Chapter 2 - The Imaginarium 18/01/25

Saturday January 18th, 2025. The first full gig of the year. I say full gig because although I played at the Stack in Lincoln two days before, this is the first one where I’m playing a full set for an evening, and it's just me. I guess you could it a headline gig? But that doesn’t feel right to call it that. I’ve seen people call their solo gigs like this a “Headline Gig” (or show or performance) before, but “Headline” to me means something like “top of the bill” or “main act” in a line up of many, many other acts. Like you’re the headliner at a festival! Each to their own though, this is just my opinion! Anyway, I’m already starting to ramble so let’s move on – as people know once I get rambling we’ll be here for a good 10 minutes of ramblyness…. That’s a real word.

I pitched up at around 8:15 ish and began setting up all the gear. I had a friend in celebrating their birthday, who I hadn’t seen in a while too! Always nice to catch up with them. As I was setting up there was their table in, a group of eight people, and then another table of two. As 9pm got closer (my start time) no one came in or left. This was going to be a pretty quiet one… or so I thought!

9pm arrived and I was about ready to start. I grabbed a drink, and as I strummed the first chord to check things were working, and begin to make noise with my usual gig intro, the doors opened. The place filled to the brim with people! Every table was looking at groups of 3/4/5 people, plus a group of 15-20 people who adopted the sofas in the corner! Time to turn the volume up! I’d set levels a bit lower so that the noise wasn’t over baring in an empty bar, but now with a room full of fifty plus people, we needed some volume! I kicked off with Air Hostess by Busted and immediately had the crowd singing. This is how it stayed for the rest of the gig! Lot’s of singing along, some dancing, everything you’d want from the first full gig of the year (not a headliner gig).

Then the requests started coming in. Most people know I play a mix of some covers and my own songs. Covers to keep people listening and so we have some fun, and then my own because, well.. they’re my songs and I want to play them and have people to hear them. So people started requesting songs, and at first it was stuff I liked – Blink-182/McFly/Busted/Green Day, I would play those songs all night long! (And I have before). Then you hear one of the songs you never want to have requested – Proud Mary. There are some songs that I flat out refuse to play, and these are:

1.       Proud Mary

2.       Summer of 69

3.       Sweet Caroline

4.       Wonderwall

But why Charlie??? These are massive crowd pleasers?? Everyone knows them?? You’ve got to play them! Everyone else does!! And this is exactly why I WON’T play them! EVERYONE plays them. Its boring. If I play them, what then sets me apart from every other cover band/artist who’s out singing? No thanks!!!  I’ve always wanted to do my own thing, and being a jukebox of all the usual common songs is not for me.  Plus I don’t really like those songs anyway. Why would I play something I don’t like? I’m here for a good time and want to enjoy myself too!

So if you see anyone with an acoustic guitar performing, please PLEASE… don’t ask for Wonderwall. We don’t want to play it, we hate it. Ok? Thanks! Usually this is how the interaction goes with someone asking for these songs:

Audience Member 

Play Oasis/Proud Mary/Summer of 69/Sweet Caroline

Me

Nope

Audience Memberr

Why not? You’ve got to!

Me 

No I don’t, plus I only good music

Everyone else in the audience

Big cheers in agreement

Also if you ask me for any of these songs, I will usually play one of my own songs, or a completely different cover. At this gig, as I said, I was asked for Proud Mary by someone. Instead I played “I’ll be there for you” by the Remembrants…. Or the Friends theme tune to everyone else. Everyone sang every word and seemed to have a good time. Proud Mary? Who’s she? Never even heard of her!!

As you can tell, this always touches a nerve so let’s move on, and again stop with my ramblyings!! (That’s also a word)

At about 11pm the venue began to quiet, as people slowly left either for home or the club upstairs. I was eventually left with a group of four people, and also my friend and their table from earlier. It turned into a gig with a mix of Busted, Blink-182 and Green Day requests, plus my own songs mixed in. They all eventually left, and the gig ended at about 11:30pm, with the last song being Chasing Sunsets by me!

So all around a good, fun gig to begin the year with! So far, two for two on good gigs this year!

A spin off story from the gig

Me and one of the bar staff finished the evening off with a hot chocolate each (which tasted amazing by the way). As I was loading the car with my gear, there was some shouting going on behind me outside in the street of the club, which is upstairs in the venue. I looked around and saw the usual scene of one person not being allowed into the club due to being WAY to drunk and shouting at the door staff. I’m not going to repeat what they said but I will tell you it was hilarious, but not appropriate for the blog. She kept this up for a good 20 minutes while I loaded up my car. Eventually they left with their friends… who just stood, watched the whole time, and made little effort to pull them away. I think they tried to go up to Wetherspoons up the road. But that had to close due to a medical emergency. That’s all I know of that, but hopefully the person/people involved are ok.

You can catch a clip of from the evening here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AudKXnIc_uE

(The video is a YouTube Short, and so won't allow me to place the clip fully in this blog)

Once again, thanks for reading the Chronicles of Cardiac Carl! See you all next time!