A Night at the Perseverance

It was a quirky night last night; we had agreed to hire the Perseverance as an experiment for Winter Voices and see if we could make a go of it. I parked outside a brothel and moved my car as soon as I realised; the Perseverance was just around the corner and was deserted downstairs apart from a couple of regular old geezers, somewhat in their cups, propping up the bar. Upstairs,Ingrid was lighting candles and putting them on the tables; Lucy leapt forward all smiles, holding her mandolin; people milled around with poetry books and musical instruments and the sound man patiently set up the microphones.
One of the old geezers seemed keen on doing a turn; he had a club-singer's voice and serenaded whoever would listen, eventually roosting on the stairs looking for new victims. A couple of punters turned up, and we started sound checking.
The room started to fill up gradually; Debi and Red had come along and it was really nice to see them, as I hadn't expected them.
Ingrid's nights are always a friendly mixture of standards and abilities with one thing in common- total commitment from each artist. Some of the poetry I find a trial because it's a little on the gloomy side, but tonight's first poem proved a red rag to the bull. Ingrid and Lucy were joined by Huma and they began a poem that reflected on the situation in Gaza, decrying the cruelty of the Israelis and sympathising with the plight of a besieged community. It was a balanced and careful performance; I listened carefully as there are so many moral issues about the situation and I never know what to think or how to express what I think either. But it was very good.
However, at the end, the drunken old geezers, bristling, stood up and yelled 'Six million Jews! We thought this was music and not political propaganda! This is disgusting! We're going!'.
Lucy's riposte was equally heated. 'Twenty thousand Russians!'; her voice carried well, as she is a trained actress.
Ingrid gently calmed them all down. 'Oh dear. What a pity', she understated as the geezers grumped off downstairs.'They might have liked some of the other music and poetry'.
The geezers had only listened to what they didn't want to hear, you see, as many people do.
After that dramatic beginning, the proceedings bumbled on amiably; I liked Graham Cole's voice and his retro style; he could make a fortune as a covers-entertainer at people's birthdays, I think.
Later, I'd completely unwisely decided to try out three new songs. The Man in the Moon was fine, especially as halfway through the song I realised that I didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of getting the instrumental part right and drew the song to a close before I got there. I completely cocked up All Systems Go! which was a real pity cos I was really in the mood for doing it. It is a fast song, however, and although I'd practised it loads, I hadn't practised the singing into the microphone bit and there was just too much going on and I had to jump ship and abandon it. I sang Summer Days and dedicated it to the woman who inspired it, who discovered that she had breast cancer and was then deserted by her husband for another woman the day she started treatment. It's a song about loving your way out of adversity, which I think after my own experiences of the past few years is all you can do. Lastly, I played A Bad Day and was unnerved that people were listening to the words so closely that they chuckled at the sarcastic bits that normally pass by unnoticed!
The best act was Jude Cowan, whose songs are sarky and poetic at the same time. She is also a really good musician and fingerpicker with a lovely voice which probably not everyone notices as she plays with such ease and grace. She is well-rehearsed and focused and well worth seeing, although her songs are sharply pointed and not for the fainthearted!
Heartssong played in their open and loose way; they are very much the sonic equivalent of naive art, dedicated, anarchic, rambling along at their own pace, no song sounding the same twice. Sometimes they are hard to listen to when the tuning goes off, but Ingrid's genial manner carries them through, and their Way of Disorganised Organisation means that any performer feels comfortable playing on the same bill. Before Christmas I played two songs I'd never played before at Voices of Experience in Tulse Hill because I knew it would be OK. This is really important and hats off to Ingrid for making performers feel relaxed enough to break out of their self-imposed cages!
We made the money on the door to pay the sound guy- the night was a success, a strange success, but it was a happy return journey home.
Strange fact of the night- three of us forgot the words to our songs. Something to do with January hibernation, perhaps?