Formula One | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

A Yes Concert, a Brad Concert, a Cool Meeting and a Mini Memoir in GP Week

November 21, 2011
bradspurgeon

The above headline could be the worst I ever wrote on this blog as I try to cram in so many words and ideas that it makes no sense at all. But in that way alone, it is probably appropriate for this post which will be a round-up of my weekend. I was so busy that I had no time to update the blog for a day or two or whatever it was. So now I have to roll all the bits and pieces into one – and I will start with the freshest and work back.

Since the last Formula One race I had been working on a story about my musical adventures along with the race travel – the stuff this blog is mostly all about. And today that tiny little “memoir” – of 1700 words – of my last three years traveling around the world and playing in open mics, has been published in a neat racing magazine called GP Week. You just click on the link and go to the site and start clicking on the pages until you find my story on pages 30 – 31, and it has photos too….

The other bit of news was my concert last night at the HideOut bar on the rue du Pot de Fer in Paris, just off the rue Mouffetard. I was invited to play an acoustic concert- along with any other band members I might want to bring – as part of the first of a series of Lazy Sunday afternoon concerts that the bar will host between 19:00 and 21:00 every Sunday.

The bar is a cool, long, place with wooden tables and chairs, sports television and music. It’s cosy, and has a friendly atmosphere. I was invited to play by the organizer of the concerts, Syd Alexander, who is the lead singer of The Burnin’ Jacks. My lead gutarist, Felix Beguin, is of course none other than the lead guitarist of the Burnin’ Jacks. I also invited Justin Purtill to play bass, as I jammed with Justin at an open mic earlier in the week and found not only that we could do some really convincing stuff off the cuff with no preparation, but that we got along well and there was a great vibe. In fact, Justin is an astonishingly good bass player, and he is also a sometimes quite shockingly good singer songwriter.

For last night, Justin and I did go over most of the songs we played beforehand, to ensure some sense of professionalism…! And it worked, with Justin and Felix and me on vocals and guitar, I had fun and got some good reactions from the audience. It felt warm and nice…. I also loved the moment Felix put down the guitar and joined me on vocals in Cat’s in the Cradle.

Just before going into the HideOut I was walking up the street and wondering aloud where exactly the venue was located when a voice came from a restaurant terrace table: “Just keep going up the street there, Brad.” I turned around to see a woman whom I had noticed momentarily before but did not recognize, and she rose to her feet and introduced herself: “It’s Heather Munro,” she said.

Of course! It was my fellow blogger of HeatherBlog, who reads this blog and does a fabulous blog of her own about her life, her photography and writing. (She touches amazing chords of common experience….) And she had come to Paris for a holiday and had come to hear my concert yesterday. It was a wonderful meeting and would never have happened without the blogosphere. Today Heather wrote about our meeting and the concert as part of her round-up of her day in Paris yesterday – along with some of her photos of Paris, and of me and the band….

Finally, Saturday night I went for the first time in my life to see the progressive rock band, Yes, at the Olympia in Paris. I had listened to them since I was about 15. Seeing them for the first time – I had seen Rick Wakeman solo in the mid-70s – was a revelation. Jon Anderson, the singer, was not present. But they have another singer, a Canadian, who used to play in a Yes tribute band and who does a great job on singing the band’s stuff almost the way Anderson does. That’s hard to believe until you see it live. Still, I sometimes preferred to close my eyes to pretend it was the real Jon Anderson… but anyway….

Another Brad Spurgeon Rock Music Video, Following the Demiller, Oh Yes, and the Bridgestone

November 7, 2011
bradspurgeon

Sorry for speaking of myself in the third person. But there has been a very cool and satisfying thing that has happened in the last two weeks that kind of makes a little concrete confirmation of a project I’ve been working on all year. As regular readers of the blog know, I have been filming people at open mics, and especially interviewing people on-camera at open mics and jam sessions around the world since last February or March in a nearly one-year filming project that will come to an end at the end of this month, or early December. In the last two weeks, two different talented young French musician friends of mine have taken some of the rough footage that I shot of them during performances in Paris and edited these into video clips.

