That the story was rejected several times hurt at first, but the payoff in The Star was more than worth the wait. It also ended up being the biggest article about Onfray in the major English-language media to that date, coming out a couple of months before his book on atheism became his first major English translation published in the United States. He was soon to be written about extensively, and I recall seeing one interesting portrait even in the Wall Street Journal.
For me, this Onfray article was another of the stories in what I was hoping would be a series about popular philosophical writers, the first being that on Colin Wilson, that turned into a book. Alas, I did not continue the series…. But maybe I will return to it some day….
BUDAPEST – Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I have not been writing as much lately, and I have not been playing as much music in open mics lately. In fact, I have not even been playing as much music at home as I usually do – although I have managed at least one song a day, with the exception of one day where I did none – and while part of me has felt dejected, destroyed, messed up and worried about losing the movement of these passionate fun things I do, TODAY, having arrived in Budapest, a city of much classical music, I was suddenly reminded of an old aphorism once said by Beethoven to a student:
“Habit may depreciate the most brilliant talents,” he said in 1812 to his pupil, Archduke Rudolph, who he warns against too zealous a devotion to music. I’m quoting from an Internet source on Beethoven on that, but I had written the same quote in one of my “Nothing Book” diaries when I was 17 or 18, and I recall my translation as having been: “Habit may depreciate even the finest of talents.”
In any case, I do not consider myself either one of the finest or most brilliant talents musically, but I have always remembered that quote since I thought it could apply to any form of artistic endeavour, or even any profession or job anyone does. And today, after travelling to Budapest and doing my day job and finally finishing everything that needed doing, I finally picked up my guitar in my hotel room and I played for half an hour. And I felt so refreshed, so happy, so powerful playing my songs and cover songs, and strumming the guitar and being liberated once again in a hotel room at the beginning of another of my open mic adventure’s faraway locations, at the beginning of a weekend of musical and other fun.
And I thought, there’s no panic on the blog, no panic in the music, shake it up. Shake it all up. Do what you love doing, and make it fresh and fun. Don’t fall into habit for habit’s sake.
Many regular readers of this blog may also have noticed that in recent weeks I have been filling out other parts of the blog, while not doing as many open mics as usual. That’s part of the same effort to break the habit…at least momentarily. There are plenty of open mics and gigs and musical adventures to come – starting, I hope, with the coming days in this beautiful city….
PARIS – Ultimately, my Saturday in Paris yesterday was a very personal thing, but in another way, it belongs entirely on this blog as it started with some themes recently expressed here, and it ended with a surprise musical interlude of the kind I love.
I was thinking of driving off to Deauville for the day, as there was sun and heat and it really isn’t that far. In then end, I decided to go to the Musée d’Orsay and profit by the sun and heat of Paris. But on the way there, I decided to go to the amazing crime writing library, the Bilipo that is behind the fire station on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the 5th Arrondissement that I wrote about on the blog the other day. I wanted to check out the mystery magazines and maybe see if there were any of the people I knew there.
So I went to the Bilipo, thumbed the pages of the mystery magazines from England, France and the U.S. and then I spoke to Catherine Chauchard, the longtime director of the library. It turned out that we shared a passion for the band Moriarty, and ended up talking as much about music as crime literature.
From there I went off towards the Seine and ended up stopping for a salad in the park of the St. Julien le Pauvre church next to the oldest tree in Paris, planted in 1602. This, of course, was right next to Shakespeare and Company, and I decided I must buy a copy of the New York Review of Books. So I went there and started entering this great bookshop only to find a hand and a voice preventing our passage: “Sorry, there is a line up of people here and you’ll have to wait in line before entering.” I turned to see this lineup of around 10 or so people, and I looked in the store to try to see what people were lining up for, and I couldn’t figure it out, so I asked.
“There are currently too many people in the shop, so you have to wait in line until your turn,” was the response.
