It’s the third instalment of our tour diary, brought to you by Springfree Trampoline.  This week’s diary will cover our first week of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

3rd August 2010 (Tuesday)

Tuesday was the day things went wrong.

We started the day with running through our show.  Like most athletic runners, we timed our efforts, but unlike most athletic runners, we weren’t too happy that it took us less time than we expected.  In fact, it took us about ten minutes quicker than we had in mind, so if we had been runners, we’d be celebrating our new world record.  We’re not though, so we stressed quietly rather than breaking out the champagne.

We also attempted to record the song we specifically wrote for Fringe, but that also went less well than desired, so we abandoned recording in an effort to maintain our self-esteem.  (I should probably ad that our problems with the song inspired us to change it slightly, and I think the changes did end up benefiting the song.  So it actually became a unfortunate fortunate event - like having all your cats die, but finding out that having twenty three cats in your flat was the reason you were still single. )

Having felt suitably productive, and not yet too despondent about the day, we went for a walk to meet up with the EdCom team – the group of producers, agents, PR managers, techies, and flyerers that we’re signed with.

The EdCom team were great.  We had some general chats about Fringe, and began to learn everyone’s name, something which Dyl seems better at than myself.  I’m beginning to think I’ve actually damaged the area of my brain which is responsible for name retention.  It’s bad.

“Hello, my name’s Simon.”
“Hey Simon, I’m Tom.”
“Nice to meet you James.”

That evening we did our sound check at our venue, and that’s when the day actually took a proper turn for the worse.  Now perhaps I’ve built this up a bit too much, maybe I’ve been more dramatic than necessary – don’t worry, I’m not about to write that during sound check, Dylan died.  He’s alive and well, but my guitar that I brought with me up to the Fringe isn’t. The preamp that sits in the guitar and gives the guitar the ability to be plugged into a sound system, decided that despite many faithful years of working for Streep, Scotland just wasn’t for him, and quit the band.

Feeling rather despondent, we went to our favourite pub for comfort food, and then headed back to our place.  Miriam, a friend of one of my friends in Cape Town, came round and helped us finish our ‘characters who find themselves living in some form of their own fantasy world’ trilogy by watching Monkey Bone.  We were meant to meet Miriam in a pub, but we missed each other, so her first introduction to us was drinking tea and eating cookies at our flat, whilst we watched a children’s film.  I’m surprised she didn’t leave when we showed her our pirate Lego.

4th August 2010 (Wednesday)

The next couple of days all began in a similar way, so to save you from having to read the same thing each entry, I’ll summarise:

We woke up.  We watched Robot Wars.  We tried to fix my guitar.  We were told that wasn’t possible.  We rented a guitar.

Today was the day of our first Edinburgh Fringe shows.  Our main show runs from 6:15pm till 7:15pm at the Gilded Balloon every day up until the 29th August.  EdCom books us for various other showcase shows, but our main responsibility is our daily show.  Our first show went surprisingly well considering I was incredibly nervous – the sort of nervous where you’re actually sitting there before the show thinking, “What on earth am I doing, why am I here, I just want to go home and have a nice cup of tea.”

Despite my spontaneous feelings of self-loathing, we got good feedback from our team who had gone to see the show, and straight after our performance we made our way to a venue called the C Plaza to play at a show called Fast Fringe, which proudly boasted ‘28 top comedy shows for the price of one in this ridiculously overambitious night’.

We’ve been told that regardless to how things have actually gone, if someone asks you how your show went, you just say, ”Aw great, amazing thanks.”  So even if on one night you only had three people attending your show and one person began shooting the other two members of the audience, if someone asked you how your show went, you’d still stay, “Aw great, amazing thanks.”

I’m going to break the mould and say that our first show was quite average.  I think it was good for a first show, but a combination of our nerves and a fairly unresponsive audience definitely wasn’t an incredible confidence booster.  That said, we then played Fast Fringe, and that was a totally different experience – the audience genuinely loved it, so by the end of Wednesday night our self-esteems had levelled out a bit.

Apparently this is a very natural Fringe experience.  You’ll play shows which are amazing, and shows where people stare at you and make you wonder whether you actually remembered to put your clothes on before the show.  Also, apparently the first week of Fringe is all about tweaking your show so that it’s likely to still work in both situations.  This obviously takes a lot of pressure off, because it gives you the freedom to experiment and see which approaches to your show works best – since our first show, we’ve embraced this culture of Fringe, and so far, so good.

Fast Fringe was great because we accidently got to work on our new comedic characters, The Clumsy South Africans.  Each act only had four minutes to perform, and we spent our first minute struggling with mic stands, dropping guitars, and dealing with high pitched feedback through the monitors... all which really worked in our favour, because every time something would go wrong, we’d make a joke about it and get laughs, so by the time we got to actually playing a song, we had the audience on our side.  Perhaps we should develop an act where we don't play any music, and simply get up on stage and fumble about with technical issues for an hour, play a chord, then walk off stage.

