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A Not-Book-Review*: “Recycling Reality,” by Nicky Almasy – an expat’s coming of age story, from NYC, Mexico, and London, to Shanghai, Thailand, HK, and Kuala Lumpur

July 2, 2026
bradspurgeon

Nicky Almasy

Until early March of this year, when I shook his hand and exchanged words with him for about two minutes, I had only ever met or communicated with Nicky Almasy once. It is easier for me to know the exact date of our first meeting – which was 19 October 2008 – than it is for me to remember the second one, earlier this year. That is because the first was the Sunday night after the Chinese Grand Prix of 2008, and in Shanghai, a first step that fall of an experience that would change my life. Having now made contact with Nicky again after nearly two decades, I have learned thanks to reading his memoir, “Recycling Reality“, (Earnshaw Books, Hong Kong, 2022), that not only was he also at that time shifting to a new reality in his life, but that we share far more experiences than I could ever have imagined for such a casual acquaintance whose path I had crossed only once until he handed me his book under the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur last March.

That last meeting was reduced to just a handshake as I had just spent more than an hour or two beyond our rendezvous time caught up in the offices of the Emirates airline trying to deal with a cancelled flight back to Paris – a gift of the man who trumped the world by starting a war in the Middle East. By the time I got to Nicky, he had to leave for another appointment. But it was long enough for us to say hello, and for Nicky to surprise me by handing me this published memoir that I ignored the existence of. I have now finished reading the book, and I wanted to talk about it here since without my earlier meeting with Nicky, this blog would not have been created 16 years ago.

In late 2008 I had been carrying around my guitar picks, capo, and songbook to all the Formula One races that I was attending as a reporter for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, as I had recently turned my life full-throttle into playing music when not writing articles about the world’s premier auto racing series. In my late teens and early twenties I had played in open mics as I sought to test the waters to see if I could possibly become the next Bob Dylan. Learning very quickly that I didn’t have a chance in hell, I decided eventually to focus on writing alone. But in 2008, after a tragic personal loss – the death of my wife, Nathalie – I felt the need to return to playing music. At the instigation of some musician friends, I then began to look around for open mics to perform at and see if I fared any better as a potential Bob Dylan than three decades earlier.

Recycling Reality by Nicky Almasy

So it was that after several races, finally, in Shanghai of all places, one night returning to my hotel from a meal in a restaurant, I saw a nearby bar-restaurant called the Blues Room. On the glass of the door or other front window, an image in a poster jumped out at me: An old-fashioned, 1950s microphone and the words: Open Mic! I took a closer looked to find that it said, in English, that every Sunday night you could bring your instruments and go on stage and play some songs. Exactly what I had been looking for in the last races in Europe without success – although I had not really applied myself all that much, being somewhat skeptical of my abilities or needs to perform in public.

After the race – won by Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren, ahead of Felipe Massa in a Ferrari, setting up what would be an historic final race duel in Brazil shortly thereafter – I got on the media shuttle bus as quickly as possible to get from the circuit in Jiading, far outside the city – and arrived in town with time to spare before the beginning of the open mic. I had brought my pick, capo and songbook with me to the circuit, so went directly to the Blues Room. It turned out to be a very, very quiet night, with only one other musician. But there was this Hungarian guy, Nicky Almasy, who ran the event, and I was very pleased to meet him, as the F1 race in Budapest was among my favorites, and I always enjoyed the company of the Hungarians I knew. (My son had been training for years under a top Hungarian chess trainer, as well, and I always found the people gentle and interesting.)

The other musician was an American teenager who lived with his parents, expats working in Shanghai, and he was there with his sister, just slightly older than him. As an open mic experience, my first after 30 years absence, it was highly inconclusive, but probably also the best way for a middle-aged, aging rock star (in his own mind), to return to “the stage.” In fact, we played and jammed for hours, and at one point, Nicky immortalized the session by taking a photograph of me while standing at a table in some deep, purple-faced, Dylanesque chant.

Brad Spurgeon jamming at the Blues Room in Shanghai in 2008. (Photo Credit: ©Nicky Almasi.)

I found no open mic in Sao Paulo, and anyway, with the championship being decided there and especially Hamilton taking his first title, I was far too busy writing and reporting to think about finding a place to play. It was only when I returned to Paris that I again began to think about finding an open mic. And it was only thanks to a small sense I had picked up at the Blues Room that I might find a deeply needed outlet that way, and then the persuasive words of my son, Paul, that I had to try again, that I ended up at Earle Holmes’s Monday night open mic at the Lizard Lounge, and my open mic, musical journey definitively began. (From that moment onwards I brought my guitar to every Formula One race and performed at open mics or jam sessions at each Grand Prix from 2009 to the end of the 2016 season, starting this blog to write about the adventure from 2010 onwards.)

What all of these preliminaries are leading to is, believe it or not, back again to “Recycling Reality,” Nicky’s book. As we were not in touch after that night in the fall of 2008, and as the event was a much, much more important moment for me than for Nicky, I don’t think he had any strong recollection of who I was at all when I learned he was now living in Malaysia and that we would be visiting there for TAC Teatro, and could we meet? So for me, the first thing I wanted to read about in the memoir that he handed me, was everything he had to say about the Blues Room in Shanghai, and how that happened, and what the stories were. I was not let down.

Nicky had begun to run the open mic evening and other live music events at the Blues Room – which was located at the corner of Nanjing Road and Tongren Road – a year or so earlier, and it closed down not long after I played there, in early 2009. But during that time, surprise surprise, Nicky had not only been hiring bands to play there on the other music nights, but he had begun to exercise his other passion, which was photography. Yes, he had been photographing the bands that played there, and soon he had developed a business in Shanghai as a photographer of bands.

Before I continue about the contents of the memoir, another side note: As someone who likes to write, and even made a living out it, and who is currently writing a memoir myself, I am always interested in seeing what “works” and what doesn’t. The first thing I did when Nicky handed me this book, a 265-page paperback, was to check out who the publisher was. Had Nicky done what so many people do today, had he self-published his memoir? Because, otherwise, I wondered, who would want to publish, let alone read, Nicky-Almasy-of-the-Blues-Room’s memoir!?

I saw “Earnshaw Books” and immediately looked it up: “Earnshaw Books was founded in Hong Kong in 2006 and publishes a wide range of books across a growing number of fiction and non-fiction genres. A hub for stories, memoirs and history from China, Asia and beyond, and a nurturing platform for new authors, Earnshaw Books offers a unique and enticing glimpse into the world through words.”

I realized that not only was it not self-published, but that Nicky had found the perfect publisher for his memoir. As he has now lived in Southeast Asia since 2005, moving from one country to another, one expat experience to another, he has a story to tell that will interest readers of that publisher’s niche. It could not be more perfect. I soon learned something more: My own interest was held at a much higher level for all those areas of his life to which I could also relate most closely by my own parallel experiences, and it waned a little – but not too much – on those I could not.

