If it were not for it being one of the best open mic nights at the Galway in recent memory, I’d have had lots of reasons to leave the Quai des Grands Augustins feeling petit. And crappy. My Zoom Q3 ended up dead. The buttons no longer work to press record, and it happened in the middle of the open mic. Then, I decided to record the musicians with my iPhone, and a little way into the first recording – of Juba – the battery died out. So it was that I found myself without any form of recording device just as the evening was heating up into having a fabulous grande finale with an amazing singer who lives in Nashville Tennessee, and quite by chance, a group of spectators who showed up, and were also from Tennessee. The singer, it turned out, was not amazing for nothing.
The Galway does not often turn into a jam at the end of the evening, or a singalong, or a situation where Romain of All the Roads, the MC, keeps on singing on and on – in his great voice – with other members of the audience and musicians getting up to sing along with him. But this guy from Tennessee had already had a slightly extended set as he was so good and Romain asked him to do another song.
Then when Romain went up to close the show, the guy from Tennessee, known as J.P. for the somewhat French name of John Paul, got up and sang harmonies with him. Two sublime voices. I felt so helpless sitting there watching this and listening, and try to bang life into my Zoom Q3HD recorder, which has served me so well on maybe three round-the-world trips, but to no avail. All was DEAD.
It was not until today when I received an email from John Paul that I learned his full name, and wanting to write something about his nice, melodic, emotional and laid back singing I did a search on the Internet – he said last night while on stage that he had a new album coming out soon – and I found out that he was the singer for an Indie band that had some small, but not negligible success a few years ago. Called, “We the Living,” it was managed by the semi-legendary A&R, Scott Austin. And speaking of Austin, the band had played many festivals, including South by Southwest, in Austin; and won prizes and had songs selected here and there for interesting showcasing, like something to do with Levi’s if I remember correctly my morning reading….
So the answer to my question of why is this guy so good, who is this guy?, was that.
I had a great time playing last night as well, a little before the Living guy, and had a great time playing with Juba on lead guitar accompanying me. It was also the first time I successfully played my new song, “Gotta Shake Her,” and having Juba play along was just what was needed – it would have been good with drums and bass too, oh, and certainly with some harmonies from JP, ex singer of We the Living. I guess, in the end, that it was appropriate that my Zoom and my iPhone both died before the singer of We the Living took to the stage too, since the Living are now dead. But I expect John Paul Roney’s next band effort is going to be very much alive.
PS, things were so much fun at the Galway that today I completely forgot that the night started off with me going to the Tennessee Bar open mic – yes, there’s a Tennessee connection again – where the excitement REALLY began, especially with the woman – not a child, a woman – who got locked into the toilet. According to the bar employee who dismantled the door to let her out, all she had to do was to turn the lock in the other direction to the one she was trying – which would have saved her 20 minutes of terror…. 😉
PPS, thank goodness I own another Zoom Q3HD, so I will be able to take the other one immediately with me to the next open mic I attend and there will be no downtime in recording the many, many videos that make this blog so slow to download for some people with low bandwidth or little RAM.
My second “Morning Exercise Rundown,” – the first of which ran on 7 April – will be much shorter than the first. I simply have fewer CDs to talk about, and a vinyl album I cannot talk about. But while there may be few CDs – three of them – they are about as contrasting as is possible, so I will talk mostly about that.
Two of the CDs came from my new source: As mentioned in my first post, the Lotus Formula One team is giving out CDs quite often now to journalists and any other takers and interested people in the paddock, as they have some kind of a sponsorship deal with Columbia Records. So at the Bahrain Grand Prix, in the 36-degree heat of the paddock, they set out for the taking a CD by Calvin Harris, the Scottish DJ, singer songwriter and record producer. Entitled “18 Months,” it is mix of dance music from beginning to end, and as such, its beats and rhythms and vacuous vocals make it perfect as morning exercise music. And nothing else for home consumption. In a club, yes, that’s the stuff. My only other “pertinent” observation is the strange and perhaps “telling” fact that in the 15 tracks almost every credit is attributed to someone with an “i” in their name, or an “i” vowel sound: “Kelis” “Rihanna” “Nicky Romero” “Ellie Goulding” “Tinie Tempah” “Dillon Francis” “Dizzee Rascal” “Ne-Yo” and “Ayah Marar” It turns out that almost every track title also goes through the “i”-sound ringer. Well, so much for my structuralist analysis of Calvin Harris’s dance music – wish I had more to say…but I was in the throes of sit-ups and side-bends and toes touching, so what do I know.
