I’ve been talking about the open mics not being quite the same as usual in Paris now that it is the middle of the summer. But last night, Ollie’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur La Chance defied the trend and was full right from the beginning. And there were lots of the cool regular acts and a few of the newer ones and some completely new. I did a number of videos, as usual, played my songs, had fun. But now my back is right up against the wall with preparations for my trip to Germany starting tomorrow, so I have for once not really got time for words. But as per usual, Ollie’s place robs me of words anyway. So take in the videos below, and if a picture tells a thousand words – or sells a thousand words – let’s hope a video tells a million!
It hurts so bad, just trying to keep to myself all the material I want to use in my documentary of the open mics around the world. But I caught a very cool, laid back little jam at the bar last night after the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic had formally ended in the basement room, the “cave.” Here it was Thomas Arlo playing Chardes Bourdon’s Epiphone at the guitar with Vincent Barriquand of the band Black Butterfly, sitting at the bar and jamming – and Ollie’s dog coming up at the end. And this just topped off a beautiful night with the final songs of Ollie closing off the show eliciting the remaining spectators to their feet to dance. Another beautiful moment of a beautiful evening.
It was summertime at Ollie’s open mic, which meant as with the previous week, a different crowd. But some of the regulars nevertheless. And the fact there were so many different people in the audience made me relax and feel I could repeat myself a little, so I did “Borderline,” I did “What’s Up!” and then I took the big risk with “A Change is Gonna Come.” I still did not feel I had done a good job of that song, that I seem to perfect only in my living room. But I recieved some good responses on it and was told that I should do it more.
I had, in fact, faced a big challenge on what to play since immediately before I went up there was this guy Elian Dalmasso, who was extremely interesting. He is a Parisian who lives in London and has a band there called “The Burnetts.” It was his birthday or something, and he had a little group of people with him, and he gave us all a very good little concert – so good that I thought I should put up here three of his songs. But that meant that I had to really search for the right thing to follow him with. I chose my songs for both the contrast to his, and what I thought might engage the audience. It worked.
I clearly felt the effects of the summertime at the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance. There were just as many people attending, or more, than usual, but there were fewer of the regulars, and there were tourists. In short, it was as jam-packed as usual, but somehow felt different – summer in the air.
I took a few videos, but the one I wished I took the most – for once – and didn’t, was my duet with Emma Guignebert. I tried singing “It’s all over now, Baby Blue,” of Bob Dylan. The hard thing about doing the same open mics in one place so often is trying to find enough material that you feel confident about to vary the show. There is just no point going and singing the same three songs all the time. But that Dylan song is one that I feel I get right very rarely, and usually then it is only when I’m in my own living room all by myself. Last night I was so stressed out about it that I not only felt I was not doing the best job, but I stumbled over and forgot a line or two here and there.
That threw me off so much that I was desperate to change the course of history, and I saw Emma sitting in the “front row” and asked if she knew “Mad World,” and she said she did, so I coaxed her up to join me on it. There, I felt much, much more relaxed and actually enjoyed myself immensely with Emma’s harmonies. Wish I’d got that on video. You can see Emma in her duet just after mine with her.
I am baffled every time I still get up behind the mic and feel human and vulnerable! But that is precisely what live performance is all about….
Last night was the annual Music Festival and I decided to learn from my experience with the Fete de la Musique from last year: I did not want to walk the crowded, rowdy, chaotic streets of Paris looking for and listening to all manner of music on this mad night of musical letting go.
For many musicians in France, the music festival, au contraire, is something that goes on all year round. The annual organized music festival is for them just an excuse for people who don’t usually care about music to go out and get drunk, hurt, involved in fights and public rowdiness.
So as it fell on a Tuesday this year, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to continue living as usual and to attend the best open mic in Paris at the moment, which takes place on Tuesday nights at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance bar in the Latin Quarter. As it turned out, Ollie Fury, who hosts the evening, had a job beforehand playing music on the street in front of a crafts shop, because it was, indeed, the Fete de la Musique.
But he ran to the bar and started the open mic on time after singing for an hour and a half, and the bar was already nearly full of waiting musicians and spectators. Still, there were a lot fewer of the regular performers. But there were a sufficient number of interesting acts, and a big audience, to make the evening a memorable one nevertheless.
Most of all, like always at Ollie’s, it was a comfortable, fun, warm evening, and one that felt all the better when once I left the place and set foot in the streets made me appreciate my decision: The streets of Paris even at 2 AM were full of rowdy, drunk, aggressive people and very few musicians by that time. Cabs were all occupied, and the general feeling was one like New Year’s Eve, which did not drum up particularly good memories for me.
So thanks to Ollie and the Ptit Bonheur la Chance and all the musicians and spectators for supporting the regular night of music on an evening where it might well have been cancelled – as other open mics did last year.