To summarize: I was absolutely hooked on his story of life in Shanghai, less so on his tales of traveling with malaria scientists in Thailand, and very much drawn in with his final chapters in Malaysia, especially his efforts to land a full-time job with Tony Fernandes’s AirAsia as a writer, photographer and videographer for its inflight magazine, Travel360. My interest there is not only due to Kuala Lumpur being one of my favorite places in the world as well, but because I too had crossed paths with AirAsia’s owner Tony Fernandes on several occasions when he was a Formula One team owner, and it was Fernandes who eventually gave the green light to hiring Almasy at the publication.

But to say that I could only identify with what I had myself experienced here would be doing a great disservice to this surprisingly well written life story that speaks for generations of people who seek something bigger, something greater, than the world they were brought up in. I say “surprisingly” because English is Almasy’s second language, and you wouldn’t know it by reading this. Almasy came from Debrecen, in Hungary, which is the country’s second largest city, but still only has around 330,000 total urban population. He grew up dreaming of the life he read about in imported music magazines like the New Musical Express – that “other” I mentioned above.

And if I say that it might require having shared the same experiences as a writer to get into their memoir, nothing could be further from that idea than the opening pages of Almasy’s story, when he writes about his wayward youth as an immigrant to New York City. There he set up a fabulously interesting life in a bar in Manhattan frequented by movie stars, before he returned to Hungary for a short visit and then found that he could not re-enter the US. So he decided, at barely 20 years old, to go for the classic route of flying to Mexico and attempting an illegal border crossing!

The story of how he paid a people-smuggler to get him across, but he ended up robbed, beaten, and dumped over the fence into the arms of the American cops aiming their weapons at him, reads like pages out of the darkest of low-life Jim Thompson kind of noir fiction. Along the way, in what I think must come from his basic life view of some kind of hope or faith, he seems to carry luck on his side through almost every step of his career – despite endless seemingly insurmountable such trials. He gives up on America, but resettles in London, where he ends up writing album reviews for “Record Collector” magazine, and hanging out in Camden Town at the height of Brit Pop, rubbing shoulders with all the up-and-coming talent, including musicians from the band Suede, that he will return to later in the story when they again cross paths, but on a different plane of life all together.

To cut the story short, and to summarize again: He finally settles in Shanghai in 2005, spends a decade there, and that gig photographing bands transforms into a completely different photography career launched by his own passion for documenting the then world’s second tallest building during its construction: The Shanghai Tower. That leads to a friendship with the embattled architect of the building, Marshall Strabala. Almasy becomes, one way or another, basically the official photographer of the construction of that building.

In turn he ends up working for the That’s Shanghai city magazine, doing countless cover photos, and bit by bit, he becomes a highly respected, full-time, and international award winning photographer. A theme that runs throughout the book is what I would call his “meetings with remarkable men” through whom he seems to, in some ways, live vicariously as a journalist and photographer. (That, of course, might be called the essence of journalism, as we are all writing about someone else – a “story.”).

Another of these people is the Hungarian musician, Miklos Both, who he connects with and ends up writing about, photographing, and filming in several collaborations, as well as becoming a close friend. Tony Fernandes, in some sense, becomes a somewhat more distant such connection, but one who ends up providing him with his longest period of “stable” employment, as he lands the job at Travel360 that will only end with the advent of Covid that shook up not just AirAsia, but the entire Asian and, indeed, world, tourism experience and lifestyle for expats.

But by then, Nicky was reaching his limits on what had turned from the lowest level of border hopping illegal immigrant working in a bar in the US into living at the very highest of journalistic luxury travel while reporting for the inflight magazine and traveling uninterrupted for weeks on end year in year out around Asia:

Once you reach your limit, you begin to lose yourself altogether: When you’re on the road, your temporary homes, the hotels, meaninglessly click and switch like projected images one after the other behind the shadow that is you. Marriott, Crown Metropol, Park Hyatt, QT, Novotel, Hilton, Wyndham, you name it, are all just repetitious, ever changing but never-changing artificial backdrops, mere empty stages to dress up your solitude as a traveller. I often find that the more luxurious the hotel, fine art hanging on the walls, their one-of-a-kind décor, the more it enhances a sense of loneliness. There is a lack of human connection. Besides, they isolate you from the essence of your chosen destination with their ostentatious comfort-bubble and cut you off from reality altogether…..

….But when these momentary shelters become your everyday reality, if this is in fact all you have to fall back on each evening, when you live in them for weeks on end, these very same magically self-cleaning units are nothing more than bitter, blank reminders of just what an ungrounded life you’re living.

Any hardcore business traveller would reassure you that beyond the dazzling luxury decor, the exaggerated reception smiles that only last strictly until checkout time, nothing awaits but a dark reflection of your inner emptiness. It hangs over you like a sinister pendulum, and it intensifies at night as you sigh into the empty room before falling asleep. A traveller’s loneliness knows no distance, sneaks under your door, finds you in your fancy bathtub, stares back at you from the bathroom mirror, and it’s already there under the nicely creased bedsheets with the carefully folded towel swan on top before you even climb under the clean, crisp blankets. Endless business travel is like jumping through different dimensions as city skylines revolve outside your window; Nagoya, Osaka, New Delhi, Seoul, Guangzhou, Beijing. As exciting as they are to be in, from the hotels, these cities are all shimmering mirages of a seemingly projected reality.

This is where Nicky Almasy’s memoir touches home the most for me: His ability to cut through the gloss, the surface view, the sludge, and to express what we all, inevitably, face in life no matter how much success or lack of it we may meet with in our lives and careers. I could also deeply relate to his sentiment and career decisions to seek change, as I myself did after covering Formula One for more than 20 years and finally choosing to step off the weekly travel conveyor belt. Ultimately, I found this memoir to be a wonderful vicarious rollercoaster ride through another contemporary’s challenges as he tries to find his way to a self-sustaining and meaningful life and career, and one with which I could compare my own life choices. I would never, ever have suspected such a story that night I entered the Blues Room in Shanghai and took that first step in my own subsequent life’s journey.

(*A note on the “Not Review:” Years ago I decided to create a new feature concept for this blog. Because I believe in Ernest Hemingway’s dictum about writers not criticizing other writers in print as reviewers – “You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” he said – but because I love to read good books and talk about them, I decided to start this approach. The idea is that I do not place myself on a critical pedestal and dictate what is righteous or not about a book I read. I do not pretend to recommend it as a piece of literature or a consumer product. I do not play the role of the book reviewer. This blog is simply my space, Brad’s world. So what I do when I feel compelled, is to write about books I am reading or have read or feel a need to write about for any other reason. This “Not-Book-Review,” as I call the column, is only a reflection of how I felt about the book.)