Huh? I looked in the shop and found that it had fewer people in it than many times I had visited, and fewer than many stores. Clearly, though, the guy at the door did not seem to be wanting to get into a discussion of what this new policy was all about, and the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to wait in line as if I was visiting one of the seven wonders of the world, when in fact I had freely entered the bookshop for 30 years…. So I told the guy I wasn’t going to wait and I went off to the Abbey Bookshop, even if they don’t carry the New York Review of Books. Despite the even more cramped quarters of the Abbey, I’d never been told to wait in line….
So I went to the Abbey, which of course, I spoke about in two recent posts here. The place was buzzing along with business, and rather than being told to wait in a lineup to get into the mausoleum, Brian Spence, the owner, greeted us by saying immediately, “Oh, just in time for a cup of coffee with maple sirup!” So I had a cup of coffee with maple sirup and I explored the bookshop, descending into the cave which Brian referred to as the scene of the crime – in reference to my short story. And while I did not buy an NYRB at Shakespeare and Company, I did decide to ask Brian for some book recommendations, and I left with three (A Steinbeck, a Patrick Leigh Fermor and Paul Auster)…. Now does this not show how effective good customer treatment is in business?!
I moved on to eat a meal at a Thailand restaurant, the Lao Lane Xang. The food was great. Oh, and on the way to the restaurant, I don’t want to forget to mention, I explored some wonderful parts of Paris, including the Chateau de la Reine Blanche, just off the Avenue des Gobelins…. What a city!!
I decided to make a very brief visit to The Quiet Man pub since it reminded me of a similar kind of jam in Montreal that I had attended, the one at Grumpy’s. Whereas Grumpy’s is all about bluegrass, the Quiet Man is all about Irish music…played by French people. They all sit around a table in the basement room every Saturday evening and play jigs and reels, with violins, concertinas, guitars, flutes, etc.
I stayed there for a half a pint of beer and then headed off to call it a night, oh, and perhaps catch some fireworks for a Bastille Day display, if there were to be any the night before the 14th…. On the walk away from there, however, I suddenly heard someone playing an acoustic guitar and singing, and I heard an accompanying violin, and I turned my head and looked right, into a pub called The Green Linnet. It was another Irish pub, and the man singing finished his song and saw me looking in and invited us in… I asked if it was an open mic, and he said, “No,” but the violinist indicated that maybe I wanted to play, and he asked, and as I was trying to figure out what to do, I noticed a man at the bar waving to me.
I suddenly realized that I had recognized the guy without it really clicking in my head: It was Chris Kenna, an amazing musician from Australia who lives in Paris and performs regularly in bars mostly in around the 11th Arrondissement. I had met him first when he was hosting an open mic in that area. Now he performs quite a bit with a violinist named Melissa Cox, as “Kenna and Cox,” and I suddenly realized this was the woman playing behind the mic with the other singer man (as I had in fact met her before too).
So I stopped for a beer here, and they invited me to go up and play some songs after their break. So I played three songs: “Mad World,” “Borderline” and in order to suit the place, I sang “Raggle Taggle Gypsies,” which I rarely do anywhere. I was fantastically fun to have this impromptu, unexpected moment, and I had a nice conversation with Chris and Melissa. Then Chris and Melissa took to the stage and played a few songs, Chris with his deep, raspy voice that seems tailor-made for the blues, and a few other styles too…. They sounded great together.
I left, and never did see any fireworks, but all in all, I realized, it was the ultimate day in the streets of Paris. How could it have been any better and with more unexpected moments and adventures!!! It felt like the greatest decision to wander about Paris rather than drive three hours to Deauville and three hours back, but I’d still have loved to stick my feet in the sea….
Oh, yes, and if you read this far, you might have also realized that I never did make it to the Musée d’Orsay, and in the end, that matters little. Perhaps all of life’s journey is kind of like this???
Steve Forbert today photograph by Alan MESSER [alanmesser.com]
OXFORD – It was September or October of 1976, and I was attending an open mic at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, about to take to the stage to sing something – I’m not sure what – when the MC woman announced the next number. A scruffy, thin, threadbare guy two or three years older than me took to the stage and greeted us in a raspy voice. He started strumming his guitar – I think it was a worn out Martin – and broke into a howling, haunting, high-pitched, emotional rendition of the Hank Williams classic, “I’m So Lonesome I could Cry.”
