December | 2010 | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Classics Continue at Ptit Bonheur: Le Plat Pays de Brel

December 15, 2010
bradspurgeon

Did Ollie Fury, the host of the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance, get an idea from Thomas Stock? Last week I posted a recording of Stock singing Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Javanaise” and I commented on how I wished more of the young generation of French singers would sing some of the French classics, instead of just the English rock songs. Yesterday, Ollie did a fabulous rendition of Jacques Brel’s “Le Plat Pays.” But remember, Ollie is one of those people who is as French as he is American in his upbringing and language abilities – when he speaks French, you think he’s French, and when he speaks English, you think he is American – so he can honestly lay claim to any English or French (or Belgian) music that he wants….

I am frequently asked by French people if I sing in French, and my usual response is: No. The thing that has always stopped me from singing in French is that the only French songs I ever wanted to sing were those of Jacques Brel, and I felt I could not get close to his sound, nor could I add any of my own interpretation with authority or interest. So I always found myself doing NO French songs. (The only exception is last year I suddenly got the idea to do the French rock group Telephone song “Un Autre Monde.” I still have not memorized the lyrics, though, and the rhythm ain’t right – but I put a recording on my myspace of it, done in my living room the night I learned it.)

But I also feel that singing Brel is not only a stumbling block for me. It is difficult for anyone to do convincingly and well and to bring something new to. Brel was such a monster of a performer, and his voice so distinct, that, good luck. But last night Ollie, after two or three false starts, got really into the song and did a fabulous job, as you will hear on the video below that unfortunately I recorded only with my iPhone 4, having again left my Zoom Q3 at home….

Three Sunday Adventures, one common thread

December 13, 2010
bradspurgeon

I’ll start immediately by saying the common thread between the three musical venues I want to talk about here was Stephen “Danger” Prescott, the Aussie musician of Paris. There may be others, but Stephen is the inimitable one.

My Sunday brunch was a surprise, massive, incredible, jubilant success…there was a salsa lesson and dance going on in the back end of the Mecano at the same time. So that meant that those who REALLY wanted to hear the laid back music of the brunch, got to bunch up in the front of the Mecano bar to listen to me and this week’s guest.

This week’s guest, if you have not guessed (sorry, that’s almost a pun), was Stephen Prescott, of Melbourne and Paris. Who would have thought that one of the audience members would be another Aussie in off the street – but that was good timing, since she knew several of the songs that Stephen sang, and requested more. In fact, Stephen has a vast and varied repertoire, from Aussie songs to the Pogues to Stan Rogers. Because of the salsa dancing and its accompanying music, at Stephen’s suggestion, after he and I did a couple of sets, he suggested we bring the guitar into the room at the front of the Mecano and sit down and just sing a few songs like that, at the table.

That’s when the brunch turned very cosy and informal, and Stephen and I shared the guitar and hammered out songs that are perhaps not always on our repertoires. We even had the visiting Austrian, Wolf, play and sing the Hank Williams song I do, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” And I thank Wolf for doing a vide of me when I sang my song, “Borderline.”

From the Mecano we all went over to the Disquaires, where Ollie Fury was set to play. But his set did not play until near 10 PM, so in the end we stayed only for Yaco and his band’s set.

Then we headed off to the Galway, where Stephen plays MC every Monday night at the open mic. There we listened to the amazing German phenomenon named Yann, who looks, dresses, speaks, acts and sings like an Irishman. Please don’t ask me to explain. But I think I liked best his Richard Thompson song, and the song he did with Stephen – the Stan Rogers one.

A long brunch, in the end, that went on from 2:30 to 12:30. Fun for a Sunday afternoon and night.

Burnin’ Jacks Burn ’em Up at the Culture Rapide

December 10, 2010
bradspurgeon

A day after the snow storm with all Paris closed down, I still decided to go out and try my luck at the open mics. I ended up with a back-up plan, too. It turned out that the open mic at Aux Copains bar on the rue Victor Letalle was just up the street from La Feline, the bar where my friend Syd Alexander was planning to celebrate his birthday with friends.

