Blog: The Hewitt Variations

The physical in-person fun of GIG ONE THOUSAND may be in the past, but the ongoing THRILLFEST of STATS is very much continuing! Today we're looking at the gigs I have done with Steve, kicking off with a big list of the top venues that we performed our various SHOWS in over the years.

Gigs Played With Steve, By Venue

Venue	Gigs
The Dram House Upstairs , Edinburgh	25
Buffs Club (R.A.O.B.), Edinburgh	16
Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh	15
The Criterion, Leicester	11
Camden Comedy Club, London	11
The King & Queen, London	9
The Green Dragon, London	8
The Lexington, London	8
The Lamb, London	4
Ray's Mum's Back Garden, Stourbridge	3
Fox & Firkin, London	3
Gwdihw, Cardiff	3

The top three venues are all places we played at for The Edinburgh Fringe, with The Dram House Upstairs at number one because we did TWO shows there - the two-man version of Dinosaur Planet in 2010 and then back for Total Hero Team in 2013. The Fringe was in a time of TUMULT and CHANGE around then, so the first time we did it was with The Five Pound Fringe, but when we returned the venue had changed hands, changed layout, changed name, and was being run by The PBH Free Fringe. The only thing that stayed the same was the chords I was able to play!

We only did one year at The Buffs Club, performing Moon Horse in 2011, but we also did various other shows there the same week, including a couple of Totally Acoustics and shows for Robin Ince (who was running about 17 shows a DAY that year). That means it just edges out Sneaky Pete's, where we did a LONGER run of shows for Hey Hey 16K in 2015 but didn't do ANY extra ones.

One point of confusion while doing this analysis was a recurring thought that said "Hang on, we played at The Medina for two years in a row too, why isn't that in the list?" but of course that was doing My Exciting Life In ROCK and the first version of Dinosaur Planet, both of which were SOLO shows. If you look at the list of ALL Steve's gigs with me you'll see that the very first one is the final night at The Medina, when he came on and danced the Dinosaur Hornpipe, after which NOTHING WOULD BE THE SAME AGANE!

SIDEBAR: Steve had CO-PRODUCED both of those first two shows and came with me to every single one of them, but for these purposes I'm only counting actual ONSTAGE collaborations.

Next on the list are two places where we ALSO regularly did shows, at the Leicester and Camden Fringes respectively. This list is, in fact, pretty much DOMINATED by Fringes, so perhaps it'd be better to have a look at where we played by CITY instead. Let's do that!

Gigs With Steve By City

City	Gigs
Edinburgh	63
London	60
Leicester	12
Cambridge	4
Northampton	4
Nottingham	4
Buxton	4
Birmingham	3
Brighton	3
Cardiff	3
Sheffield	3
Stourbridge	3
Reading	2
Manchester	2
York	2
Other	8

This clarifies things a bit - Edinburgh, London and Leicester are still there a LOT, but look how many times we played Cambridge, Northampton and Buxton! Buxton was another Fringe festival, but Cambridge and Buxton were regular places for TOURING put on by lovely PALS. Reading, Brighton, Manchester and York were ALSO visited for various festivals, and we see Stourbridge there as the host city of HIBBETTFEST of course. It's still all very FRINGEY really isn't it? We can see that even more clearly if we look at the next table, showing the MONTHS these gigs happened in.

Gigs With Steve By Month

Month	Gigs
January	9
February	24
March	6
April	4
May	9
June	7
July	25
August	75
September	0
October	5
November	13
December	1

The Leicester Fringe is in February, Edinburgh and Camden Fringes are in August, and lots of the others are in July, which explains a LOT about how these numbers come together. It also probably explains the otherwise ALARMING statistic suggesting we have never ever done a gig in September - by that point we were due a well-earned break!

I was rather surprised to see we have only done one gig together in December, but I suppose the world of ROCK gets taken over by Christmas gigs around then. I was also midly perplexed by the uptick in shows in November, but on closer investigation it turns out that we did our post-Edinburgh TOURS during that month in 2010 and 2011. We were keen to get back on the road, clearly!

Next let's have a look at my Steve-enhanced activities by YEAR.

Gigs With Steve By Year

Year	Gigs
2008	1
2009	2
2010	31
2011	45
2012	13
2013	36
2014	6
2015	35
2016	3
2017	5
2023	1

Apart from a couple odd spots of Just Doing A Gig (including GIG ONE THOUSAND there at the end) this basically SHOWS THE SHOWS, with the duo version of Dinosaur Planet starting in 2010, followed by Moon Horse in 2011 and into early 2012. We then had a year off when Steve was THE STAR of the Olympics, came back for Total Hero Team in 2013, Hey Hey 16K in 2015 and then Still Valid in 2017. It's not QUITE as clear cut as that - we did all sorts of RUM comedy gigs, for instance, and there was the time were REVIVED Dinosaur Planet for The Green Man Festival in 2012 (which I'd pretty much forgotten we'd done until doing this analysis!) - so let's look instead at gigs by SHOWS, as follows:

Gigs With Steve By Show

Show	Gigs
My Exciting Life In ROCK	1
Dinosaur Planet	41
Moon Horse	34
Total Hero Team	41
Hey Hey 16K	37
Still Valid	5
Other	10

The occurrence of Steve in My Exciting Life In ROCK is the time he got on stage with me and demonstrated how to do The Indie Kid! The other shows are all around the same number of performances, interestingly, which taken alongside the repeated venues earlier indicates that we got ourselves into a nice little GROOVE of doing previews, then festivals, and the a TOUR. That's how I remember it happening, so it's nice to see that THE STATS agree!

Two small surprises for me here - firstly, I'd forgotten that we'd done Still Valid so many times. To be honest, the whole point of that show was to give us an excuse to play the Leicester Comedy Festival, but it seems we did put some effort into getting it properly WORKED UP - well done us! The second was to see that there were ten gigs which WERE NOT part of the runs of shows. I was aware that over the years we'd done a couple of gigs like these, but not that many. As far as I remember, doing bits of our shows out of context is more PERPLEXING for audiences than anything else, although as demonstrated in the VIDEOS yesterday, a crowd willing to go for it very much WILL!

That's all for Steve-based STATS for now - I can't really do another day's worth like I did with The Validators, as there are significantly fewer line-up variations when there's just two of us (i.e. there are NO variations), so instead I'll be back tomorrow with a first look at SONGS PLAYED!

posted 7/2/2023 by MJ Hibbett

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