KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.
This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – This post has nothing to do with my location of sitting in a hotel room high above hot and humid Kuala Lumpur, where I will be working and playing music for the next week…except perhaps that high in the air (although not high in the head) is also where I was when I edited this music video of the first of my songs from the Melodium recording sessions last month in Montreuil.
In fact, yes, this post is all about a chain of events that started at the Melodium Studio in Montreuil outside Paris last month, that continued in the streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter over the weekend and that I finalized on my flight to Kuala Lumpur from Paris last night. I’m talking about the video that I put together for my song “When You’re Gone Away,” the music of which I recorded in Montreuil last month, and that I filmed in Paris over the weekend and that I edited on the flight and uploaded in my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur.
That actually seems a fitting chain of events for my song called, “When You’re Gone Away,” that I recorded along with my favorite lead player, Félix Beguin and drummer, Jeremy Norris – both of whom are in two excellent Paris bands, The Burnin’ Jacks and the Velvet Veins – and also with Scott Bricklin – a Paris expat musician originally from Philadelphia – on bass. Together, as I mentioned in a blog item about my session at Melodium Studios, we recorded five songs, of which “When You’re Gone Away,” is one.
In the coming weeks I plan to continue making videos of these songs and releasing them, and then I plan to put out a CD of the whole, as well as others of my songs (and a wicked cover song). The videos will all be quite different; this one was fun, as I did it walking around Paris and being filmed by Raphaëlle, and adding two bits of “mystery footage” from the past and from elsewhere in the world that I took – see if you can spot it!
The beauty of doing these recording sessions was the incredible cohesion and talent I was surrounded with in Félix, Jeremy and Scott and their wonderful arrangements and Félix’s mixing. All three have worked together extensively, and often at the incredible Melodium Studios, and of course, I have gigged with Félix regularly in the last five years. So it was all just so together.
MELBOURNE, Australia – My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.
This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.
PARIS – I have not posted on this blog for a few days for the simple, excellent reason that I have been working on a music video since the last post. The song is called “Mississippi,” and it is a fabulous melody written and performed by my friend Raphaëlle Bouskela, who goes under the stage name of Raphaël’la. I had been filming Raphaël’la in open mics and at her gigs for a few months, and last week she asked if I could put together a video for her song, using those films. When I heard the song, I said, “WOWWWW! YES!!!” So I decided to go all out on the video, also adding historic footage and photos to illustrate the theme, in addition to using the videos I shot of her.
Raphaëlle, for her part, recorded the song in her living room, performing all vocal harmonies and playing all instruments, and doing the arrangements, everything…. She had written the song a while back, but had never performed it in public, since it required those harmonies and multiple guitars (one of which is my own Gibson J-200). The lyrics were written by David Azencot, who was inspired by a line and melody that kept going through Raphaëlle’s mind: “I was born in Mississippi…”
I was pleased to take a short break from editing my own open mic documentary that I’ve been working on for a couple of years in order to have a nice little finished project, and go back to my feature film with an even fresher eye . Anyway, this is way too much blah blah blah. Just watch and listen to the video!!!!
PARIS – Paris in August is great in the day and crap at night. Everything closes down, the musical venues decide that the business the tourists and vacationers might give them is not worth losing their own vacations for, and generally, it’s a place to avoid. Last night, with these negative thoughts in my mind, I set out for the open mic at the Tennessee bar, deciding that in order to get there early for once I would sacrifice my normal dinner mode and grab a falafel near the Place St. Michel and eat it on the Rue St. André des Arts before arriving at the Tennessee. Once I got there, I found the bar open, but the open mic cancelled – as it has been for weeks, apparently. The bartender could not tell me when it would start a again – a week or two, or maybe three.
With this in mind, I thought my night was a catastrophe and I should return home and continue working on my books and film. I’ve been on a good run with them, and nightlife and adventure and music were obviously dead in Paris. But then I decided I had better burn off the falafel and I decided to walk to the Escargot Underground open mic that I attended last week, to see how things were going this week. It’s not like I did not have a great time last week. It was just I wanted variety, and I feared there’d be practically no one there.
At the Escargot, Suddenly, Wayne Standley Sings Jimmy
By I did not drop my arms and lose my hope and I continued on my march across Paris, stopping only for a Magnum ice cream from a supermarket near the Rex cinema. Once I got to the Escargot, I found some old friends, including Trelys, and Wayne Standley, who was one of the mainstay musician – along with me – at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance bar, now since ended…. It was great to see them both again, and great to sing my songs in this wonderful open mic, and great to listen to more Russian music and other things…. And then… BANG! Suddenly, without announcing the name of his next song, Wayne lays into “Jimmy,” by the band Moriarty. Readers of this blog may have seen in the past that I have referred to Wayne as the father of Rosemary Standley, the singer in that same band. But this was the first time I had ever seen Wayne sing the band’s biggest hit.
