Way Too Picky

Friday April 10th, 2009 - Chicago, IL

I’ll be the first one to admit I’m a nut. A kook. A flake. A wack job. A temperamental ’artiste’. I’m in my own world when it comes to my creativity and I see or don’t see a lot of things nobody else does. To get the good you have to take the odd. It’s a package deal.

I really think any true artist type is like this to a certain degree. If someone is a creative being there are all kinds of ingredients required to bake that cake and sometimes it gets a little bit messy in the kitchen. The bigger the cake, the bigger the mess it took to bake it.

I’m trying to keep my own personal mess to a minimum but it’s still there. I know that I rarely see what the public does as far as my act goes and I have to accept it even though it isn’t always easy. Sometimes I tend to forget I’m up there to make them happy before me.

Tonight was a perfect example. I did two shows at Zanies in Chicago and hated one but loved the other. The early show was totally sold out and they were turning people away at the door. Even though it’s a smaller club that rarely happens on a Friday so I was excited.

I started out extremely strong and felt like I was going to totally rip the roof off the joint but then about ten minutes in I made a wrong choice of material and lost my groove. I had them around the throat and they slipped out for some reason and I couldn’t figure it out.

It’s not that the material I chose was bad or didn’t get laughs or anything like that. It got solid response but not the war whoops I got right up front. It was something only I would be able to notice but I did and it bothered me. I wanted to keep that gas pedal to the floor.

I hung in there and kept ‘playing the hits’ the rest of the show. I didn’t vary much at all and did my tried and true bits word for word. To me that’s BORRR-inggg, but that’s what needed to be done in this situation. I had some guests come out to see me and I wanted to give them the best show I could so I wasn’t willing to take chances like I normally would.

The late show was completely different. It was pretty full but not sold out and they were a little chatty but not in a bad way. They talked during the show but to me so I could react to it and they weren’t mean at all. I was able to work with it and build a unique show with the ingredients they added and I actually had a lot of fun doing it. I was in a good groove.

It wasn’t a career maker show and had I recorded it I would have erased it right away so why did I like it so much? I liked the all around vibe. The audience wasn’t mean or drunk beyond coherence and they were there to be entertained. For the circumstances I felt I was able to squeeze all I could out of them and that’s very satisfying. I gave my best effort.

I know in my heart when it’s going well and also when it isn’t. When it’s right it’s great and when it’s not it’s torture. I guess it’s like prison sex. It’s a matter of perspective. One party is usually having a lot more fun than the other even though both are involved in the same act at the same time. After it’s over each party gets to decide if it was good or not.