So what could be better than turnin’ up and doing a bit of both things? I assumed Syd’s party would go on all night, but it turned out to be a few drinks only. I assumed more than just a handful of people would turn up for the open mic at the Copains, but it turned out only about five of us made it.

So I had some quick thinking to do. I did a song at the open mic, and I went down the street and invited Syd, and his friends to come to the open mic too. After all, it turned out that Syd’s group, the Burnin’ Jacks, was there to celebrate his birthday. But the atmosphere at the Copains ultimately struck me as not right for the Burnin’ Jacks – it is mostly a spoken word open mic, and there was just another feeling, and so after I played I rushed back to the Feline to find Syd and the gang of about 10 people just about to come and meet me.

“Change of plan,” I said. I proposed to them that we all go up two metro stops away, to Belleville, where I knew there was the blues jam of the Cabaret Culture Rapide. This, I was sure, would be perfect for the Burnin’ Jacks, and for the jamming blues musicians and the audience.

Turned out I was right. The Burnin’ Jacks did four or five songs, got the place really rockin’ and rollin’ and even the Belleville Blues Band looked like it enjoyed the set. Then I played a couple of songs, and later in the evening I did more. The Burnin’ Jacks, I think, had fun, and they got to advertise their upcoming gig next Friday at the Feline….

I, at least, was happy that I could turn around an otherwise potentially boring night after the snow storm when few Parisians dared go out, into something fun and cool.

Incidentally, the guy who plays the cool lead guitar is Félix, and he also played on two of my recordings at the Point Ephemere in July, on the songs, “Memories” and “Except Her Heart.”

An 8th of December in Paris, and long ago in Toronto and New York

December 9, 2010
bradspurgeon

I have always kept the same image in my mind of me walking down a snowy Toronto street, at Bathurst and Queen Streets, to be precise, and looking down at the slush and ice on the sidewalk, and up at the lights above the street, and thinking about the death of John Lennon. It was 8 December 1980, and I had had my own birthday the day before and I think I was basking in some strange sense of how I could be feeling good about my birthday – this is no longer the case – while Lennon would never reach another year, and the world – and I – was swamped by the tragedy of his death. How could such an icon die? Worse, be murdered?

In any case, who knows why we sometimes have certain banal images attached in our minds with big events (I mean, why Bathurst and Queen Streets? Right next to the Wheatsheaf Tavern, I think it was….) Of course, it’s the “where were you when John Lennon (or JFK or Martin Luther King etc) died?” question and phenomenon….

So last night, in Paris it was the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder, and not only did I have the memory of the snow Toronto evening in my mind as I walked to the Highlander to play in the open mic but I actually also had the same image of the Paris streets and sidewalk and streetlights: Paris was, as Toronto was 30 years before, under a blanket of snow and slush and ice. Where such a thing is banal in Toronto, however, here in Paris it means the city nearly stops functioning.

To Thomas Brun‘s great credit, however, the open mic went on. And it was quite a success, considering that most people had a hard time getting there – no buses, all taxis occupied, streets unwalkable, and metros full. While the Highlander went on, I learned later that the vocal jam at the Cavern was called off because some of the musicians could not get into town.

So it was that the theme at the Highlander was John Lennon. Just before he opened the evening Thomas told me I would go up after him – if I wanted – and began the evening singing three Lennon songs. I was rubbing my hands with delight at the thought that I would play second because I know only one John Lennon song, and that is, “Jealous Guy.” So I thought that I had a very, very good chance to be able to play it. If I went up in the middle of the evening, I was sure someone would play it before me. Oh dear, the third song Thomas did was… “Jealous Guy.”

But I did have a joker, and that was a song that Lennon did, and his rendition of it – rather than the original – is what really got me to thinking I should learn it. So I told the crowd that I would do “Stand By Me” as my Lennon tribute.

