Continuing on in the same theme and lifestyle of Monday night, last night I attended two Paris open mics – O.K., not the three of Monday, but still. What happened was I arrived late at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance, found my name last on the list, and decided to cut out before I played, in order to be still on time for the Baroc open mic. Still, I was on time to hear some good and interesting musicians at both places.
It was no doubt inevitable that Tuesday would be a reaction night to Monday: Most people had gone out, got drunk, celebrated too late, slept until 5 PM, and therefore did NOT go out on Tuesday night, the last of the days of the long weekend in Paris. So the Ptit Bonheur was not as full as usual, although it developed into an O.K. crowd.
So I whipped off to the Baroc in a taxi, found it to have a pretty good crowd and some musicians I had not seen before. And I was there just in time to go up after two or three other acts. I had a riot! I played some of my most pounding rhythmic songs in order to impose a different feel to the previous performer, and with the thought that maybe, perhaps, as in the past, someone might come up and play with me. And that happened – piano, another guitar and percussion. We went mad. I met people, spoke, mingled, had a great time.
I travelled from one madhouse scene to another until I alighted at the Galway and settled down for some great music, beer and chat. That does not mean I didn’t have fun in the madhouses – but you can live only so long in a madhouse before your feet need a strong, settled earth beneath them. The thing that happened was a combination of a soccer – football, if you want – match between two teams from Manchester and a French public holiday the following day (today). Consequently, the venues were more packed and more crazy than usual.
Still, I was really pleased to arrive first at the Tennessee bar and find myself next on the list. I had not played at this, one of my favorite open mics in Paris, for a very, very long time – always arriving too late, and then leaping off to other realms. So I went up and played four songs, one of which was my new one, which I have not officially named. I had to read the lyrics, and that NEVER seems to work well for me – especially in a place where the chatter is more important than the music. As it seemed last night.
So I watched a couple of other acts and then moved on to Coolin and got there just in time to watch the end of the match on a very, very large screen. I need a screen that big, or even bigger, to make soccer of any interest to me at all, since if I see it on a television I get bored as hell. (Not fair, not really true: I have made the effort most of my adult life to NOT get into soccer. It’s the last thing I need, I think, to break the last strand of sanity I have left keeping me away from being involved full time in professional sports appreciation.)
So I was something like the third person up on the stage at the Coolin bar, but as it turned out, the crowd was there mostly for the match, too, and they were kind of digesting whatever it was that happened in the game and thinking about drinking all night since they were not going to work today, and I felt there was only half a brain present for the music from each listener. No, wait, let me correct that. Football fans only have half a brain to start with, so it must have been a quarter of a brain.
(Sorry, really, just joking.)
Anyway, so I left that mad house – telling Lena, one of the MCs – that it was a bit to mad for me. And I went to the Galway. Now the Galway, naturally, had ALSO had the game airing before the open mic started, not long after I arrived. But at the Galway these screens are pretty much normal sized TV thingys. So the minds had not been quite so consumed by the match, and the crowd – large though it remained – was more open to music. By then, of course, I had already sung seven songs and I was very warmed up.
There was also a peculiar sort of Irish band called the Shamrocks, which is comprised of a couple of French guys from the south of France…. So that set a kind of tone and atmosphere that was different to the previous joints as well. So I played four songs and then settled down and spoke to an interesting Irishwoman for the rest of the evening.
All in all, it was an unexpected and fully refreshing evening with a difference.
