When young, I used to not really wake up till nearly 10 am - I had been at work for some time before then, so that caused some difficulties :-) and used not be able to fall asleep till easily 2 or 3 am - or sometimes, not at all - I would stay awake all night a couple of times a month regularly. I was under a lot of stress those days too, from certain areas...

Nowadays I find that I often start to fade after 9 pm - might have something to do with regularly coming awake at 4-5 am !!! (funny, I remember my dad complaining about that too, but he was a pilot in the RAAF in WWII, and ran a paper run after that so I thought that might have had something to do with that ...) so now I find waiting for the promised slot for the 'lower down the pecking order musos' at certain events to be sadly a bore - really, I just can't perform when I'm falling asleep!, and coffee only does so much... the problem is that 'social politeness' insists that I not throw a tantrum and get on earlier - well, I probably COULD do that... ONCE .... :-)

Funny, I don't seem to be in front of an audience much these days, and I often find myself leaving early regularly now, even when I really want to watch certain performers later in the evening...

But who cares?

"I don't know quite what the cause of this was - do get enough ale in to get the Dutch courage to go on ? Desire to be the "star turn"? Thinking the audience would be more warmed up?"

Ego ... and a bit from column A, a bit from column B, a bit from ...

"Recently, it has gone far more smoothly, I think possibly because people cottoned on that you got more songs if you went on early."

Actually, the trick is that some probably discovered for themselves that if you just go with the flow, you are not working as hard, and if you do that, you don't improve as rapidly. Go on early, and WORK THE AUDIENCE - that's a performing skill in itself, and like sex, the more you do it the easier it is, and the better it gets. (At least, that's what my music teacher Mrs Palmer told me ....)