In Which The Geeks Gather

Thursday night was the night that Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton were playing at Bristol's Colston Hall, for the first date of their European tour. (it's a pretty short tour - only 4 dates, I think)

Last time they played in Bristol was in November 2009, (I  blogged it here ), and I ended up selling mercahndise, so this time when I heard that they were coming back, I sent off an email volunteering as a Merch Girl again. And then I inveigled my friend Cheryl into coming along with me to help out.

We got there a little early, and the guys were running a little late, so we hung out for a bit first, then Paul arrived to talk us through pricing and how to use the credit-card-machine-with-the-carbon-paper. One of the things on sale was the Paul and Storm's " ________ IS THE NAME OF MY ___________ COVER BAND"  shirt (which comes with a washable marker pen so you can fill in the gaps as often as you wish). I made some comment about their channelling John Scalzi, and was immediately corrected, and told thatg it is, of course, Scalzi channelling them... which led, inevitabley, to the creation of the "John Scalzi IS THE NAME OF MY Paul and Storm COVER BAND" modelled here, and on twitter, by Cheryl!

The show was great - first half featuring Paul & Storm, with the 'Nun Fight', 'Frogger the Musical' and 'The Captain's Wife's Lament' songs being particularly well-recieved.

There was also the presentation by a member of the audience of the the World's Largest Jaffa-Cake....

Then, after the interval in which we sold many many shorts and CDs, came JoCo's portion of the show, which featured many old favoutrites such as 'Code Monkey' and 'Skullcrusher Mountain', plus new ones including 'Blue Sunny Day' (about a sad vampire) the new Portal II song (and, of course, 'Still Alive', sung with full choral  audience participation), not to mention the ever-popular 'Re: Your Brains' (also featuring much enthusiastic audince participation)

Jonathan also spoke a little about the Crushing Burden of fame, enocuraged us all to sell all of us stuff in order to buy tickets for the JoCo Cruise

It was a lot of fun!

After the show (including the not-at-all-planned-or-choreographed,-honest encore) we sold a lot more merchandise, and had the chance to chat a little with Paul and Storm and Jonathan, before helping to pack up the unsold shirts, and heading home. I normally aim to be home well beofre midnoght on days when i have to work in the morning. I failed completely on this occasion, but I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever.  it was a great show, and I am so glad I went. Looking forward to next time.

If I can ever remember my YouTube password, I will try to upload some video I took, but I know there was someone filming pretty much everything, and with a better camera than mine, so she may well have posted a ll the good stuff already..