Dreadful Nonsense

It seems these days that, written in to the rules for my attendance of gigs, is the provision that I must always end up, somehow, backstage talking to the performers about the performance. I'm used to this at comedy gigs, and quite often this is the highlight of the whole process, because I'm a geeky comedy nerd who enjoys ruining the fun by constantly analysing and dissecting the process, and thankfully so are most comedians. Also, I'm very good at lying to people and telling them they're hilarious, while carrying on a double life as Kate Copstick's ghost writer (that's the geekiest comedy reference there could ever be, and if you get that, you're a big fat loser too).

Last night, my good friend D, her good friend V and myself were in attendance at Whelans, seeing the glorious Mundy play new songs from his new album, and three songs from the only album of his that I own. He is, in fact, playing 5 gigs in a row at Whelans, to celebrate their 15th birthday. Mundy, if you didn't know, is quite big news in Ireland, and probably will be following in the irritating footsteps of Damien Rice quite soon by becoming over-hyped and over-successful in the US.

I had been planning to go along to one of these gigs, but never got round to booking tickets or talking Edel in to coming with me. Thankfully one of V's friends dropped out at the last minute, so I stepped in to the breach, because I'm good like that.

During the gig, I tried calling Edel to leave songs on her voicemail, but apparently Whelans has been designed so that the acoustics destroy any chance of hearing a song properly, and instead it all sounds like tuneless shouting. Edel made up for this instead by gatecrashing the gig, using the all time classic of brazenly walking up through the back entrance like she's supposed to be there. It's a trick we constantly use in Whelans, and usually works out well for us. We are nothing if not resourceful.

Post gig, and D & V went for a wander while me, Edel and her friend Bronagh went for a boogie on the dancefloor, moshing like fools to songs none of us knew, but all sounded vaguely familiar, probably being within the Green Day / White Stripes / The Strokes genre that I refuse to become interested in. I got a text message from D about ten minutes later, which read -

"We're up in the VIP lounge having a beer with Mundy. Come on up. Ask 4 V or Mundy."

We ran.

The funniest thing about it all was that, during the gig while I was enduring that peculiar girly bonding moment of standing in a queue in the toilet while people take far too long in the cubicles, a bunch of ladies were trying to come up with some kind of plan of action to get closer to Mundy post gig. These girls had apparently bought tickets for every night he's playing, and will be in attendance every night, staking out the back stage area and trying to get to know the bouncers. I'd laughed to myself about this, since I'm far too old for those kind of crazy shenanigans. An hour later, I found myself cruising past them and giving the secret knock on the back stage door, while they shot us dagger looks and I tried not to look too smug.

I managed to all but completely ignore Mundy for the duration of time we were there, since up until 2 hours before I had no idea what he even looked like in real life (according to the girls in the toilets, he's looking "a lot better" since getting his hair cut). We did manage to help him solve the Irish Times crossword though. I feel I impressed by offering "epinom" as the solution to a particularly difficult 1 across. He repaid my kindness by continually providing us with free beer.

So the great big ridiculous plan for tonight is to do it all over again. Having gone from not actually being bothered to book a ticket for myself at all, now I'm going to see the man two nights in a row, the second night being happily placed on the guest list. I'm now officially known as "Plus One".

This entry was posted on 01 October 2004 at 4:55 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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