From the European Corporate Chess Championship to an Unexpected Musical Jam Session: Two Days Where Many of the World’s Top Players challenge Executives of the World’s Top Companies in the Chess Mecca of My Hometown of Asnières-sur-Seine

November 9, 2025
bradspurgeon

European Corporate Chess Championship 2025 Underway

ASNIERES-SUR-SEINE, France – For the last week I had been worried sick about how well I might match up with one of France’s coolest jazz pianists and his upright bass player for a gig I had been invited to do at the Gala of the European Corporate Chess Championship in my hometown last night. Fortunately, for two very good reasons I ended up not having a problem playing with Ahmet Gülbay at all: the first was because Ahmet and his bass player are such great musicians with so much experience playing in jam sessions that they had no problem at all adapting to my own idiosyncratic musical style, so far away from their own. The second reason was that I had also been invited at the last minute to play in the tournament itself on the team of the Ile de France Region, as I am a member of the club that organized the event: Le Grand Echiquier, of Asnières-sur-Seine. And if my music is idiosyncratic, my chess game is even more so. But having spent the two days prior to mounting the stage losing all but the last game of my six rounds in the tournament, I had just the “blues” and pent up emotion to get up on stage and try to take my revenge by channelling all that amassed energy into song. It seemed to work. Above all, the tournament and gala were of such emotional proportions for me and everyone who attended, that we were all winners in the end. Oh, yes, and what made that gala so special and perfect for this blog which has always had as its main central theme the open mic or open jam session, the gala stage itself ended up turning into something of an open mic, or open stage, as it turned out we had several fantastic musicians in the room who ended up taking the stage.

This extraordinary chess tournament is in only its second year, but anyone who visited over the last couple of days might have imagined it has been around for decades: There were more than 50 teams of four players each from around Europe, and the players ranged from the un-rated to among the top in the world, including the former world champion, Veselin Topalov, of Bulgaria. Another of the top rated players of the event is the extraordinary Ukrainian, Igor Kovalenko, who after three years fighting on the frontlines of his country’s war with Russia, has recently taken a break to return to chess. He with his Ukraine team won the European Team Championships last month. Yesterday, his team – Greco – won the tournament in Asnières.

Marie-Do Aeschlimann, center, senator and wife of Manuel Aeschlimann, hand on her shoulder, with Jean-Claude Moingt on the left, at the prize giving of the tournament.

The tournament is the fruit of a fantastic synergy between the founding director of the Grand Echiquier, Jean-Claude Moingt and the longtime mayor of Asnières-sur-Seine, Manuel Aeschlimann. The two of them met in the 1970s while playing tournaments as teenagers, and while the one pursued his political career – without ever losing his love for chess – the other concentrated his energies in building the sport in France to the highest levels. Moingt first founded the Clichy chess club, which went on to become the strongest in the country for many years, fostering some of the top talents, before he became the president of the French Chess Federation from 2005 to 2011. A decade ago, the mayor called him up and told him he wanted to develop his city as a chess center in France. Today, my hometown since 1996 – where my son had begun playing chess as a young child and reached a top level before quitting competitive chess at age 15 – is now the seat of the French federation, and the home of the Grand Echiquier, which has among its players some of the top in the world, including Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the former world blitz champion, the rising young talents Javokhir Sindarov and Andrey Esipenko, and the Jules Moussard, a former French champion. Not to mention the somewhat retired former champion, Joel Lautier. The team has won the European Cup several years in a row. And as a final statement of its chess ambitions, there is a sector of the city that now features streets and a park bearing the names of several chess champions.

Marc’Andria Maurizzi, center, accepting his team’s trophy.

At this weekend’s European Corporate Chess Championship, under the aegis of the European Chess Union, other better known players included the reigning French national champion, Marc’Andria Maurizzi, and the former champions, Moussard and Laurent Fressinet. Another Frenchman was Jean-Marc Degraeve, who just won the European seniors title. There were many other extraordinary players from several other countries. But one of the most interesting of those who took part in what is above all a meeting between top companies and chess players to try to use the game as a team building and intellectually stimulating exercise was the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Sir Demis Hassabis, who also happens to be the founder of Google DeepMind. Hassabis was something of a child prodigy in chess, among many other things, and he remains attached to the game. There were several teams from Google present at the boards. I played the seventh round against Google’s #2 team, and I lost in the final seconds of the game on board 4 against what I can only describe as a brilliant young woman. I mean, could my ego accept she be anything else?

My only excuse for losing so many games was that I have absolutely no experience playing in this particular time control: It was 15 minutes for each player, PLUS 5 seconds added after each move at the end…. I got so excited and nervous several times as the game arrived close to its end that I threw away great positions for total failure! Including in the Google game!

Brad Spurgeon with Ahmet Gulbay and Laurent Souques Photo©Nicolas Auneveux

Anyway, as I said, this whole thing just lifted my angst, anger, and motivation to try to get rid of all of that pent up whatever by playing the music during the gala last night. But there remained that other challenge that I mentioned: The top jazz musicians I was matched up to play with. It was Jean-Claude Moingt, the director of the club, who called me from the big Cap d’Agde tournament a week or so ago to invite me to play with his friend, Ahmet Gülbay, who is not just a great pianist, but a chess player himself and Gülbay’s regular bass player, Laurent Souques.

As anyone who follows this blog knows, any small amount of talent I may have in music – a little more than in chess nevertheless – is entirely unrelated to jazz. I am a huge fan of jazz, however, and have even seen some of the great pianists live – like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and McCoy Tyner. So I was trembling with respect and trepidation. Ahmet and I exchanged phone calls and I sent him four songs I thought we could try from my repertoire, so he had a bit of time to look at what he was up against! (“Mad World,” “Crazy Love,” “Wicked Game,” and “What’s Up!.”)

Brad Spurgeon on stage at the chess tournament Photo©Nicolas Auneveux

As it turned out, I need not have worried. Ahmet is such an experienced pro, with more experience than I can even dream of with his longtime leading of the Duc des Lombards open jam session, dates at the New Morning and other prestigious venues, while Laurent Souques is also so talented and wide-ranging a bass player, that not only did we play those scheduled songs, but we did many more from my repertoire as well. The night then finally progressed with us playing not only together, but also taking duties on the stage individually in order to give each other breaks, as the celebration went on for several hours. The people attending the gala therefore, had a night of hearing my rock, pop, folk, and Ahmet and Laurent’s classic jazz and show tunes. Ahmet has a massive repertoire, and a facility to glide across the keys like I have rarely heard.

