I just came back from my Survivor's Poetry gig hosted by the most wonderful Razz the performance poet at Tottenham Chances and had such a great time. I love playing in Tottenham and I love the Tottenham Chances venue, I got there with such bad stage nerves but after spending a little while there, the atmosphere and the people just made me feel totally at ease like you could go on stage and do anything, as long as it wasn't boring and you were being yourself.
In the other room there were three punk bands and we could hear them fairly loudly in the background, they looked stupendous, hard core punks, one band was from Germany and I think possibly Wasted Youth were playing. Anyway in the main bar we were having our poetry and eclectic music, including a couple of South American bands and a great band called Iron Meat who reminded me of the early jazz stuff from Gong ( although Iron Meat are not psychedelic at all) and Stonehenge festival bands of the 80s.
Anyway my stage nerves disappeared from the general mayhem ( we also had a dog bouncing about the place including on the stage) and the wonderful crazy people in the audience.
But we could hear loud punk screaming in the background a lot of the time. I had prepared one of my quiet and sensitive music sets, but the atmosphere was different with the imminent full moon and this general feeling that anything was possible, and perhaps the spirit of the recently departed Xochitl Tuck was in me, she always encouraged everyone at Survivor's to just go for it, so I decided when I went on stage to not do my quiet sensitive stuff but to do my loud songs with definite rock and punk influences, I just rocked it on the guitar and in my singing and just obliterated the punk screaming in the background by being louder.
Oh My God ( sorry that is a trite thing to say but anyway....) OMG!!! I had such a great time and it was so easy I just let the adrenaline in my system pour out through my hands and throat and rocked it.
Afterwards Madeleine another Survivor's singer-songwriter , who always says lovely things to me , commented "Don't take this the wrong way but... you play the guitar like a man, but you sing like a woman". No I didn't mind I was trying to play the guitar like Jimmy Page after all, I wasn't trying to sing like anyone else although I guess Maggie Bell from Stone The Crows has been a big influence on me.
Anyway I am now really looking forwards to my next two gigs ( June 3rd and June 6th See concerts or my previous post)where I will do a mix of acoustic guitar songs and semi-improvised electronic material where the other acts will all be fantabulous and innovative both in Stoke Newington. Let me know if you want to be on my emailing list, your emails will not be passed onto other people or companies.
wishing you all love and peace and music in a crazy world
Let's help eachother out during this recession and club together not against one another.
Véronique x