Bob Dylan’s album Tempest
The big, big bad CD, the one I was happiest to receive, and least happy to talk about, is “Tempest”, the latest Bob Dylan album. This is hardly a timely review, since the album came out last year and has been massively written about in the media, and massively listed as one of the top albums of the year in the music magazines around the world. And as a Bob Dylan fan for most of my life, I had, naturally, already listened to several of the album’s tracks over the Internet. Having said that, as proof that the CD, the album, the physical collection of a musical oeuvre still carries weight and counts for something, I was very happy to take this physical CD object and put it in my Marantz CD player and listen to it over my Bose speakers, and not just on my computer’s iTunes.
Until I did, actually. Then I was struck with the biggest existential problem I have yet faced with my morning exercise music talk. How can I write about Bob Dylan’s latest album when I love Bob Dylan, when almost all of the reviews have been great, when as I say, it has made it to the top, or near the top, of the lists of the year’s best albums? And I just don’t get it? Yes, yes, yes. This album has one, maybe two or three tracks that have something really great – and the only one that really, really stands out for me is the first one, “Duquesne Whistle.” Using this old time music, singing this folksy up-tempo song, I really feel as if Dylan has written some kind of a classic here. Not, I feel, a classic Dylan song, but some kind of American classic. It was very hard for me to accept his voice on this, until I decided to pretend that it was not Bob Dylan, but Satchmo himself. I never complained about Satchmo’s gutteral, destroyed voice – why should I complain about Dylan’s? No doubt because Dylan once had a few other voices, and I liked several of those better – the original one from the early 60s, the one from Lay Lady Lay in the Late Sixities, the one from Blood on the Tracks in the mid-70s, the one from Desire at the same time, the one from some of the songs in the 80s, even…. But this Satchmo voice has never worked for me. In fact, for much of the album, I thought I was not hearing Dylan, but Tom Waits….
Another song that cannot be thrown away is the last one, “Roll on John,” about John Lennon. Come on, with subject matter like that, and you know the two knew each other…!
If Bob Dylan can’t write songs like Bob Dylan anymore what chance do the rest of us have?
But the problem with this CD, and maybe with why the critics give it so high marks, is that this IS Dylan. And I kept trying to figure out how some of these songs would sound when sung by other musicians…but then I wondered how many actually WOULD be sung by them. I love the fact that Dylan keeps making music, keeps touring almost every day, keeps creating. But even he said, in his fabulous book, Chronicles, that he can no longer write the kinds of songs he did in the 60s. That was in the chapter about when Daniel Lanois produced an album of his and wanted him to write the old stuff again. And that made me think of a funny line that I just kind of made up and found plopping into my brain as a guy who writes some songs too – without the success of a Dylan: If Bob Dylan can’t write songs like Bob Dylan anymore what chance do the rest of us have?
Of course, I step back from that and say, it’s got nothing to do with anything like that – we all reach our own creative peak in our own way in our own time. And ultimately, as T.S. Eliot said: “For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.”
Well, let’s hope Dylan keeps on trying – but I can’t really see how this CD got to the top of so many “year’s best” lists. There is a repetitiveness to the rhymes and melodies in a lot of these songs – that have also appeared in many of the Dylan albums of the last 30 years – that was not there in his classic work. The new Bowie album, by contrast, I could see if if it gets there at the end of the year….
