Monday, August 16, 2010

Auckland Zine Fest

So the Auckland Zine Fest was on Saturday - If I understood it correctly, it was a day for independent maga-'zine' publishers to show off their stuff and get out there. I saw some online (as I had to work on Saturday day) but sounded hella interesting - not to mention that Tera patrick was in town for the Erotica expo!!!!

This was my first gig with the Literrati (not all of them as they just had a gig up in Whangarei for their Escaping the Ghosts show) so it was only the boys. We were to perform at the Zine fest afterparty.

So I was asked to perform three peices, the titles of these are i. Define Poetry ii. The Rescue (Love Poetry) & iii. The Phoenix.

Anyways, I was preparing this for about 2 weeks (but was having difficulty memorising Define Poetry - I just dont konw what was up with that one) then one of the members requested that I also have music accompanying them. So on Friday night I receive the tracks - 24 hours to get them down. Now the last two were no problem but the cursed Define Poetry just has a weird rhthym and now with a beat - my mind was having trouble comprehended the beat as well as remembering the words......

Plus working on Saturday - 24 hours became mroe like 2 hours (awoke at 7am on Saturday to start practising). Saturday night arrives and my friend Carol accompanied me to the gig. It was delayed when we finally commenced after 8pm. The lovely Anna (from the Literatti) was also to perform with us. I was 4th to begin in our set.

The piece for Define poetry was first - it was intended to be over 2 minutes long - after 30 seconds I was stumbling - 45 seconds I was in over my head - 1 minute past and I just forgot everythign to that piece so I just ended and walked off!!!! I guess the best of performers have choked on stage.

I remember the first NZ Kanye West concert....he had a great show (my all time favourite concert) and he choked when he was to perform 'School Spirit' from the College Dropout album. I was at the frount row trying to yell out the lyrics (with others aroudn me thinking "what a hard out guy")......

I continued for the rest of the show and I think I redeemed myself. It was a small audience but on my last poem I got some 'woo's' so that was great. All in all a great experience, I learnt to not worrying about choking on stage as the greats have all done it, and I learnt to perform with music and poetry. Probably not the greatest performance but hey all good....bring on the next challenge.

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