The room filled with his presence, and I felt a bolt of something overcome my senses and turn what was until then your average dreary open mic night – even if it was at the legendary open mic where Bob Dylan and all the other 60s icons got their start – into an electrifying experience that left me, for one, not just entertained but also mystified. What’s going? Who is this guy? What’s he doing to the room? Where did he get this voice? Can I find one of those somewhere? How does he do this? And why? What does it represent?
Those were the thoughts going through my teenage mind at this period in my life when although I would have loved to have “been a singer songwriter” I felt far, far from any such ambition. (I would later that night at Gerde’s give a terrible, shaky, non-rhythmic version of Raggle Taggle Gypsies or some other traditional Celtic song, and I don’t know what else – maybe a Bob Dylan, maybe one of my own songs.) So I had all these questions going through my head about who this guy was and what I was feeling in the room. He was clearly known to the MC, so he had been there a few times before – and perhaps even a lot.
I would see the guy, whose full name I learned was Steve Forbert, two or three more times, and on one of those occasions I found myself standing just ahead or just behind him in the line up outside Gerde’s where the musicians waited to sign the list before the open mic. It was cold, and I recall clearly the inner lining and stuffing of his jacket was bursting out at the seams.
I decided it was time to try to find some answers to those questions and I asked him how old he was and how long he had been playing in bars and open mics. He said he was 21 and had been doing it for a couple of years.
Of course, he was not from New York City. He was from Meridian, Mississippi, and his strong southern accent is apparent not only in his speech but in his singing. But I did not learn all that much more about him, and I left New York City myself with many questions about just what it was I had witnessed.
I would go through many travels and trials and spend a four-month period down and out in London busking in Marble Arch (where I would discover the beginnings of a voice), then rent a room with a well known American DJ in London, and spend a period in Iran during the revolution and then finally on my way back from the revolution in Iran, while taking a black cab from the airport to the home of my American DJ friend, I suddenly heard the voice in a song on the radio. It was now 1978 and I recognized the voice instantly and just waited for the DJ on that station to announce the guy’s name: Steve Forbert.
Forbert’s Alive on Arrival cover
He had just released his album “Alive on Arrival,” and this was a song from the album – although I cannot remember which one. Suddenly, however, I now had the answer to my questions of that night two years earlier: What I had witnessed in Gerde’s Folk City was quite simply a future giant of American pop music, who was about to go on a roll of about three years of success.
He was, in fact, greeted with the doubtful and unfortunate acclaim of being “the next Bob Dylan.” Like so many others. His song, “Romeo’s Tune,” hit No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980.
Sometime in the early 1980s when I was living in Toronto, Forbert came to do a concert and I may or may not have attended the concert – no clear memories – but I do recall being thoroughly surprised to discover that the liner notes of his latest album were written by that DJ friend of mine – Paul Gambaccini – from London, who, it turned out, was a huge fan of Forbert’s. How strange the way people’s paths cross, I thought.
Over the years I have thought back many times to that period in New York City at the open mics, and my meeting with Forbert. I moved to France and for many years ceased to perform in public until I started again nearly five years ago, once again at the open mics, but now feeling much better about my reception as a performer. One of the songs I would try to perform would be that Hank Williams song as I tried to reach the same emotional and melodic heights not of Hank, but of Steve Forbert. Another song I would occasionally try was “Romeo’s Tune.”
In neither case would I ever feel satisfied to have achieved that level of what I recalled from Forbert’s performance, or his recordings on his records, which I later bought.
Living in France I never had a chance to see Forbert again, but I always vowed to go to one of his concerts in England, should I be here when he did a concert. So it was that this weekend I noticed that Forbert was doing a small tour of England that involved not only the famous Glastonbury Festival today, but yesterday, an appearance in Swindon.
