Brad Spurgeon's Blog

A bit of a crazy day yesterday as I did not go to bed in Singapore on Sunday night and simply hopped on the airplane at 9:30 in the morning after leaving my hotel at 6 AM. Slept – more or less – on the flight to Dubai, spent a bit of time there waiting for the flight to Paris, then hopped on that and slept one hour and then wrote four articles and read four newspapers, and read four pages of a book, and then took the RER from Charles de Gaulle to the Coolin where I arrived at 10 PM and JUST in time to be served a cheeseburger dinner. But all that is backstory to the evening of music in one of the best open mics in Paris.

Oh, but before I jump into that, let me just add that the coming couple of months are going to be just as crazy as I realized yesterday that basically I will have the following schedule in my life and on this blog: One week in Paris followed by two weeks of tripping around the world, followed by one week in Paris followed by two weeks of tripping around the world, followed by one week in Paris followed by two weeks of tripping around the world, followed by a winter in Paris – what’s left of it…and unless someone has an idea of where else I should go over the winter. (To hell?)

It will all be documented on this blog, musically mostly, but of course there could be the occasional day or two of absence while I’m in the skies – or outer space – and when I fail to find a musical venue in any of the several continents I will visit.

Oh, back to the Coolin. So, this open mic that started so inauspiciously a few months ago, suddenly, I’m finding myself going there every week and seeing that if I arrive too late I am No. 113 on the list of performers. I managed to get 16th last night at 10 PM, and that was just fine because I had to eat that cheeseburger and take a shower in the sink of the bathroom and change my shirt, which I said I had been wearing for 22 hours, but in fact had been using for closer to 40 hours, as I had put it on upon awaking Sunday morning at 3 PM.

There were new acts and old acts and in between acts and even very tired acts – notably me – at Coolin. I met several people who were eager to hear me do the same songs I had done the previous week – and the week before and before and before that – but I decided that I had to break into new territory and NOT do What’s Up! or Mad World or Father and Son. So I did one of my own and Only Our Rivers Run Free. A complete and perfect failure, is how it felt. I wanted sooo much to wow the world. But I did not want to do the same songs again and again. So I’ll just have to learn some more….

I will definitely be Coolin-ing it whenever I am in Paris in the coming wacky weeks… which in fact won’t be much.