I’m putting up this item a day later than usual, as the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance was on Tuesday. But for the record, I thought I’d put up the videos anyway, since it was just another epic open mic with Ollie at this cool little bar with the neat cave basement near the Pantheon in Paris. I have written so many times about this one and come at it from so many angles, that I just didn’t know which end to grab it from this time.
Suffice to say that it was, indeed, another great open mic with Ollie and check out some of these interesting performers, and I will put them up as much as I can remember, in the order of their appearance:
I am rushing like a maniac – 10,000 maniacs – to get prepared for my trip to Barcelona tomorrow and for the open mic at the Highlander tonight! So I will keep this short on words – for once – and just say that last night at Ollie’s it was another astounding open mic.
The Ptit Bonheur la Chance basement room is getting too small to hold us all. But I am 99 percent certain that if it moved somewhere else, this open mic hosted by Ollie Fury, it would not be the same success. Yes, it’s Ollie, but the location always comes into play in something successful. But there is only floor room these days – and on the staircase – for those who are not there before 9 PM.
And a long string of new and interesting musicians. I loved the Japanese musician who sang in English and Japanese, his name, he said, was Nicolas, and his band name – or myspace – is Monkeyguitarist. He sang a Damon Rice song and a Japanese song about toe nails. And there was that cultural difference, I am sure: Everytime someone entered the room or came down the stairs, he welcomed them – even in the middle of his song.
There were so many musicians present that from the start Ollie decided we could only do one song. That is always difficult. You need three to warm up, do a slow, do a fast. But I ended up having no problem, nor did anyone else. It was normal for the number of musicians that Ollie allow us only one song. There would not have been time otherwise for everyone to play. I did one of mine, then I did my new cover song, “What’s Up.” The audience helped me in a way I could only have dreamed of, as everyone sang along through most of the song.
Wayne Standley appeared not so happy to have only two songs to sing, but he was totally unchained and out of his cage on the Tom Petty song, which I caught the last part of on video. You might call it, Tom Petty’s song, Wayne’s world….
Word about this open mic must be getting around, because I heard from several people that there was a newly famous Irish folk singer in the audience, in James Vincent McMorrow, of Ireland. He didn’t sing, though.
“When people run in circles, it’s a very, very, maaaaad world….”
I sing those lyrics often when I do “Mad World,” my version falling somewhere between that of the original by Tears For Fears, and that of Gary Jules. But in the last several days I can really apply those words literally to my life, as opposed to the figurative sense that I play in my head when I sing the song.
There has been an uncommon break on this blog, because I’ve been running in circles in all sorts of senses. First, my third cold in about six weeks meant that upon my return from Istanbul I was more wiped out than at any time in recent memory, and therefore did not go out to an open mic on Monday.
(I later learned that despite my doctor’s belief that the cold might be allergy related, the entire Lotus Formula One team apparently came back from Istanbul with the same cold.)
Well, that was the first running in circles: a third cold in six weeks and never seeming able to kill the virus, or whatever it is.
Second, I decided to sit down and read into my computer from my Canon HV20 HDV video camera the footage that I took in Istanbul, including my interview with Safak at the Kooperatif. And that is when the real running in circles began and has still not ended.
There is no problem with the ultimate fate of the footage. It is on mini DV tape, so I can read it into the computer with any HD DV camera. But with MY camera and MY computer, it has been a full time job for the past three days trying to overcome technical difficulties that I see on Internet forums are very common for people with this and other camcorders, but that no one has a solution for.
The problem is that the computer does not recognize the existence of the camera through firewire, which is the only way to connect to download the video from the tape to the computer. This had happened repeatedly with the camera in the past, but I was always able to somehow eventually hook into the camera and it would pop up on the computer.
Now, no luck. Dead! So that led me to deciding finally to download Windows 7 and loading it on my Vista computer…. But THAT process has now taken two days and my computer keeps on rejecting it!!! I am currently using my work lap top to write these words, as my computer has been setting up Windows 7 for about six hours….
In short, between the cold, the video and the Windows I have been running in circles, and going very, and completely MAD.
I did, however, decide that while I might get a little behind on the blog entries, I could not let myself go completely mad. So I went to Ollie’s open mic on Tuesday, and I went to the Highlander open mic last night – and in order to run continuously in circles I took a brief break from the Highlander to walk the 10 minute sprint walk over to the Be There bar on the Ile St. Louis to see a friend’s band. I missed his band, but I saw another, and it was good mad world fun, so check it out – the C*caine Rodeo.
But the highlight for me at Ollie’s was most certainly Victoire’s rendition of “Look What they Done to my Song…” of Melanie. I had mentioned her on this blog a couple of weeks ago after that wonderful women’s night, and I said that I told her she ought to do the Melanie song. She listened to it on my iPhone, liked it, and two weeks later, there she was performing it in public for the first time. She did an excellent job, and I think her voice DOES match up well with it. She was a little more at ease on her next song, but once she gets going on this Melanie one, Victoire will definitely wipe us out.
