March | 2010 | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Empress Hotel Open Mic, Melbourne

March 31, 2010
bradspurgeon

Sounds grand, this “Empress Hotel” open mic title. But the rather spacious bar at 714 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy North, Melbourne, is not exactly “grand.” What is fabulous, however, is the coziness of the open mic area, and the wonderfully spacious, yet not too grand, stage. I felt comfortable the instant I arrived tonight in the performance area of the bar. There were guitar cases all over the place, tall round tables with stools, the stage well-lit, the horseshoe-shaped bar in the entry, and another large room off to the side.

Frank Shaw, balding white-haired man with a poneytail, who does the sound stood behind the soundboard, and his partner, Robin, made up the list of the performers for the evening. She is a kind, easy-going woman, just the sort you want and actually run into so often with open mics.

I asked Robin how long the open mic had existed, and she couldn’t tell me. They have been running it for around three years, I believe she said, but she said she was unable to find out how long it had existed but that it was many, many years.

When I say that the area was dreary, in fact, I took a walk down the street to go and eat dinner and as I walked along Nicholson I was suddenly struck by the sight of the buildings in the moonlight and I was reminded of the facades of a cowboy film. It was extraordinary how cowboy wild west the buildings looked, but mainly compared to the usual facades I am now used to in Paris. This cowboy facade look is something I equate also with many of the building fronts in Toronto, particularly along Yonge Street near Bloor Street, for example.

I later spoke to a client who equated it with colonial architecture. “All the colonies were a little alike, I suppose,” she said. And I agreed.

Unfortunately I missed the beginning of the evening, which started at 8:30, because of the pizza. But the look around town was worth it, and as I went for the pizza I passed a hotel bar that had some kind of sign in the window talking about not wanting to kill music.

I noticed the sign, but did not read it and it was only later in the evening – at the end of the open mic – that the subject came up. Robin told me that there was a big political problem in Melbourne at the moment involving live music and liquor licenses, and that it was killing live music.

I’ll have to look into it, but at the moment that is all I know about it, and also the fact that Robin said that the hotel bar where I had seen the sign was the center of the beginning of this political problem.

In any case, live music was certainly alive at the Empress Hotel open mic, as the level of musician was again good, and the atmosphere was fabulously laid back and comfortable. The first act that I saw was a woman in her thirties – I suspect – whose name I did not hear, but whose singing was very folksie 1960s like. I enjoyed it immensely.

I also liked another woman, this was Melody Moon, who later told me that this was her first open mic. Her voice was dynamic and unique, and I told her afterwards that I thought she had her own sound. Upon listening to the video recording, however, I realized that it reminded me a little of a singer popular at the moment whose name entirely escapes me, but who I will mention as soon as I remember! (That’s one of the nice things about a blog – you can update the stories as you please.)

Melody had a very beautiful voice and an agreeable execution and some clever lyrics that could be interpreted in several ways. She also had good direct communication with the audience as she tried to involve them in whistling in the middle of one of her three songs. Her guitar playing was far from smooth, but she made a good effort at it, not using simple chords and chord shapes, but employing much of the neck of the guitar.

A man whose name escapes me too also had an interesting act, with good solid rhythm guitar playing and a voice he really knew how to sing with. Unfortunately for my tastes, all three of his songs sounded a little like the soppy, obligatory and conventional slow songs of heavy metal bands, both in sentiment and sound. So I didn’t really turn on to it in the end.

This is comedy festival month in Melbourne, and that means most venues are taken up by comedy acts for the festival. It was therefore fitting that a guy came up to perform comedy, even on this musical open mic night. He was clearly a beginner and he was trying out new material that was so new he kept referring to his notes about it. But he had an agreeable easy way about him, and his humor was light and agreeable. He actually started with a little skit about the Formula One race being in town and how he hadn’t realized it until he turned on his TV for a basketball game and all he got was the F1. Then he complained about the jets flying over during the race….

In any case, it turned out that this comedian, who had everyone laughing – including me – if only lightly rather than gut laughs, and who had lightened up the atmosphere considerably, was the act immediately before me.

There had been some dreary, horrible, sleep-inducing acts of people who still need to learn how to walk before they can run – ie, it was not entirely clear why they sought an audience just yet, as they had a lot of learning to do with both guitar and singing. In fact, Frank Shaw decided to sit down and recite some kind of children’s story between acts at one point, perhaps to liven things up at that moment – I cannot remember exactly. But I liked the moment, so I caught a little of it on video, as you can see below.

So the comedian’s act really lightened up the environment. In fact, it lightened it up so much, and lightened me up so much, that I felt thoroughly out of shape for singing my songs in the mood an feeling they require.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “That’s the first time that has happened to me. I get to go up after a comedian. Now that we’re all lightened up. I’m going to have to change my whole set list now. I was going to sing a bunch of depressing songs….”

That actually got a good laugh out of them, and suddenly I thought I should be doing my own comedy act. But I did decide to change my set list of three songs. I had planned on starting with Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” But right after a comic, I couldn’t see how I could enter that world.