It turned out that it was, indeed, actually, the first time Wayne had ever sung the song in public. So I was fast on him with my Zoom Q3 HD, not wanting to miss my opportunity to slap that up here on the blog in a world first. It was a beautiful rendition, and I only regret that I did not start going for the closeups until much later in the song, so the first part is a little distant, but it gets better. Wayne’s singing of it is beautifully emotional, and when you know the backstory, wow!
So after the Escargot Wayne and I decided to walk over to the metro together and then Wayne suggested we go somewhere for a drink. We were within walking distance of a bar called the Zelda – after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife – that is owned by a friend of mine, Matthias Cadéac d’Arbaud. The Zelda opened up a couple of years ago, and it has had quite a bit of good press and is considered something of an “in” place in Paris now. It is small and comfortable and hip, and I had seen David Broad play there in the past, and thought that it would be a cool place to show Wayne, and thought it would be cool to speak to Matthias again.
I have very fond memories of jamming with Matthias at the Truskel in the days of Earle’s open mic there in 2009. Matthias was the guitarist (and also played drums, keyboards, some vocals and bass) in a very cool band called Rock&Roll, that had the cover of one of its albums done with a photograph of the band taken by Karl Lagerfeld. For a couple of years they were looking set to be the next big thing from France musically, and they had top management in the U.S., as well. And very hot, rhythmic and colorful music. Their producer had worked with New Order, Pet Shop Boys and Blur. The French rock magazine, Les Inrockuptibles selected them from 7000 bands as the top new band of 2006.
Then Matthias of Rock&Roll and Zelda Owner, Comes Out of Retirement and Plays Jimmy With Wayne
But Matthias ended up packing up his musical instruments and opened the bar and he has not played guitar for a long while, he said, although he said he sometimes goes to a nearby bar after he closes his Zelda and he plays piano for fun, late into the night. Well, I mentioned to Matthias that my friend Wayne here was the father of Rosemary of Moriarty, and Matthias just lit up and said that Jimmy was one of his favorite songs. He put it on the sound system, as it was in his iPod. That’s when Wayne pointed out that he himself actually provides backing vocals on the original recording of the song (the recording we hear on the radio, etc.). We heard him doing them, and that was news to me.
After Matthias closed the bar I suggested that Wayne show him his 1962 Guild guitar, and that’s when Mattias proposed that Wayne sing Jimmy, and I proposed that Matthias play along. So started a jam that lasted around 45 minutes, with all of us playing together or separately. The high moment was the Jimmy moment – even though it was around 2:30 and we were all pretty tired at that point – and the first take of one of Wayne’s songs, with Matthias playing a bit of lead and rhythm along with Wayne. It was full of energy, and a great song and a great moment.
All in all, I was totally astounded by the richness of the evening. And for fans of Moriarty, if there is any single one of the covers of Jimmy that you have to choose from, then Wayne’s is it! Check this stuff out, and keep in mind that these are the first and second times only that Wayne has sung this song in public. Of course, now he joins the thousands of other – mostly young women – who sing this amazing song at open mics. A quiet night in August breaking out in all directions….
Here it is, my fifth year in a row of traveling the world to play in open mics and jam sessions. It starts tomorrow with my flight from Paris to Melbourne, then the following week I go to Kuala Lumpur. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have been documenting my musical adventures around the world on this blog for the last three years, and for the year before that I began writing a book about it. This year I will again visit 20 countries in the next nine months, and play in a massive number of open mics and open jam sessions, and I will write about what I find here….
To recap a little, the first year was the book. The second year was the blog. The third year was the blog and a documentary film. The fourth year was the blog and me recording myself playing music with musicians in the open mics around the world, as well as a series of podcasts of people running the open mics and playing in them.
So where does this whole trans-media epic stand at the moment? Another recap: I take these worldwide trips as a journalist reporting on Formula One auto racing for my newspaper, and in my free time I seek out places to play, in these cities and countries where I would not otherwise expect to find open mics – in many cases. And each time I like to have a new project to work on to document it, or do something “else” with it. This year will be no exception. I again have projects in the works. What are they?