Swindon is a 50 minute drive from Oxford, where I am staying during my reporting of the British Grand Prix in Siverstone. So I bought a ticket online for his show at the Swindon Arts Centre, and after my day of work yesterday, I drove off to encounter Forbert again – after 37 years!
It turned out to be a small theater, and as I entered the room to take my seat 10 minutes before the performance was to start, there was Steve already on the stage, tuning up and preparing his equipment. He was up there for the full 10 minutes, just waiting for the spectators to enter and preparing. Now 58 years old, wearing jeans, T-shirt and another open-collar shirt over that, in full possession of all his hair, I felt instantly as if no time had passed whatsoever. Later, during the show, he mentioned there were CDs for sale and asked people to kindly not hold the cover up to his face – in reference to the fact that his youthful face on the CDs would be a contrast to the one he has now. In fact, he looks in great condition, physically trim and fit, and as I said, I had the feeling from my seat in Row F, that I was seeing exactly the same “Little Stevie Orbit” as I saw at Gerde’s Folk City.
The concert was, again, for me in particular a very emotional one, and one in which I was constantly trying to figure out what had changed in his voice, his delivery, his persona, his music. Had anything changed? If not, why was Forbert a big star 30 years ago and today known mostly to aficionados and grey-haired people walking down memory lane?
My conclusion, after two 45-minute (or more) sets of Steve playing his guitar solo and with no electronic effects and entertaining us purely with his magic, rhythmic playing, his harmonic and his raspy voice, was that not much had changed at all, in fact. Unfortunately, before the concert, his assistant announced that Steve preferred that no one make a video or take photographs. So I had to set my Zoom Q3 HD aside and not grace my readers with material to make up their own minds about his performance today.
But what I did come away with was the thought that Steve had not changed that much, but that I now had a new and different interpretation of his voice and of my own encounter with him playing 37 years ago before he became a success. What I realized was that his extremely distinctive raspy and emotional voice is one that may sound different according to the circumstances – be it live or recorded, with a band or solo, in a large room or a small bar – but that behind it all is the same “center” of Steve Forbert’s poetic, musical world.
And that world is all about, guess what? Our passage through life. I bought his re-released first album last night to hear its 11 bonus tracks – and they are fabulous, some outtakes and some live stuff from the time, as well as demo stuff – and on one of the songs I noticed the lyric about time passing and him now being “23 year’s old,” as if he was much older and wiser now…. And there was a lot of talk of this kind of thing last night, too, and I realized that he had not changed – Steve Forbert the observer of life is still there, and still Alive well past Arrival. If he had not changed, then perhaps popular tastes change; but that means they’ll perhaps come around again….
Forbert’s patter with the audience was a blessing, a brilliant way to connect, and I admired how he warmed up both us and himself through the patter, the songs, and as he did, his voice warmed up, got stronger, warmer. He had a constant, excellent, drole rapport with the audience, asked for requests – I asked for the Hank Willams song, but did not get it – and he played many of the old hits, as well as more recent stuff, including stuff from his recent album from last year.
It was admirable to see how he carried these two sets without a band and without electronic looping or other cheating gadgets: Just his own musical world and the songs his fans love.
After the show he came out to sign CDs and speak to the spectators. This gave me the chance to present myself and tell him about meeting him at Gerde’s 37 years before.
“Those were great days, weren’t they?” he said.
They were, I said. And he said something upon my departure about how maybe he’d go through another 35 years and we’d meet again. During the show he had mentioned visiting his dad who was 90 years old. So I told him that his dad was 90, and my dad was 88, and so we’d both get there, wouldn’t we?
During the show, by the way, he said if you don’t have the recent re-editions of his albums then you don’t have the albums, because he has added so many bonus tracks. I can confirm that the Alive on Arrival is definitely worth buying. I’ve been listening to it in my rental car driving around England and I realized that while we were fed the slick, well-produced 10 tracks of the original, there was a treasure trove of more raw but perhaps more pure gold in the outtakes and live stuff….
