I travelled from Tokyo to South Korea yesterday, but frankly, when I went to play at the open mic at a bar called “The Local,” in Haebangchon – a 20 minute walk from my hotel in Itaewon – I felt almost like I was back in Canada.
The Haebangchon neighborhood has recently grown up as another popular place for foreigners, thanks partly to its cheap rents, apparently. It’s defintely more downmarket than Itaewon. But when I heard about The Local and its open mic on Wednesdays, I was delighted. And not let down.
The open mic is run by a Canadian, Patrick, and owned by his girlfriend. It is a tiny, cosy, cool place that has become a magnet to the local foreign bands and musicians, and a lot of them turned up last night. In the room, either playing, or as spectators, there were at least four Canadians, including one from New Brunswick and two from Newfoundland. There were Americans, English, and others. Oh, and yes, Koreans too.
Like a lot of small bar situations, the open mic was a success because everyone is one on top of the other – as it were – and you cannot escape the music. I liked the decorations in the bar too, old photos of Dylan, the Doors, a few LPs pinned up on the wall.
Just generally a nice vibe and great open mic. You actually get to play for half an hour! Thanks to Yvon Malenfant for telling me about this place. Yvon, from Canada, was there to play too, and he lent me his cool guitar since my pick up doesn’t work, as I mentioned yesterday.
Gotta run to catch a shuttle and so will add more videos tomorrow, but must make due with the few I put up now….
Last night in Shibuya at the Ruby Room open mic in Tokyo more than made up for all the missed opportunities and frustrations of previous evenings in my open mic searches. It was a multidimensional evening of interest, fun and – today – fatigue. One of the most amazing and amusing things to happen was that it turned out that I was not alone as a person from the Paris open mics to show up at the Ruby Room last night.
A band from Paris that has taken part in many of the open mics that I do in Paris has come to Japan to play gigs and develop music and live an adventure here for three months, and they showed up at the Ruby Room last night. That was the band called One Bourbon One Beer. They are a very cool blues, pop indie kind of band that met at the Pop ‘In open mic in Paris and got together to make their history.
I had played at the Ruby Room two years ago, and some how like a homing pigeon I managed to get off the Shibuya station metro last night and walk straight to the club amidst the bright lights, signs in Japanese, curling sidestreets, large neon movie, store, club and other morass of a city scape. I loved this open mic two years ago because it was a beautiful small room on a small street with a good ambience, neat bar, cool stage and sofas, little tables spotted about, including a separate kind of covered table off to the side. Something about the ambience of the place had reminded me two years ago of the Truskel bar in Paris, and so it was pretty amazing to meet up with One Bourbon One Beer, who it turns out, also were on the same flight as me from Paris to Japan last week!
The other thing that is cool about the Ruby Room is the mixture of Japanese and Westerners. There were Brits, New Zealanders, Americans, everything. And the Japanese. In fact, before One Bourbon One Beer showed up and as I waited on the staircase outside for the doors to open and the sign-up to begin, I struck up a conversation with the leader of what would turn out to be the coolest Japanese band of the evening, a band called D.O.G.S. Koji, the leader, spoke perfect English, thanks to his former girlfriend from Canada.
D.O.G.S., it turned out, are going on a tour of Seattle in about 10 days, and they showed up at the Ruby Room to warm up in front of an audience before they leave for the United States. So I interviewed Koji for my open mic film, and then later interviewed One Bourbon, One Beer. I mean, what a wonderful example of the open mic zeitgeist: This young band from Paris travels to Japan to learn its chops in a different culture, while this young band from Japan – same age basically – travels to the U.S. to learn its chops – actually both bands have a little tour organized – and here they are both showing up at the same open mic in Tokyo….
There were some weird and cool acts last night, but it was quite different to two years ago, when there were a lot more acoustic Japanese bands. Last night I played four songs, and had to use my guitar without its pick-up, thanks to the butcher job done by Guitar Garage in Paris, that worked on repairing the damaged wood – after the guitar was destroyed by Emirates on the way to Singapore – and in working on the wood they destroyed the electronic pick up. (Now they don’t respond to my emails asking desperately if they have an idea how I can fix the pick up myself.)