First, I want to say that my goal this year is perhaps more ambitious than in all the other year combined. Because my No. 1 goal will be to COMPLETELY finish all of the projects that have accumulated but never ceased to spin out. In other words, I’m still working on the book – it’s written, but I’m now editing it – and I want that finished finally by the end of the year, but hopefully within the next couple of months. I want to work with all the recordings I did and make some kind of CD – ie, the podcasts and some of the stuff of me playing with other people. And I want to finish the film, finally. To that end, I have made a number of very important steps in recent weeks, and I’m very, very excited about them, and I will write about that in the coming weeks.
For this year, I will not simply sit back on my laurels and be satisfied with finishing the other projects, but I will start one or two new ones. In addition to simply continuing to play at open mics and jam sessions everywhere I go, and recording it here on the blog, the first new project is that I will be adding a new page to the blog at every location I go to, which will be a Thumbnail Guide to the open mics and jam sessions, etc., that I know of in those cities. Having now had four years, and this will be the fifth, of accumulated and growing knowledge about each city’s open mics, I finally feel like it is time to put it all up on the blog in a usable form. Of course, my Paris guide to open mics will always be the most up-to-date, since that’s where I live and play the most. But the other pages will, I hope, serve their purpose well, and give a whole knew heft to this site.
The other project I plan to do, but this one may or may not be feasible, is that I plan to write a new song in each country and city I visit, and the song will in some way be inspired by the place. I have no idea how big a task that will prove to be, but I really want to face the challenge and try it. If it produces one good song, then that’s cool enough – the rest will just be a great exercise and discipline…. I will decide whether or not to make the songs heard on the site, but I expect that I will only manage to lay down the melodic idea and write the full text, but not perfect the song at each place – since I’m often not present in the countries long enough to do that…especially given all the work I have to do for my day job.
So that is it in a nutshell: 20 countries in 9 months; a new web of evergreen material for a worldwide open mic thumbnail guide of where to perform; 20 new songs inspired by the places I visit; and finally, all of my previous years’ projects finished and finalized to tie together the entire multimedia, trans-media, worldwide musical adventure. Sound like I’m a dreamer? I hope so!!!!
PS, here is the schedule of places I will visit, and when (although the date usually but not always represents the last day I am in the country – and while there are only 19 countries here, the 20th is France, where I will play in between times):
Mar. 17 Australian Grand Prix Melbourne
Mar. 24 Malaysian Grand Prix Kuala Lumpur
Apr. 14 Chinese Grand Prix Shanghai
Apr. 21 Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain
May 12 Spanish Grand Prix Barcelona
May 26 Monaco Grand Prix Nice/Monaco
Jun 9 Canadian Grand Prix Montreal
Jun. 30 British Grand Prix Silverstone/Oxford
Jul. 7 German Grand Prix Nurburgring/Cologne
Jul. 28 Hungarian Grand Prix Budapest
Aug. 25 Belgian Grand Prix Spa-Francorchamps/Liege
Sep. 8 Italian Grand Prix Monza/Milan
Sep. 22 Singapore Grand Prix Singapore
Oct. 6 Korean Grand Prix South Korea/Seoul/Mokpo
Oct. 13 Japanese Grand Prix Suzuka/Nagoya/Osaka
Oct. 27 Indian Grand Prix Delhi
Nov. 3 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Abu Dhabi
Nov. 17 U.S. Grand Prix Austin
Nov. 24 Brazilian Grand Prix Sao Paolo
I’m a great believer in the concept of loyalty in certain situations in life, maybe even in most situations. But when it comes to deciding where I am going to go to have fun playing my music in an open mic, I don’t care at all about loyalty. I’m going to go to the open mic(s) on any particular evening where I think I’m going to have the most fun, both behind the mic and at the bar talking to people, and within the confines of what my availability is within the sign-up rules of the open mic. But when it comes to the MCs of great open mics, I sometimes feel that maybe they should show a little loyalty. And last night, Ollie Joe, the MC of the great Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic decided to disappear from his post to go off and do a personal concert at the Espace B. I wanted to go and see him, but given the choice, I decided to go to his open mic, being hosted exceptionally by Sven. Wow! I was not the only one who remained loyal where Ollie did not! The place was jam packed with spectators and musicians, more than any other time practically that I have seen….
Having said that, Ollie Joe is a wonderful musician, and had I not had such a selfish motivation in doing music at open mics, I would have attended his concert – and he later returned to the Ptit Bonheur la Chance and told me the Espace B was also packed. So all ended well. But I can say that loyalty had nothing to do with the fun at the Ptit Bonheur last night. A vast list of performers, a full bar on the ground floor, standing room only in the concert room below, and some wonderful acts. NOT a night to miss – and woe to all those other bars in Paris that choose Tuesday as their open mic night….
