Dream 39: Misbehaving Horses and Singers
P and I were meant to be doing a show as B & K for a group. We'd done the place before a few times and they kept joining in. It was more like a social party than a gig. Different tables were talking or trying to do bits of the act. I wanted to do some new material but it was impossible. We decided to have a break. I went to some glass doors which looked out into a stable yard that was part of the centre where we were playing. There were three nicely turned out palominos, although the colouring wasn't quite correct for a true palomino. Three young girls owned them, mostly for their looks. It was obvious they didn't know how to look after them properly but were there to pose on beautiful ponies and be part of the beautiful people set. One girl was already mounted, another was holding a pony while the other girl tried to get on. The pony backed away and the girl holding his head let it so the girl could not mount and in the end they got dragged about and ended up on the ground. The third palomino was loose by this time and trotted off into the distance dangling its bridle. I was very annoyed, firstly the girls should have been supervised and secondly if they didn't know how to look after their ponies properly they shouldn't be allowed to have them. Especially as they just seemed to be accessories for a certain look. Too much money and no sense or responsibility.
I was just thinking how badly run the stable was when another large bay horse came over towards the door with no bridle, just a saddle badly put on. I stepped out to see if I could stop him but as I did so an agent friend of ours, D, said 'No, no, no,' very disapprovingly behind me. I was dressed as K and as I opened the glass doors the horse shied away. A woman holding the rope of a halter on a smaller darker bay horse came over to the door. I offered to take the horse and let her go and sort out some of the mess happening in the rest of the yard. She handed him over with thanks. I took off my K shoes as they were high heeled and glittery, not really appropriate for a stable yard. I took the horse back towards a pen where several of them were kept. The lady from the stables came with me instead of going off to sort out the others. I explained to her that I used to work in a stables and I knew what I was doing. We got to the pen and I let the horse in. It was a sort of balcony with a fence at the edge. There were several people sitting around and the horse stepped through and around them and down a couple of steps to the straw covered balcony area where some other horses were standing around.
Next I was back inside, we were about to go on and a group of women (who may have been part of the stable) requested that we do our song called Bunch of C*nts. We didn't really want to do it as it seemed the wrong song for the occasion, but they started singing it. When they got to the chorus they had changed all the words to suit them and their work situation, inserting names and scenarios replacing our lines. This meant the song no longer had the line Bunch of C*nts in it and ceased to be either our song or offensive.
Then we were going to do some recording there was a woman with a guitar and I think she was recording one of our songs. She sang one line for a sound check. I got the level ok on one mic but needed to set the second. She wouldn't sing the line again. She'd sing one note, half a word, then stop, or she'd do a little squeak or croak. I told her to sing the line like she did so I could get the level. But she kept on squeaking and not singing. I said you have to sing it as you are going to in the recording otherwise the level will be wrong and the recording will be crap and a waste of time. She wouldn't do it. I snapped at her and said just sing the bloody line! P was standing by and could see I was getting angry and that the woman was clamming up. I tried to be nice and patient and asked her if she was feeling sick or something. I told her she had already sung the line once and she was going to have to sing it for the recording. But she said she'd have music then and there were all these people. I told her I wasn't worried about how she sounded in the rehearsal, I just needed to check the volume and I was going to be looking at the needle on the meter so it didn't matter how well or badly she sang the line. I made all the people who had gathered around go away.
Next I had to go and check another amp we were recording on. It was completely different and it took me several false starts to find the meter. There were about three other things which looked like meters until you got close and they turned into something else. When I sorted that unit out, I went to a third recording station further away, more in the open. There were several young men we knew and they looked like they were all set. I asked them if they knew what they were recording and one man said that GM had a list and he would be there soon. A ute turned up with supplies and an enormous picnic. This group were going to make a day of it and have a party while recording. I was frustrated because I didn't want to be organising everyone I wanted P and I to have a recording session for ourselves. There was a huge box of bread in the shape of footballs being unloaded and I was slightly jealous that they were going to have a good day.

Dream 38: Lecturing
We were to attend a lecture. It was very full but it wasn't in a lecture hall it was more in a part of the building inbetween rooms so it was a disjointed setting, a bit of a vestibule, stairs, corridors and so on. We had to sit under some stairs. I was trying to start a new system whereby new lecturers or lecturers who were going to do a particular lecture for the first time could have a rehearsal lecture. This would allow them to practise what they were going to do and make some adjustments if necessary. Also students could attend either the rehearsal or the main one. I was trying to explain that it was the only way to get the lectures to a better standard and it would help students to give them a chance to attend at a different time and to see how the lecturing process was worked through. There was talk that there weren't enough lecture halls and hours available to schedule extra ones, but I pointed out that the rooms weren't in constant use, there were plenty of free hours and besides, this one wasn't even in a room.