But my thing went over well, and I felt in good shape. I thoroughly enjoyed it, got the crowd clapping along – well, no, they just did it – and the evening was immensely wonderful. I just had to forfeit sleep as I travelled today to Seoul, South Korea, from Tokyo….
P.S., it was only two of the three performers from One Bourbon One Beer: Genji Kuno (guitar/vocal) and
Thibault Delacour. The drummer did not come on the trip.
It is such a cliche to say the Internet has transformed our lives. But in the context of my open mic journey around the world, it really has made it possible to arrive in a country or a city and stay there only a few days and to find an open mic or jam session, producing it out of the blue, thanks to postings and lists and other forms of communication on the Internet about where to play and when. On the other hand, sincce the Internet is not a professionally run listing either, there are occasionally pitfalls and traps.
Yesterday arriving in Tokyo for two days, I decided to see if there were any open mics on Mondays. I know of one on Tuesday, but I decided to see if I could hit two on this short stay. Eureka! I found a listing all over the place for an open mic on Mondays in Tokyo in a place in the Roppongi neighborhood called Rock Factory. I tried to confirm it was still hosting the open mic by going to its web site, but several of the web site addresses I had for the place did not work, and another was in Japanese.
There seemed no reason for it not to still exist, though, since I found so many traces of it. In any case, I saw also that it was just around the corner from a bar called Bauhaus, where I had sung two years ago with the cover band that allows anyone to go up and sing along. Bauhaus is a very cool place that has been running since 1981 with the same band, more or less. It is not strictly speaking an open mic, but I thought at least I would have a place to play if there was a problem at the Rock Factory.
Problem there was. The place was closed down and looking like it had not been open for months. It also looked as if it must have been a very cool place. But I was very pissed off, since I had traversed the city in the metro and spent more than an hour trying to find my way around the metro and to the Rock Factory. Only to find, as I say, something that looked once very cool indeed.
I will put up a little video segment of me discovering the place, but the weak of heart and mind should not watch the video as I use so many expletives in a very short period of time that I now understand how bad that can sound…. But it is authentic! I came all the way to Tokyo to play an open mic, and it was closed.
No, okay, I exaggerate. I only really thought I’d do the Tuesday one, and I still had the Bauhaus.
But when I went to the Bauhaus, I noticed on my way up that there was a cover charge for the music of around 28 euros! I figured I would not get out it of there for less than 40 euros once I got a beer or two, and that although I had the time of my life there two years ago, the place would be absolutely useless for my film, and worse, my guitar amplification no longer works thanks to a luthier in Paris that killed a contact somewhere inside the guitar when working on the wood outside…. So I decided to call it an early night, eat in a Korean barbecue and put all my open mic eggs in the basket of the Ruby Room tonight.
PS, Going to the Bauhaus web page just now for the link above, I notice that they have a part they call “open mic.” So I shot myself in the foot by once again failing to heed my own personal inner call to not sit on your laurels and always go the extra step as you never know what you will find. Still, 40 euros is a lot of cash! (Not to mention the cost of a taxi after that when I would leave too late for the metro.)
I discovered the Plastic Factory night club, event space and art gallery through an open mic internet search that revealed it is the local of an open mic on the last Sunday of the month in Nagoya. It was one of three or four open mics that take place once or twice a month on days of the week in which I am in Nagoya, but without being on the precise days when I am here! That is a common hasard of this open mic adventure. But what suddenly became interesting when I visited the Plastic Factory web site was that they announced that last night there would be an open stage for musicians and DJs. So I decided to take my guitar and take the subway two stops from my hotel and join in.
Well, joining in turned out to be not entirely the accurate word. Dominate would be better, as I ended up as the only musician present. Having said that, I played my heart out to a small but cosy, kind and interesting audience, including Heinz Senn, the owner of the Plastic Factory, who comes from German-speaking Switzerland.