Then, one of those musical things happened that I run into again and again: The night turned into a kind of open mic session! First, a young guy who had been sitting beside Ahmet for several tunes, asked me when I was up doing a solo if he could play the piano. I agreed. When he immediately launched into Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, and did it like a master, I quickly exited the stage! Seeing this, another participant in the tournament asked if he could take my guitar and the stage for a song. I agreed: Out camee the Oasis standard, “Wonderwall!” Then, by the end of the evening, we discovered we had another singer in the crowd, and all I can say is that when she took the mic, I counted my blessings that she ended up singing AFTER my gig had basically finished. I did not want to go up on stage after a fabulous, trained opera singer, who has also mastered the French pop and jazz standards doing a couple of Piafs and several other songs. She was fantastic, and unfortunately, I did not get her name. But the combination of Ahmet, Laurent and this singer was brilliant: Especially for the many French people still left at the end of the long gala evening. And the most surprising of all, I think, was when the President of the Asnières chess club, Yves Marek, a top politician, and also the president of the “Hall de la chanson, Centre national du patrimoine de la chanson, des variétés et des musiques actuelles,” got up on stage and sang a comical ditty from Belgium!

In the end, I mentioned synergy between the two lead architects of the emergence of Asnières-sur-Seine as a French chess mecca; but what astounds me personally is how I could find myself quite by chance not only being a great fan – and mediocre player – of chess and living in this town, but being able to merge that with my other great love of music. There was another thing that made me feel even more at home at the European Corporate Chess Championship, and that was after my decades of reporting on big companies in the context of both my technology writing and my Formula One writings at the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, I felt I had stepped into a zeitgeist in that area with people I felt close to as well – even all those horrible people who beat me at the chessboard!

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Groovin’ the Jam at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon, France

September 8, 2025
bradspurgeon

LYON – On the last night of our three-day oversea and overland trip back from Sicily to Paris we stopped over in Lyon, as we usually do. But this time, Ornella insisted that we find an open mic for me to play some music in, just for a change, and since I have been going too long without jamming in public. (Having played only once or twice during our two months in Sicily.) But when I stepped into La Grooverie at 9 rue du Jardin des Plantes in central Lyon, I immediately turned to Ornella and said: “This place is not for me!”

It’s not that I found this one of several weekly jam sessions in this terrific bar venue to look bad. I found it to look far too GOOD for me. We entered a full, bustling, bar to see the stage at the far end full of young musicians preparing to play. It was between songs, so while I knew that the theme was supposed to be funk, groove, etc., I did not even have to hear the music to know what I was up against: A stage full of brass – trumpets, saxes, and others – flutes, bass guitar, lead guitar, full drum set, keyboards, two vocal mics… in short, a whole orchestra of what could only be something special.

First at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

“Come on, Brad, try!” said Ornella. “I’ll go and find out how it works.”

“I can see how it works,” I said. “There’s no room for me. There’s no way I can get up there just with my guitar and do a Bob Dylan!”

“Let’s just see,” she insisted.

“But I can only let them down. These are clearly seasoned musicians, and they will not be doing my kind of stuff. This is going to be great music!”

Second at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

Ornella Lays the Pressure On

She insisted again, and anyway, it was raining outside and we had been driving from Genova most of the day and were exhausted and hungry and needed a beer. So we ordered a couple of pints of IPA, and waited for the music to start. Or rather, I stayed at the bar and moped, while Ornella went out to the terrace for a smoke.

While I listened to the first song, a guy approached me as he saw I had my guitar case. He introduced himself as Matt, and said he was the organizer of the jam. Did I want to play? I thought of Ornella, and said, “Sure. But how does it work.” I told him my limitations, but he said to go sign the list and they would call me up.

The music was exactly what I thought, and the jam was what I expected. What I did not consider, was just how great the attitude was of seemingly all the musicians – and public – who attended. When Ornella returned she told me that she had struck up a conversation with some musicians on the terrace and they told her how it worked and that I should try. She told me that I had to go see the organizer. I said I had signed up.

And Then Brad Got Up on Stage – and it was a Mad, Mad World

Then she gave told me the other thing that she had discovered, which is a key to this whole open jam – and the others under different themes that take place on two other nights per week: Most of the musicians who play in the jam are from local music schools in Lyon. They are young, enthusiastic, excellent musicians with a clear love of just getting up on stage and playing. Doesn’t matter who with.

Brad at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

And so when it was my turn to get up on stage, I immediately felt comfortable with the other musicians who had been assigned to play with me. I assume that since Matt knew I was mostly guitar and vocals with a more rock than groove song, he assigned only a drummer, bass player and a keyboard player – to make it easier for me. He had told me that they only did cover songs, so I combed through all my possibilities, and dug deep and … came up with the one I do the most: “Mad World.”

In the end, a trumpet player and a saxophonist both timidly tried to fit into the piece, but I guess they couldn’t find the groove! I wish I had the time to have done another song, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. It was a great moment for me, anyway, and Ornella made a video of it – warts and all!

Third at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

The ambience was so great that we stayed on until practically the end of the jam at 11pm before we ran off to eat a late dinner of Ramen soup in the main square not far from our hotel. And I gave a huge thanks to Ornella for pushing me on, when all the nerves in my body told me there was no place for me this in La Grooverie jam. How wrong I was!

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Out of a Jam Underground at the NAMA Jam in Milan

May 19, 2025
bradspurgeon

Underground Jam at NAMA in Milan

MILAN, Italy – I never expected going to the incredibly cool Nuovo Anfiteatro Martesana in Milan for a couple of shows with TAC Teatro that I would find myself in the same location of one of the city’s Thursday night music jam sessions open to all musicians and styles of music. But there I was, in this extraordinary location just a stone’s throw away from the now closed down Ligera bar where Ornella and I met nearly a decade ago, discovering that if one door closes another opens. Even when you forget half the lyrics to a song you have sung a million times and that you find yourself starting anyway….

Yes, what a great discovery was this jam session at the NAMA, as they call the place for short. And the environment helps the vibe: Outside, in this beautiful park by the canal, you find the amphitheater – where TAC put on two shows – but entering the heavy metal doors at the back of the amphitheater, you discover a whole underground world you never expected or suspected. And when I say “underground” I mean in two senses: The people that run this joint have a broad cross-section of associations and events, some of which clearly have an underground aspect to them. But the whole structure is also located underground, underneath the park above.

Brad Spurgeon playing the Jam at NAMA in Milan

As we arrived on the Thursday, but had not yet put on one of the TAC shows – “Les Oubliés du Demain,” and “Lysistrata” – I took the opportunity to play in the jam. The jam starts after 11PM every Thursday, and you bring your own instrument and play what you want, with other musicians present. I played my pop songs, with an electric guitar – because I did not have mine – and with a bass player and drummer. But there were at least three horn players, and a fabulous ethereal electric guitar player, and an Amy Winehouse kind of singer, all of which you can see in the videos.

NAMA logo

I found myself feeling really free as I got up to the stage and began playing Mad World. So free, in fact, did I feel, that I entirely forgot the lyrics of the beginning of the song. But I had started going, had the musicians backing me, and hey, the audience was mostly Italians – except for the Russian who had curated the art show, and her other Russian friends – so I thought, what the hell. No one will notice. And I started with the second verse. Then I finished that, stopped, and told the audience I had in fact forgotten the whole first verse! And as I said it, the words returned, and I went right back to it and started the song all over again, from the first verse, but ending on that rather than repeating the second verse again! Somehow, it worked out wonderfully. You can see the moment in the short medley video I compiled of excerpts from the three songs I performed and post here.