This was a night to remember as well, as it turned out, for Paris was SOOOO closed down that by the time I decided to go home the metro had stopped, all of the few remaining taxis were occupied – and every street corner had someone trying to flag down a cab – and all the hotels were booked. I finally managed to find a hotel room for a few hundred euros after a last minute cancellation by someone, and because I got to the counter before the many people sleeping on the floor and couches of the lobby…. Airplanes had been cancelled too, and people could not return to their homes so the hotels were crowded. Only in Paris!!!!!

La Javanaise at the Ptit Bonheur – oh La Chance!

December 8, 2010
bradspurgeon

Last night was Ollie’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance bar near the Pantheon, and I had good evening. But it was really punctuated by the song sung by Thomas Stock, an up-and-coming Paris musician with a killer voice at age only something like 22 (not sure exactly).

I mention the age because what was so cool last night was Thomas’s choice of opening song in his moment behind the mic in the cave of this nice little bar on the rue Laplace: It was one of the rare times I have heard anyone in the open mic scene in Paris do a song by Serge Gainsbourg. Why don’t they do it more often? Instead of yet another Anglo-Saxon pop hit from the same period. In any case, Thomas chose “La Javanaise,” and did a great job.

At the end of the evening a Spanish woman asked if she could play, and it turned out to be her first ever appearance in front of an open mic audience playing guitar and singing. But when she got behind the mic she realized that she had to read her lyrics and chords and that she could not see in the dark. This is a very cosy open mic, but the darkness means that with my Zoom Q3 we never see anything. I wanted to hear the woman, so I proposed that I stand over her shoulder and beam down my iPhone in its flashlight mode, an application which turns the iPhone into a flashlight, and which I had downloaded in Sao Paulo so I could read Mojo in the darkness in the traffic jams.

I did not realize until today when I went to upload the Thomas Stock video that Ollie Fury, the organizer and MC of the open mic, had grabbed my Zoom recorder and videoed a bit of me holding the light, and the woman singing. I have included it here primarily because for the first time – why did I not think of it – you can catch a larger glimpse of the room in which this open mic takes place. By the way, it was quite full earlier on, but by the end there were just a few of us left, as you will see in the video.

The Difference a Guitar Makes

December 7, 2010
bradspurgeon

I won’t give a day-by-day account of all the open mics I do in Paris, because that could get tiresome (if it hasn’t already). But the one little point I took out of last night’s playing at the Galway – I also played at the Tennessee Bar, where there was some great jamming with many musicians together – was the difference a guitar can make to a musician’s sound.

That may sound like a banality. But as I have recently been contemplating buying a new acoustic guitar, I have continually come back to the same conclusion: Since I’m not much of a guitarist, my Seagull S6 does me just fine. In fact, this fabulous guitar has been praised around the world, even once in England by a guy – a good guitarist – who said it blew away a 10,000 euro Martin signature guitar he had played a few days before. And this Seagull – minus the pick-up – costs less than 400 euros.

So back to last night. Stephen Prescott is the MC of the Galway open mic and I have always enjoyed his singing and stage persona, and I have also been intrigued by his guitar playing. I’ve liked the guitar playing, but I have always found there was something I could not understand about it, or pinpoint. That may sound weird, but last night when the battery ran out on his regular guitar – a travel guitar with no body to it – he asked if he could use my Seagull. I agreed with no problem – the guitar has been used for two years now at various open mics by people around the world, and I love that.

So then when Stephen started playing away in his usual way on MY guitar, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Here, finally, I realized, was what Stephen’s guitar playing really sounds like! The Seagull gave to it, above all, the “body” it was missing with his no-body guitar. A depth, a range, a sound that was very cool indeed. It not only added a whole dimension to his music, but also made my guitar come to life in a different way than when I play it. Unfortunately, I ran out of battery life on my Zoom Q3 recorder at the same time as his guitar ran out of pick-up battery life, so I only got a small little taste of the Stephen sound on my guitar in video, and more unfortunately, the automatic level thingy toned down the guitar too much when he really got to playing it hard. But give it a listen:

P.S., it is normal that Stephen does not have a great guitar for his open mic, since it is the one that gets passed around to all takers, every Monday, many hands, if they do not have their own instrument.