It was done with footage I had NOT intended to use in my open mic film, and some of it was pretty rough stuff done with simple cameras – to say the least. But these two guys, Niki Demiller, and a guy who calls his act/band, All-The-Roads, both put together very cool little music videos with what was available. And they both credited me with the filming. Talk about a beautiful encouraging thing. Check out the footage below. They’re both interesting musicians as well, I have to add. Niki used to front a band called The Brats, which along with BB Brunes, was one of the great hopes of the last decade in the wave of new bands that came out of French youth. He’s now worked on this solo project. All-The-Roads has just begun playing in the open mics around Paris, and I think the guy has a lot of talent – to say nothing of both a physical look to him and a sound/quality of voice as well, that reminds me of Elvis Costello…

All-The-Roads:

Niki Demiller:

PS, these were not the first time my video footage was used in a cool little video. The Red Bulletin Formula One paddock newspaper used more than an hour’s worth of footage I shot on my Canon HV20 HDV tape camera in 2008 and they edited it down to a minute and a half for a little trailer on their web site. It was a race of former F1 drivers and journalists in go karts near the F1 circuit in Spain. Check it out:

A Classic Meeting at the Galway, and a Passage to India

October 26, 2011
bradspurgeon

Christine Haquet and Rouen piano solo

I finally got back to my two regular Paris open mics after a couple of weeks away in Asia. And as it turned out, for this blog I ended up getting very little material from the music of the evening. I was too distracted, not by my new Gibson guitar that I played at these places for the first time, but by meeting a couple of interesting French classical music musicians.

One was a flutist, named Christel and the other was a piano player and composer named Christine Haquet, and she gave me a copy of her CD that has just come out. It is a fabulous set of piano compositions all based on aspects of and places in Rouen, where Christine lives. I listened to it immediately Tuesday morning as I did my exercises, and it reminded me in some ways of the kind of feeling I enjoy listening to Erik Satie’s piano compositions. But Christine’s touch on many different feelings and shades of style, with a very contemporary pop sound at moments, along with classical sounds. I am inadept at writing about such music, but suffice it to say I enjoyed it and know that I will be listening to it again. Furthermore, it made me want to return to Rouen, as it makes me see it in a completely different light to the only time I was there.

So it was that while I went to both the Tennessee Bar and the Galway Pub open mics, and I played at both of them, I ended up filming only one performer. That was an interesting young Frenchman singing at the Tennessee Bar in a fairly traditional French popular music style. Sounded very interesting, and gave a lot of us a jolt.

I am currently going through another kind of jolt as I write these words, for I barely slept through the night flight to New Delhi, and then I got lost in the maze of streets of two completely different quarters as I sought my hotel. I am now sitting in my hotel room and I have been entertained for hours by the sound of exploding fireworks. They are non-stop. I mean, this is as bad as the music outside of the love motel in Mokpo, South Korea. It is, I suddenly remember shortly after I had thought the Indians were a mad people, quite simply a national holiday, and that is why there is all of these fireworks going off.

Tomorrow I will have my own concert at The Living Room Cafe in New Delhi, and I am really looking forward to doing and reporting on that!

From Tony’s Aussie Bar in Seoul, to the Interesting Flight to Paris, to the Highlander – Catch-Up Time

October 20, 2011
bradspurgeon

Here goes: Sometimes life runs away with us and we cannot seem to catch up. That is how it has been for me since Monday. So this will be a catch-up post, or rather a “ketchup post” for its fast-food writing style. It starts at Tony’s Aussie bar in the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul, and finishes at the Highlander in Paris. But one of the most interesting parts was one of the flights – or, rather, the guy sitting next to me.