Oh, I forgot to mention that I was actually taken enormously by surprise, got to the Ptit Bonheur so late that I was virtually the last one on the list to perform, and even then, I was no doubt on the “standby” list. As it happened, I had so much fun as an audience member and listening to others, that when it came my turn and Sven had reduced people’s slots to one song, I decided to give my second song to a crazy Australian and crazy Frenchman who had never performed at the Bonheur before. And even that was selfish, since I actually did not want to perform at that point, it was such a great night.
OK, I admit. I’m not telling the full truth. Another reason I didn’t want to perform by that time is I had a run-in with a very disagreeable spectator who treated me like cow manure for making a video of one of the better performers. That kind of thing happens very, very rarely; which is why I tend to take badly to it. (I’m actually completely cool with someone telling me that they hate being videoed and would rather I not do it – but the secret is in how it is done, IE, treat me like a normal human, my video camera is not a weapon, and lots of people love seeing the videos (of themselves or others). I needed a bit of time to cool off on the only low point of the night…. (There, I have adhered to my strict effort to speak my mind on this blog, no matter what happens….)
Brad Spurgeon at St. Lazare Metro New Year’s 2012-13
I had just finished eating a nice and quiet meal with my friend Zaza Jardim last night at my apartment and the New Year was less than an hour away. Suddenly, as I was playing a song for her on my guitar on my terrace – and attracting possibly angry looks from my neighbors – my friend said to me: “I have an idea! Let’s go out and take your guitar and go on the métro, go to the Louvre, go around Paris, all over the place, and you will sing your songs with your guitar and I will film it. It is New Year’s in Paris!” My immediate reaction that I said to myself but not to her, was: “Great idea, but I would really rather sit comfortably here and digest my meal and play songs for you. Paris on New Year’s eve can be totally mad and even dangerous.” Ultimately I just felt so comfortable I saw no reason to go out. But her idea!
It had my mind and imagination feeling possibilities. And I thought, so what am I going to do, say to her that we will just sit here like an old couple and watch life go by????? No, I thought it was potentially far more interesting to go with her – after all, what a nice offer to film it too – and I thought, well, of course, because it is New Year’s maybe people in the métro and elsewhere would be more open to craziness.
Man, that’s for SURE! So we went and spent about four hours going across and around Paris, and I sang my songs, and people danced, clapped and sang along. It was Paris in 7 and a half minutes on a New Year’s Eve, and it was wonderful. Not a single person that I played for appeared to even think for one moment that we were doing it for money. No one offered. Oh…someone offered a quarter bottle of champagne under the walkway of the Louvre where I played.
Check out the video we came up with today from last night’s events. All the scenes and the photos were all from that four hour period last night. I hashed it together as a video today.
In terms of open mics in Paris, we are situated in the red hot moment of total desperation, angst and depression in the middle of the month of August where all of Paris has to take off and go somewhere else, leaving its tourists and musicians to play with themselves.
Last night was the end of the opulence, as there were actually and ridiculously, FOUR open mics concentrated in the same area – more or less – of the Latin Quarter. Tonight, Tuesday, there are ZERO open mics, as they all take a summer break. On the other hand, not even a brimming full Paris of open mics and the crawl it would have allowed me to take would stop me from preferring to go out for a drink with my friend Marianne BP.
I met Marianne at an open jam session one Monday night a year or so ago, and our musical paths have crossed several times, and as she was about to go off herself for a vacation, we met up for a drink last night and discussed our various projects. Marianne has recently completed the second of her music videos, as well as completing her first novel. So as I complete my various writing and video projects, we had much to discuss and share.
I mention this mainly in order to post her two music videos on the blog and by way of explanation as to why there will be so little on the blog about my open mic experience in Paris last night… that did not effectively begin until midnight, at the Coolin, having taken a pass at the other three places, the Batofar, the Tennessee Bar and the Galway. I heard from musicians who DID do a bit of an open mic crawl that things were kicking at both the Galway – where there was a list of 12 performers, and apparently Thomas Brun of the Highlander was serving as MC – and at the Tennessee. I had no spies at the Batofar, though, so I cannot say anything about that one.
I can only complain that it makes no sense for four venues to do an open mic in the same city on the same night when there are other nights this summer where there is NOTHING: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for example!