P.P.S., I forgot to finish off with one of my conclusions! To see the difference with Stephen’s sound when he used a different guitar made me reconsider my relationship with my S6. On the other hand, so far I have only found Gibsons and a one or two other guitars that cost 5 to 10 times more than my Seagull that strike me as adding a little difference in sound to my guitar playing….

Viking Moses and Zara Sophia at the Brunch

December 6, 2010
bradspurgeon

I don’t know how this is happening, really, but my weekly brunch has continued to prove entertaining and surprising week after week, despite occasionally seeming as if… it won’t. Now, if that is not a very original line, and sounds kind of oddly forced, let me say that the two performers I had at my weekly brunch at the Mecano bar in Oberkampf in Paris yesterday were anything but forced or un-original. In fact, if you can define a kind of genius in popular music as being a singer songwriter who grips you with the originality and the interest of their voice, emotion and the stories they tell without sounding like anyone else but themselves, then both of these performers were touched a little by that genius.

I first saw Zara Sophia at the Highlander last week and immediately invited her to my brunch. The microphone at my brunch being about 10 times better than the mic at the Highlander, her voice was a real treat of emotion, texture and highs and lows of melody.

Zara has just arrived in Paris from her homeland of England, and I had listened to her songs on her Myspace and found that with one of them she reminded me a little of Sandy Denny, the late singer for the band Fairport Convention, who also put out several solo albums. When I spoke to Zara yesterday I learned that, hey, guess what? Growing up she heard her parents listening to Sandy Denny all the time, and her mother even sang some of the songs to her. I got Zara to do one yesterday, as well, the wonderful “Matty Groves.” But Zara’s voice is anything but a imitation of Sandy Denny. In fact, there are some clear touches of it, but the rest is Zara….

To my horror, however, I found out that for perhaps only the second time since I have started recording with my Zoom Q3 portable video and sound recorder for this blog, I left it at home. Fortunately I at least had my iPhone 4 to record in HD, but the sound is NOT what my Zoom would have provided. So I’m sorry to let down on getting some of the great textures of these voices across.

That is particularly noticeable with the other guest, the extraordinary Viking Moses, who was in Paris to play a show at the International, and who dropped by for the brunch, thanks mostly to the fact that his friend Earle Holmes was there and invited him to come along.

It took a considerable amount of chatting him up, but I managed to get this Missouri-born Appalachian world travelling minstral to sing a few songs. The brunch, thanks to his sudden appearance, went on until after midnight. From its more or less 3 PM start time (I was actually eating my brunch at that time, and went on a little late). Now Viking Moses was a discovery for me. But anyone who has heard of the term “anti-folk,” will probably have heard of him. He’s in there with people like Adam Green, who once opened for Viking Moses. And oddly enough, he reminded me a little of Stan Rogers, the Canadian folk singer from the Maritimes whom I have mentioned before, and who died in the early 80s in his early 30s.

Viking Moses has a very unique sound to his voice, he plays a mean understated guitar – the singing is often understated too – and his lyrics are dynamite stories both personal and fictitious. There are also touches of Tom Waits to this, although not in the sound of the voice – just in the music, some of the feeling and general zeitgeist of it. I came home and today listened to two of the three albums I picked up from him yesterday, and found it really fabulous. One of them he wrote with the idea that it should be sung by Dolly Parton. And how strange is this, he threw in a song by Dolly Parton that he sings himself on the CD: “I Will Always Love You.” Yes! And unfortunately for me, I happened to have been doing my push-ups at the moment that he began singing that, and I was close to tears and could not complete my full number of daily push ups, despite trying to block the lyrics out of my mind, and his plaintive take on this song.

Viking Moses is also a fabulously interesting troubador who travels the world on a shoestring budget and plays small concerts everywhere, from London to Budapest and elsewhere, often in mini concerts for 20 to 30 people in their living rooms. This, of course, reminded me of my own adventure playing music around the world – except his takes much more guts.

His sound appeals to me because it is real, it is true.

And by the way, when the term “anti-folk” came up, he scoffed at it a little and said something to the effect that, “I don’t write anti-folk, I just write songs.” The label had been foisted on him, it seemed. A real discovery, and yet again another surprise day at the brunch.

