The Gig

The University’s guitar club put on its second guitar concert last Friday. This time they made posters and had the Irish contingent (Philip Dunne and myself) as a selling point!

The line-up this time differed slightly from the first gig. Last time they had a lot of classical and folk guitarists alongside the pop and rock college bands. This time it seemed to consist mostly of college bands. We were the third act to perform. I’d only half learned the words for Sweet Home Alabama that week, so the main thing that concerned me was that I might mess up some of the words. Well, in the end it worked out fine. Phil went out first and sang his uncensored version of Revolution by The Beatles. The whole of one of Phil’s engineering classes turned up to watch, and were cheering him on, shouting 菲利普加油 (fei-li-pu jia-you), or "come on Philip"!! Excellent!



I came on-stage and jibbered some shite in Chinese and we went into Sweet Home Alabama, which came off well. Most of them probably didn’t know the song, but since it was in the movie Forrest Gump, some of them might know it, since that movie was big in China. I did the ever-popular Country Roads by myself after that. I know some of them were singing along!


We finished off with Slide Away by Oasis. One of our favourites, although prob none of the students knew it! I think we got away with the whole thing without messing it up, so we were happy.

I think the highlight of the gig had to be a Chinese dude who was literally making his guitar sing. He wasn’t a student and I think he is famous in Dalian. I haven’t seen anyone that good up close before! His fingers moved so fast that they were a blur! Gave Jimi Hendrix a run for his money! Here's a vid of the guy in question:



I think the rest of the bands may have been college bands, but I had to leave early. If they give me a VCD like last time, I will slap it up on my YouTube site.