I was sure that the summer months would mean Ollie Fury’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance would die out a little, so I arrived well after 10 PM. But I was wrong about the popularity of the place dying out. And I paid for it. I had taken a cab to Ollie’s with Vanessa as we decided to pick up where we left off at the Galway and try our songs again. But when we arrived at Ollie’s the place was so packed with singers and spectators that you could not get down the stairs, and worse, there was just no more room for any more performers on the list. I waited until a few cleared out and I took a brief bit of video footage to show how packed the tiny room was. Then we took another cab and headed off to the Baroc bar open mic near Belleville.
We arrived at Le Baroc bar after 11 PM, and while there were a number of musicians there and they were having fun jamming and playing, there was still room for Vanessa and I to try our material again. In fact, we did a total of 25 minutes of stuff, including most importantly the “I’m No Good,” of Amy Winehouse that we learned the day before. I am still horrendously shaky on the guitar playing and had to read it on my cell phone. But Rejean, the MC of the open mic, heard Vanessa’s voice and decided to join us immediately on piano. So it was a nice moment.
What’s really cool is that although I recorded it myself, I had to do all 25 minutes, and I don’t want to cut up the video – no time to edit. But Le Baroc has recently started a new feature of their musical evenings that I am sure is going to catch on all over the place: Web TV. So you can actually watch the evening live on the Internet at the Baroc web TV site, and you can also check out the archive videos. So I have put up a link here to some of our stuff. There are two songs on each of these, and the Amy Winehouse does not open the video, so it could be worth it to fastforward to find it….
The first video in this link contains “Just Like a Woman,” and “I’m No Good.” The second video in this link contains my song “Borderline,” and “What’s Up!” – on which we both sing, and we are later joined by a sax player.
August 6, 2011 at 2:27 pm
bonjour onjour Monsieur ^^
Fantastic! I was searching for information about open mics in paris and found your blog.
First, thank you fro sharing all thosme moments and beeing so information about the open mic “scene” here.
I watched a few videos and some of yours too. That’s what beeing a musician is all about for me ahah, traveling, from bars to bars, city to city and share my love for music ^^
Do you have some kind of “event calendar” where we can follow your next open bar and see you?
take care Brad, and thanks again.
August 6, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Thank you Mickael, that is a great idea to do a calendar. If I could figure out how to incorporate one I will do it. You are not the first to make a similar suggestion, in fact. The only problem is that half the time I never know precisely where my feet are leading me until I land there…. 🙂 So planning in advance can be tricky…. but some things are certain….
August 6, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Thank you Mickael, that is a great idea to do a calendar. If I could figure out how to incorporate one I will do it. You are not the first to make a similar suggestion, in fact. The only problem is that half the time I never know precisely where my feet are leading me until I land there…. 🙂 So planning in advance can be tricky…. but some things are certain….