So I gave in and quit and decided to sing the song I had decided I definitely would NOT sing: “Crazy Love.”

The audience helped me try to get into the idea of singing – “Come on, you can do it!” after I had joked about tackling the change in tone after the comedian.

So I sang Crazy Love, did a half okay job. Then I took another swig of beer and decided to try out the Chapin song.

“I can’t remember now if the capo goes on the seventh fret or the eighth fret,” I said. “That has to do with age….”

That was not a comedian’s line, but one related to the song about a father and his son growing up without him seeing it because life passes you by.

It went well and by then I’d warmed myself up with Crazy Love.

I then sang my song to finish it all off, the song called, “Memories,” about the time with my wife. That received wonderful applause and I was happy with the singing and playing, particularly because the sound system was so perfect here – even with a little reverb added on the voice to warm it up. In fact, it all seemed to go down so well that for the second day running the audience called for more, giving me a warm, heartfelt encore.

I was delighted, and couldn’t believe it. And this time I was determined to do something other than “Jealous Guy.”

“Another cover?” I said. “How about a Dylan?”

“Yeah! A Dylan!” people said.

So I did “Just Like a Woman.” And I was in seventh heaven yet again when I heard the audience singing along with me on the song. Wow.

A great way to end the trip to Australia.

The Arthouse Open Mic in Melbourne

March 30, 2010
bradspurgeon

I heard about the Arthouse open mic from a couple of different sources, and my curiosity was wetted and very high. Monday night around the world tends to be one of the big nights for open mics, as it also tends to be one of the down nights for the bar business in general.

The Arthouse came recommended on one of the good sites I used to look up venues in Melbourne, a site called Skinhat. But it also came up last Friday when I sent out an SOS on my Facebook page: “Pissed off there’s no open mics in Melbourne on Friday from what I can see. Still, allows me to finally have the time to put new strings on my guitar in my hotel room.”

My friend Emma Wilson, who runs the River Bar open mic in London, put up a call for anyone on her Facebook to provide me with a place if they new of anything. Someone came up with the suggestion for the Arthouse open mic on Monday.

So it was clear that here was an open mic that is well-known in Melbourne, and I resolved to go. Located at 616 Elizabeth Street, the Arthouse turned out to be only about 35 minutes walk from my hotel, although I took a couple of trams to get there. The area around it is pretty deserted and dreary, I found, but the bar itself is very cool. And when I walked in to find this massive stage – for an open mic – with beautiful lighting and mics and amps all over the place, I felt very blissful.

What I liked less was that there were very few people there when I arrived at the ostensible starting time at 8 PM, as I read on another site. In fact, it turned out that it started at more like 9 PM. But that gave me a chance to put my name on the list and leave to find a place to eat – I ended up at a Korean BBQ place that was so good and authentic that I thought I was in Japan, or Korea rather….

When I returned to the Arthouse, I found a few more people, but it was still terribly deserted by comparison to the All Nations bar open mic I attended on Thursday. In fact, it was a terrible letdown. Fortunately, however, as the evening progressed I would find not only that the quality of the musicians who had signed up was high, but that the rest of the people present were fun and interesting, and above all, most importantly, a wonderful, appreciative audience. In fact, I was massively delighted to receive an encore once I’d finished my three songs.

I first sang “Crazy Love,” and then I sang “Father and Son,” and then I sang my own song, “Since You Left Me.” Much to my surprise and delight, it was with my song that some people actually got up on the dance floor and started to slow dance and listen to me very closely and with smiles. Wow. When I finished my three songs and said goodbye, they said, “No!! Don’t leave!!” And then they said, “Encore!” I was taken by surprise and the best I could think of to do – after checking with Tim Chelow, the organizer, that it was O.K. to do another – was John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” I think it went over O.K., though.

I actually recorded myself for the first time with my Q3 Zoom recorder. But unfortunately my whole set lasted 20 minutes – including setting up the guitar – and that is far too long to put on this site. And I do not yet have adequate software to cut and splice the cool part out – ie, the encore….

I will put up a couple of snippets of a couple of other musicians though, because that’s what this blog is really meant to be all about – talking about the people who attend open mics all around the world.

All the tables were full in front of the stage, even though there were only around 20 people in the place at most, and I did not want to sit far back in the room, so I sat down at a table of a woman with a guitar. It turned out that she would be probably the best musician and singer there, and her name was Bel Woods. She came from a small town a few hours outside of Sydney, and she told me she had come to Melbourne two months ago to basically work on her music.

It was clear very quickly that she admired Tori Amos. In fact, it was quite amazing that Bel not only looked a lot like Tori, but her voice sounded a lot like hers as well. I did pick up a few touches of Joni Mitchell, too, however. But Bel said she didn’t particularly listen to Joni.

