Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I often learn lessons about how to tackle life through the adventures of my open mic attendance around the world. The last two days were yet another example.

Monday night, I showed up at the Coolin open mic to find that I was too late to get on the list for any reasonable playing slot – ie, maybe if I was lucky I’d get a slot close to 1 AM, if they went on that long – so I felt completely let down and a little like that was the end of my night. But I did not give up. First I went to the Tennessee. There, though, pretty much the same situation, and after buying a pint of beer and listening to a few musicians, I decided to leave half the beer and head off to the Galway Pub.

There, eureka! A wonderful crowd of spectators and a sizable number of musicians and an available slot midway through the night made this the ideal open mic of the evening – even better than Coolin, as there were plenty of people to talk to, much talent, and a great sound system – which is lacking at Coolin.

So I played my set, had fun, spoke with people, and left feeling like it didn’t really matter if the first option failed, there was a second option, if I persisted.

Well, last night I was so busy with a work-life crisis, that I did not get to post on this blog. But that in itself worked out fantastically, as I had the exact same thing happen as on Monday night as far as the open mics went. I arrived at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic and found that I was 17th on the list and it was not even certain I would get a spot to play.

Again, I had bought a pint of beer, and again I decided to drink part of it, and leave the rest on the bar and head off to another open mic that I knew existed. So I took the metro and went to the Pigalle Country Club where I had attended the new open mic a few weeks ago, and not felt like it was totally my thing.

This time, it WAS. And how! It started kind of quietly, but after I went up and played a few songs with my guitarist, Félix Beguin, and people began to sing along, suddenly, the night turned from fairly quiet and low speed, into a magic, rocking, rolling, hot musicathlon of wild craziness and amazing young Paris rock talents. I not only enjoyed my slot, but I enjoyed as much that of the others, and all the people going crazy in the crowd, dancing, moving, shaking – and I even had one crazy uncouth woman feel me up on the dance floor. Which was clearly because of my singing talent (and nothing to do with the amount of booze she had imbibed)….

Anyway….the moral of this story is clear: If you think all is lost, just keep going, there will be an alternative out there that could end up not being an alternative but the thing you were actually really looking for in the first place. Check out the videos.