Always leave them wanting more

I don't know much about live music (obviously newspapers is more my thing!) but even I know that the first rule of showbiz is to get off stage before the audience gets tired of you. Somebody needs to tell King Creosote. We went to his rescheduled concert in Crawdaddy and by the time he left the stage 2 hours after he started there was nobody in the room still listening to him.

He's a lovely bloke and he had a great band with him but seriously, whatever happened to quitting while you're ahead? He began the show with a nice touch - by giving out free cds as a way of apologising for cancelling his show in January. Once he got started though it turned into a strange stop/start affair. He's got a lovely expressive smiley face and a nice line in self-deprecating humour but someone needs to sit him down and talk to him about pacing a show. It was all starting to sound a bit samey as he reached the encore.

He prefaced the last song by saying that they were going to do one more and then 2 encores. I think he'd been on about 75 minutes at this stage and that was plenty. After the encore, as the audience were beginning to do the post gig shuffle towards the door, he stuck his head out from behind a speaker and came out to do another encore to a response that could best be described as underwhelming. Now I can fake whelm as much as the next fella but I wasn't really up for much more. When he'd eventually found his guitar lead he started to take requests from a bunch of diehards in the front row. At one point he asked what time the curfew was set to only to be told that in face, there as no curfew. So he played. And he played. And when you thought he might be done, he played some more. And then did a big finish with lots of jumping up and down and noodly noodles with his lead guitarist. And then he played and he played some more.. At one point I'm sure tumbleweeds blew across the floor of the venue but, undeterred, he kept going..

By the end, the diehards in the front row were taking pictures of themselves and paying little or no attention to the man rocking out needlessly onstage.. He finished to very polite applause and left the stage, rocked out and unloved..

It's possible I'm being harsh but judging from the number of people talking as he played and all the mobile phone beeps and buzzes that were going off, everybody seemed to have better places to be. I did - by the time I got to O'Connells I'd missed last orders. I hope he's learnt an important lesson!

Still it's hard not to like him. He recently sold one of songs to Coca Cola for an advertisement. Inevitably, he got a lot of abuse from his fans who accused him of selling out to the man etc etc. In his defence he said that at least he was taking money from Coke while everybody else is giving it to them. Enough said. Besides -it's a good ad.