The other musician I liked a lot was Tim Chelow, the guy who has run the open mic for the last two or three years, although it has existed for nearly 19 years. He also took to the stage and played some interesting acoustic guitar, of which I’ll put up a little excerpt. What was funny about this was that his music sounded very laid back and sort of classically folk-like. But he said normally his greatest interest is heavy metal. We would talk later on as many of the young people gathered on the terrace on the second floor after the open mic finished and there we talked for an hour or so about everything from religion, mysticism and heavy metal music to boyfriend/girlfriend relationships where the couples either couldn’t stand each other or were not apparently made for each other, but stayed together.

The heavy metal connection, it turned out, was also appropriate for the Arthouse. I found out that the Arthouse has been a center for independent music for 19 years, and is mostly known for its heavy metal bands, as you can see in an article in The Age where it was called, “one of Melbourne’s stalwart homes of metal.”

Well, last night it was far from metal, and it never filled up. But Bel told me that she was told that it had a tendency to be either full up and bursting with people, or rather dead, as it was last night. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much like most open mics around the world.

No Mic Today, My Love Has Gone Away

March 26, 2010
bradspurgeon

Remember that song from Herman’s Hermits? Well, all right, I changed a word in my headline for this post, of course. Same difference.

I could not find an open mic in Melbourne tonight, so I just took the opportunity to restring my guitar. I’d been wanting to do that for weeks, but never had the time. Then I decided also to play a song in my room, as I did in Bahrain. But this time, used my handy Zoom Q3 recorder to record it, and not my interview recorder as I did in Bahrain.

I went ALL over the hotel room tonight trying to find the right angle to get enough light and some kind of backdrop but all I could come up with was the washroom, and I figured that was tasteless. So I decided to record the song in the nearly complete darkness of the bad light available, because, after all, that suits mood of the song, which is Mad World. I’ll put the video up tomorrow after it finishes processing in about an hour…. when I’ll be long since asleep.

All Nations Hostel U-Bar Open Mic Melbourne

March 25, 2010
bradspurgeon

Don’t bother trying to figure out the real order of the words of the headline I put on this post. Just go to 2 Spencer Street in Melbourne, Australia, on a Thursday night. There you will find one of the coolest open mics down under, I’m sure of that. I am the happiest man alive after showing up there tonight and playing my three songs and listening to the other open mic singers and the house band.

And it proved a thing to me again: Go off the beaten path, break your habits, try something new, force yourself! Last year on the Thursday of the Formula One weekend I played in the open mic of the Spleen Bar on Bourke Street. So being like most people a man of habit, I decided to try it out again this time.

But then life got in the way – thank goodness! I ended up staying late at the track, well not that late, but until 7 PM. And could not find any indication that the Spleen Bar was still doing its musical open mic night. And this being Comedy Festival month in Melbourne and the Softbelly having canceled its musical open mic, I feared the Spleen might have canceled its musical open mic too, since the Spleen is more known for its comedy open mics on Monday or Tuesday (can’t remember which).

So it was that I stumbled across this open mic announced for the U-Bar at the All Nations Hostel on 2 Spencer street. It looked pretty certain to be happening, and on my way back from the track, I happened to find it on the corner of Spencer street where I got off the tram and where I had to head uptown on another tram to my hotel. According to the Internet it would start at 8 PM, and I was there at 7:40 or so. So I popped into what looked like a dreary bar with few people in it, and I asked if there was an open mic.

“Yes, it starts at nine,” I was told by a young man behind the bar.

The walls were painted graffiti-like with strange cartoon drawings and other graffiti-art like stuff. Very colorful, but my main impression was of potential dreariness. And I noticed a crappy looking amplifier against a wall near the bar and the pool table. It looked as if the open mic would be an afterthought.

But it was so late I decided I had no choice but to take the tram to the hotel and then return to the bar, since I now had plenty of time as it started at nine, not eight.

Returned to the hotel, warmed up my voice with a song on the guitar – ‘Father and Son’ – and then ate a very quick meal at the buffet in the hotel before taking a tram back down to the U-Bar or whatever it was called.

Went into the place to find a lot of people and a dreary, quiet singer at the dreary amp. I was guided by the bartender to a woman named Emily Brown, and told she ran the open mic. There was so much talking in the bar that I could barely hear the singer or Emily. But I gave her my name and she said she’d get me up. “Three songs each,” she said.

Turned out to be a nice crowd of young people, and very international. That clearly had to do with the hostel next door. I spoke to a Dutchman, and one of the performers was from Canada. A man named Brandon, who was from Burlington and there with his girlfriend as they were spending a year in Australia traveling all over the country.

Emily reminded me instantly of Bea, the 23-year-old woman from Sydney who ran the Softbelly open mic last year. I would learn that Emily was 22 years old, she had studied music at “uni” and she had run the open mic here since last August or so. She also had a band that would play in the middle of the open mic evening for a full one hour or so set. She taught singing in the Melbourne school system and also had a few other music gigs to keep her going. She was very enthusiastic and friendly. This was classic open mic stuff here!