Ollie’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance practically never fails to provide me with a theme for this blog, and yesterday was no exception – despite that Ollie was off somewhere else neglecting his duties to us and leaving his MC job to Tristan, who did great job of it. But despite Ollie’s absence, and despite a slightly quiet start, the evening picked up steam very quickly. And there was something about it that seemed to be inspiring the women performers of the night because that was where I saw all sorts of fabulous new things, and great sounds and emotions.
For that reason, I will not put up any of the men in videos – although I was tempted to put up Tristan’s great “Tickle Me Pink.” (And I thank Tristan for doing videos of my three songs, too!)
No, the show belonged to the women and their songs and voices: I was touched by them all (I wish) and unfortunately one who hit me most I did not record, since I was submerged in emotion. (That was Aurore Clement’s second song.) But check out these performances. Victoire’s a cappella song in particular was great, and the first time I heard her voice – on the first song – I immediately thought of Melanie from the 1960s/70s (Look What They Done to My Song, Ma…). I told that to Victoire afterwards, and I’m hoping she will try the Melanie song, because the couple of bars she sang in the street made my feel goosebumps.
Then there was a young woman from the United States somewhere, Honor. She had a very nice voice too and did a nice song and then a duo with another woman. And then there was Kerry from Alabama, who was really in good form. And Fannie, who is French but also Swedish, and she who does a very mean “Chelsea Hotel” this time decided to do a Swedish song. Beautiful. Was it that that inspired Ayse Ayhan of Turkey to do a Turkish song after her English one? Very nice there too. And I was thinking that was a good preparation for my trip to Istanbul next week….
All in all, then, the woman OWNED Ollie’s joint last night. No question about it.
I was all ready to find myself regretting depature from Asia and the fabulous fun of the open mics in Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai when I dragged myself, dead tired and jet lagged from my comfortable home to the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance bar in Paris near the Panthéon. Ollie Fury’s open mic, that is. And wow, there was nothing like an evening at Ollie’s open mic to wake me up and jolt me to my feet and realize that Paris may be a little routine for me, but the people it attracts are anything but. In fact, the electric shock of the night was a couple of brothers from Japan who have been hanging around in Europe in the last couple of years – mostly London and France – and electrifying audiences with their high-voltage duo act of frenetic guitar, vocals and movement.
THAT was a long-winded paragraph, but how else could I wind up the night’s activities? These guys call themselves Tar0&Jir0, and their real names are Kimitaro & Tomojiro Kukae… or perhaps not. Just check out the videos of Tar0&Jir0 and no doubt you will have a small idea of how mad these two are. I bought their CD and played it this morning and found the same electrifying – or electrified – acoustic scramble, and was glad I’d spent the 10 euros. I thought these brothers had named themselves after a couple of dogs who saved some people’s lives in a failed Antarctic expedition, but that is not the case. It’s just a coincidence. But I could fairly say they saved me last night.
I played three songs, not at all prepared, and only realizing how tired I was when I got up behind the mic. But it went well. I did “Streets of London” for the first time from beginning to end with only one real slip up in memory of the lyrics. I did a Dylan and my “Except Her Heart.”
There were lots of other fabulous performers and sounds, like another visit by Natas Loves You, doing one of their own and a Beatles they don’t often do. There was a trio of young people singing Dylan, The Band and something else – and I found it really refreshing. There was soo much variety – a new person coming in the form of Zoe Kelly, from Sidney, who has a very nice voice and style, and self-assuredly pulls it all off. Some regulars like Aurore Clement, and Tristan, and others. And finally, Angus Sinclair played Ollie’s for the first time in a nice set, the last song of which got the crowd really rocking.
Finally, I was not the only one electrified by Ollie’s great open mic. Ollie’s dog was also one of the best listeners, at least when Ollie was playing his songs to start off the evening. Check out the video of his dog listening to his master’s voice….
I will refrain from writing too much here, as it was yet another night in Paris at Ollie’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance. The main lines here, though, are that after a slow start led me to believe that there is something in the air this week reducing crowds at open mics, it suddenly picked up and was pretty much as busy and as successful as ever chez Ollie.
The salient point for me would be the great new duos and trios. Or rather, two duos and the everlasting Natas Loves You in trio (before its concert at the Maroquinerie this Saturday).
The first new duo was that of Aurore and Tristan, and they did a nice number together – fully unexpected; and then there was the further development of the duo of Emma Guignebert singing with Yaco playing guitar, doing a song written by Yaco, and called, “Carry Me Back.” I really like it, and Emma’s voice is hot.
Then there was Natas, doing a couple of their songs and a couple of covers…. I’d love to put the Beatles cover they do down here again in video, but I’ve done that before… so space for the rest….