Moreoever, after I played Heinz asked me about whether I’d ever recorded my music, and I produced a CD with the four songs on it that I recorded last year. He promptly put it on the turntable and piped it through the massive sound system very loud. I have never heard it in a club situation coming that loud through speakers, and it was very cool and inspiring!
So was the Plastic Factory, this is clearly a hip and comfortable joint, and no wonder it has lasted seven years. I think Heinz is putting on a party next week to mark the seven years of the place’s existence. The web site gives clear instructions on how to find the place, but the small hallway entrance is still difficult to notice from the street. You follow it down a long corridor until you come to the bright yellow/green entrance door, enter the room and you feel like you’re in a cool, private loft. There is a nice stage with a big DJ set up on it, but room also to play music in front of that, with a screen above the stage for projections.
Heiz said his Harmonium Parlour open mic is the biggest and most successful in the city and that they have 80 to 90 spectators and up to 24 musicians every month. And given the vibe of the place, I can believe it. And he may be of European origin, but he said the clientele at the open mic is very much a mixture of Japanese and foreigners. So was last night’s clientele, by the way.
This morning as I stopped in at McDonald’s in Sakae to have my daily dose of pancakes and egg McMuffin – in order to avoid the rice, fish and vegetable “breakfast” at the hotel – I saw once again the same scene I have noticed in this McDonald’s every day: Revellers or workers taking a morning nap on the tables of the restaurant. Is their lifestyle so tightly and overworked that they take every minute available to sleep? Just when I thought the McDonalds was a center for crashing out, a journalist colleague of mine in Formula One, told me that this morning he had seen them sleeping in the 7 Eleven store too….
The video I took this morning shows far fewer than the usual number of sleepers, but it was after 9 AM, and it was a Sunday – there are more on the weekdays. I just had to get a shot of it for the blog….
I also put up a couple of videos of my songs being piped through the sound system at the Plastic Factory, with a segment of “Except Her Heart” and a segment of “Since You Left Me,” which I also sang live.
When we think of urban life and culture in Japan, we think mostly of Tokyo. At least I do. But I know very little about Japan, even though I have been here several times. I am getting to like it more and more on each visit, though, and part of that is related to learning how to read the culture and where to go to find it. Last night just walking through the streets of Nagoya, in the Sakae area, which is the central downtown part of the city, I nevertheless had a bit of unexpected culture thrown in my face.
Nagoya may be Japan’s third most populated city, but it is somewhat understated, with most of the nightlife happening behind closed doors in basements and upper floors of buildings that look otherwise rather discreet. So I was surprised to suddenly have my attention grabbed by a bunch of people dancing in front of an office building at around 10 PM, using the glass front of the building as a mirror. This was very cool stuff, and so I grabbed a bit of it on video for the blog.
Not far from this spot I heard a fabulous sound of rock music coming from the street, and my first thought was it was either an outdoor concert or a music bar with the doors wide open. Turned out it was a young band busking outside the Sakae subway station. They were really cool. I was running out of battery power on my Zoom HD Q3, though, so only got a bit of it. The guitarist was hot!
Meanwhile, I think I found another open mic place to play, on Saturday evening. But I keep my fingers crossed.
First night in Japan, first night lucky. I had a cheap meal of noodles – very good – and then made my way directly over to the R&B Melrose bar in Nagoya. I first played here two years ago, and when I returned last night, the owners not only remembered me, they actually had a piece of scrap paper on which I had drawn a little map-like thing showing the location of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
This is a very cool bar that has a full stage of equipment – drums, Marshall amps, microphones, and a collection of guitars, all there for the public. It is a cross between an open mic and a jam session, and last night I realized that it reminded me a lot of the Actors’ bar in Singapore. You can show up several days of the week and take the stage either alone or in a group, or joining people who are present, and play whatever you please.