And guess what? The music just got better and better, and the crowd got thicker and thicker and the atmosphere just grew stronger and stronger. Sure, there would be talking throughout the night, and there would be some people playing on the pool table, and you would have to move aside while singing a song to occasionally let the man hit the pool ball because the performer was too close to the table. Oh, and the sound system was indeed crap.

But this would prove to be so much fun, with such an eclectic group of musicians, mostly young, that I was very quickly persuaded that it had a real atmosphere. Several of the musicians came from local bands, too, and played acoustic for fun. A lot of what I learned about the evening came from a couple of the musicians, one named Jim, and the other named…Jim.

One of the Jims described the other Jim’s music as being very eclectic, and he asked me if I’d ever heard of his hero.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Townes.”

I expected him to say, “Townes Van Zandt,” but decided to get him to say it.

“Who?”

“Townes Van Zandt.”

“Yeah,” I said. And the other Jim was surprised.

“What do you think of him,” asked the Jim who sang Townes’s songs.

“A genius,” I said. To which the other Jim just walked away in disgust and let us talk about Townes Van Zandt.

So it was cool indeed to be in Australia talking about Townes Van Zandt.

The Canadian Brandon played some blues of his own making, and had a nice strong voice and a nice fingerpicking style. A local rock musician who had given out his self-produced record played three or four songs that were fast moving and hard hitting, and perfect for the crowd. And he showed a wonderful attitude as several drunks joined him during his song and he stopped and spoke to them and at one point said:

“I’d like to introduce you to my band, I don’t even know their names, but here they are.”

I did not have to wait very long before I went up, in fact, I went up after that guy. I had planned to play Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” a song of my own, and Cat Steven’s “Father and Son.” But in the end, given how much noise there was and how the crowd felt, I did not do my own song, but instead did “Just Like a Woman,” by Bob Dylan.

It was one of those evenings where you wonder how much you’re really reaching people. But when both of the Jims told me afterwards how much they loved my songs, especially the Cat Stevens, I knew I had reached the people. In fact, one of the Jims actually gave me the biggest compliment I ever had with “Father and Son.”

“I was just saying to Jim,” said Jim, “that I actually liked your version of ‘Father and Song’ more than the original.”

No compliment can be better.

The singers varied a lot, from rocking to quiet and from singing originals to singing covers. One of them who got up just before Emily’s band was in fact the guitar player from her band, and he sang some very nice covers quietly but strongly.

And now to Emily’s band, called “My Favourite Emily.” This was fabulous. Emily sang, she had a female bass player, she had a 23-year old sax player who Jim told me had begun to play at age eight, and she had a drummer and the guitar player. They had some very nice jazzy stuff, and the sax player blew me away. I loved Emily’s voice too. I made videos all night with my new Zoom Q3 toy, and I will post something here:

In addition to the great musicality of the band, Emily had a nice way of communicating with the audience, and she frequently went into the crowd to get some audience participation in the songs – ie, holding the mic up to spectators to sing along.

Oh yeah, and Emily told me she took a couple of photos of me and will put them up on the open mic’s Facebook page, so I’ll link to them as soon as I see them.

This was a very moving, swinging, cool and hip open mic format, and Emily was all the things a great open mic host should be: Friendly, encouraging, nice, warm and enthusiastic. And on top of it, she is a talented musician herself. I’ll go back again – unless my desire to break all habits gets me finding another place on Thursday in Melbourne next year….

Arrival in Melbourne, Softbelly Cancelled

March 24, 2010
bradspurgeon

I am writing these words from my hotel in Melbourne while eating fish and chips from room service and drinking a wine that has a classic old Formula One team name to it: Tyrrell’s Wines. I’m feeling a little bit down because I learned shortly before arriving here that the cool open mic at the Softbelly bar on Little Bourke Street that I attended last year on the Wednesday evening has been canceled tonight because of the standup comedy festival this week. On the other hand, the complete trip from Paris – via Malaysia – consisted of 25 hours of travel time, and four hours sleep. So I can probably consider myself lucky that I was not tempted to run out to the Softbelly tonight, after all. Onward tomorrow to some new adventure – perhaps the Spleen Bar open mic on Bourke Street (not Little Bourke) where I also played last year….

Another Live Music Lesson

March 21, 2010
bradspurgeon

As I prepare for my departure on Tuesday for Australia and Malaysia, I have been trying to keep a little warm playing in open mics here and there. After more than a year of playing three to five times per week, in recent weeks I have been playing only around once a week while at home in France. And like when any habit breaks, it’s sometimes hard to get back in the groove of doing it all the time.

I had a couple of interesting experiences on Friday and Saturday that should serve me as a lesson. On Friday I was eating at a restaurant in the 17th Arrondissement in Paris where a house band played classic American folk rock, mostly Dylan. I was surprised to find that the main singer – there was a bass player, drummer, a couple of guitarists, a couple of people sang – sounded 100 percent American. He had the idiom down pat. So during one of the breaks, I spoke to him…and found out he was French. He had learned his English, said one of the other band members, from Bob Dylan. That is to say, from listening to Dylan. The singer then told me, “If I had it my way, I’d only sing Dylan. Nothing but Dylan. But the other band members wouldn’t like that, so we do other stuff too.”