Another at the NAMA Jam in Milan

La Cattedrale logo

A day or two later, I discovered ANOTHER Thursday night jam in Milan, but this time, I could not attend. I did, however, visit the location and stand on the stage, and boy, does this jam at La Cattedrale in Cusano Milanino look like an amazing thing to participate in. I will update my open mic guide to Milan, and add a bit more about that.

Nice horns at the NAMA jam in Milan

For now, never forget how to turn a screw up into an advantage – easier done at an open jam session than anywhere else, perhaps….

Ethereal guitar playing at the NAMA jam in Milan

Irish Trad Music Around a Table in Paris with Paddy Sherlock – and Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris in the Background, on my Mind

March 7, 2024
bradspurgeon

Paddy Sherlock and Paul Susen at La Cave Café in Paris

PARIS – Truth be told, it has been 50 years since I sat around a table and played along with Irish songs in a pub over a couple of pints. But 50 years ago, I was incapable of carrying a tune, and only really dreaming I was doing it. That was with my friend Charles de Lint and his band, Wickentree, in Ottawa at The Celts Room bar in Ottawa. Last night, I joined Paddy Sherlock and fiddle-player Paul Susen at La Cave Café for the first round-the-table weekly Irish jam. And sitting before me or beside me throughout the jam was the songbook of Celtic trad songs handwritten and given to me by Charles de Lint half a century ago as well. To my slight surprise – but not too much – Paddy Sherlock knew and played almost all of those songs…and more.

While Charles de Lint went on to become a successful fantasy novelist, he has always continued to play music, as well, writing and recording his own songs, but also continuing to play traditional music. It was through Charles while he worked at a record store in Ottawa that I also discovered and developed my taste for traditional Irish, Scottish and English music. And while I went on to do my own stuff, and in the open mics I play mine and all the usual pop and folk rock stuff, I regularly persist at home to be a closet Celtic crooner.
Paddy Sherlock and Paul Susen

When I learned last week that Paddy – whose Paris Songwriter’s Club open mic has been going for years – would begin this weekly session around the table, I jumped at it. In fact, I pulled out Charles’s songbook from my shelves and brushed up also on a few songs I love but rarely play at home, to be ready.

First song in Charles de Lint songbook in his calligraphic handwriting

One of these was “Peter’s Song,” by the Sands Family. Memory tells me that during at least one of Charles’s sessions at the Celts Room, he invited at least a couple of the visiting members of that Irish band – on a tour in Canada – onto the stage and they performed together. Maybe it was an amalgamation of my slightly off-kilter teenage mind. In any case, last night, for the first time in my life in front of an audience, I sang their song about a fiddler and a weekly jam he played at until his death in ’74. A beautiful, touching song that paints a picture of the kind of atmosphere I found last night at Paddy Sherlock’s new evening. A line from the song sums it up: “There were flying bows and bodhran sticks and you hadn’t room to turn / But there was always a chair and a couple of drinks for the lad who came to learn.”

Unfortunately, Charles and MaryAnn have not been able to continue their own frequent music nights in Ottawa over the last more than two years, as MaryAnn has been in a difficult condition in hospital after being bitten by a tick and infected with Powassan virus. This is a horrible, debilitating condition and situation that you can read more about at the Gofundme page dedicated to MaryAnn and Charles’s plight. And this is why the two of them were so much on my mind at the Cave Café last night. The other reason, was the book that Charles gave me, and that I have treasured for this half century. And I highly recommend any of Charles de Lint’s own novels or short stories and other writings, if you have never read this master of the urban fantasy genre.

Charles de Lint singing and MaryAnn on the mandolin a few years ago

By the way, in addition to “Peter’s Song,” I sang “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” and “The Star of the County Down.” Paddy and Paul did some reels and jigs, and songs like “Whiskey in the Jar” – Paddy’s version was quite different in style than what I know, and strangely sounded something like American country music to my ear!!! (Don’t kill me, Paddy! But I loved it!) And he did “As I Roved Out,” and many other classics. It was so fabulous to hear his Irish accent with these songs – I probably sounded like American country music on ALL of mine to him, with my accent – and he taught me a thing or two about playing the guitar the Irish way! It was a completely different Paddy of the Paris Songwriter’s Club open night.

Paddy Sherlock Irish Night 3

Paddy plans to do this weekly at the Cave Café: So if you are an audience member or a musician, get your instruments or vocal cords warmed up and join the jam!

PS Also, take a listen to this old Wickentree song from the 1970s. I remember listening to this one a lot at that time, before I even knew what the words meant – as it is in French.

PPS For years I attended the Oxford Folk Club open night once a year while attending the British Grand Prix. But that was a classic kind of audience/stage open mic, not an around the table jam. A fabulous place, by the way, where some of my folk heroes have occasionally played through the years, like Dave Swarbrick, etc.

Paddy Sherlock Irish night 1

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Theatrical and Musical Adventures from Aubervilliers and Asnières to Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily

July 27, 2023
bradspurgeon

Academy of the Unfulfilled in Palermo Flash Mob

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – I have been wrapped up in a whirlwind of theatrical and musical adventures over the past month that have been so many and varied that I have had not a single moment to write about them here, despite itching to do so every day. Now I am sitting high in the hills above Castellammare as I start these words, taking a break from setting down harmonies for the next song in a musical show that we will be performing at this Azienda Agricola Acquaviva this coming Sunday, 30 July, and I finally found a moment to get a few words down in the blog about these incredible experiences.

Brad Spurgeon as Einstein in TAC production

The first was my cameo role as Albert Einstein in TAC Teatro‘s next play, the work-in-progress tentatively titled “La Première Fois.” The show is in its early stages of creation, but TAC Teatro put on a show of the work-in-progress at its theater space in Aubervilliers at 164 rue Henri Barbusse. I loved creating this role with Ornella Bonventre directing, because I cannot imagine that many other wonderful true-life personalities to play than Einstein. And, surprise surprise, I discovered through the necessity of growing my hair and my moustache, that I am capable of growing a moustache that is a pretty damn convincing version of the mathematical genius’s moustache! (Now if only I discovered I could also emulate his mathematical genius.) In any case, the show went off very well, with the TAC Teatro actors demonstrating more than ever their diversity of talents, as the show is full of music, magic and illusion, along with some beautiful songs. My role is minor, opens the show at the moment, and will probably appear again later on.

