Brad Spurgeon's Blog

I wrote about the Mazet pub open mic on this blog some months ago. It is a very cool pub on the Rue St. André des Arts in the Latin Quarter, and the first time they decided to try an open mic they did it on one of the most popular days of the week for open mics: Wednesday. That did not work out as well as it might have because the Highlander, about four minutes walk away, had a loyal and longstanding crowd. Now, after taking a break throughout the summer – a deadly thing for an open mic to do – The Mazet has learned its lesson, and has chosen Thursday night to run its open mic. There is no really good classic open mic on Thursdays, except now there is.

I went last night, and the pub was full of spectators, and there were a fair number of musicians. The sound system was excellent and compact, and my Gibson J200 worked perfectly with no fuss and little effort to work out the details of the best sound settings. I met an interesting Canadian by the name of John R. Lester, who decided to join me on my two sets and play harmonica – he had five in his pocket – and hitting a stool for a drum. Unlike the evening before at the Highlander, I felt perfectly at ease and happy, and the whole thing fell together very well. Because it is a new open mic, there were not so many musicians that you had to play two or three songs only. In fact, if there was one thing to criticize, it was that everyone got about a half hour on stage – cute little stage too, by the way, overlooking the street – and we had to wait a long time to play, some of us. But then many of us went up a second time. Really nice atmosphere in this clean, cool and well-attended pub. I hope it continues this time!

PS, I was a little pissed off when someone else sang before I went up my very popular song, “What’s Up!” What right have they?!?!? No problem. I sang it again later.