So anyway… I went to Tony’s Aussie bar last year while at the Korean Grand Prix, and so I returned this year to find the same place, but better. Tony’s is a cool expat bar/restaurant, run by cool Tony, who is a drummer and entertainment tycoon in the making. The bar was an afterthought, something that grew out of him sitting in this place and practicing his drums and finding people dropping by and wanting to jam, and drink and eat and, hey, presto, there it was and is: One of the greatest places for jamming in Seoul. He also has a standup comedy night and another kind of open mic night on Sundays.

What made it better even than last year was that there were more people present, more Koreans, and other nationalities – British, Australian, American, Canadian – and some absolutely wonderful musicians and singers. During my three-song set – Mad World, I Won’t Back Down, and Borderline – I was joined on the first two by Vadim Scott, a Ukraine/Canadian who lives in Seoul and works as a musician and actor. He just climbed up behind the mic and joined in with me. That’s the spirit of Tony’s, and I loved it. Especially playing with Tony on the drums, with the bass player and violinist. Check out the Hendrix bit and the guitar solo bit too. Great stuff.

I left Tony’s at 1 AM, went to bed at 1:30 AM and then got up at 4:30 AM to go to the airport, catch a flight to Tokyo and from there a flight to Paris.

The second I sat down in the Air France A380, the guy sitting next to me said, “You are a guitarist?” He had seen me put my guitar in the overhead compartment, and he was smarter than most of the Japanese customs people who thought it was a set of golf clubs. In fact, he was much smarter, and when we were not both trying to catch up on sleep during the 12-hour flight, we were talking music. Because it turned out that this was Paolo Alderighi, one of Italy’s most promising and finest jazz piano players on the international scene. He plays a wicked stride piano, mostly American jazz from the ’30s and ’40s, but he is classically trained, and mixes the traditional jazz with a classic feel too, and his own feel from growing up with a dad who loved and played jazz music around the house.

But part of our conversation also centered around how to mix and live a life using different talents, multiple approaches and points of view and careers. Paolo, for instance, is a pianist, but he also took a degree in management and economics, and he is now teaching a course in musical culture at a university in Italy. I spoke, of course, about how I write as a journalist about Formula One racing, I do other more literary writing pursuits, the music, the open mic adventure, the film. We listened to each other’s music on our iPhones, and I was humbled by the quality of his, which I will put below from YouTube.

What really fascinated me too discussing his life and career, was how it came about in an interesting step-by-step manner with one thing leading to another without a master plan. He did a gig here and a gig there since he was 16 or so and the pieces all began falling together, the connections were made, other musicians met, and now he travels the world and plays his piano from Japan to the United States, Australia and almost everywhere in between.

So I returned to Paris late Tuesday, missed open mics and crashed out in bed for the night. Woke up, tried getting things done, was swamped, but then did that ridiculous small space-holder post here before doing the Highlander open mic, where it was life as usual, lots of fun, some good musicians, some less so. And I enjoyed trying to get the audience to sing along with “What’s Up!” which they did. But I was thinking I have to find something new since I’m doing the same songs week after week now at the Highlander….

It is still taking so long to upload all the videos over this period of time that I will just now put up a few, and add more later….

The Lesson Learned in Playing at the 7080 Music Bar in Mokpo….

October 17, 2011
bradspurgeon

It is one of the main reasons I do my worldwide open mic and jam session musical adventure, and it happened again last night: Despite being in my second year in Mokpo and failing after last year and the first three nights of four this year to find anywhere to play, I did not give up, I pushed myself beyond my safety and comfort zone and I found a place to play.

Having said that, it was not an open mic or a jam session. But I did play with my guitar and sang my songs. But I’m jumping ahead of this little story, which is really about pushing ourselves forward beyond our preconceptions, our comfort zones and into territory we may fear. Last year in Mokpo the only place I managed to find to play was with buskers in the Street of the Roses in downtown Mokpo. I had ventured into one or two bars that had musical instruments and advertised live music. But they were empty of both musicians and clients. This year things went the same way and I did not even meet up with my young busker friends.

