Reinvention

When you move to a new place and start a new job, to a certain extent you can be someone completely different, reinvent yourself. Provided, of course, that you don't go too far from the mark because that's impossible to keep up.

At the moment, I'm trying to recreate myself as a super-cool music journalist.

This wasn't my initial intention, oh no. It all started when I innocently asked Curtains, who has power in the world of our music section, if he might possibly be able to get me into a Just Jack concert, cos I quite fancied that song that was in the charts but it was all sold out. I was a little taken aback when afterwards he asked me to write a few words for the Guide, but we managed to forget about that one.

But less than a week later, there was another gig on I wanted to see, so I very nicely asked if it might be possible to do that one too. And Curtains happily obliged - only this time I had to write a bit about it.

Thing is, I've never done a music review before. Seeing as I own both a Lighthouse Family cd and a Celine Dion album, I feel singularly unqualified to pass off my opinions as worth listening to. Yes, I love music, and some of it might even be cool in some people's views, but would anyone really care what I thought?

Anyway, I managed to bash out a few words, but this has led to other things. Like I was supposed to go and review Travis last week but that fell through so I ended up reviewing John Cale of Velvet Underground fame. Tip - never go and see this man. I felt like a fraud, I had to look up all this stuff so I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

Anyway, if I'm going to be doing all these gigs - and I have a sneaking feeling Curtains is going to continue quietly signing me up to blander, more commercial gigs that he's not really interested in doing - I feel I need to work on my rock chick, wicked-cool music hack image. So I went shopping and looked at some funky rock chick t-shirts.

Tried one on. But it was backless. Bit much. And remember, Curtains is the one who told me I looked like I was on the game. So no funky new look. And tonight, watching the amazing Tiny Dancers (find them on myspace, I guarantee they will make you smile), I was dithering about because I was too nervous to go and get the set list from the sound guy. I got it in the end, of course. Maybe I need to do what Curtains does and have lots of dutch courage first. But I'm not sure I would be able to remember anything - let alone write authoritatively, incisively and concisively about the gig.

Hmmm. This reinvention thing may be harder than initially thought. I've got to say though, I'm loving being on the guest-list for gigs and not having to queue. That I could get used to.

More on that story later.