In Bahrain I also got given a CD from a fellow Canadian musician, Félix Fréchette, who was the guitarist at the Dublin Club jam session on the Saturday night where I played – along with him and his band. The CD is a 10-track album of songs written and sung by Nelle Thomas, who is also Canadian – she is English-speaking,from Montreal, whereas Fréchette is a French speaking Quebecer – the music of which was written mostly by Fréchette. He also plays his lead guitar on most of the tracks.
Nelle Thomas
The two, as I say, were part of the house band at the Dublin Club in the Ramee Palace hotel, but this CD – called Noise Rises – they made in Canada in 2012. It is a highly professional, eclectic mix of songs, starting off with a kind of soul music and heading into some soft rock and finishing off with a song on acoustic guitar that is almost – but not quite – folk.
While there were a number of songs that just sort of passed me by – although they were beautifully played and produced – there were three that really stood out for me. “Tell a Sad Story,” has a good catchy melody and lyrics, and really hits the spot. “Never Been Accused,” with its sort of 1970 rock sound, and its ripping lead guitar by Félix Fréchette is another – oh, and there is another nice guitar solo on “One Day at a Time.” And I really love the last song on the album, “Eleven Dollars,” with the great lyrics, vocals and acoustic guitar – reminds me very much of Tuck & Patti. Certainly the best song of the album – but maybe my liking of vocals, acoustic, folky stuff. Still, NO! I love Hendrix, King Crimson, Zappa, Talking Heads, Joy Division, so what the hell – I just think this one works.
It was interesting, once again, to compare an album by a completely unknown young couple to that of Dylan, and to say, well, yeah!!!
Peace In Love
I also got a vinyl album by the British indie band, Peace, – their first album, “In Love,” which has been getting great reviews (9 out of 10 at NME) – but I am very old fashioned, and have no turntable, so I could not listen to this. Wait. That seems odd. Old fashioned? I grew up with vinyl. I had a large collection, then got rid of my turntable because CDs were better…. Right, that’s where the old fashioned bit comes in…. I don’t know ANYTHING, vinyl is better…. well, not for morning exercises – too much work putting the cartridge arm and diamond down the vinyl – and, actually, according to my research, vinyl is NOT better than digital…. but let’s leave that one alone, lest I become even more unpopular than I will be after these morning exercise “reviews” turn me into an evil “critic.”
The Tennessee Bar’s open mic on Mondays in Paris is one of the most successful open mics in Paris. Part of this is due to the location and style of the bar: It is in the heart of the Latin Quarter, near the Odeon metro, and it has a cozy small cellar with a good sound system and stage, and walls and ceiling that always remind me of the home of Fred and Barney Flintstone. But it is also a success due to its MC, James Iansiti, an expat American artist and musician. While I was away on my most recent travels around the world, James decided to introduce a second, new open mic at the Tennessee, which takes place on Thursdays – when there are practically no open mics in the city because they all want to be on the same days earlier in the week – and he has changed the format slightly.
The Thursday open mic has a feature performer or band that plays an extended set (last night it featured Jovanny Parvedy). That’s the only, but significant, difference between the Monday open mic and the Thursday open mic. Oh, and the audience is slightly different, James said: Since Monday is the day that most bars have little regular customers, they set up open mics to attract customers. The result is that most of the customers are the musicians and their friends. But on Thursday, James noted that regular customers, and customers passing through who hear the music, also make up the spectator crowd. So that’s nice.
James knows what he is talking about. With more than half a decade’s experience running the open mic, and a lot of music and “happening” experience before that in the U.S., he brings not only organizational experience, but his own singing and musicianship to the evening. So much so that a film company decided James was worth a short documentary himself, showing off his art, his world, his open mic. Called “Point Zero,” it tells things about James and his world that even I, after five years of regular attendance at the open mic, had no idea about. Check it out:
Last night as I prepared to go to the Vieux Léon open mic and then the Highlander open mic and then maybe the Cavern open vocal jam, I received an SMS from a friend inviting me to go see a burlesque show at the Manufacture Bar Rock in Paris near Pigalle. Starring the inimitable American, Paris expat, Louise de ville, who calls herself a feminist, and puts a sarcastic and humorous edge on her patter, it would actually be the third time that I join my friend to see a Louise de ville burlesque (and this time her crew of various other burlesque acts). And the third time I write about it here. I suspect it will be the last time.