TAC Teatro school performers take a bow at yearend show at Studio Théâtre of Asnières-sur-Seine

The sad story there was that this was the last show that TAC Teatro performed in the space where it has been housed for the last two and a half years, since the middle of the Covid epidemic. The owners of the former warehouse decided they want to try to sell the lot on which it sits, and so they took it back from us, and the same day we handed over the keys, they had the space demolished so that no one got the idea of squatting it. In a sad, sad irony, while the rich owners wanted to demolish our space to keep squatters out, that same night during the riots that tore France apart after the police killed a 17-year-old for no reason, TAC Teatro’s new space for the coming season, in Asnières-sur-Seine was demolished, looted, burned down, by the rioters. So the coming season poses some challenges.

In the meantime, TAC Teatro also celebrated its yearend of performances of the students of the classes in Asnières, which took place in the 200-seat, magnificent Studio Théâtre. There, I was called in to do the job of MC, and I was given the opportunity to do this by playing a song between each performance of the classes. I matched the nature of each song with the play performance. The plays of the children were Peter Pan, the Addams Family and the Petits Chaperons Rouges; the adult class’s play was “The Bear,” by Chekhov. It was a fabulous festive evening of shows with a full house spectators and a great capping to a season of drama classes for TAC Teatro and its students.

Brad Spurgeon MCing the TAC Teatro yearend show

No sooner did we finish that event than we packed the car to go to our annual summer address in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, not far from Palermo. Here, this year, I started my first week participating in the great Chiringuito Jam session in Scopello, that I had discovered only last year, and which we learned was run by Ornella’s cousin, Michelangello Bologna. I again did a couple of songs with a complete band, and with Michelangello, who is a Michelangello of the harmonica in addition to the MC of the evening.Then, suddenly irresistibly, surprisingly, and synchronistically, after we had discovered that Castellammare del Golfo had been chosen as the location for a big crazy theater workshop by the illustrious Mario Biagini and his group called Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled, we decided to take part. This workshop, or residency, lasts for the entire second two weeks of July, and in addition to consisting of working with Biagini’s troupe to create a final show – called “The Thirsty Ones” – for the 30th July, we also had two other performances of some of the work.

Teaser for the show of Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled

Extraordinarily, one of those performances had been planned – without any input or prior knowledge from us – as taking place during the Wednesday night jam at Chiringuito! So for the second time in the month of July I ended up performing on the stage outside in Scopello, but now, I did first a performance of a couple of songs in the usual way with me on the guitar with other performers at the jam; then, second, I worked with the dozen or so actors and singers of the theater workshop performing the songs we had been working on, with their fabulous harmonies and many languages. I played guitar and filled in here and there with vocals.

I want to jump back a little and say why this serendipitous meeting of the Biagini group and Ornella and me was so surprising: We had met Biagini for the first time last year when we went to the Teatro Ridotto outside of Bologna, Italy in order to interview him for a project that Ornella and I are working on about some of the theater greats of the last 60 years. Biagini is known for having worked closely with the legendary intellectual figure of 20th century avant garde theater, Jerzy Grotowski. In fact, Grotowski, who died in 1999, had left Biagini and another man, Thomas Richards, in charge of the Grotowski Center in Pontedera, Italy – Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards – where Mario Biagini had worked since 1986.

Biagini and Richards ran the center until 2021, when they decided to go their own ways. Grotowski was one of the seminal figures of modern theater, and Biagini is a torchbearer of his world, along with Richards. Now this links into the next meeting, which happened a couple of months ago in Paris, when Ornella and I went to the Grotowski event at the Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris where Biagini was present to launch the latest edition that he edited of a translation of Grotowski’s theoretical – and other – writings that has just been published in French. It is a fabulous collection of the theorist’s work, including the writings that would eventually make up his famous and influential “Towards a Poor Theater” book that was first published by the Odin Teatret publisher and founder, Eugenio Barba. (Whom I have written about a few times here.

We also made a connection at one remove with Biagini at the beginning of April this year, when a group that he has directed that came out of Teatro Ridotto, also took part in the annual international residency called Finestres – see my previous post! – that Teatro Ridotto has put on for decades in Italy and that TAC hosted this year in Aubervilliers at the beginning of April. I am speaking about the fantastic Collettivo Hospites, who, incidentally, just put up a video of their memories of that week of activities.

FINESTRE sur le jeune théâtre from Collettivo Hospites

So it was quite amazing to discover that Biagini was holding this workshop in Ornella’s home town in Sicily during our stay here. And we joined in. The performance at Chiringuito was then followed by a flash mob performance a few days later in the streets of downtown Palermo. Here again we sang our songs, and I played guitar along with the musical anchor of the work, Viviana Marino on her classical guitar. There was a film production company on hand in Palermo, so you can see the work of this company, Ponte di Archimede Produzioni, in the teaser for Sunday’s show that I posted above. The teaser was also filmed partly on location at the base in the hills above Castellammare, where we are preparing and will put on the show, and where I am sitting writing these words. You only catch a tiny glimpse of me playing in Palermo, and a bit of Ornella and her daughter, Morgana, are also visible momentarily!

Segesta temple burning July 2023

I hope to have more videos and photos to follow, but this is what I have at the moment. Until then, if you can make it to the show on Sunday, I understand the airport in Palermo is open again…. Oh, yes, that’s another bit of news to follow up with: After the burning down of TAC’s new space in Asnières and the demolition of the old space in Aubervilliers, the 2,000 year old theater in Segesta, next to Castellammare del Golfo, and the neighboring 2,000 year old temple were both engulfed in flames in recent days during the catastrophic fires that we have been experiencing during the massive heatwave that lifted temperatures to well above 40 degrees celsius. A couple of years ago, TAC had been in negotiations to put on a performance on that ancient stage. The flames are following us from town to town, country to country!

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Giant Open Mic and Screening of Open Mic Film (excerpts) @ TAC Teatro

February 15, 2023
bradspurgeon

A view through the entrance to TAC Teatro in Aubervilliers.

PARIS – If you are in Paris on this date, please stop by TAC Teatro in Aubervilliers to participate in – or just check out – the open mic night we will be holding to celebrate the premiere of my Open Mic streaming series: “Out of a Jam.” This has now become an historic film of open mics in 20 countries over a one-year period – that year being 2011 ! This is my open mic film that ended up taking a year to film and a decade to edit into its final format: 21 episodes of between 19 and 23 minutes each. Each episode takes place in a different country – or some like NYC are spread out – and every one is structured with first, visit to the open mics of Paris – home base – and interviews with key people about a theme connected to the open mic; followed by a visit to a new country and its open mics, with interviews and films of the musicians there.