There is a kind of fad amongst many musicians in France to say that they hate the Fête de la Musique, that night on the 21 June where music is allowed in the streets, bars and everywhere and anywhere else and goes on all night long, celebrating music (and the first day of summer, usually). It started in France in 1982, and it has spread to other countries, but I think there is probably no other country and city, especially, than Paris that celebrates this musical festival with as much fervor. But a lot of musicians like to say they are not going to play or celebrate the music, and they hate the festival. I can understand that in some ways, but my own attitude now is that I play music every day of the year – or if I don’t, I don’t feel good – and so why would I be so contrarian as to say the only day I’m not going to play is during the day that music has its official celebration?
Still, in recent years I have been much less enthusiastic about going out on the Fête de la Musique in Paris quite simply because it can be an absolute mad house in the streets of Paris, and even violent and loud and disagreeable. And if the metros run all night and are free, well, they’re also full of rowdy people pissed out of their minds and carrying a guitar on your back – as I always do – makes you stand out even more, oddly enough, than you usually do.
Anyway, all of this build up is in order to say that I ended up finding the most wonderful alternative to the madhouse of Paris during the Fête de la Musique after I was invited by the young and up-and-coming French singer songwriter Melody Says – with whom I had shared the bill last fall on a boat on the Seine – to play in the first part of her show at a bar in her native Levallois, just outside Paris. In fact, she had invited me without telling me where it was, and I immediately accepted, and then found out afterwards that it was a 23-minute walk from my home. That, of course, meant that I would perform during the Fête de la Musique without having to fight through the hell and noise of the Paris streets.
It also meant that the gig itself would take place in a nice, calm, cool neighborhood pub, where, as it turned out, there were lots of locals and lots of guests and fans of Melody Says. And no wonder: Melody’s music is fresh with nice melodies, lively with moving rhythms and captivating with her lovely vocals. There is one wonderful song, “I Wish I Was Born in 1952,” that I particularly like, and I think it’s one of her most popular ones. But I kept wanting to interrupt her act and say, “Melody, listen, I’m sorry to have to break the news, but if you had been born in 1952 you would be hitting 61 years old about now, and I’m not so sure your future would be looking quite the same….” But then, who am I to say? Maybe it will – if she keeps up the melodies.
She had some interesting musicians with her too, by the way, with on bass a former bassist for Le Spark, and on guitar her producer Kenny Paterson, who it turns out – although I did not realize it last night – was a legendary engineer and producer from Scotland who has worked with bands like Texas, and INXS and John Martyn, and who today recorded Melody’s EP (in London), and worked recently as Pete Doherty’s sound engineer on his gigs. (Melody Says has, by the way, also toured a little with Doherty recently.)
I myself had a completely new experience as a musician working on the Fête de la Musique. When Melody Says asked me to play, as I said, I immediately agreed to do so. The idea was I’d play with my band. But here’s what happened: It being the Fête de la Musique, and me not really having any kind of permanent band (I play with several other musicians occasionally), I discovered that every one of the five or six or more musicians that I have played with were already performing in gigs around Paris in their own regular bands! I almost got one in the end, but he had a very non-understanding employer who would not let him finish work early for his music passion, even on this international music festival day.
So it was that I had to perform solo and act as the warm-up man before the real treat of the evening – Melody Says. Fortunately there was a kind of neighborhood feel to the pub, which, by the way, is called, The Last Drop, and so I found that starting the evening’s music with just my guitar was actually a great way to do things. I did shift from my original desire to play mostly only my owns songs into a decision to play some of the crowd pleasers too, some of the songs, like “Father and Son,” that everyone knows or can sing along with. And as it turned out, both Melody and her bass player joined me for several songs by playing on the drum set behind me. So I chose some very moving, thrusting rhythm songs for those ones and that got the audience warmed up a bit, and it was great fun to play with them.
So all in all it was actually a fabulous evening, and we finished it off by going to Melody Says’ place and doing a little rooftop jamming within sight of the Eiffel Tower and with my Gibson J-200 facing of with Melody’s Epiphone EJ-200, which is the Gibson clone and a fabulous guitar of its own…. Could it have been a better celebration of music in Paris – or rather, Levallois – than that?