That conclusion has nothing to do with the quality of the show, Louise’s talents (she’s very smart, works an audience well, and she’s provocative), or the friendliness of my friend. It has everything to do with my lack of understanding of what today’s Burlesque is all about. I withheld coming to any conclusions on the first two times I saw Louise’s show, and actually, I will not really conclude anything today, since I don’t feel I can conclude anything. Nor, in fact, does it call for or require or need any concluding. Either you appreciate it, get it, and like it – this burlesque thing – or you don’t. And I am in the latter category!
I think Louise could see that herself when during the break between the first part of the evening and the second part she came up to me in my corner nursing my beer while looking at all the women (the spectators) – including Louise – jumping around on the dance floor in a moment of relaxation, and she said: “You look like a dad!” “Huh?” She said it was the way a father would look with a kind of judgmental air over the actions of the young people partying…. Well, all I could say to her was that, yes, actually, “I AM a dad….” She left with no comment!
If that made me feel like I was over-the-hill, old and a stick-in-the-mud, I took no offense to the comment at all – I kind of liked it. But it did make me reflect on my own reactions to the rest of the evening’s show, my reactions to which DID make me uneasy over just how much of a “dad” I might be. I just do not “get” what this modern Burlesque movement is all about. It doesn’t do anything for me. I mean, here, in a nutshell, are my observations, the way this stick-in-the-mud dad sees the thing:
– So first of all, Burlesque for me was always the old fashioned, naive step before hard-core stripping of the kind you have all over North America and in a few other parts of the world was allowed after a change in mores: IE, burlesque was naive, and really limited by the old fashioned mores of society: So the women had pasties on their nipples and their shows were really watered down until society changed and they went completely naked. Today, the new mores, changed mores are still accepted and “hardcore” strip clubs and strippers still exist. Those places make these burlesque shows look coy, naive, and like strange games-playing. As far as the sexy element goes, really, you see more of a woman’s body on a beach in the south of France than on the burlesque stage in Paris….
– Right, so if it is not about the woman’s body… but wait… one of the burlesque women last night wore panties that when she turned around, it was written: “Haze Me.” Louise pointed out to the audience – and whether this was tongue-in-cheek or whether it was real, I cannot fathom, that such a statement was actually a kind of reverse feminism, and that it was not the statement that it apparently said – IE, my body is yours, and I’m hot for you – but rather it was a way of putting men off the idea of hazing a woman in first year college. Listen, I do not buy this at all. Before she kindly explained that, the only thought going through my mind was, “Holy crap, this woman is asking for it???” It almost made the hazing seem desirable. (I have the same opinion of all these women who have been stripping down around the world to bare their breasts for women’s rights…. No, no. I don’t believe in that reverse psychology.)
– It seemed to me that this super naive approach to burlesque was of more fun, enjoyment and hip-coolness to the women in the crowd than to the men. Of course, there appeared to be quite a few lesbians, so perhaps that was normal. But like one of the other shows I saw, it seems designed almost more for the women than for the men.
– I really did feel like a dad when I found a large percentage of the audience clapping, cheering, shouting approval and making other manifestations of pleasure and encouragement at the same time – when I really didn’t know what all the fuss was about. I mean, again, in terms of the nudity, we ARE living in the age of YouPorn.
– So if this is NOT about the nudity, what IS it about? Sketches that did not wring my emotions dry in the way a good song at an open mic by a talented singer does. Again, naive stuff – or faux naive. Sarcastic, etc.
– Whereas I genuinely have a great time attending open mics and listening to musicians and playing music myself, and I genuinely understand and accept the good cheer and encouragement and praise – or looks of disbelief at something bad – of my fellow open mic spectators, I really felt as if much of the audience reaction in the burlesque show was disingenuous. What was all the fuss about!!!???