But a couple of nights ago I thought I had discovered a local equivalent of live music joint where there might at least be a jam session, if not an open mic. (Oh, Moe’s Bar and Grill, an expat joint, is holding an open mic, but not until this coming Friday, when I will be in Paris.) The places are called a “Live Cafe,” and some are “Music Bar.” There are a number of them around town. I dropped into one where I saw a guy playing keyboards and singing Korean music. But there was not only no clients in the bar, I couldn’t even see a bartender or other worker. So I just left the guy to sing for himself and continued checking out other places.

Two nights ago I found one near my hotel called 7080, and it had a neon guitar outside, and it had photos of The Beatles, c. 1964, in the stairway leading up to the bar. When I opened the door to the bar and looked inside I saw a nifty but strange neon stage, screens on the walls, and neon and silver lights and walls and chintzy music and people at tables all over in a half inebriated state. Someone came quickly to see me at the door and my immediate reaction was to say, “No thank! Sorry, not for me….”

Why? Because it was sooooooooo foreign. A lot of the Formula One journalists are forced to stay in so-called Love Motels in Mokpo because there is not enough housing. These are motels rented by the hour where young lovers and prostitues alike alight. The district in which we find ourselves, and where I found the 7080 bar is pretty much the sex and games part of what is probably the crime capital of South Korea.

So my immediate reaction was fear and also a sense that if I went into that place I would surely be robbed, propositioned, or otherwise volunteering myself for some illicit act that I wanted nothing to do with. But over the day or two since I did that, I began as I said, finding these music bars and live cafes (which are also bars that serve alcohol), and the more I thought about it, the more I thought perhaps the 7080 was just another of these. Perhaps the 7080 was a bona fide local entertainment bar with live music and karaoke and whatever. Nothing to fear but the real, true Korean experience I had been looking for all along. At Moe’s none of the expats I spoke to had any idea where I might find live music or a jam or open mic. They had not even heard of the live cafe….

So I returned the following night to the 7080 and found it had been rented out to host an F1-related party. Some kind of Korean company involved in oil and gas had bought up the room and they were doing live-band karaoke when I arrived. I was promptly asked to leave, this time, which was the inverse of what happened the previous day.

So it was that last night, desperate to prove to myself that I could indeed find a place to play in Mokpo and that if I had failed to do so it was my own failure as opposed to a failure of the city to provide. And above all, I decided I had to be courageous and not shy away from what is unfamiliar, since that is the very essence of what I am seeking out in this adventure.

I went to the bar, walked in, asked if I could buy just a beer, and I was told yes. (That was another fear, that I’d be fleeced for thousands of won in a so-called cover charge.) I went to my table and the woman very kindly brought me my Hite beer from Korea, and a piece of paper for me to make a request for a song. Although I had come in to listen the musician on the stage – who played keyboards, electric guitar and sang – it turned out it was a karaoke too, with the musician playing part of the music track.

The room had some 20 or so people in it, not bad for a Sunday night. I watched and listened, and then decided that although the Karaoke was written in Korean, I would try to request doing a song. I asked for anything by the Stones, Beatles, Dylan or Cat Stevens, since all the other stuff had been in Korean…. In the end, I got to do “What’s Up!” by the 4 Non-Blondes, which I have done a lot lately. And I did a great job! I’m usually terrible at Karaoke, but this worked. (It’s easier.) I received massive applause, people sang along, and a man immediately asked for an encore and then invited me to his table to talk.

His name was Kim Sek-Soo, and he is a Korean painter and Pine Art Master. He offered me beer, he went up and sang himself, we talked as much as we could with fractured English. And he and his wife and the woman running the bar and I all communicated for some time and had a great time. He requested I play more songs, but the musician in charge took a break. So that is when I took out my guitar and played some songs for Kim and his wife. They clapped along, the other people in the bar did too, I received applause, and then the karaoke started again and I did another song – “Unchained Melody.”