The man saw my guitar, and he invited me to up to play. He said they frequently invite their friends, and some of the kids from the neighborhood go up and play guest sets too. I really wanted to play, but I didn’t. Earlier in the evening I had felt that it was not the sort of place I’d like to play, not the right time and place; and then afterwards, when invited, I chose not to because – ostensibly – I did not want to offend Vanessa, with whom I was having the meal at the restaurant.

After I left, however, I felt a sense of regret. I could have gone up there and belted out a Dylan, and it would have been perfectly at home.

The next day, Saturday, I again found myself with Vanessa, but this time we were at a bar near the Bastille, called Planete Mars. It turned out there was a punk band playing there earlier in the evening, but we missed that while dining at a Couscous place a couple of doors down the street. Vanessa knows the guy who owns the Planete Mars bar, and without me knowing it, she asked him if she and I could play a song. I had my guitar, and she and I have been working on singing “Mad World” together – although I have yet to memorize the words. (Actually, today I think I got ’em down.)

The bar owner said, “Sure!”

But I felt huge, huge wariness. After all, this was mostly punk-like and electro sort of music, hard, fast rhythms, etc. And the place was full of people drinking and talking and laughing and having fun, and there was no sound system. I thought we’d go over very badly – as I thought just about any acoustic duo would in that environment. Nothing to do with us in particular.

So I kept on throwing excuses at Vanessa; “You know, there is a time and a place for everything…. You know, people listen sometimes when it’s an open mic and all set up for amateurs….. You know, are you sure you really want to do this here?”

She just kept saying yes. So I went along with it. We rehearsed two or three times right out in the open in the bar sitting there playing for ourselves while everyone listened to the DJ. Then, finally, we agreed we were ready and Vanessa went over to tell the DJ he could turn off the sound now.

“Listen everyone, we’re going to have a little live music here with VANESSA! … and her guitar player,” said the DJ, getting everyone to cut down the talk a little. (But not entirely.) The small room had perhaps around 40 people in it, which in those tight confines was a very big crowd – especially without amplification.

In any case, we jumped right into the song. I enjoyed myself immensely, and I think we sang the song better than we ever have together – even if I messed up in a few places the planned exchange of moments where she sings and then I sing, etc. Eventually, a young guy began singing along with us. We received applause, and afterwards Vanessa was complimented copiously by several people. And I felt fabulous.

The moral of the story? There may be a time and a place for every kind of singing, but if you get the chance, don’t pass it up for anything in the world. Especially not the stage fright I was clearly feeling beforehand….

The one thing that I did regret and that Vanessa had said I should do, was to record our song on the Q3 video camera. Again I thought it wasn’t the time or place, and again I was wrong. I shot a few seconds on the Q3 afterwards, to show what the atmosphere was like, and so below you can see a little look around the bar from the vantage point of where we sang….

The Amateur Musical Video Revolution, and a Harry Chapin Anecdote

March 16, 2010
bradspurgeon

It may be a pretty simple, straightforward musical video, but I’m putting it up on my site today simply because I’m so excited about the broader implications of what it all means for my upcoming open mic adventure….

Today I went to the Pigalle district of Paris, the city where I live. Pigalle is known mostly for two things: Sex shops/sex shows, and, for musicians it’s a gold mine of an area with guitar stores, music stores, home studio stores, musicians’ gadgets shops, etc. All contained in the same few streets. Literally, I musician’s candy shop.

I went there for a couple of things, one of which was a new bag to carry my Seagull S6 guitar with me on my adventure around the world, since last year’s worldwide adventure nearly killed the bag I have. As I sauntered along looking in one store after another I suddenly saw an object in a store window that had also been on my agenda, or wish-list, of gadgets for this blog.

I’m talking about the new Zoom Q3 “Handy Video Recorder.” I own a fabulous Canon HDV video recorder and some excellent video editing software, zith Adobe Premiere Pro. But is there anything more dissuasive than the idea of setting up a camera, capturing the video, processing and editing it – when you’re just talking about grabbing some cool musician on the fly at an open mic or jam in Kuala Lumpur or London or Sao Paulo?

As you might have seen on this blog, over the last weekend when I was in Bahrain I tried to avoid using my camera and instead used my iPhone to record music at the Bahrain venues. And produced absolute crap with sound like as if you were hearing something going on in a rhinoceros’s stomach.

I had read several great reviews about this Zoom Q3, and I also own one of the original Zoom H4 recording devices so I iknew that Zoom made very good products for cheap prices. And I thought, this is the thing that I need in order to bring another dimension to my blog and give full reports of my musical adventure around the world this coming year. I can carry the recorder in my guitar bag and just whip it out and do a video of some cool musician, or maybe even me with a band in some jam in Barcelona or Istanbul. And then, I can upload the file to the blog in minutes.