So it is indeed an open mic, and a jam. The owners love music, and just let people play what they want, while making sure that each client has a chance to play. A really classy place.
Last night I played alone, and then with the drummer. Then I ended up playing with all the other musicians and we did a lot of songs, and I got a lot of them on video – me, a bass player, two guitarists and the drummer. But the videos are too long for the blog and I’ll save them for bits in my documentary film.
For the moment, though, I have the What’s Up video and a couple of others of the other guys jamming.
What luck, first night and I scored! (Well, yes, musically, I mean.)
This post will no doubt be little more than a postage stamp-sized marking of territory where it might have been quite fun and elaborate. But having played at the Galway Pub open mic on Monday night and then returned home and stayed up all night before catching a flight to Tokyo and then a bullet train to Nagoya, I must say that my intellectual capacities are a little dulled out.
The all-night thing was intended to help me beat jet-lag, and it worked to a good degree, but I’m still feeling it. (I slept on the airplane for several hours during Paris daytime hours, where normally… this is turning into a rambling nothing….)
The Galway evening was fun, and it was particularly well illuminated by an interesting couple of guys passing through Paris from a California-based band called Alma Desnuda. They were funny, light, and also capable of being heavy and emotional. I liked the stuff a lot, and a glance at their Alma Desnuda band web site shows they are invovled in all sorts of interesting projects, including educational ones.
They were passing through Paris, and happened to celebrate the birthday of one of the two of them. Their band, they said, was founded while they lived in Spain.
I am writing these words from my hotel in Nagoya, and fighting the fatigue but hoping that I will find an open mic here tonight anyway. I have seen all sorts of open mics in the city, but most take place on days I will not be here. I hope nevertheless that the one I attended two years ago is still running on Thursdays…. Keep posted…. and I’ll keep posting.
PS, if you are in France, it seems that tonight the France 3 television channel will be airing a report about the Ullmann Kararocke at the Bus Palladium that I wrote about a couple of days ago. Part of the report was filmed during the evening I took part in, as I had mentioned. Don’t know if there will be any moments of me in it, but check it out, it’s bound to be mad!
I have attended Nicolas Ullmann’s Kararocké at the Bus Palladium two or three times before, and I have signed my name on the list to sing two or three times before. But last night was the first time Nicolas pulled my name out of the hat. I had come to wonder if it was fake, or what? I mean, there had been so many very cool singers, many from local bands, that I had thought perhaps only those who Nicolas liked got to sing. This is clearly not the case. The Ullmann Kararocké may have all the trimmings of a big rock ‘n roll, almost Hollywood, extravaganza, but down at the bottom of it all is the simple and same formula that you find the world over:
There is a backing band of high calibre, and a list of songs, and anyone who wants to can go up and sing along with the band. It’s one of those “live karaokés.” But Ullmann’s has a twist with all the showbusiness trimmings. Ullmann himself dresses up in a costume each time – like Alice Cooper, a werewolf, or some other bizarre thing -, and he sings a few songs, runs around the room, drinks Jack Daniels and just basically goes mad. It is not much different from the hugely successful “Anti-karaoke” in Barcelona at the Apolo Club, in that it has a good feel of debauchery and costumes are encouraged. But unlike traditional karaoké, with a live band both the singer and the spectators are treated to a much more concert-like situation. And it is a great way for budding singers to try their hand and being in the real music situation….
And although Ullmann’s Kararocké does not always take place only at the Bus Palladium, that is a huge advantage. I have written about the Bus before on this blog – several times – and I have played in the restaurant on the first floor several times. But playing in the main concert hall on the ground floor is just something else. It is a huge stage, high above the spectators, with great lighting, a great sound system, and a packed full house of spectators on the floor below. This is really addictive rock star territory here! And all the top bands in France and elsewhere have played in that room on that stage.
