A friend of mine gets radio and gig bookings for up-and-coming artistes, so I went with her to see a young New Yorker, Nell Bryden, perform at Joogleberry's cabaret club here in Brighton a few nights back. Nell has a very lovely range of voice in an Eva Cassidy-ish way, acoustic guitar, writes her own stuff. The fact that she's tall, slim, and blonde doesn't hurt either. Got a free CD to remind me of her set.
I was really annoyed that a group of people who came in talked and laughed loudly all over her set, though. When I complained to the owner, all she did was to say 'well, this is a cabaret club and they're paying customers, so that happens'. I pointed out that at two bottles of champagne down, I wasn't exactly freeloading, so she changed her tack to 'well, it's up to the artist to bring in more people' - as if the club had no responsibility for advertising the shows. No wonder it's so hard for folks to get known with attitudes like that.