At Fast Fringe we got to meet the host Fred MacAulay, who is often a contestant in The Unbelievable Truth – perhaps my favourite British radio show, and we also got to meet James Dowdeswell – a talented comedian and writer, who is perhaps best known for his appearance as ‘the Count’ in Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant’s Extras.

This was also the great day of toast, where we had butter on toast for breakfast, lunch and supper.  I’m not sure how healthy an all toast diet is, but the money you save makes up for the essential vitamins you lose.

5th August 2010 (Thursday)

After our usual start of Robot Wars and sobbing over my guitar, in the afternoon we went to go watch James Dowdeswell’s show at The Stand.  His show is incredibly funny, and incredibly interesting – it’s called My Grandad Was A Clown And Those Are Big Shoes To Fill – let’s be honest, that title is reason enough to go see his show.

That evening we decided to go for a more natural approach to our show – not feeling bound by our script, and rather see what would happen if we used our script as a base for the show, but felt free to diverge and play around with it a bit.  This approach definitely made for a better show, although our show seemed to be full of foreigners who didn’t exactly know what was going on.  In their defence, a few of them who apparently were in a choir were attempting to sing along, which made it fairly interesting, because every now and again a song would stop and they’d still be singing.

After our show we went to go watch Dead Cat Bounce, which I’m fairly sure is going to be my favourite musical comedy act at the Fringe.  The group started as a sketch troupe, which eventually evolved into a rock band.  What works the best for them is that not only are all their songs constructed really well for comedy, but they each play incredibly distinct characters, so it does make you feel like you’re watching a comedy act as well as a band at the same time.

After Dead Cat Bounce we watched H Anthony Hildebrand’s show – Why Is A Lettuce.  Another great show full of music, poetry, graph-based comedy, and lies about Robert Mugabe.

That night we had our first experience of The Loft Bar – a bar in Gilded Balloon exclusively for people involved in shows at the festival.  This means a trip to The Loft Bar means you’re quite likely to bump into British comedians.  We were at The Loft Bar for quite some time, so technically, the rest of this Loft Bar story takes place on...

6th August 2010 (Friday)

Being a performer at the Fringe is great, because not only can you get in to see a lot of shows for free, but you also get to hang out in the Loft Bar with celebrities.  I always feel somewhat shallow getting excited when I spot someone who I’ve seen on TV, because I know deep down that the whole notion of celebrity is an absolutely meaningless construct, but even though I know this, it’s impossible not to feel privileged and star struck to find myself around famous comedians.

It’s even worse though when you’re actually a genuine fan of the comedian’s work, but are also trying to maintain some sort of professional decorum, because in our case, we’re at the Fringe in a performer capacity, and it would be incredibly unprofessional to simply run up to your favourite comedian like an excited school girl who inexplicably knows everything about your work and is full to the brim with nerdy questions about it.  I feel that even though every part of me wants to act as a fan, I have to hold back and balance the conversation between basic banter with a slight hint of professional admiration.  It’s a tough hard line.

Having said all that, this was the night we met Noel Fielding.  We shook hands, had a surreal chat about juggling newspapers, and Dyl gave him a business card.  It was a brief meeting, but considering Dyl and I were both trying to hold back our fandom, I think it went fairly well.  Fielding, on the very small chance you end up reading our business card and finding this blog, what I really would have liked to ask you is, “Is it true that you’re making a Mighty Boosh movie?”, and “Could I please have a small role in it?”

We left the Loft Bar and made our way down to some of the younger EdCom employees flat, had something to eat and drink, and then ended up walking back to our flat at about 5am.  As Dyl would say, “You know you’ve stayed up a bit too late when you can see your shadow when you’re walking home.”

Despite our late night, we were up quite soon afterwards to play our first lunchtime Showcase Show at Pleasance.  The show was hosted by Matthew Hardy and featured us as the opening act, followed by Pete Johansson, Maeve Higgins and The Boy With Tape On His Face - we recommend all their shows, especially The Boy With Tape On His Face, because although it’s not nice to pick favourites, it’s probably the most original comedy I’ve seen at the festival thus far.

That night we played our first official show - apparently Fringe technically starts on the Friday, and Wednesday and Thursday were just preview shows.  We had less foreigners in this night, so without meaning to sound horribly xenophobic, the show went better because more people understood it.

After our show we went to go watch Jarred Christmas, a comedian with a dynamic onstage persona and the ability to improvise and roll with anything that’s thrown his way - making his comedy sizzle with originality.  I stole that last sentence off his website because I was running out of ways to describe different acts.  It works though, and it was good, so be sure to try check him out.

After Christmas, we went home and got an early night.  I think we actually got to sleep at 11:00pm.  In Edinburgh that’s pretty much a crime, but for two tired and worn out South Africans, it was heaven.

7th August 2010 (Saturday)

Saturday was the day our good friend and web developer Hugh Lashbrooke arrived.  Having travelled for about two days to get here from South Africa, he arrived in Edinburgh exhausted.  He also arrived in Edinburgh bearing the gift of my old guitar so that I could use that instead of having to rent a guitar every day.