After I did that, Kim came up to me in front of the stage and importuned me to do a song for everyone with my guitar. The musician, with some sense of wounded pride – I think – eventually agreed to this, and so I played “Since You Left Me,” my song, with my guitar and vocals. It received warm applause, and we drank and spoke more and the evening eventually ended.

This, I thought and realized, was a REAL musical night in Korea at a place where the people go to have fund – the Koreans, not the expats. And I had my chance to sing my heart out in Korea for Koreans. Above all, I had broken down a communication barrier and a preconception in my own mind, and I had screwed my courage up, with the reward being absolutely massive.

That’s a lesson that I want to apply to life in general. That’s why I love this adventure.

P.S. Oh, by the way, I managed to get a video of me doing “Unchained Melody,” and “Since You Left Me.” But it was too long for YouTube, so I tried to put it up but it would not go. I will have to edit it and perhaps put some up another time. Or use it in my film.

Tankstelle Open Mic in Cologne, Germany, Grows Up

July 22, 2011
bradspurgeon

Tankstelle bar open mic in Cologne, Germany

It went so smoothly I could hardly believe it: Without consulting any notes from two years ago, I walked out of my hotel near the cathedral in Cologne, took the U-Bahn to precisely the right station, headed down the precisely right street and arrived at the Tankstelle bar to find an announcement outside that there was an open mic.

I had first discovered the Tankstelle bar‘s open mic two years ago on my first world tour of open mics. It had just begun three months earlier, and it was the only open mic in Cologne, and it was run only on the Thursday and I had stumbled upon it on the Thursday. Founded and hosted by the genial Daniel Klaus, a fabulous guitar player – his flamenco is crazy – and good singer, I had very little hope that I would find the open mic still existed when I set out last night. But there it was, soon to begin.

So I went out, ate a pizza and returned. Not only did Daniel remember me almost instantly but he remembered me precisely: “Cat Stevens?” he said. “Yes,” I said. “That’s me.” It was at the Tankstelle that I had sung “Father and Son” for only the second time in public. (I’ve now sung it probably around 100 times.)

Anyway, the atmosphere was fabulous as it was two years ago, but the open mic stage had moved to another part of the bar and now dominated the evening and the bar. It was full, bubbling with life, and a good mix of both German and English songs. Oh, and there was a wonderful touch whereby Daniel bangs a gong between each act, before and after the act, so that the bartenders at the other end of the large bar can turn on the house music between acts, on cue.

Definitely a worthwhile event if you’re ever in Cologne. I hear there are some other jam sessions, but I remain skeptical as to whether I will find them, and precisely what the quality will be like. Keep posted.

Rockin’ the Oxford Folk Club

July 9, 2011
bradspurgeon

The Oxford Folk Club was one of my favorite finds on the world tour of open mics and jam sessions in the last three years. It was the only place at which I really felt at home singing my traditional English, Irish and Scottish folk songs, and it was occasionally visited by some of my favorite musicians of my teenage years. Last night, however, although I did end up singing “Peter’s Song” by the Sands Family, because I was with Vanessa, and we only know popular rock-like songs, that’s we did: “Mad World” and the closest we could come to folk, “Just Like a Woman.”

In fact, I need not have worried. They applauded us warmly and sang and clapped along. And more than that, not only did two other people do Bob Dylan songs, but when I spoke for my open mic documentary to Lucy, one of the organizers, she told me that although the main sound is folk, all music is welcome. It is rarely sung into a microphone, or played with electric instruments, but she said that even there sometimes people bring their own mic and other equipment.

In any case, last night was another warm success on the Friday open night, which alternates generally with a Friday night guest night, every two weeks. There were folk singers from Britain, Spain, France, and it was just a very warm environment as usual. Located on the top floor of the Folly Bridge Inn, it is a nice occasion to have a pub meal below and then drink your draft and listen to the music and play upstairs. It ends early, too, around 11 PM, so you have time to do other things afterwards, if you want.