I have decided to show excerpts from the series for the first time anywhere, at TAC Teatro, and then hold our own huge open mic. In the coming weeks I will post more information about it all, including more details about the location – it will be a night to remember, as we will be able to play and celebrate in the theater, in the cabaret and in the courtyard. I want to give a few little tours of those spaces by video when and as I can. There will be beer and wine to drink for real cheap – a key to the success of any open mic – and I will create the best sound system I can.
“Out of a Jam” open mic film series generique

I really want to see as many of the people who played in the open mic scene in Paris in 2011 as possible, since many of you will be in the film, and we can celebrate the time that has passed since then! And I want as many new faces, musicians and fans of open mics to attend as possible! This evening will be devoted to the open mic, and I will keep the film part to a minimum – unless people want more and more and more! – as my goal is to have as many of us play music, and talk and have fun, and I don’t want anyone feeling like a hostage in a cinema seat! That said, this series will be a real nostalgia trip for many of you, and the most complete look at the open mic phenomenon that I know of.

Inside the theater at TAC Teatro where the main stage of the open mic will be and the film will be screened.

I am giving you a little look at the opening credit video bit – above – that will go with each of the episodes. But keep in mind that while these little moments feature mostly me in different world settings, I repeat that the film is not about me. It’s about all of you who played or organized or attended as spectators the open mics at that time. During this evening in Aubervilliers I will focus as much as possible on the Paris parts where you can see yourselves – unless I have any of my friends from any of the other 20 countries showing up, and wanting to see their contributions… Japan, China, Malaysia, Brazil, Turkey… etc…!

A look at the courtyard at TAC Teatro during a recent event, and where the open mic participants can go to talk and drink and smoke while not wanting to disturb musicians singing!

The date is 24 March 2023. I’ll keep you updated as we approach the hour….

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Playing with Layth Aldaene on his Oud in Abu Dhabi 10 years Ago

November 17, 2022
bradspurgeon

Laythe Aldaene

PARIS – Today I stumbled on a recording I did in Abu Dhabi exactly 10 years ago and I wanted to post it again to mark the occasion. It was one of my musical adventures following the Formula One season as a journalist, and that year, 2012, I had set myself the goal of recording a song with a local musician in every one of the 20 or so countries that I visited. The idea was a real challenge, and I think I succeeded in my goal, but unfortunately the sound quality of the recordings was not of CD-level quality. But what a treasure to find this one of a star oud player and musician living in Abu Dhabi named Layth Aldaene, who is an Iraqi, and who is still playing around the area and farther afield, including recently with a symphony orchestra. I decided to post this today because this weekend is also that of the season-finale 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in Formula One, so it seemed a great moment to post.

This recording took place in the House of Oud, which was a community center and workshop for building ouds, teaching the oud, spreading oud culture and everything else oud that you can imagine. I suggest you check out Layth Aldaene’s web site, as it has lots of his amazing music on it, and some cool videos.

I chose as a song to play my song “Let Me Know,” which I always felt had a middle eastern sound to it. In fact, I had written it purposefully with a middle eastern sound – although the guitar chord progression had itself been given to me by Laurent Guillaume, with whom I recorded the song on my CD.

Layth Aldaene in action

In any case, this recording was done in the workshop of the House of Oud and you can hear the luthier actually working on an oud while we play the song, and read more about it on the post I did at the time. This was a real jam of my song, as we had never rehearsed it.

Also, FYI, here is a link to the song as I recorded on my CD (with Laurent Guillaume doing the lead guitar):

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In Paris, Three Open Mics Over Two Days – a Post-Covid Return!

October 2, 2022
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Bootleg Bar open mic near Bastille

PARIS – Unless my mind is playing serious games with me, this last week I finally attended open mics in Paris again for the first time since the Covid pandemic began in early 2020. I have mentioned in these pages before that I have performed here and there occasionally in various performance formats – including the jam I did a couple of times in Sicily over the summer. But unless this old brain is fading, these are the first open mics I have done in Paris since 2020, or even 2019! And it was great to see that while I may have been playing it safe on the disease front for a lot longer than most open mic performers and spectators, clearly I am behind the times on open mic performing!

I have been waiting for a long time to attend the new open mic at the Cave Café, near the Lamarck metro in a part of town that – at least to my knowledge – has few open mics. This is the place where I used to love to go just before the pandemic, when Sheldon Forrest ran his “Montmartre Mondays.” I was very sad when it ended, because the Cave Café, owned by the American, Arthur, has such a wonderful vibe: Like its name, it takes place in a “cave.” Lest you get images of brutes with wooden clubs to beat you with, please know this has nothing to do with neanderthals. It is the French word for basement, and it drums up the beautiful image of precisely what we find here: a vaulted brick ceiling in the cellar room.

But the real cherry on the top of this cake is that the new open mic at the Cave Café is now the old Paris Songwriters Club run by Paddy Sherlock. This is one of the best open mics in the city, but one where you can ONLY sing or play your own compositions. No cover songs. Paddy had run this first at the Tennessee Bar, then at the O’Sullivan’s Rebel Bar. But this is not just his best location so far, it is also the most intimate and well-served sound wise. So it is also perfect for the precise kind of open mic it represents: play your own songs to an audience that listens in a location that makes you want to spend the whole evening there just for the comfort and fun.

Paddy Sherlock playing at the Cave Café

I took advantage of this open mic to play for the first time in public anywhere, my song, “What’s All This Talk?!” which I wrote during the pandemic, in the fall of 2020, and which provided me the soundtrack for the video I made of and after the January 6th, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It’s always very difficult to sing a song for the first time in public, especially with that weak memory of mine – but I got through it pretty well.

First at the Cave Café

From Tuesday’s Songwriter Open Mic to a couple of regular Wednesday venues

I mentioned Sheldon Forrest above, and on Wednesday, it was time to visit Sheldon’s open mic at the Osmoz Café in Montparnasse. From Montmartre to Montparnasse. Could anything be better? I have no need to introduce either Sheldon or his Osmoz Café open mic, as both have been around for years now. In fact, Sheldon was running this one at the same time as he did the one at the Cafe Café as I mentioned above. It was great to see that everything was the same as usual: Sheldon playing piano to accompany singers who do not play an instrument. Or if you do play an instrument then you are welcome to do that too. I took this opportunity to play a few songs that I had learned during the pandemic – or just before – so as not to be singing the same songs for more than a decade for Sheldon and his audiences. I also did “What’s All This Talk?!” and felt about the same as the night before at the Cave Café, so that’s down now!

I finished my tour of three open mics in two days by attending the open mic at the Bootleg Bar, heading directly from Montparnasse to the Bastille! How much better does it get than that? Montmartre to Montparnasse to Bastille!

First at Osmoz Café

I only discovered after I finished at the Osmoz that there was an open mic at the Bootleg. This is the one that I used to attend that was run by the former group running the Rush Bar open mic. It used to be on Mondays. Now, it is every Wednesday, and seems not to be run by the same groupe of people, and has a bit of a different feel to it: Wednesday evening it was mostly about jamming, with several musicians playing simultaneously. Although there was a woman who came to play her songs on the acoustic guitar, and she accepted some other musicians joining her – but it seemed not to be obligatory.
First at Bootleg Bar

Here I was told I could go up to play, even though it was by then quite late, just before midnight. But after listening to the other groups and realizing I had a long hike across Paris to return home, I opted not to play. I had all I needed: I got to see that life continues at the Paris open mics, and now I will finally also be able to update my Thumbnail Guide to Paris Open Mics, Jam Sessions and other Live Music, which through Covid, had been collecting cob webs, but remains one of the most often consulted pages on this blog.