PARIS – The thing that keeps me going on this blog is the connection I make with its readers, the people who write in to me about it, the people I meet in open mics who say, “You’re Brad, aren’t you? I found this open mic because of your blog!” Can there be anything more satisfying than that? Well, upon my return from Montreal last week I found waiting for me in the snail mailbox the hardcopy of a glossy and classy magazine called Pittsburgh Quarterly, which is the premier popular, general interest magazine of that part of Pennsylvania. And in it was a big article by a man named Tim Menees, who is an editorial cartoon artist, a painter, a musician and a writer. And his story was entitled: “Rainy Nights in Paris: Tim Menees Lands a Flat and Plays the Blues.” In the story, in highly readable prose, Menees writes of his adventures on a vacation in Paris last year in which he plays piano at the Tennessee Bar open mic on Monday nights. And he tells the tale of how he found the place – from my blog….
The story, in the Summer 2013 issue of the Pittsburgh Quarterly, avoids most of the usual clichés of writing about renting an apartment in Paris and discovering the City of Light. Of course, it has to have some of those, and one of the more flattering ones is how he ties the ethos of the recent Woody Allen film, “Midnight in Paris,” to the current situation that I and many of my friends now live, with the Tennessee Bar’s open mic as one of the gathering places for that. The description of his evening at the open mic is just great, and I can picture it all.
Here are two of the early introductory paragraphs from that section (the story is not online):
“It’s a tiny joint on a tiny street, sitting behind a red facade and a line of bicycles: A few guys are standing around having a smoke. Down in the cave below street level, someone tunes a guitar, and James is setting up shop. He’s an expat from L.A., with intense eyes and curly blond hair poking out from under a porkpie hat. He plays in a local rock band, speaks some French and runs Monday night’s open mic. He says, “You gonna play? Cool!”
“Many Paris clubs are in caves (cellars) because there’s nowhere else to put them. I found Le Tennessee via a blog written by Canadian Brad Spurgeon about open mics and Paris jam sessions. By day he covers Formula One auto racing for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune; by night he plays guitar and tracks down open mics around the world. It’s hard to sling a keyboard over your back, so I emailed him and he quickly named three clubs with pianos.”
There is much information about renting an apartment short term in Paris, and lots of wonderful description of the open mic itself – Menees went twice – and you can easily recognize the mood, and no doubt some of the musicians. It approaches its end with the most flattering and cool aspect of all:
“In the crowd is a sculptor from Philadelphia who lives and works in Paris. Brad Spurgeon. James. The Houston girl staying another two months to perform and write music.
“Expats and the arts. The beat goes on.”
That, of course, is referring back to how he started the piece by referring to the Woody Allen film and the expat artists of the 1920s and 30s.
Yep, the beat goes on, and on, and on. Tim, who also illustrated the story with his own artwork paintings of Paris, will be returning to Paris this October for another round, and an aim to visit more than just the Tennessee Bar open mic.
PARIS – The first thing I want to make clear is that I am not a struggling musician. I play music and have countless music-related projects going on simultaneously simply because I love to play music and find this to be a super cool lifestyle, and I love all my musical side projects. I earn my as a journalist covering Formula One racing for a major world newspaper. So music for me, while I take it very seriously, is just an amateur passion. Who knows, maybe some day it will be more for me than that. But at the moment, that’s it. And this post is just meant to talk about what it can be like for someone who IS a struggling musician.
It is also not going to be a very in-depth post, since I have to rush out in a few minutes for meeting involving another musical project – my documentary on open mics – so I don’t have the time for depth. Instead, I want to write very quickly about the little experience I had last night when I was asked to run an open mic in Paris for one exceptional appearance as MC, host, organizer, whatever. This is the sort of work a budding and struggling and journeyman musician can often be asked to do.