Of the acts I particularly enjoyed, there was a man who did a long but passionate and interesting version of the Roi Renaud, a great guitarist and Pam on her concertina, and a couple of great women singers.

P.S., Unfortunately, my internet connection has not improved since yesterday, so I am still stuck with a horrendously slow connection, and therefore I have problems uploading videos. I’ll do my best and upload later if possible.

First Night in Valencia, Singing at Carpe Diem Restaurant

June 24, 2011
bradspurgeon

Last year I wrote here about how Valencia, Spain was the only Formula One venue at which I was unable to find a place to play my music, and to this day it remains the only one in two and a half years where I have not found a place to play. I am in Valencia now, and I am afraid it will remain the only place I will not play – having said that, I DID actually play on the terrace of a restaurant in downtown Valencia last night.

But that is another story. First I want to say that I also wrote last year about my trials with Vueling, the crappy Spanish airline that hates musicians and guitars. This year while going to Barcelona I booked a flight – as I did last year – with Iberia, the big Spanish airline. But when I got to the airport I learned I was on a Vueling flight. And although I managed to get past the check-in desk with my guitar, I got aggressed by a flight attendant as I boarded the airplane. He asked me if I had booked a seat for my guitar. I said no, and he said it had to go in the hold – and he took it from me. Meanwhile, there was lots of room available in the overhead luggage compartment.

So with that in mind, and last year’s trip in mind, when I booked for Valencia I decided to keep away from Iberia and Vueling, and I found a flight on one of the Skyteam airlines, some small thing called Air Europa. At the airport I realized it was apparently no bigger than Vueling, but at the check-in desk, the woman smiled at me and asked if she could please put a “carry on luggage” label on my guitar. Damn right you can!!!! What a difference an airline makes. Oh, and the flight was entirely full yesterday, not a single seat free from what I could see….

So anyway, as I walked depressed around the streets of Valencia last night, thinking I would not find a place to play, I decided finally after a few hours to return to my hotel. It is no huge big deal to NOT play here or not do a segment on my film here, because I have already had a very fruitful time on that level in Barcelona, so I have marked my territory in Spain. That’s the main thing.

It also turns out there IS a jam session in Valencia, but only on Monday nights, at the Black Note club. I will have left by then.

But as I returned by foot to my hotel I suddenly received a call last night from a Formula One journalist friend and colleague, Patrick Camus, of AutoHebdo. He said he had just seen me walking down the street with my guitar and he was at a restaurant on the terrace and would I join him? So I walked back, only to find that he had somehow managed to recognize me through my walk and guitar from a very far distance – I could not make out any of his features from the crossroads where he saw me.

It also turned out he was on the terrace of the Carpe Diem restaurant, sitting exactly opposite the hotel I stayed in last year. He was with a friend and we spoke and he asked me if I had repaired my guitar yet – after the Malaysia mishap – and I said I had not, that it still held together and I feared fixing it might make it worse. So I opened the case and handed it over, because Patrick plays guitar too, mostly Bossa Nova.

After he played a little bit I took the guitar back and decided to play a song, he and his friend asked for more. So I did two more, and I received applause from the waiters, some people at the other table and people walking down the street. So it was a wonderful moment, and suddenly I didn’t feel so down and low anymore. But I also had to stop because it was after midnight, and a quiet street just beneath the hotel windows….

Patrick had never heard me play before, either, so it was fun to show him what I’m up to doing all this music all the time at the races. I think he will probably not call me Django anymore though, as he will have seen that my guitar playing is pretty basic….

Another thing worth noting was the protest in the main square of the city that reminded me of the same thing that was happening in Barcelona when I was there, about the problems with the economy. I did a bit of video footage, but have not had the time to put it up. May do so tommorrow.