Yes, this Zoom Q3 is so easy to use it is disgusting. Press a button and it records in better than CD quality sound, with a very good image and the capability of uploading directly to YouTube and my blog. It runs on AA batteries and can hold many many hours of video if you put a 32 gig SD card in it. (It comes with a 2 gig card which holds 39 minutes of the best quality video and sound, but more than that with lower quality.)

So there we go, no more sideways videos, and no more sound overload. This is going to be very cool, and very much fun. And the thing only cost around 240 euros or so. It will take a little work before I realize how to get the right sound and light.

Good hearted Harry Chapin

Above, is the first video of me using the Q3 and singing Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Chapin was a wonderful singer-songwriter who had huge success in the ’70s, notably with “Taxi” and “Cat’s in the Cradle,” which was a No. 1 hit and was later covered by Ugly Kid Joe in the 1990s. Chapin died in a car crash in 1981 – although there was some evidence to suggest he might have had a heart attack in the car, causing the crash, if I remember correctly.

I had the good fortune to have met Harry Chapin in 1976, when I was a teenager working on a TV show in Ottawa. I spoke with him in his dressing room and I will always remember not just how kind he was, but also the nature of his easy-going character. We learned we both had the same birthday, and we were talking about wanting to go to acting school – he said he wanted to do that in future – and suddenly he was called out to perform in front of the cameras. He lept up from his chair and grabbed his guitar, but the guitar slipped out of his grasp, fell to the floor and a rib broke inside the guitar. He looked in it, shook it, saw it was broken, and he broke out laughing and said, “Well, I’ll just have to play with it like that!” As he ran off, I thought about how I would have been so angry had the same thing happened to me.

Dublin Club Bahrain Jam With SuperkatZ

March 14, 2010
bradspurgeon

It was the only open mic/jam session place I managed to find in Bahrain this trip, but it lived up to all my hopes – or almost. I found the Dublin club on my first day in Bahrain – on Wednesday – and set up a date to play at the jam session on Saturday. I spent the next two nights scouring through the streets and Internet and magazines trying to find another place to jam or do an open mic – as readers of this blog will have seen. But all the while, I had this idea of a date at the Dublin club ready to happen. And it did.

Saturday night is a bit of a down night in Bahrain for the bars, as it is the equivalent of our Sunday night, since here the weekend starts on Friday with the holy day. (Actually, it really starts Thursday night, of course.) But with the Formula One race in town, the Dublin bar – which I described in an earlier post – was really bopping with what seemed like a couple of hundred people at the high point.

The resident band is called SuperkatZ, and it originated in Australia (the next stop on my worldwide trip). The band leader is Mark Eaves, who is also married to the keyboard player. He organizes the band’s tours, and they go all over the world and play as a resident band for several months at a time. Mark told me they started at the Dublin in January and they’re there until Ramadan. So if you’re in Bahrain, go take in a few sets. This is a very cool and together cover band of six or seven members, with a great bass player, lead guitarist, the keyboards and Mark on drums. They do everything from the Cranberries to Led Zeppelin, and several of the band members sing quite well. In addition to the keyboard woman, Masha, there’s also another lead woman singer. The band has played in South Korea, Russia and Indonesia, for example. But Mark’s favorite area is the Gulf region, so they play often around here, in Dubai, etc.

But now on to the open mic/jam session. This is another of those evenings that calls itself a jam session but might almost call itself an open mic. The difference here is that in general the guest musicians play with the other band members, and the band does a full three or so sets, mixing in the guest musicians starting from the second set – or some time after 10 PM.

I arrived early in order to eat my dinner in the restaurant and watch the band play and just to settle in. The restaurant had a good deal offering a free half bottle of wine if you bought a steak. I ceased eating steak around 10 years ago, although I still eat most other kinds of meat. But with the temptation of a free half bottle of wine, I went for a sirloin. And I can see why they’re offering this. The steak was much better than the pork chop I had on Wednesday, and the wine was very good for a house wine served in a carafe (not in a half bottle).

But it turned out to be a good idea to go early just for the preparation for the jam session as well. They set up a detailed list for you to sign and even give your telephone number. Where it is different from most open mics, or even jam sessions, is that they only ask for you to do one song. Usually the standard is two or three. But this method means if you’re absolute crap, at least the evening won’t have a very big hole punched into it by a boring or embarrassingly bad musician. So on the list they ask for your name, the instrument you play, the name of the song and your telephone number.

I spoke to two or three members of the band after I signed up, as they wanted to know what I wanted to do, what they could do playing along, etc. It was very well organized that way, and it put me at ease. When I spoke to Mark early on and told him that I would do “Crazy Love,” by Van Morrison, he said the band didn’t do that one, and he was a little worried. Then he realized I had my own guitar with me, so he said it was no problem. He would play the drums and the bass player, Dean, would also accompany me. I told them both that the chords were very simple. Both the Dean and Mark asked me to sing the beginning of the song for them just in their ear so they could get an idea.