Ullmann’s Kararocké also has special guests of high calibre, which is a cool added attraction. Last night it was the French rock star Arthur H (son of that other rock star, Jacques Higelin, and brother to that other pop star, Izia). Another special guest was Michel Gondry, who was a drummer in the band Oui, Oui, and then went on to become a filmmaker, and has directed all sorts of films including music videos for people like Bjork, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Beck and… dammit, wish I could have done my “Mad World,” because he did the Gary Jules “Mad World” video, Donnie Darko version.
There were not many songs on the list that I figured I could do without learning them or rehearsing. But “What’s Up!” of the Four Non-Blondes was on the list, and I do that one a lot these days, even if I do it at a higher pitch than they do. And I usually screw up the timing at one spot. Anyway, out of the hat came my name, up to the stage I ran, didn’t have enough time to think about being nervous – and had drunk more than a half bottle of wine plus two beers, so hey… – and they started playing and I started singing. It was very strange as there were so many things to take in at the same time while also getting into the song entirely. There was the band, the stage, the lights, the crowd, the room, just the fact of suddenly being up there, not to mention what the fuck to do with my hands and body without my guitar! But I knew my salvation could only be to give everything to song and inhabit it and live it and wail through it all my particular frustrations of the moment. Aside from a momentary screw up in the place I usually screw up the rhythm – “Well I try, oh my God do I try!!!” – I got through it and had no crises, and although I did not feel quite as liberated throughout as I do when playing it myself, I got some good responses from people afterwards.
Not only that, but Nicolas decided to give me a gift – and aside from beers and swigs on beer for other performers, I think I was the only one to receive such a gift. It was a triple DVD of a fabulous French music television show from the late 70s, early 80s that I had read about recently in Rock & Folk magazine. It is archival material of live concerts done specifically for the television show, which was presented by Antoine de Caunes. The show was called Chorus, and the DVD has hours and hours worth of concerts by bands like The Jam, The Stranglers, The Clash, The Police, but also James Brown, Pat Benatar, Link Wray…. It is just a magnificent DVD and as I write these words I am already on Disc 3, having listened to discs 1 and 2 today. (Currently watching John Lee Hooker, whom I saw in concert in Ottawa in around 1973, opening for Gentle Giant!!!)
In addition to all of this excitement – on a night where I had decided I would probably just stay at home! – I also met some friends there, and watched them perform. It turned out the Burnin’ Jacks were there, and Syd performed a song and Félix, my guitarist of the same band, played several songs in the second half of the show as lead guitar player. The most touching was when Antoine went up and started playing Teenage Kicks, which I knew he had seen Earle Holmes sing so many times at the closing of his open mic in Paris where the Burnin’ Jacks got their start. (But I was late getting the video going so only have a fragment of Teenage Kicks.)
What a load of fun that all was for nothing but a karaoké! No, an Ullmann Kararocké!!!
PS, I forgot to mention that the evening was also being videoed by a French television channel – one of the big ones – but I’m not sure why….
PPS, It was also the 46th birthday celebration of the Bus Palladium!
I’m not sure which direction to zoom in on this story, but it’s one of the coolest ones in my life in the last two years. And last night at the Théatre de l’Essaion in Paris – near the Pompidou Center – it continued with extraordinary power. I attended a concert in a small venue to listen to Pierre Bensusan playing his acoustic guitar and singing. Sounds like nothing, right? Forget it. This guy is one of the world’s great, and original guitarists – and I’m not the only one to say that, as I will show. But there is also a personal story to this, so hang on and take a ride….
It was two years ago almost exactly that I was returning from Italy after the Italian Grand Prix and wandering around Milan airport with my guitar bag on my back. I had arrived at the airport very early, and while wandering around I crossed paths two or three times with another man carrying a guitar. We had nodded to each other as people carrying guitars will sometimes. But it was when I entered the gate an hour or so before my flight to Paris and I saw the same guy – he looked about my age, healthy and intelligent with a sharp gaze – sitting on one of the seats and fingerpicking a light melody on his guitar, that I decided to approach him.