Playing at the George Payne open mic in Barcelona

May 20, 2011
bradspurgeon

Sometimes on my worldwide musical adventure I get the feeling that an open mic here or there has been thrown together just for me. When I played in Cologne two years ago I found what was certainly the only open mic in the city, and it happened to be on the first day I arrived, the Thursday, I stumble across it immediately while searching the bars desperately for an open mic, and it had only existed for three months. Although Barcelona is full of open jam sessions, the strict open mic mic format is more rare. Two years ago I discovered an open mic on the Monday night at an Irish pub called the George Payne, on the Place Urquinaona. But it did not last long. Yesterday after an internet search, I found it was happening again, and it was on Thursdays.

I arrived last night to find that it has only existed since last week, but in only one week it has become a great success. There were all sorts of accomplished musicians and bands there to play last night in this vast “Irish Pub,” which looks more like a Texas whorehouse, if you ask me – although I’ve never set foot in a pub in Ireland OR a Texas whorehouse…. but anyway….

This time around it was more Spanish, too, as the MC, Max, is Spanish, and there were more Spanish-speaking performers, despite the Irish pub aspect to it. There were the usual expats too, and some very good ones. In fact, most of the performers were a multicultural mix – from Joe-Psalmist of Nigerian origin to Jesse Masterson and Paul Henry of Argentine, Spanish, U.S. and British mix to me, a Canadian living in Paris….

Most of us did around three songs, although the guys dressed up like the Blues Brothers – Masterson and Henry – did a lot more, by popular demand.

Oh, forgot to mention, the Internet also led me astray as I first went to a very hip musical venue called KGB, that was supposed to have an open mic according to the net, but which had some kind of pin-up girl thing going on instead. Reminded me of the venue in Paris called the Machine du Moulin Rouge.

Now onwards to the many blues, rock and jazz jams in the coming days….

First Night in Shanghai, Two open mics, one with Sister Fay from Paris/Sweden

April 14, 2011
bradspurgeon

I must be on a roll. I wrote about how great things had gone in Kuala Lumpur. Now I have had only one night in Shanghai and I have already played at two open mics, one with a friend I met in Paris and have written about on this blog in recent months. I am in a huge rush to get back to Paris now from the Formula One race track as I have two more open mics to do tonight. So I will keep this to a minimum….

The first place I went to last night was Oscar’s Pub, which I wrote about here last year. Last year it was one of the highlights of my trip to Shanghai, with wonderful musicians and a great atmosphere. (Remember Tom & Jerry, the bluegrass musicians from Mongolia?) Well, last night it was a horrendous atmosphere and aside from the MC, I was the only musician at the open mic. The MC, needless to say, is not the same one as last year. Last year it was the genial Paul Meredith. This year the man greeted me with open arms and kindness. But somehow the open mic just did not have what it did. It did not bother me to sing my four songs entirely for my own ears while the pub boiled with talk and carousing. I just needed a place to play.

But what I had not planned for was that just around the corner at a bar called Not Me – the idea is that when you are in this bar you are not yourself!!! – owned and run by Chinese people, there was another open mic, and this one had a very cool, laid back and hip atmosphere. I learned about this one through my friend Frida, whom I have written about on this blog during her time in Paris in recent months. She now lives in Shanghai and we met, and will meet again, to play further open mics.

Known also as Sister Fay, Frida has some clever and sensitive lyrics, and she really did a good job last night. It’s funny because Frida found Ollie’s open mic in Paris through my blog, and when she looked for places to play in Shanghai she also found my blog items about the places here, from my trip last year.

Small world? That cliche does not even begin to tell the story this time.

Unfortunately, the upload of the video files is taking WAY too long. So I will have to put them up tomorrow. Apologies. But I have to take an hour and a half trip back to central Shanghai so not to miss tonight’s open mics….

By the way, check out what Formula One journalist Joe Saward wrote about me in that last night in Kuala Lumpur….