Conclusion in the form of a Brad Spurgeon and Burlesque FAQ:
Was it a fun night? Well, yes, I enjoyed myself. It was diverting. Distracting. Made me think.
Should there have been more to it than that? Well, yes. More emotion, and more understanding. More self-identification, perhaps – or rather, fantasizing.
So was it a success? I would say it was a great success, as the room was cramped tight with people, all apparently having a great time and buying beer.
Will I go again? No, I see no reason why I would go again. I probably would not write this post if I intended to go again, since I’ll have myself strung up and whipped with a leather horse whip no doubt, if I show up again.
What will I do instead? Continue doing what I love doing, which is going to open mics – even if I seem to have lived every kind of open mic on earth – but also keep on going out to try to discover other forms of entertainment and community get together…. (Any suggestions are welcome.)
Do I think burlesque is morally depraved? No way. I just DON’T get it!!!!
Do I understand how modern burlesque is supposed to empower women, whereas stripping is supposed to debase them? Not at all. Please help explain it to me.
Am I really a dad? Absolutely!
Am I really an old geezer who just doesn’t get it? Well, at least as regards burlesque, yes, I guess I am….
Am I politically incorrect? I hope so….
While all of this may sound like ultra-conservative curmudgeon stuff, do I consider myself a conservative? Absolutely not!
Do I apologize to my friend who invited me and to Louise? Absolutely.
Should readers go to see Louise de ville and her gang in their show on Wednesdays at the Manufacture in Paris? Darn right!
Do I want readers to enlighten me as to what it is that I miss in the point of today’s burlesque? Please do!!!!
PS: The women were beautiful, but the other problem with this thing for me is that since I like making videos so much for my blog…I was frustrated in that I did not feel like it was right for me to make videos of this show! 🙁
Last night was my first time back at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic in what feels like maybe a month, after my travels. It was a refreshing return, and I found that this, one of the best open mics in Paris, was also hosting another two or three regulars from the past who had returned to Paris at least for a few days. But there were new people too, including several from England who have come just for the open mics…
One of the returnees was Tory Roucaud, who has been living in Switzerland for a year or so now and who has set up the only open mic in Zurich, called…Open Mic Zurich. So Tory returned with great relish, and it was with relish we listened to her hot vocals again….
Also returning was Arthur Goldiner – just call him “fang” – with his sensitive ballads and his amazing Lowden guitar. Oh, and speaking of his cool Lowden, Arthur was unbelievably giving, as he allowed me to use his guitar when I played my two songs. The Lowden has a very unique and pure sound, and is just a beautiful guitar, particularly good for fingerpicking – Pierre Bensusan, the French fingerpicking genius, is a longtime advocate of the Lowden, and even has a signature model of his own – and I foolishly used it only for strumming. But there was worse: Last night the mic cable or the mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance suddenly ceased working, so most of the open mic was done acoustic. It was great, intimate, and the room is small enough for it to work without amplification. But when I sat down to play my songs, and to try something new, I began with my song, “If I Only Had You,” and I suddenly felt vocally and melodically and tonically, very uncomfortable. Something was clearly wrong, and I felt my voice really low, the sound barely coming out….
I continued and as I played I forgot a line or two, but did the best I could as I was thinking to myself, “What is wrong!!!???” And then I figured it out: The Lowden, with its magic sound, MUST have been tuned down a level. After the song I asked Arthur, and he said it was – that he had forgotten to tell me. He then advised me to use the capo up two frets for everything….
So, I then decided to leap onto the edge of a precipice and do “May You Never,” by John Martyn, which I am still learning, and feeling very shaky about. In fact, after learning that it was a favorite song of the spectator sitting right in front of me, I lost all sense of confidence and groove, and could not get the song going, forgetting the chords, the lyrics, everything! So Tory, bless her, suggested I do “Mad World.” After at first saying I had done it a million times there, when she offered to sing along in harmony, I accepted…. it was pretty cool with that Lowden, in fact, despite my strumming, and with Tory’s – and other people’s – harmonies….
