Follow these 10 easy steps and you’ll be Kerring with the best of them in no time.
1. Wear tight leg-ins, boots and frilly shirts with the occassional waistcoat for that “dapper, poetic, philosophical gent type of fellow” vibe. If you need some practice of being in a ’stage’ situation you can get the old hairbrush and mirror and strut away using the double bed as a good platform for some of the moves indicated below.
2. Ask people “is everything OK?” at least 3 times when you appear in public even when it’s quite evident that people are quite happy with it all (having parted with their kids ‘Christmas present fund’ for front row tickets in a giant plastic tent in Liverpool).
3. Dance your heart out with moves taken from the “Kerr School of Choreography” [see All The Things She Said video to learn some of the moves].
4. Remember its the 1980’s there is no political issue that is toooooo grand to comment upon or champion in some way. If you do this then make sure you’re holding that all important ‘license to be a politician white dove’ in your serious po-faced hands.
5. If you’ve reached that terribly serious political issue part of your gig then you can use the “tied-and-beaten-arms-locked-together-over-my-head” pose for full effect to really make sure the crowd know what you were going through when you penned the lyrics.
6. Tell stories from the “me and Charlie playing in a sandpit on a Glasgow housing estate” days to the crowds of people who’ve brought their teenage kids to the gig to show them what real music is like. The best bands start in sandpits.
7. Sorry, you got stuck in a musical time-warp on step 4 so suddenly recall that its not the 1980’s and politics should in no way feature in music as its the 00’s so remove the “Mandela-Biko-Belfast” vibe and replace with the more cuisine, reflective issues of the day such as “chocolate”, “stars” (or “chocolate stars” if you need to combine two tracks so you can add more food related songs to your album) and “Andy Warhol” with a few new age “dolphiny” tracks thrown in for good measure.
8. Create a series of gravity defying poses when playing live – for example, hanging off the edge of the stage upside down whilst bringing ‘Oh Jungleland’ to a dramatic conclusion.
9. Karate kick your way through any situation where you need to impress an audience, boss, client or possible love interest quickly and effectively.
10. Never ever stage dive. I don’t know why,….Dave’s done it, Bono’s done it and I’m sure Michael’s done it [God rest his soul]. Just don’t do it. However, it’s ok to go to the audience and pat some of them though.
OK, next time….how to be Burchill in 10 easy steps.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, its time to reveal the latest Simple Minded collaboration between Christophe Avril [vocals], Simon Hayward [keyboards / arrangement] and myself [guitars].
2 Comments
April 15, 2008 at 11:15 am
Excellent!!! Very true, even if some moves/attitudes are now getting a little bit more difficult to perform… oops…
April 18, 2008 at 4:57 pm
LoL, nice (and so true) list, I can’t wait to read a similar list about Charlie (and hopefully Mick, Derek and Mel too). I totally agree with not doing a stage dive! Jim did “dive” off the stage once in 1989 and broke his elbow. More of an accident, yes, but still a good example to back up #10.
Nice job with “Love Song” and good thing you kept the original arpeggiator sample with it.