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Tonight I was hosting the Music and Sound Awards 2016. The Oscars was very much a warm up for this event and I was very excited as I couldn’t wait to hear (literally) what the best sound of the year had been. I had done a burp last April which I thought might be in with a shot. I objected to the tautological title of the event though. Music is very much a sound. Sure it’s got rhythm and usually melody, but it doesn’t deserve a separate mention in the title of the event as “Sound” covers it (and in a way aren’t all sounds a kind of music? I like to think so). I proposed it should be called the Sound Awards, which makes it sound cool if you’re from 1997 (which I am).
Sadly individual sounds weren’t up for any of the awards, it was very much about sound design in TV, films and adverts. But I tried to hide my disappointment and do a professional job.
It was a rowdy event and the audience talked quite loudly through my opening monologue, so I commented on the fact that they liked sound so much that they had to make it all the time. They couldn’t take an evening off. The sound had to be constant. A few years ago a gig like this would have thrown me, but it’s pretty much par for the course that you won’t get listened to by most of the room, who are more interested in eating and drinking and networking, but I pushed onwards, getting some nice laughs from the people who were listening, managing to make some solid ad-libs and mocking myself and the situation. There was a ship’s bell on stage, put there I think, because they’ve had the same problems in the past and hoped that it could be used as some kind of warning system to quieten people down. I rang it to no effect, but wondered why it was there and speculated that given how well I was doing there was maybe a Titanic theme to the evening. I stayed strong and stayed in control and didn’t want to mess this up because of my deep love of and respect for all sounds. And also because I wanted to make sure I got paid. Which might have been another motivation for taking this job. Every time I get a job like this it frees me up to do some more stuff for free. I wouldn’t like it to be all that I do, but I think I am pretty good at it (certainly at whisking through loads of awards without the kind of haste that would be rude, but without letting the momentum flag). It’s a real challenge too, which I rarely get these days as I play mainly to audiences who like me already and have come to see me. Those years of open spots in front of actively hostile crowds pay off on a night like this. Firstly because it’s nowhere near as bad as those horrible early gigs, but secondly because it taught me how to fight against noise and find my way through it. And there’s some fun to be had dropping in a comment for the people who are listening and then saying something contentious that will pull the focus of those who aren’t. A wall of noise, can become a solid or at least viscous thing that you can penetrate and manipulate, sending little sound bombs through to certain people. You’d think the audience tonight would have appreciated my magician like abilities with their own medium more than they initially seemed to.
One solitary man kept on shouting out AIOTM to the general confusion of the others, but uniquely at such an event the audience actually got less chatty and more focused as the night went on. I like to think it was because they had warmed to me. So let’s say that is why. And there were some very impressive bits of work up for consideration. I gave special emphasis to the radio winner, as they loved sound so much they refused to let the visuals do any of the work.
All the time I kept my mind of the figurative cheque at the end of the evening. That will allow me to mess around doing free stuff and pay for my self-indulgent playwriting experiments. I wouldn’t like to do these kind of gigs every day, but even at my relatively modest level, the occasional one can really make a difference to what I can afford to do elsewhere.
And a professional backstage team meant everything ran smoothly and I got through the 27 awards and intros and outros in an impressive 80 minutes.The crowd liked me by the end and the organisers were happy. This is as close as my job gets to being a job and I did a good job.
It's a stupid way to make a living.
Retro RHLSTP with Simon Pegg is now up in the usual places
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Latest Metro column can be read here. See more from about the five little monkeys in my latest tour show.