The evening ended with a supercool duet of Wayne Standley and Yaco playing very cool sounding 50s-ish lead….
Well, I beat my record Saturday in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, by playing in two open mics/jam sessions, in this tiny country in the Gulf. I was all set to pulverize my record by playing in a third jam session on Sunday night. But then it all went wrong.
I had heard about the jam session at Rocky’s Café when I was at the Dublin Club in the Ramee Palace hotel and I asked about other jam sessions or open mics. I had been told it was a little like the same jam session that I wrote about last night, at the Dublin Club. But when I got to Rocky’s Café, which is near the Dublin Club and Bennigan’s, I found a completely different environment, and little by little it all fell into disarray, and I decided to leave without playing.
Here’s what went wrong:
– arrived to warm reception by security guards outside who saw my guitar and said, “Here for the jam session?” “Yes.” They let me in. No problem here…but…
– enter reception and a greeter sees my guitar and says: “Here for the jam session?” “Yes.” He watches me enter the bar… then comes and grabs me and says, “You can just check in your guitar and then come out and get it again when you play.” I don’t want to leave the guitar at the coat-check, as I want to tune it and keep it near me, and I complain a little that it is full of: Wallet, Zoom video recorder, telephone, reading material – Mojo, Uncut, etc. -, spare batteries for recorder, jacket and one or two other things. To no avail, I remove them and put on jacket and pile full the pockets of the paraphernalia and enter the bar again.
– look at menu and ask for lamb chops for around 5000 local whatevers. “You like lobster?” “Well, yes.” Waiter points to the lobster and it costs 24000 local whatevers. “No, lamb chops, please.”
– “To drink?” “A beer.” “Huh?” “A big one.” “Oh, ok.” So next thing I know, a waitress, instead of bringing me a “pint” of beer – my meaning of “big” – brings a jug containing about five pints, or five litres of Guinness, which ever amount is bigger. I nearly fall off my chair and send her away with the oil barrel of Guinness and tell her to bring a pint, but she’s not happy at all. Next comes the waiter returning to nearly threaten me and tell me I asked for a big beer. “Yeah, but not that massive thing!!!” He pretends he does not understand what a pint of beer is when I explain, until I start to go and show him one on another table. So he accepts….
– at the break I go to the band’s singer and ask about the jam, and she sends me to the guitarist. He asks what song I want to sing, and I say “Mad World.” “Don’t know it, any others?” “Wicked Game.” “Don’t know it.” I explain that I would like to play my guitar and sing, and he says I can use his, but that they don’t like playing songs they don’t know. I say I’d like him to play lead with me, and that the songs are really easy. He says, “I’ll speak to the band and see.”
– as I see them prepare to go back up on stage – I thought – I go back into the reception to take my guitar. Now the man behind the reception tells me I cannot bring my guitar into the pub. “But your colleague told me I could do it before I play!” “No!” “OK, I’ll tell you what, I’m going to leave. You win.”
– I return to tell the guitarist I am not going to play, I hate the place and the people running it, and I’m leaving. Turns out he’s from Quebec, we have a great little chat, he offers me his guitar to play. He’s a great guy, and I have no complaints about the band – as they seem very cool indeed.
But I still had a bad, bad impression of Rocky’s and although it did not happen during the time I was there, I was sure I would be accosted at some point by one of the 15 or so women hanging around the bar – as they had visibly been doing with the 80 or so men at the tables….
So, no, not my favorite evening, and I was glad to get out of Rocky’s. Still, I’m sure it all just got off on the wrong foot. But I do, I do very much hate open mics or open jams where you are not allowed to bring a musical instrument into the bar where they take place.