Coming from the newspaper business where I work in an institution that, while far, far, far from perfect, actually does produce a newspaper every day, it is sometimes surprising to see that the same professional qualities required to do that are not applied elsewhere, like in the bar life, musical lowlife, world of the struggling musician. So here is what I found last night and would never have to depend on for my livelihood:
I was invited weeks ago to host this open mic, and last night, an hour before I went, I asked if I should show up at 8:15:
– an hour beforehand I was told I should show up at 8:15 for an open mic that started at 8:30, upon arrival I found some musicians waiting, as they had signed on my facebook invite, but the barman told me the open mic usually starts at 9:00 or after. At least one of my musicians present had another appointment for playing at just after 9, so that was a problem right there, but no big, big deal.
– an hour beforehand I was told that I would get a meal and two drinks as payment for the gig, so I rushed out of my home without eating dinner, pleased I’d eat there. The man behind the bar told me that in fact I would not be given a meal. So I ordered a meat and cheese plate, since there was nothing else, and I paid 9.50 euros, and 2 euros tip. 11.50
– I drank the two beers, and through the evening, I ordered two more, so my total donation to the bar for the work I did for them was 23.50 euros, including tip. I took a cab home and that cost 22 euros, so the total evening’s cost was 45.50.
– From 15 to 17 people I invited on facebook showed up, so if count what I donated to the bar and what they bought in drinks, we’re at a minimum of a couple of hundred euros coming into the bar for my work.
– I waited for the guy who hired me to do the hosting to show up, but he did not come and it was after 9. He had been there in the past with other replacement hosts, and he had not told me he was not coming. And I did not have his phone number and neither did the guy behind the bar, and I did not know where the mic and other equipment was, as I had not been told and expected the guy to show up.
– So finally I got the help of the guy behind the bar to find the mic and set up. It turned out there was no mic clip to hold the mic to the mic stand. So I scrounged about the bar and found bits of half-dead tape here and there and I managed to tape the mic to the stand.
– We set everything up and then within 15 seconds of me starting to play my opening songs to start the night, the sound system died. It cut out.
– Thanks to the help of a couple of the performers, who knew something about sound systems, we got the sound working again…for another 15 seconds.
– For the first hour, at least, we played with the sound system, which cut out every 15 seconds. The first three performers, therefore, including me, played with no mic or amplified acoustic guitar, and this was in a loud bar with the front terrace open to the street. IE, no good.
– Finally the owner of the bar showed up and HE had the number of the guy who hired me. That guy soon showed up, but by then the owner of the bar had played with the sound system and got it to work – he said he had known that the sound system had a problem, and he knew how to make it work….
Well, after that, the whole evening just took off, the performers were great, I got the job done, and all was well. But there were people whom I had invited from my facebook who found me in charge of a chaotic evening of ridiculousness for an hour, and looking like I did not know what to do. One of them actually said when he left, “I’m never coming back to this place again.” None of it would have happened had the evening been handled professionally from all sides, and I will know in future to ask anyone who hires me every single detail about the setup and when they are going to arrive, etc. But can you imagine depending on this sort of thing for a living as a struggling musician? While I worked, sweated things out and felt like a fool, the bar made a profit off my earnings as a journalist and my contacts that I invited.
Hmmm, I think I should write a modern novel about this world, and maybe call it something like Musical Grub Street….
Anyway, my thanks to all the musicians and spectators who came, and especially to those who helped me with the sound. The night, in the end, as I said, turned out to be a very fun one – after the crap. Sure, it cost me 45 euros, but it was kind of interesting, yes!!!
PS, I forgot to mention that after an evening like that I had to go to another bar to decompress, to come down, and there I spent another 4 euros on a half pint of beer, bringing the total cost of the evening up to like 50 euros. Oh, that second bar, by the way, was the Highlander, where there is a very, very professional run and well organized open mic, with Thomas Brun as the MC….
