more ups and downs

Tuesday 15th July 2008

4:46 p.m. BST Last night was probably the best of this contract so far, with the audience receptive from the very start, I even had applause after each of my instrumental pieces! One of the rare occasions where I felt like I couldn’t do anything wrong. I had loads of requests, four in a row in fact, during my second (vocal) set, and more later. One of them was for You’re A Lady which I hadn’t played in a long time. There were two ladies in who I had chatted to the night before, who stayed up to hear me play Night and Day. Also there were a group of young German people sat behind me who were listening intently for most of the evening.

Friday 18th July 2008

5:10 p.m. CET No live blogging today as unfortunately the internet connection on the ship appears to be down.

Tuesday night can’t have been particularly eventful as I made no notes about it. Wednesday night was busy, with more like the kind of numbers I would expect on a Friday or Saturday night than midweek. The audience reception was fairly warm throughout the evening, not least after I had performed Leaving On A Jet Plane by John Denver for the first time. One of the couples who were sat nearby were requesting songs, one of which was for “George Formby and the Range” which I found very amusing (he meant Bruce Hornsby and The Range of course! I expect that a band intending to make a statement about the American Civil Rights movement would have lacked the desired impact with an elderly front-man sat on a stool playing a ukelele crooning about his former window-cleaning antics.) I also played Still Haven’t Found by U2 for the first time in a very long time, and (by popular demand) rounded off with an Elton John medley.

Last night was a similar story, it was fairly busy again all evening, but there wasn’t much of an atmosphere in the bar and things didn’t really ever get going properly. Having said that, there were quite a few people who were obviously listening, and asked for some songs. I played Layla for the first time with vocals. There was a Dutch couple in sat nearby me who had been in the night before (they were on a round-trip to the UK and back), and I was chatting to them quite a bit, so that helped to make the evening a bit more bearable!

The resident band, Four and More have left today and been replaced by What’s Up, one of the few Bulgarian bands I haven’t (yet) met.

11:23 p.m. BST Well this evening was a bit of a non-event, except for during my second set when we were making our way out of the port, we sailed past a large floating platform that had an enormous metal pole attached to it (it was so tall it was even higher than the wind turbines). I would assume that it had, or was going to, form part of an oil rig.

Saturday 19th July 2008

11:10 a.m. BST I have now met the band, and heard them briefly last night during one of my breaks. They have a pretty big-set up, and a sound to match!