Friday 20 February 2009

I'm retracting that retraction

Right yu know the whole thing about the me not making it to the radio and it all being my fault?
Well Fuck that shit.
I ain't in the wrong on this one.
It all comes down to this woman.


Jen Roberts

Look if your a poet/musician/comic then heed the name cos I reckon this woman is out to rip you off.

This is the woman who runs the 2-bit piece of shit radio station that don't fucking exist and if it does don't get any fucking listeners 'sept for folks tuning in to be disappointed that I ain't onit.

Well last night I done a gig for her again. (I know, I must have dickhead written on my forehead).
But seeing as how I've not performed both the last 2 times I was supposed to be in London I figured this time I had to do it. Either that or get a reputation. 

Anyway the gig its self was at the Library on Upper Street. Crazy thing for me is that this venue is on the corner of my Auntie and Uncles street. Small World eh. I didn't ring 'um cos I figured they'd of seen the flyers etc what with it being like 45 seconds from their front door.

So I've arrived met this woman and sat down to write a set list. To be honest there were maybe 25-30 people in the venue and probably about 40% of them were there for the event. The rest, as far as I could tell looked like they'd come out because they like having poetry in the background as they talk really loudly about how cultured they are. Dicks.

I'd talked my mate Steve into filming my performance and had decided to do the whole set as a homage to Bernie Mac. 
"Straight off the bat, I ain't scared of you mother fuckers"

Turns out that's not what they wanted. In a moment of panic I tried to fall back on some A material (a joke about wanking off midgets), but again not what they were looking for.

Here's a video so you can see how much they weren't into it. Note the amount of other people talking over me eh.

I'd managed to win a few people round by the end but generally they weren't into what I was doing. Still I only had to do fifteen minutes and Steve enjoyed it.

Sound of Rum were also performing on the bill and that's about 80% of why I agreed to do the gig. After the gig I was chatting to Kate Tempest (S.O.R) and it turns out neither one of us could remember making any arrangement about money. (I know, Dickheads init.)

Well i approached this Jen Roberts woman putting on my best gentleman's goloss all like 
"hi Jen I can't remember if we made an arrangement about money, am I invoicing you?"
She comes like "No we didn't make an arrangement about money and I've only just broken even so I'm afraid I can't give you anything."
I'm like, "sorry what do you mean?"
She's like "You should have made an arrangement about money before you came because we didn't make any money. what do you want me to do? pay you out of my own bank account?"
I'm like, "yeah you could at least cover my petrol that way I don't have to pay money out of My bank account for your night." 
She's like, "Well I didn't even know you were coming from Leicester."
I'm like "Yeah maybe on Tuesday but after the message you sent me regarding my blog and driving home etc,"
She's like, "Well you can't expect to get paid for gigs if your not, yu know, right up there. This is good promo for you."
I'm like "How's UK Slam Champion for right up there? How's 4 star reviews in the Sunday Telegraph? that up there is it? To be honest Luv I probably didn't need to drive all this way to promote my self to 25 people who are more concerned about being seen here than they are about listening to the acts, also I have family that live on this street and they usually travel all across London to watch me and my brother perform, If they're not here that's down to your promotion."

It was part way through this sentence that she just turned her back and started walking off and it was at that exact moment that I switched.
I'm like, "Oi, Oi, OI. Don't be just walking away from me mid fucking sentence"
But she did.
went and hid in the toilets for like half an hour. I waited in the bar and eventually she came out and went over to the bar manager. I watched her talk to him. I saw him take money from the till and give it to her. Then she walked over to me and Kate and she's all like "The Bar Man will give you both petrol money and I'll sort it out with him next month, I hope you're happy." Then she scuttled off no doubt to try and find her next mark.

Well anyway we waited about till like 1 in the fucking morning. (I was on at 8.45) 
Eventually when we are the only people left the bar manager comes over and asks us 
"What are you still waiting for?"
I explain what This woman said to me and he's like "No, I gave her the money for you from the till."
I went off a little bit but it weren't this geezers fault. Eventually he gave me and The Rums £15 each but that was only because he knew that if he didn't I wasn't leaving.

Brass Tacks.
If you're a poet, and a woman called Jen Roberts tries to book you for an event called behind the mic, then do us a favor.
 Agree to do the gig and on the day don't show up. If you do this I'll give you £10. 
Trust me that's £10 more than you'll get out of Blood-Stone Roberts

and Jen if you're reading this and I hope to fuck that you are then I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you to go fuck yu self you pretentious vacuum of shit. Oh and fuck your piece of shit nobody's-ever-heard-of radio show an all. That's what I think.



4 comments:

Unknown said...

HURRAH - love the blog!!

How's it going matey?

Ian/ AYM

Anonymous said...

BWAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAH!

Anonymous said...

Hey man, thats the biggest load of shit i've ever read. The reason why the audience talked through your set is because you didn't win them over. Your performance was average and undersold (not to mention your jokes at the start were just not that funny). Your work was ok but because you obviously felt some hostility towards the crowd people didn't like you very much. I've been to plenty of these evenings and seen some brilliant spoken word artists who have silenced entire roomfull's of people within the first minutes of their performances. Dockers MC for example, at the last Behind The Mic in the same venus had us eating out of the palm of her hand.I would say you've become a victim of your minor success and its resulted in complacency on stage.A bad workman blames his tools and only a fool performs without prior agreemnt of payment. As a pretty successfull promoter myself i have seen many acts, and I would say your's simply lacked the edge needed on the night.
My final comment is that by publishing this aggressive little rant on a third party internet blog site, you have made yourself liable for legal trouble.There is a very clear case for Libel, and as a regular at behind The Mic, I'm tempted to have one of my legal team take a look!
I'm sorry you felt hurt by an unsuccessfull performance but that's the life of an artist. I would say you have a long way to go and blaming everyone else is not only childish but cowardly. look inward and underneath your bravado and all the aggression you'll find the truth, you just aint always good enough.
This blog makes you look very silly, I hope re-reading it you feel that. Imagine a grown man intimidationg a women, calling her names and then boasting about it on his un-read ego page. grow up.
and if you really think you're such a big man, publish this on your page, and show the whole picture...

Berko said...

I think the anonymous post is from this Jen woman.
But she ain't got the balls to sign her thing and part way through it starts to sound like she's pretending to be someone else.

She's right about one thing though. I was very complacency on stage that night. The reason being I'd already realized the audience wern't listening.