BSMS at the Bus Palladium

December 4, 2010
bradspurgeon

I decided not to attend the barman’s open mic at the Cabaret Culture Rapide since I had played in the blues jam at the same venue on Thursday night. Instead, I accepted with myself to go out naked into the night – that is to say, without my guitar on my back – and to visit the Bus Palladium to see the band, Blue Shade and the Magical Smile, better known now as BSMS.

I did not regret it. This is a very interesting French band that has been around since 2004 and mixes blues and rock and psychedelia. Sometimes it sounds as basic as Ten Years After, sometimes it sounds like Frank Zappa and sometimes, sure, why not, like Jimi Hendrix. Above all, live, it grooves and moves and the musicians have some charisma, stage presence and coolness – in bred. That was never more visible than after they appeared after a warm-up band that had none of those qualities – gee, what was the name of that band? Doesn’t matter.

Check out the bits ‘n pieces of BSMS:

Ollie Fury at the Espace B and Me at the Acoustic Jam Session

December 3, 2010
bradspurgeon

Actually, I ended up in both places last night and had a nice bit of exercise walking between the two of them. That’s the beauty of the iPhone; you can pull up the GPS and see how long and HOW you can walk from one venue to the other and get your daily exercise – in the -10 degree weather.

Although I have seen and written about Ollie Fury in Paris for a while and in Singapore during the F1 race when Ollie happened to be there at the same time I was, this was the first time I had the opportunity to see him in action with a whole band. On bass and some kind of harmonica/keyboard instrument was Yaco Mouchard, and there was another guy on percussion – bongos, snare, something like that. It sounded great. A beautiful combination for Ollie’s haunting compositions. Ollie told me in Singapore that he was going into the studio to record like this, and now I’m really looking forward to the result.

I took the 36-minute hike from the Espace B – where Ollie played – over to the Cabaret Culture Rapide bar where I have written many a time about my Friday-night open mics there…without a microphone. But last night was the first time I have attended the Thursday night jam session with the Belleville Blues Band. And I was not let down. I enjoyed the band immensely, and I was delighted to be able to find four of my songs that just managed to squeeze into a blues feel of the evening. I was invited to do more, but I couldn’t think of anymore to do just then. Will no doubt return. But it was great fun to play with the guitar player and drummer, and then the bass player joined in and so did the other guitar players. I ended up with the full band on “I Shall Be Released.” (I had started with “Crazy Love,” then went into my blues version of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and then did my own song that I wrote when I was 16 and which has yet to find a title.) The band then played on its own brand of blues and blues rock, and while I am not a huge fan of electric blues evenings – with the same three chords endlessly played – this was a completely different effect with the acoustic instruments, and as you will see, with the cool singing.

Zara, Ollie and Texas in Paris at the Highlander

December 2, 2010
bradspurgeon

It was Wednesday, so it was the Highlander. I had been intending to sign up early at the Highlander, and then run over to the Tennessee to see Rafa and his band, with Les DeShane on lead. But in the end, I immediately signed up for the Highlander and met a newcomer, Zara Sophia, from England, so I just had to sit and talk and learn about her, as I had a feeling that she might have some talent.

How can one have that feeling? No idea. But I did, in fact, enjoy immensely what Zara did, so give it a listen and see if you agree – in the video below.

It was a great night with Ollie Fury doing a great song of his, with wonderful fingerpicking, and his rich voice. And one of the best moments of the whole night, unfortunately for the audience, ended up being last: Texas in Paris. Baptiste of Texas in Paris is the guy who hosted the Thanksgiving evening of music at the Disquaires last week, and he decided to come around and sing three of his songs. Fabulous. If only he had not been scheduled last, or if only the crowd had stuck around for his original sound….

I played three songs, and weirdly, oddly, bizarrely, found myself destroying my song “Since You Left Me,” by placing words in the wrong place, changing words and going mad with the realization – and trying to hold the whole thing together anyway as if it was all being done the way it is supposed to be. What fun!

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Monthly Archives: December 2010