Anyway, the Coolin seemed to become even more alive as we approached 12:30 AM, but it seemed they were looking to close down a little early too, and so I managed to do my two-song set, and see a few other performers, and then call it an early night – at around 1:30….
I have been hanging around home for the last three days as I edit my documentary film about open mics, and prepare my memoir and my novel for adolescents for submission to publishers/agents. What this has meant is wonderful experiences using the new Final Cut X, which got so hugely criticized when it first came out last year. It has also meant thinking a LOT about cameras, films and editing; and meeting an existential question to do with cameras, which was started off by a recent experience.
First, a note on Final Cut X. I had a week’s worth of training – 35 to 40 hours – on Final Cut Pro 7 in 2007. I then bought Premiere Pro for my home use, as I was only using a PC at home. Then after I started assembling all the rushes on my documentary about traveling around the world to open mics last year, I realized that my PC was antiquated and could not deal with the 100 hours or more of sound and footage that I had accumulated for the film, from interviews in 20 countries last year.
So I decided to buy a heavy duty Mac Pro – one of those PC-looking Macs that sits on the floor – and to buy Final Cut X. I had heard all sorts of crappy things about it, since filmmakers were as unhappy as I was, no doubt, at having learned how to use Final Cut Pro 7 and then discovering that Final Cut X had re-written the paradigm, and it looked like iMovie.
I needed one thing in particular that it had just come out with, and that was the new multicam aspect that came out after the first version. I had often done interviews with three cameras operating at once, as well as a sound recording device. I needed to sink all of that, and the Premiere Pro system – even using PluralEyes’ synching software – was not great…in fact it was a pain.
Now that I have started editing in ernest, I can say this is better than like driving a limousine. This is like sitting in a television studio and snapping your fingers during a live feed to mix and mash all the camera angles as the show goes on. It is FUN as hell, and works incredibly. I never thought editing the film would be so much fun. Additionally, Final Cut X does all the rendering in the background without you having to ask it to do so. It is sooooo simple, so beautiful, so cool.
Now to get down to figuring out what to discard from my film, making the storyline work. But I think I have that approach worked out now! In any case, it’s as fun doing it as it was interviewing people and putting the footage together.
zoom q3hd
So, that other thing I mentioned? That was to do with hardware and recording. I continue going to open mics for fun and for this blog, and I carry around a little portable Zoom Q3HD recording device, which is mainly made to record great sound, with a camera recording device added almost as an afterthought.
But it is so simple to use and to carry – on my belt – that I have always thought it was the ideal device for this blog. Unfortunately, sometimes when the lighting is really bad, the image quality is trash. Having said that, it can see in the dark to a degree, and has three basic settings for the lighting, so it is easy to use brainlessly.
But when last week I saw a video that Patrick Lamoine did of me playing at the Coolin open mic two weeks ago I was struck by the extraordinary quality of the image, and I asked him what he filmed it with. It turns out it was done with a Canon DSLR camera. That is, a camera for taking photographs that also does video. This has become a very common way to make videos, and some people are even making full length films with DSLRs.
I had noticed Patrick using the camera with a large microphone attached to it, as he attends all the Coolin open mic sessions and takes the official photos and videos – it is a great concept. I seriously wondered if I should change over to a DSLR for my blog. But Patrick had also used for a separate sound device at Zoom H4, placed above the bar – and that is apparently what he used on the video of me.
(If the video does not work correctly, click the link above it:)
Check out the video – even if it is not my most vital performance – in fact, I was a spaced out on this first song, “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart, and I did a better job on the next song, my own, “Except Her Heart.” (And you may notice people behind me leaving as soon as I start, and another looking at his cell phone – but you can’t win them all!) But the quality of the image when compared to most of what I deliver on my blog is just fabulous.
My interest piqued, I then started looking at more of the videos Patrick has taken in recent weeks. I was able to find one of the same performance that we both made a video of. It was the delightful trio of starring the deadly Alix on guitar and the fun Ansaya on vocals. The video done by Patrick was not done in the same light as the one he did of me, but it was with the same camera.
This is the video I took of the trio with my Zoom Q3HD:
So if you actually compare the two videos, my portable – and half-the-price – Zoom Q3HD really stands up to it, and the sound is far better. So I don’t think, all things considered, that I will run out immediately and buy a DSLR. But I think I will keep looking around to see if there is anything irresistibly cool on the market, now that I have had my attention turned that way….
This is the video Patrick Lamoine took of the trio with his DSLR at the same time as I took mine with my Zoom Q3HD (if the video does not work correctly, click the link above it.):
