In the 1980’s Guy Pratt was the bass player in Aussie’s synth pop band Icehouse when they started to have success in Europe (that’s him on Hey Little Girl). Then he took over the bass position in Pink Floyd when Roger Waters left the band (that’s him on the Pulse DVD). Since then he has played with everybody: Madonna (that’s him on Like A Prayer), Coverdale Page, Michael Jackson, Bryan Ferry and many others. As you can imagine he has some stories to tell and he has fashioned them into a highly amusing book: My Bass and Other Animals. And now he taken to telling these stories in a stand up/spoken word show, augmented with a bass and guitar set up which he regularly grabs to illustrate a bassline or particular story. He has been performing his stand-up show for about a year now and he’s pretty good at it. Whilst not a Ross Noble or Bill Bailey, Pratt is extremely likable, and his tales of rock’n’roll excess (and access) are well paced and often hilarious, frequently at the expense of his much more famous employers. In his story about recording with Madonna, all of her dialog is shouted in a harsh NY bark (“GUY! DID THAT TAKE MAKE YOU HARD?”). This work led to a call from Michael Jackson’s people, and the tale of several recording sessions with Guy trying basslines while The King of Pop hid on the floor behind the mixing desk. There is also a theme of – œÃ¢â‚¬Â¦which is why they are not talking to me at the moment’ through some of these stories. Jimmy Page stopped taking his calls when he accidentally blurted out which Led Zeppelin classic the guitarist would perform at the closing of the Beijing Olympics on his blog, a full ten day prior to the event, causing a near International incident.

Tonight the audience is mostly here because of Pratt’s long association with Pink Floyd. They want Floyd stories (and there are plenty) and these easily get the biggest reactions of the evening. The tale of David Gilmour hiring the Australian Pink Floyd Show for his 50th Birthday celebrations was particularly funny, involving the members of the real Pink Floyd getting up on stage, and then being too smashed to remember any of their own songs. These stories go down much better than earlier stories about groups lesser known to this demographic ( Level 42 and, surprisingly, INXS ) which fell a bit flat. This can happen to any stand up, but Pratt hasn’t quite got the hang of how to handle it when the audience doesn’t react exactly the way you hope they do. He berated the audience a couple of times – œDoes anybody here know anything about music at all?’ His reaction may have been exacerbated by the fact that tonight’s show was being filmed for a DVD release and wasn’t getting the reaction he a) is used to or b) hoped for.

This aside, it was a highly amusing evening and his book My Bass and Other Animals is available now.