There was another part of the dream after this which I spent quite a lot of time memorising - it was far more interesting than the above. Even in semi dream state I was recalling and working out how I should write it up. I remembered this first bit as an after thought, then I drifted off again and now all I can remember is the first bit, very annoying! I usually just need one image to remain for me to recall the whole dream, but if that image goes then there's nothing much I can do to get it back. I do remember when I drifted off again having a dream about some office work. My boss invited a couple of work colleagues and clients to his house. AD turned up, he used to be a real old boss from the 80's. When he arrived he recognised a Dali print on the wall and commented on it. It was a fairly obvious print but there were two more obscure ones. He did notice one, but I had to steer him towards the third in amongst some other artworks. I invited him to take a seat on the sofa, but I was pretty blunt and casual and this seemed to shock the other work colleagues in the room. I guess they didn't know that I knew him. I was folding some white sports socks at the time (just like P's in real life). We were meant to be doing work, but it was just a flat and wasn't set up for it and it was frustrating having to step around domestic items and mess while trying to conduct business. (Mmmm wonder what that can mean?!).

Dream 37: Betrayed By Song
In the dream I was in a ‘backstage’ area which was basically a small vestibule at the bottom of some stairs. I was working on a script and some new jokes I was going to try out as my character K. P had just gone on stage. He was going to try out some new bits too and instead of doing our normal act together we had agreed to do bits separately tonight. It was going well for P and I was pleased. Then he started doing a bit about songs. He sang a well known line from a popular song, but it was in the wrong style and voice. He made some joke about but what if they were from ... he said something inappropriate (eg the North or another country). Next thing this woman got up and sang in the style he just said (ie with a Northern/foreign accent). The crowd loved it. She was another comedy act, but also a really good singer. In fact she was more of a singer than comedian, so even though they were doing the song in a daft accent she was singing it very well, belting it out. Then P did another one.
I was backstage dumbfounded. My friend J was sitting further up the stairs, she was busy writing herself. I went up to sit next to her, I needed to talk about what was happening on stage. I explained that I was meant to be doing the singing with P. I told her we’d had a rehearsal planned. As I was telling her, the story of what I was saying played out like a film. I was narrating while I saw P drinking. It was around his birthday and he’d been drinking heavily for a few days. We’d scheduled a rehearsal at the venue we were now in and turned up at about 3pm. He was very reluctant, complaining about being there and saying he was drunk and tired and so on. I said that he was the one who wanted the rehearsal and that it was his idea we were working on. I wasn’t that convinced about his idea. I explained to J that it didn’t seem like much of a joke. It was an excuse to sing and show off accents and seemed a cheap, easy way to get the crowd on side. Also once you’d done one song, the joke was done and doing it over an over with different songs again seemed a cheap way of entertaining the crowd. Besides it was sort of the same joke twice within the one song. P sang it ‘wrong’ then the woman did too. I thought it would be better if he sang it straight then they did the silly accent/style or whatever. It seemed to be just the sort of thing he disliked in other acts. Still I had turned up at the rehearsal to give it a go and to set the keys for the songs, but he was so reluctant and grumpy, in the end I said we'd better forget it and he went back to ‘celebrating his birthday’ by drinking some more Guinness (this was about 3 days after his birthday).
By now on stage they were up to around their sixth song. They kept doing the same thing, P would start off with a really well known lyric, he was doing Johnny Cash in his JC voice, then he'd say but what if, and she would belt it out in another accent. The crown went mad first when P sang as they recognised the song then even more so when she did it. It was more like a pop concert. J and I listened from backstage. I knew she was a far better singer than me, but I was annoyed he’d gone ahead without me. If we’d had the rehearsal we could have maybe improved it or found another way. I was saying to J that I wouldn’t be able to tell him what I thought of the act because it had gone so well and he’d be all excited and very pleased. I was also upset that he had used this other woman. She was a great singer, but he hadn’t told me, he hadn’t given me a chance to do it with him and we were supposed to either work together as a double-act or try bits on our own. Now to bring in someone else was just confusing the issue and taking us off in a different direction. Because it was such a crowd pleaser it was going to be impossible to criticise it without looking like I had a bad case of sour grapes. Which I did, as well as being legitimately critical of the act! While I was talking to J, they were still doing songs on stage, the same joke over and over and it wasn’t even a real joke. I looked up the stairs and out onto a small balcony/landing which led to other stairs and buildings. They had Chinese style lanterns hanging and large Guinness effigies which sort of glowed, but also looked like real oversized pints of Guinness decorating the banisters. I thought it was ironic as it seemed to be the Guinness which had got me in this mess in the first place. Then the front door buzzer went so I woke.... pity, would have been interesting to see what happened when they came off stage!