Second at Osmos Café

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Paddy Sherlock and piano player at Cave Café

Second at Bootleg Bar

Third at Osmoz Café

Third at Bootleg Bar

One Thing Again Leads to Another at the Chiringuito Jam in Scopello

August 26, 2022
bradspurgeon

Babel Tower Logo

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – It seems not to matter how many times I live this lesson, I always come close to forgetting it – only to relive it and learn it again. A few weeks ago I wrote of my experience at the Chiringuito jam in Scopello, Sicily. I wrote about how one good thing leads to another good thing – and vice versa. I missed the last few jams on Wednesday nights at Chiriniguito for various reasons – a cold, a more important meeting, and, yes, inertia. I was almost going to let inertia steer me away from it again this time, but didn’t, and the reward was huge, and unexpected – as usual!

We had planned to have dinner in Scopello at the Nettuno restaurant with Ornella’s family Wednesday and then head off to the jam. But the dinner started late, many more family members arrived, and conversation and good cheer began to take over and extend the time at the table, and reduce the potential time at the jam. Then, as with the last outdoor restaurant meal with the family – last week – a sudden downpour of rain began. It never rains here in the summer. It’s not supposed to. Will not, does not. Unless we have a family gathering or a jam session to attend.

The conversation, family get-together and rain all persuaded me by midnight that I was going to miss the jam session again, and I was going to miss it for valid reasons. I had my guitar ready in the trunk of the car, I had made the “effort,” but it had failed. Once again. Then at about two minutes past midnight, Ornella said to me: “You are going to miss the jam! Go and play, Brad. Don’t worry about us.” In fact, I had been told that many of the members of the family had come to see me play, but I suppose inertia had settled in there too….

I decided not to let that get me down, and in any case, I fully expected to go to the jam – a few minutes’ walk away from the Nettuno – and find that it had been packed up, closed down, over with, all thanks to the downpour, which could have short-circuited all the guitar amps and everything else. There, I thought, I would have my excuse. Part of me had the jitters about playing the jam again also because it had gone so well the first time, and I had had so much fun, that I expected it would fall flat this second time.

I got my Gibson J-200 from the car trunk and went to the jam. It was bopping big time. The stage was curiously dark and wet, but there were musicians on it, playing to a vast crowd of manic spectators jumping up and down in delight at the front of the stage. Michelangelo, the jam organiser and MC, immediately saw me with my guitar on my back at the front right corner of the stage and he approached: “Brad, we had a problem tonight with the rain cutting out a lot of things, and we had to set up all over again, and try to make it work after that…. anyway, the point is, I had to change the format a little: You only get one song. And you are up next.”

Man! I could not say no to that. I had no more excuses! And anyway, I started feeling the pulse of excitement of the idea of going up and playing just one song and if it all failed, I had my excuse there too! I just finished a massive bacon and cheese burger, a massive chocolate Sunday, got wet in the rain, came over to the jam, had one song and got up with no warming up!

I got the Gibson out, waited, when the guy finished, I climbed up on the stage where someone said: “What chords?” I realised it was one of the other musicians – turned out to be the bass player – and he wanted to know what chords I would use for my one song. I didn’t even know what my song would be. I had, in advance, been planning three: “Crazy Love,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” and “Wicked Game.” I thought for a moment about the simplest of them, but also I decided to go for a contrast to the crowd pleasing, foot-stomping, fast-moving, singalong song of the guy onstage before me. I chose “Wicked Game,” by Chris Isaak. It is just three chords from beginning to end, and there can be plenty of room for the jamming of the harmonica and lead guitar between verses on those three chords.

I whipped through the song with huge pleasure – and a few rough spots – and then got off the stage fast. It seemed to go fairly smoothly, and the others had lots of room to jam. I blew my voice out a little, since I had a bit of a problem hearing myself and so I forced it too much, but in all, I was really happy to have done it, and I was happy to have been able to do it fast during what was clearly a difficult night for the organiser – with that rain storm!

Now here is where the real story starts: I got off the stage and began packing my guitar away in its case when a guy approaches and starts speaking English and congratulating me. He turned out to be another musician, a drummer, and he asked if I played professionally. I said no, and asked him if he did. He said he did, and that he was also studying jazz drumming at the conservatory. But he said his band was playing in Castellammare soon, and so I should come and listen. The band, he said, was called Babel Tower. It turned out that they had played recently at Picolit, where my musical adventure began last month.

Babel Tower in Castellammare del Golfo

We talked for some time about music, his life, and the band playing around Sicily. I was still a little breathless after performing, and I had to go and find Ornella’s family. So we parted without exchanging contacts.

Then Ornella and I later in the evening went to the Picolit Pub in Castellammare, and I tried to remember the name of the band that this drummer played in, so I could speak to one of the owners of Picolit about it. Since they have a lot of bands there, she had no idea! But then I looked at the names of the bands that have played there recently, and I recognized the name “Babel Tower.” I then found the Instagram page of the band, and looked at the photos and…there I saw the photo of the guy I spoke to at the jam session.

I returned to the owner, told her it was this band, and she said: “Oh yes!!! And by the way, the singer of the band is sitting at the table beside yours!” Unsure whether I should speak to the singer of Babel Tower and tell him I had just met one of the other band members, it was again Ornella who pushed for this. I decided that, yes, I’d love to know the name of the drummer I met and maybe send him a message on Facebook.

So we approached the singer of the band, and we explained the situation. He gave me the link to the Instagram page of the drummer of the band and I followed it. Then, we got involved in more conversation with the singer, pulled our chairs over to his table, and after some minutes of talk, it began to dawn on both Ornella and the singer that they knew each other! They had not seen each other for 15 years or so, but they realized that he had been one of Ornella’s sister’s best friends! And as it turned out, he had long been trying to make contact with her, but as she no longer lives here, he had not found out how to communicate.

Another bit of Babel Tower

This happy situation then led eventually to the singer inviting me to play with Babel Tower at their next gig, in a small town not too far from here on Saturday night! Now, let us remember and realize and think about all of these happy repercussions that came form a moment’s decision as to whether I should or should not make the effort to play at the jam! Had I done the easy thing and just sat back lazily, I would never have met these musicians, never had the fun of playing the jam, never been offered to play this weekend, and Ornella and her sister would never have met this old friend! Astounding what action, and music, can do!

Babel Tower, I learned, plays nearly 300 dates per year throughout Sicily, doing all manner of rock, pop and reggae. I suggest you look them up and give a listen! And maybe you will discover something that will change your life too!

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