Brad Spurgeon's Blog

PARIS – I’ve been making the rounds of all my regular open mic venues that I so rarely visited in the last few months while travelling all over the world for the tail end of my worldwide open mic tour, and last night it was over to the Tireuse – formerly Ptit Bonheur la Chance – for the cellar open mic that became the favourite of many people in Paris. It turned out to be a kind of quiet and cozy night in the basement room of the Tireuse, so much so that my Zoom Q3HD recording device decided to either go on strike or take a nap.

I’m not sure which it decided to do, but I could not get it to recognize the SD card. The result is that I just did a couple of videos on my iPhone, which means pig bad sound quality. Having today put a different SD card in my Zoom recorder and found it recognized, I’m hoping it will work again and I don’t have to replace it.

But my feeling is that it has been around the world several times since I bought it a few years ago, and I think it is becoming travel weary…. Let’s wait and see. In the meantime, check out the feel at the Tireuse, with Wayne on one video, and a new French performer on his resonator guitar on the other video.

La Tireuse is still attracting lots of musicians, and I wish I could have recorded more of them last night. There were a few great performances, including Brislee doing a third Queen song in two nights, and getting all the spectators singing along. He did a very good Freddy Mercury approximation….