“It’s a little soul-like, not too slow, but not fast,” I said, adding that I did it faster than Van Morrison, though, and in simple 4×4 time.

I then mentioned to Dean that I had spoken to the keyboard player at The Warbler, who was his friend, and he was delighted to have the passing on of hellos, as it were. The connection.

They wisely asked if I wanted to open the second set, and they gave me several minutes to plug in the guitar and set up the microphone. I say “wisely,” because this gave me the chance to get comfortable, and while the DJ played some music and the crowd caroused, I was able to use the monitors to play the chords on my guitar for Dean. It was also wise for me to open the second set because I thought that “Crazy Love” with me on rhythm guitar and vocals and the drummer and bass would be a lot more downbeat, slower and quiet than most of what the band did. So it was a great way to start out the set, rather than poking a hole in the middle of it.

So I went up and the woman singer introduced me to the crowd. It was rowdy but respectful, and obviously passionate about the music that night. I did not get the feeling that the music was an intrusion for the crowd, despite the giant TV screen with a rugby match on it. I felt fully relaxed, partly thanks to the half bottle of wine, but mostly thanks to the cool and easy treatment by the band, the preparation, and I love playing in front of big audiences. It’s more difficult to play for five people than 500.

Another thing that made me feel immediately at ease was that the sound system and monitors were absolutely fabulous. I could hear myself and my guitar perfectly, and that is very important when you play and it is so often lacking at open mics or jam sessions. Actually, having played with so many horrendous sound systems over the last year and more since I started doing this again, I probably prepared myself all the better for the moment when I have a good system. It’s like when you spend a year driving a crappy four-stroke engine go-kart and then you suddenly have a thoroughbred two-stroke machine that actually handles the way you’ve been trying to get the four-stroke to do – but effortlessly.

So I introduced the song briefly, after asking how many people were there just for the race…. (Didn’t get a big response on that one, but I later learned that my colleague sitting next to me in the media center from an Italian racing public was staying in the Ramee Palace hotel in Juffair where the Dublin club is located and he had seen the band every night, but didn’t go last night when I was there!)

“I’m going to do a little Irish soul here,” I said, “because that actually exists, particularly when it is done by Van Morrison. Here’s “Crazy Love”….”

I started the simple chords and the drums and bass went right into it too, and I was told later they were very conscious of trying not to drown out my acoustic, as they do whenever someone plays acoustic with them.

In any case, we just flew through the song without a hitch, without a glitch, and I felt great. I flew. I could see the audience quite well too, as I did not have any particularly badly placed and blinding spotlights. So it was very cool to do the song with a band, hear it perfectly, and see the large audience before me, some of whom looked like they were swaying to the rhythm of the song. The only real problem I encountered with the performance came at the end. I did not want to stop the song. Didn’t want to quit. So I decided to play a full run of the chords and then leap in and sing the chorus a second time at the end, just to keep going and wind it down, adding again, “She gives me love, love, love, love…crazy love. She gives me love, love, love, love…crazy love.” But in adding this at the end, I both screwed up the chords a little, and I think took the other musicians a little by surprise.

But all in all it went great, and I had several of the musicians pat me on the back and shake my hands afterwards, and one gave me a calling card for the band as I left the stage. Another asked when I would be back in Bahrain, another said, “Come back any time!”

Afterwards, two of them and one of the other guest performers complimented the sound of my guitar, which they thought was astounding. They wanted to know what it was.

“It’s a Seagull,” I said of my S6. “A Canadian brand. Made by the Godin Company.”

I picked it up and showed it to them.

“I know it sounds great,” I added. “I get compliments all over the world for it. And today, these strings are even old and thrashed out strings. They’ve been on it for a month and have been played really hard.”

I didn’t tell them exactly how, but I lend the guitar for Earle’s open mic at the Mecano bar in Paris, and it had also been played by other people recently at another open mic in Paris.

I didn’t tell them this time that the guitar only costs 380 euros, and I was on the verge of telling them about a compliment I had in England last year when a guy told me after playing my guitar that it blew away a 10,000 euro signature Martin that he had just played a few days before.

Anyway…. this blog is not supposed to be only about me, me, me. The jam session had a few other cool musicians as well. In fact, they were all cool and entertaining. A young Saudi Arabian guy named Osama who lives in Bahrain played with the band, doing Billy Jean by Michael Jackson. A local guy played a weird metal tonal drum, the name of which I’m afraid I cannot remember. But it was very airy and acid, sounded very cool with the band playing light and airy stuff behind it. And then there was a bass player who played a song I have suddenly forgotten!!! But REM comes to mind, though I don’t that was it, and I’ll have to take notes next time. This guest bass player came up to me afterwards to tell me he liked my song and he also complimented the sound of my Seagull guitar and wanted to know what it was.

