Even the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic in Paris will take a summer break in August … of a single day. Next Tuesday there will be no open mic at this great venue; Yaco, the MC, was apologetic: “I’ll be here! I will be in Paris!!!” But all workers need occasional breaks. Musicians may not, but proprietors and barmen and women do. Anyway….
It was already the least well attended of the recent open mics at this place on the Rue Laplace, near the Pantheon, in several weeks. But that did not prevent it from being a fun and cool night with some new musicians – including Phil Donnan from California, who is filming to do a thing about music in Paris – and who also, by the way, has an interesting idea of having a “mobile studio” with him and he is looking to record people at their homes in Paris – and then there was also the man with the very cool resonator classical guitar, that he got built himself.
Resonators are those old fashioned guitars from the 1930s mostly used for the blues, with a steel or tin resonating plate on the front to help with volume in the days before amplification. I am not sure if the classical resonator ever existed, but now it does….
Personally, I decided to force myself into singing a couple of songs I have not yet memorized, having to read the lyrics. But I wanted to change what I do at this local open mic, since I’m always singing the same songs. I did a Rolling Stones…> “Take me to the station…” and a Bob Dylan, which had too many lyrics for what I did… “When you’re lost in Juarez, and its Eastertime too….”
All in all, a good night that enabled me to get home relatively early in order to spend more time on MY film today….
Quiet But Cool at the Bonheur Before the Break
August 8, 2012