There has once again on F1 race weekend been a fair amount of noise in the media about protests and social unrest, about armoured vehicles and police fighting rioters with teargas in Bahrain. But like last year, I didn’t see anything myself, not venturing out into the villages outside the capital, as I was busy enough working on my sports stories. Again, however, this year, I did find the time to go jamming in downtown Bahrain, where life does indeed go on as usual.
That is not to deny the civic strife and the problems in the country, as there is social unrest. But not only was it life as usual in the city, but in fact, personally this year I have already beat my record for the number of jam venues I have played at in the city. Prior to last night, I had only played in one place here in Bahrain, as I had only found one place: The Dublin Club open jam at the Ramee Palace hotel.
This Irish bar in the ground floor of the Ramee Palace in Juffair is a lively joint, and has a great expat band featured throughout the year. This weekend it played to a backdrop of an F1 weekend, and it held its usual jam session. The jam takes the form of the house band opening the stage for anyone who wishes to sing or play along, in the company of the house band.
That meant that for me I got up and played “Wicked Game” with my acoustic guitar and vocals, along with a keyboard player, a lead guitarist – Félix Fréchette, from Québec – a couple of backing vocalists, a drummer and a bass guitar player. It was really magical, especially as the band is so good, and despite not having played the song before – apparently – it went very smoothly, I thought.
I recognized a few of the other jammers from last year, a vocalist or two, and a guitar player. The U.S. navy fifth fleet is based here, and some of the jammers come from there, I understand….
But the night had begun with a dinner at Bennigan’s restaurant and bar, where there was also an open mic going on in the pub opposite the dining room. The house band here is a Filipino couple named Wally and Tanya. Wally plays lead guitar and sings, and Tanya sings. They also use recorded backup stuff, like drums, and generally have a vast repertoire of cover songs.
But on Saturdays they open the stage to anyone, in addition to playing themselves through the evening. I played three songs, and Wally played lead on two, while he shook maracas on the third – my song “Borderline.”
Sometime in the next day or two I will put up my Bahrain guide to open mics and jam sessions, as promised at the beginning of my world travels….
The first ever open mic that I did after my decades-long break from performing was in Shanghai in a bar called the Blues Room, in October 2008 after the Chinese Grand Prix. There was only one other musician at the open mic, and that was John. Last night, four and a half years later, after I found that the original open mic I intended to go to was running a band instead, I found there was another open mic, at a place called Windows Scoreboard. When I walked in, I found only one other musician present – and playing – and that was John.
It ended up being quite a fun night with lots of people coming to this massive bar to play pool, ping pong and to watch the television and listen to the music. As it turned out, this would not be a massive night for other musicians, and I ended up doing three sets and playing for perhaps an hour and a half in total. As did John.
He told me a lot of his regular musicians had the flu, and I believe it – he was suffering too!
In any case, I had a great time and highly recommend this bar and open mic, which I have now added to my list of open mics in Shanghai.
I did not do any open mics or other musical performances in Shanghai last night, aside from writing a song in my hotel room and putting together the promised Shanghai version of my Thumbnail Guide to Open Mics.
I wrote about how on my first night in Shanghai I had been disappointed about how two of the open mics I did here in past years no longer existed, and one of the bars had closed down. Last night, I found myself attending a new, and fabulously lively jam at a new, and fabulously cool bar/bistro called Le Comptoir.
It took my slow-thinking brain a little while to understand why there was a French guy behind the bar, another French guy in the hall smoking a cigarette, another French guy behind the mic, a Belgian on the drums, and another French guy later on the drums. The place was named Le Comptoir, after all!
So this is a French joint in the middle of Shanghai and has French magazines like La Revue du Vin de France in the front hall, it has posters for Cognac on the wall, it has style and quiet chic. It has been open since September, and the jam has taken place now for two months.
This was a real free for all jam, and in some ways it reminded me of the near hippie like feel of the jam at the Szimpla Kert in Budapest from a couple of years ago.
There were not only French people, either, and that is what made this Shanghai, a cosmopolitan gathering of people, including beautiful actresses and signers from Germany, Ukraine, China, Africa and all over the place!