We restrung my old guitar and got it ready for the show, and Hugh showered to get rid of the two days of travel feeling.  The fact that Hugh showered isn’t incredibly interesting, but I included it because I felt the need to let everyone know that although we’re a bunch of men sharing a flat together, our levels of cleanliness are quite high.  Unless of course you include the general state of the kitchen, in which case it probably levels things out.

After our show that evening we celebrated Hugh’s arrival with a dinner at The Doctors – oh yes, our favourite pub strikes again.  Miriam and her friend (and now our friend) Amy joined us for celebrations, although they probably didn’t know they were celebrating anything, because to be fair, we use any excuse to go and eat at The Doctors.

After supper we all went to watch Sam Simmons at The Gilded Balloon, a very surreal show that was what I’d imagine Shooting Stars would be like if Vic and Bob were on heavy drugs.  That might sound like a negative review, but it’s not – it was really good, and it was a show that I probably wouldn’t have picked had Miriam and Amy not suggested it, so it was a pleasant surprise.

After Simmons we made our way to the Pleasance because we were going to be on Dave Hill’s Late Night Explosion.  It’s hard to explain Dave Hill – when we met him he was very reserved, but his onstage persona is quite crazy, yet still in a fairly reserved fashion.  Hill, if you’re reading this, I apologise for the comparison that apparently follows you around, but his look, and style of comedy is very similar to Rich Fulcher of Mighty Boosh fame – except, because Dave is calmer in nature, his humour will probably appeal to those who find Fulcher too much to handle.

I hope a TV network picks up Dave Hill’s Late Night Explosion, because it was a blast to watch, and a blast to be on.  I've just realised I made an awful pun.  Anyways, we add Dave Hill onto our every growing list of acts we recommend at this year’s Fringe.

After Explosion we headed off to the Loft Bar and hung out with Hildebrand and Neale (who, if you’ve been following this blog you might remember we met in London), and met their friends Katie and Neil.  Katie works in the Gilded Balloon office and seems to be an Edinburgh Fringe guru – full of great advice and encouragement.  Neil works as a graphic designer and was responsible for designing a few of the Fringe programmes this year.  Hanging out with this group of people is becoming Loft Bar tradition, a tradition which I hope continues because they’re all really fun to chill with.

We left the Loft Bar because Katie wanted to introduce us to The Spiegeltent, but we arrived as it was ‘closing’, so we couldn’t go in.  I’ve written ‘closing’ in inverted commas because I have reason to believe this place doesn’t actually exist.  We were meant to have an interview there the next day, but that interview was moved elsewhere, so I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that The Spiegeltent is a lot like Mr Whippy. 

8th August 2010 (Sunday)

The nice thing about doing a show every day is that you begin to tweak the show until you have a show which you know is as good as it possibly can be.  We’ve discovered we’ve got jokes which seem to work in every show, and then other jokes which get laughs at some shows, but not at others.  What we’ve begun to do is leave out the jokes which don’t always get laughs, so that we’ve got a show which will work even with a less giving audience.

We’ve also swapped a few songs in our set.  We wanted to include something South African in our song selection, but instead of playing Fly Away Today (Proudly South African) like we had originally planned, we’ve replaced it with The Steri Stumpie Song, because it seems to get more laughs.  Who knew that flavoured sterilized milk could be so hilarious?  We obviously first explain what a Steri Stumpie is, because otherwise I imagine people would not only be confused, but they’d also wonder why they’re suddenly becoming thirsty.

I think this was the show that we got our first ‘heckle’ – after telling the audience we had albums on sale, someone shouted out “You don’t love your mother unless you buy her a CD”, or something to that degree.  It was shouted out in such a hostile way that at first we thought we had gotten our first proper heckle, but after processing it, it turned out we had just got an aggressive compliment.

That night we went to go watch So You Think You’re Funny, a competition at the Gilded Balloon which sees up and coming comedians competing against each other for some ridiculously extravagant prize.  I should probably mention that South Africa’s very own Martin Evans made it to the finals a few years back, so well done Evans!

9th August 2010 (Monday)

Today was the day I eventually caved and welcomed Martin Streep, my new guitar, into the band.  My old guitar kept on going out of tune and it was becoming too frustrating having to tune during shows, so I decided it was time for a permanent solution and bought a guitar.  Dyl’s guitar, Courtney Streep, seems to be getting along nicely with Martin.

At the Streep show a small child came up to me after we’d finished and bought an album and said that he had seen six shows at the Fringe this year, and our one had been his favourite.  If we could put that review on our posters, we would.

That evening Dyl and I watched Comedy Countdown – it’s like normal Countdown (in SA it’s similar to A Word Or Two), except the contestants are comedians, and they’re all a bit drunk.  We were going to go watch Comedy In The Dark, but we couldn’t get tickets.  It doesn’t matter though because we’re just going to go to another comedy show and close our eyes.