Part of my interest was the guitar itself, the other part was just my general curiosity about anyone with a guitar in an airport or anywhere else, especially as I am on my neverending world tour of open mics and jam sessions, discovering what the world of music is all about. That was my first year of the tour. So I approached the guy and asked what kind of guitar it was, as it was indeed very interesting and old looking.
“A Lowden,” he said. And he showed me the guitar. It turned out he had had it for some 30 years or so. It also turned out that I had just recently discovered these extraordinary guitars made by a luthier in Ireland named George Lowden. I’d been reading about them in Acoustic magazine, I think, which is a magazine from the UK about acoustic guitars.
We struck up a conversation. The guy, I learned had been attending a guitar festival outside Milan, where he had been playing as a featured guest. He lived outside Paris. I told him about my life, a journalist travelling the world and playing in open mics and jams. I think I told him I’d had an amazing weekend playing with anarchists in Milan.
As the flight began boarding, we ended our talk – I showed him my Seagull, by the way – and he suggested we exchange emails. So we did, and when I looked at his and saw that his name was Pierre Bensusan, I said, “Hmm… I just read a story in Acoustic magazine last week by a gutarist with this name….”
“Yes, that’s me,” he said, adding that it was a regular column he did for the magazine.
I had rememebered seeing the name and wondering where the guy had come from and why I had never heard of him, as he was French, and I have lived in France most of my adult life.
Upon returning to Paris, I looked him up on the Internet and found his web site, and I ordered the complete works collection of CDs of his life works that he had just put out. Oh, he had given me a compilation – or mailed it to me -, I must add, and I had really enjoyed it. Looking up who he was, where he came from and listening to his music I was struck by many things: We were born only 5 weeks apart, he had listened to and been inspired by the same traditional music as I was at the same period of life in the 1970s, and he was often mentioned in the same breath as one of my favorite acoustic guitar players, John Renbourn.
So fastforward to last night. I loved Pierre’s albums, but I did not really know what to expect in the concert. I thought I would find some kind of laid-back, world music kind of thing in the concert, a reproduction of the albums. I mean, Pierre was elected “World Music Guitarist of the Year” by Guitar Player magazine in 2009 or something like that. And as I found last night, he was on the cover of Acoustic magazine in July 2011.
What was astounding in this very intimate concert last night, was just how amazingly good and entertaining and “prenant” was his playing last night. Pierre does not really like to collaborate or play with other musicians; but as I saw last night at the Theatre de l’Essaion, he does not need to. He creates so many different kinds of sounds, he crosses so many different styles, that he is trully a one-man-band. But in the best possible sense of that word. He is a virtuoso. He has his own sound. And the astounding thing is that unlike so many guitarists or other musicians who range and rove between styles, Pierre absolutely and truly captures the reality of the styles. He can jump from Celtic to jazz to Brazilian Bossa Nova and you are entirely and completely convinced by the world he inhabits and delivers to you. It is not fake. Renbourn did an interesting bluesy record with a top American bluesy musician, but although I love the record for its technical virtuosity, I am not convinced of the feeling and world behind it. With Bensusan, I am. Deadly.
Listening to the records is one thing, but hearing it live and above all, SEEING him do this stuff live is extraordinary – his fingers seem to cover all strings, all frets, all bases, with a simplicity I could only imagine possible, but never believe. I just cannot figure out how he is not better known than he is. His playing is absolutely extraordinary!
Anyway, so much for being a critic. I will never succeed. That’s not my goal, though, as I am just another musical traveller looking to be inspired by the truth. I was flattered, too, when after the concert I went to speak to him and introduced myself and he said immediately, “My travelling friend!!!!”
He remembered our meeting in the Milan airport, and the fact that music is truth, truth music, for both of us. No doubt. Except that Pierre Bensusan is soooooooooo goooood that he makes me question why I continue playing music at all. (Okay, because I enjoy it – but still….)
Oh, by the way, Pierre’s last show is on Sunday – tomorrow – at 18:30 and obviously, I highly recommend going to see it….