He told me he was here in Bahrain working in military intelligence. What?!?!?! And playing bass on the side. I liked that. It was in a way a defining moment of the open mic jam session scene in Bahrain. I will definitely return to play again next year, and once again, my feeling is that I have discovered a completely different Bahrain to the one I have been to for the race on the previous five occasions I came here. Goodbye airport, hotel, circuit, airport. Hello jam session!

One problem was that this was really a musical experience in the international world of expats in hotels – this was not an authentic indigenous Bahrain jam. I failed to pierce into that world. But maybe next time. And there will be many more of those to come, as in Istanbul, for instance. Or Sao Paulo….

And my only regret about the jam session – the down point I mentioned earlier – was that I only played one song. I’d have loved to have done more. In fact, the guitar player/singer, asked me at one point if I was going to do another. So that made me feel good – but for some reason it just didn’t happen. Still, the old show business dictum says, “Leave the audience wanting more.” So I can’t complain.

Down Night in Bahrain – Hard Rock Times

March 12, 2010
bradspurgeon

It’s so depressing when you write a nice long blog post and then the computer eats it before you get a chance to put it up. Especially at nearly 1 AM. So I give up. In short, today was not a fruitful evening on the musical front. But it was not entirely without – for as I walked from the circuit shuttle drop off point at the Gulf Hotel back to my hotel I ran into a Hard Rock Cafe just down the street from my hotel. It reminded me of the evening I had at the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur last year when I went to listen to Eddie Jordan’s band there, and I did a blog post on Eddie and the Robbers at my F1 blog at the NYT.

The neon guitar of the Hard Rock Cafe in Bahrain appeared on the horizon of the cityscape....

So tonight, I went into the Hard Rock Cafe and had a beer. The place was bursting with people and at the bar where I sat were about five men dressed in the traditional white Arab garb – not sure what they were drinking. I asked a nice blonde barwoman if she knew a place to play music, like in an open mic or jam, and she knew nothing. She was from South Africa, but had lived here for some time. She said, though, that the woman at the door, the greeter, had lived here a lot longer and she might know about places to play.

So I left and on my way out, I asked the greeter woman – who looked Filipino – if she knew where there might be a place for an amateur musician like me to play.

“You know, an open mic or jam session,” I said. “Just some place where they might allow anyone to go up and play a little music. I’m here for a few days and brought my guitar and I’d like to find a place to play.”

“At all the bars in all the hotels,” she said.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, and got out fast.

That was it. Back to the hotel. Play a little music all by myself with the knowledge that I may have had a down day today, but there was definitely an open jam session at the Dublin Club tomorrow and I was told they’d fit me in.

So I went back to the hotel itching to play. I’m like a violinist I remember reading about when I was a teenager. It was either in a radio and TV announcing course I took or it was in a ventriloquism course, I cannot remember which, but the quote was very interesting. The violinist said: “If I don’t practice for one day, I notice it. If I don’t practice for two days, my family notice it. If I don’t practice for three days, my audience notices it.” Well, I may be the only one who notices it when I don’t practice for a few days, but I’ve still begun to get a little itchy if I can’t play every day.

So I went into the bathroom in my hotel room since it is well insulated from the other rooms next to mine, and also because it echoes nicely and gives me that feeling you get when you sing in the shower – or just a bigger sound. And I sang two cover songs I often sing, “Father And Son,” by Cat Stevens and “Just Like A Woman,” by Bob Dylan. I set up my handheld recorder that I use for my interviews in the paddock, propping it up on the towel rack in a way that Jac Holzman had me do (not in the bathroom but on a towel on a table in his hotel room in order to absorb and deflect any bad sound vibrations from the glass-top table) in Amsterdam a few years ago when I interviewed him, the founder of Elektra Records for a story. Anyway, I thought I’d put up here the results of those two recordings I did in the bathroom of my hotel tonight and leave the musical adventure at that for today as I wait with anticipation for tomorrow. You can click on the songs below to hear me singing them in my hotel in Bahrain tonight:

Father and Son

Just Like A Woman

Schumacher’s First TV Talks

March 12, 2010
bradspurgeon

Sorry I’m a day late on this, but I had a few technical things to work out before I could get this little snippet of video up for you. The F1 television rights rules are so strict, the contracts with the series so expensive and the images so tightly controlled as a result, that print media journalists do not have the right to use video footage from within the paddock. So whenever I get a chance at events outside the paddock, I like to take a bit of video footage.

Yesterday morning the launch of the season for the Mercedes Grand Prix team took place at a local Bahraini Mercedes showroom, so it was within bounds for video footage. As it turns out, I didn’t have my video camera at the ready and charged up when I suddenly realized I could take a little video of Michael Schumacher being interviewed for the first time during the new season.

I managed to slot my iPhone in between a few shoulders of the television journalists and caught a few minutes of Schumi on camera and then afterwards as he made his way over to the area for the print media conference. So I’m providing you with this uncut, unedited video footage of Schumi on his first, fresh morning of the media bombardment of the 2010 season.

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Monthly Archives: March 2010