as much as I should.  Sorry. 

I’ve spent the last two weeks feeling very sorry for myself.  I had a job interview for a job I didn’t really want.  Because I couldn’t really care I was much more relaxed and confident in the interview than I probably would have been had I wanted the job.  Then when I got the call to come in for a second interview I thought, ‘You know, actually, this could be quite good.  I’d quite like this job’.  Which is probably why I didn’t get the job.  That and they asked me questions that I didn’t have answers to.

Secondly, it’s been a quiet month for stand up.  I’ve got plenty of gigs from November to the end of January but I’ve only had one this month - and it was on Thursday to seven people.  I mean they were seven very nice people and they laughed in all the right places but it would have been nice if the audience had hit double figures.

Thirdly there’s the radio station.  Cutbacks all round mean that I’ve lost a shift which means I’m losing money and is forcing my hand to go and get a proper job.  Also, one of my comedy chums came on my Saturday breakfast show last week and said something which almost got me the sack.  I kept my job but said comedy chum is never to be allowed on air or indeed mentioned on the station again. 

Fourthly my Evening Express Column hasn’t appeared for the last two weeks.  My editor keeps asking me to send it in but it hasn’t gone online.  I’m not sure if much is going to happen there.  Hopefully it will.

I knew when I quit my lovely, well paying job to become a freelance ‘light entertainer’ that things might be tough but Christ, this is a bit much.  I have this reoccurring nightmare where I end up back doing the same job in KFC I was doing as a 16 year old spotty child.  I can’t do it.  I just can’t do another job where I have to wear a hat.

That plus the miserable hideous weather and the impending end of the world has just left me a bit down.  Still, I’m sure something will come along which will make me cheer the fuck up.

Perhaps it’ll be this afternoon when the fantastic Punch and The Apostles come and do a wee session for me.  You probably haven’t heard of them but they are another Scottish band destined for great things.  Have a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/punchandtheapostles

broken records

…really are one of the best bands in Scotland just now, and this video shows why…

You’ll barely be able to tell they have no souls

This is very good.  Simple without being over long.

We don’t really do anything like this in the UK.  Satire or topical comedy seems to be restricted to panel shows where comedians are asked questions they can answer with jokes, or rather snidey, smug sketches.  We don’t really have a Daily Show or a Colbert Report or an Onion.  I genuinely don’t know why but it seems a shame that we don’t.

Oasis Vs Sir Cliff

The technical genius that is Producer Dave has put together a wee video of part of last Sunday’s show.  Taken from the story on music news that fans of Sir Cliff have accused Oasis of thieving Devil Woman.

if J.M.W. Turner did star wars

From the always brilliant B3TA.  Right, back to work.

things that have floated my boat this week

The reviews this is getting on Amazon.

My new column is up.

Original 106 won the pub quiz last night.  Take that BBC, STV and Aberdeen Journals.

I have been paid.

I have a job interview.

Jim Gellatly’s new music podcast.

Things that sunk my ship this week…

The bank.

Death.

General Cuntery. 

Ikea on a bank holiday Monday.

SCOTY

looking angry beside SCOTY final poster

I had the final of Scottish Comedian Of The Year.  If I’m being brutally honest I didn’t do myself justice.  The set lacked focus and was in no order and I lacked energy.  If I’m being really brutally honest then even if I had given the set of my life there’s still no way I would have been in contention with the top three.  Scott, Teddy and Keir are all superb and amazing comics, all three of them heroes of mine and they deserved their respective placings.

What was a bit of a result was that I got some genuinely nice and positive feedback, and some offers of gigs.  What was also rather nice was how pleasant everyone was.  Janey Godley was a brilliant compere and was incredibly helpful and full of advice without in anyway being condescending or patronising.  The other acts were not cunts but incredibly supportive, nice funny people.  Even some of the judges sought me out after the event and gave me some nice words.

I had gigged the night before and for some reason I had been incredibly nervous before it.  I don’t know if it was because it was in front of 200 pissed up Glasweigans on a Saturday night or because I was representing the East Coast in a special make pretend Glasgow Vs Everybody-Else-In-Scotland contest.  Yet all day Sunday before I played the biggest gig of my life in front 750 people in the Old Fruitmarket I wasn’t nervous at all.  I’m not sure why but until a few minutes before I went on stage I remained fairly calm.  Perhaps that’s the reason why I was lacking in energy.  Who knows?  It’s really not like me.

The only thing that sounds even more ridiculously wanky than that is that I really can’t remember much of being on stage.  I can remember a couple of the big laughs.  I can recall a strange Ha Ha laugh from someone at the front of the audience purely because it was about two seconds behind everyone else.  And I, unfortunately, can remember getting to the end of my set and realising I still had over a minute to fill.  This forced me to go back and use a joke I haven’t used in months.  Seriously, what sort of spaz knows he’s doing 10 minutes in front of the biggest and most important audience of his life and doesn’t prepare? 

The review I got from Chortle certainly wasn’t great but it was by no means bad.  Fairly true reflection I think.  I’ve still managed to pick out a word or two to stick on any future posters.

From a purely professional point of view I realised on Sunday that I need to write more funny funny.  The great Jerry Seinfeld talks about seeing a construction worker go back to work one afternoon and realising that this person doesn’t want to go to work but he does.  So why should he as a comedian put off writing when that was his job?  The other piece of advice I received not too long ago was from If.comedy winner Sarah Millican who just told me to do more and more gigs because then the gags would come.

So, taking that advice I took some half remembered thoughts, scribbles from my book and three word notes on my phone and tried to tie them together in some sort of set.  Then I went down to SNAFU for the Comedy Capers gig and tried them out.  It wasn’t pretty, I didn’t quite die on my hole but from it there were bits and pieces that I now know could work.  I shall try and hammer them into some sort of decent shape and just take as many gigs as I possibly can.  Alas, despite my intentions I slipped some old material in at the end just so I could leave on a good laugh.  What a whore I am.