Lee Evans-Nice Chap
Just been watching the very popular and very funny Lee Evans on TV tonight and it reminded me of the show we played with him at Nottingham University back in the early 1990s as he was just beginning to get a name for himself.
Back then I was playing in a function band and as he was a comedian just walking in and doing his spot prior to us playing on stage we offered to let him use our PA system.
This would have been fine except he didn’t have sound man and we ussually did our sound from the stage as we were playing.With this and the fact that Lee has a manic stage prescence and wild microphone technique the sound for Lee Evans was pretty bad and most of his jokes were lost on a drunk and pretty loud University student audience.
Our keyboard player decided to come to the rescue.He crawled on stage and sat on his knees behind Lee fiddling with the sound desk and trying to get the sound right.
It just got worse and as it did Lee became more and more extreme with the visual comedy which he does so well.
By the time the keyboard player had sorted the sound out Lee Evans had done five minutes of the most extreme visual,manic comedy I have ever seen.
I’m pretty sure as he tours stadiums around the world he will still have nightmares about this gig which must have been one of the worst performances of his life (through no fault of his own….how can a comedian work with poor sound?)
He was a lovely fella as well.We shared a dressing room before the gig and had a good chat.He shot off pretty sharp after leaving the stage though!