Technology is unreliable. Computers crash. We expect them to work most of the time. Not perfectly, but reasonably, and when they don’t work we’re pissed off but not surprised. Fair to say?

So relying on my laptop to provide the backing tracks and all the sounds for my keyboard for when I’m gigging , I expected there’d come a day that I would stand on stage surrounded by all emptiness where beautiful synths and drums should be.

Chances are it wouldn’t happen at my first Bearcraft gig. That would be really unlucky. Wouldn’t it?

If Ronald Eustace Psmith had been reclining by the stage at the Cross Kings venue watching me frantically pull things out and plug things in, rebooting and reinstalling, he would have reminded me never to confuse the unusual with the impossible.

Somewhere between my flat and the venue my laptop and audio interface had fallen out. This only became evident amid the frantic whirlwind of cables and noises of the soundcheck. I spent an hour and a half trying to get them working together before a wave of nausea signalled that I had to form a plan B.

Luckily I had a few backing tracks on my iPod, and the extremely kind Steve of Zwah offered to let me use his keyboard, even reprogramming it a bit.

It meant I had to get up on stage without a soundcheck and use unfamiliar equipment, guessing which synth sound may work ad-hoc, but it also meant that the calmness of the aforementioned Psmith took me. I could have no further nervousness, as the impossible had already happened. If a passing circus had loosened a real bear onstage, perhaps even a grizzly one, I would have simply shrugged and given him an instrument for accompaniment. It wouldn’t have filled me with the dread I felt earlier. Well perhaps some startlement, but it’s an unlikely occurrence.

In the end the gig went well, the adversity conquered. Here’s a film of one of the songs from the performance, Out on a Limb. Please enjoy while I try to formulate a more reliable plan A, and invest in some sort of bear-catcher.

Bearcraft – Out on a Limb @ Cross Kings, London