crazybobbles

Well, continueing from the epic meetup with uka, I head off to Shepherds Bush to check out the folk singer songwriter Jonathan Coulton. If you guys don’t know much about him, he’s the one who wrote the epic song “Still Alive” for the ending song of the video game “Portal”. He used to be a software developer (my roots) but now makes music and tours for a living. He income comes directly from his website www.jonathancoulton.com and you can download his tracks if you like it. He’s even nice enough to throw in some free tracks for you to download right now But yeah, if you like his stuff to buy them! Some tracks I’d recommend are (click on the links, some tracks you can download for free!) “Tom Cruise Crazy“, “You Ruined Everything“, “Skull Crusher Mountain” and “Code Monkey“. The lyrics tend to be passive agressive and involve zombies, crazy warlords, mad scientists and whatever geeky stuff he can imagine. So yes, on with the show!

Getting to the venue was pretty easy, it was a few stops from where I dropped off uka, though I felt slightly disorientated and actually missed my station at Paddington, nevermind haha. Once I was finally there it was once again showdown time, camera smuggling part 2. Last time ended up almost in tears and this time, I made sure I was well prepared. Instead of stuffing the camera in my bag, I actually put it in the most dangerous place one can put it, strapped to my body. I actually wore the camera body (no lens) and walked in with just lenses in the bag (same secret compartment).

I was also armed with my long coat in my bag (best trick since it makes searching painfully long!) so immediately we have the perfect trap. A big bag distraction with the real loot hidden right behind my back. It was pretty maths to be honest, last time they didn’t do a body search so I’ve assumed that it isn’t really neccesary in this venue so having it strapped to my body whilst they focus on the bag was the best trick. After a few pats I was let in pretty easily and escourted to my seat….

Wait a minute I hear you say! SEAT?! You’re sitting down?!! Unfortunately, these gigs aren’t of the standing variety, it’s a folk artist, so you get comfty seats to relax instead of standing all night. It also probably made sense because most of the audience was made up of pasty skinny and/or slightly overweight greasy nerds :p (sorry nerds, I need to betray you to look cool haha!). Most of the folk probably spent their days sitting down so having it seated was a good idea (man I’m mean hehe). After a hectic day of work and getting things signed, I wouldn’t mind a nice chillaxed night of geeky folk music.

The support band Paul and Storm, were pretty cool, I actually missed half of the show but it was pretty easy to get in, it was clearly a mash up of folk music and comedians, their lyrics reached out to the fans with references only a pure bred (ie both parents are of geek bloodline) geek would understand. The mudbloods probably didn’t get a thing (me being a mudblood ). Anyway, to give you an idea of what they did, here’s a video of their last song. You need to think like a pirate to be able to appreciate the jokes.

Judging from the seats you can tell that I wasn’t sitting particularly close to the band huh? Yeah my seats sucked, I was escorted to some shonky seating area near the left hand side of the show, though it was level 0 seats (ie ground floor), it was nonetheless shonky, the annoying thing was that it was a first come first serve seating arrangement when you booked your tickets, there were no premium seats and having your seats reserved was merely to avoid having people sitting alone from their friends (GO CRY BEHIND THE CORNER BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SIT NEXT TO YOUR FRIEND! CRY! CRY LIKE THE RAGE OF A BIBLICAL FLOOD) (ahem). Luckily for me, I’m used to going solo, and this is where solo missions pay off. After the interval (yes there’s an interval for these gigs, toilet breaks and people to catch their breath, being geeks and all ) I pretty much walked all the way to the front and sat in the most bestest (correct, bestest ) most comfortablest (and correct, most comfortablest) seats there were, SORTED! Not only were the seats close to the band, it made ninja photographying inconspicuous and awesome (because I was shooting on the left).

Anyway after the interval, Jonathan Coulton appeared on stage and greeted us with a song about a certain swedish furniture company. The stage was pretty bare, and the sound isn’t as full as other bands (since it’s just vocals and an acoustic) but it was nonetheless an awesome show. The fact is, the entire show I was in giggles for the stuff he sang and did. Occasionally Paul and Storm came out to provide backing as well as ad lib and vamp up whilst Jonathan Coulton was tuning up. The audience was all rowdy and not afraid of heckling during his talks. The best heckle was when Jonathan said “this song is about two people arguing” and another guy said “no it isn’t”, the sheer cheek in saying that made Jonathan giggle at the response…. oh dear, rereading makes me wonder whether or not you’ll get any of this it’s probably far too geeky! Uhm *panics* just listen to some songs and it should hopefully make sense.

Here’s a video of him doing Still Alive:

At one point of the show, he took his iphone out and told the audience he wanted to show us something, I immediately heckled (yup, heckling is fun) “STOP TWITTERING!” which he giggly replied that he wasn’t, the next thing he showed us was quite a funny bit. He explained how one of his songs, Mr Fancy Pants was like a 1 minute odd song that he originally hated when making the tune but later on loved, he wanted to play it live but didn’t know how to, so he installed an iphone app that did some sampling action (i’m not too sure now tbh, it might have been just for show and he was merely playing backing tracks) which played all the samples from the song whilst he sang along to it. The song was funny to listen to, but halfway through the song.. it happened! A video is needed to explain this. So yes, ANOTHER youtube video!

So yeah, the gig wasn’t about musical genious, it was about laughing out loud, being a pirate, heckling, and appreciating geeky references. The photography experience was pretty fun since nobody really cared about me photolising, their main concern was for folks filming the show, I did record a song or two but that was about it. I still prefer the satisfication you get when taking a pretty photo of a musician that really captures the moment and whatnot. Oh and only one professional photographer was at the “photopit”, it was pretty hilarious seeing him on his own (guess someone had to do it). So yes, enjoy the photos. Definitely check his site out and listen to a few songs and tell me what you think

So yeah, lots of videos since it’s hard to explain!