PARIS – Readers of this blog may well have grown sick and tired of the myriad posts I have written over the last two to three years about one Paris open mic in particular. That is the P’tit Bonheur la Chance open mic, run on Tuesday nights, first by Ollie, then when Ollie went to Berlin, by Ollie. Yes, yes, somehow the one Ollie left, and the other Ollie took over. Also known as Yaco, the second Ollie defied all expectations that a great open mic must be entirely about the person who runs it – and he made as big a success of it as the first Ollie did. So that is when it became clear – I think – that an open mic is about the MC, the bar shape and layout, the proprietor and/or manager, the style, the musicians who come, the neighborhood… okay, you get the idea. Well, last night was the bar’s last open mic, and I decided to make a short film of the evening. Pierre, who owns Au P’tit Bonheur la Chance, is moving on to bigger and better things – if I understood correctly. So this is not totally one of those sad stories of complaints from the neighbors – although there were some of those.
In any case, I think I want to shut up now and let the film take over and tell the story. Last night was the last night of the open mic, and I was eager to do something different and special in terms of this blog. So last night I did an interview with Yaco/Ollie – or is it Ollie/Yaco – and I caught some of the great moments of the evening on my Zoom Q3HD recording device, and decided to not do what I usually do, which is to inundate this page with videos, but rather to spend the day editing bits and pieces all together to make a little documentary of the last evening. All bits from this shaky little roughshod documentary come from last night – all the performances, interview(s), etc., all represent the last night at the P’tit Bonheur la Chance open mic. I forgot to bring my wind protector from the camera, so there are some brutal wind sounds, brutal cuts, it is full of flaws, but I HAD to get this one down. I wish I could have got and fit everyone on this film – in fact, from all the P’tit Bonheur open mics…but it was not possible.
A Great Open Mic Gone
Paris is losing one of its best open mics – but I am sure there will be more to come. Oh, and by the way, as you will see in the little – actually waaaaay too long film (for Internet purposes) – there was some kind of prize-giving last night to the people who had come to the open mic the most and contributed the most, etc. I got that, and so did Wayne, John and Sven. I hope I have not forgotten anyone – I made frequent trips from the music to the bar to the street, playing, talking, having a great time – as usual. There must have been close to 30 musicians, but I only managed to grab a few of them for this.
Oh, and I have to mention that 1) a massive thanks to Brislee Adams for using my Zoom to film me – and somehow I was elsewhere when he played his great open mic song – and 2), the bit in the film towards the end where my interview cuts off brutally with Yaco/Ollie happened because there was no more space on the 8 gigabyte SD card!!!! But as he had just talked about the mic cutting out abruptly and brutally one recent night, it seemed like a great way to end the interview!
Hope you like it, and please bear in mind that in the interest of getting this out on the site tonight before midnight, it is a bit roughshod – but it is intended as being as off-the-cuff as the average open mic night at the P’tit Bonheur la Chance…..
PS, the bar will not close until Saturday night, so there is still time to go and imbibe – and in principle, there is supposed to be quite a celebration on Saturday night….
BARCELONA – For my sixth city installment of my worldwide open mic guide today I am loading my Barcelona page. As a reminder, it all started with my now very popular Thumbnail Guide to Paris Open Mics, Jam Sessions and other Live Music, and due to that guide’s popularity I decided this year to do a similar guide for each of the cities I travel to during my worldwide open mic tour.
Worldwide Open Mic Guide Philosophy
The only guide I am really in a good position to update regularly is that of Paris, since I live there. But I decided to do guides to all the other 20 and more cities on my worldwide open mic tour in order to give the knowledge I have personally of each city’s open mics. The guide has links to sites I know of local guides that may be more up-to-date, but I have chosen to list the open mics or jam sessions that I have played in myself. There may be others that I know of, but if I have not played there, I will not include it on the list. That way, the user learns a little of my own impressions. But I cannot be as certain that the guide is up-to-date – so check before you go.
More Experience Than Existing Open Mics
Unfortunately, given the ephemeral nature of open mics – and bars themselves – in virtually all of the cities in the guide my own personal experience of playing open mics in the city in question usually goes way beyond the number of venues listed, since they things arise and close very frequently.
Mostly Jam Sessions in Barcelona
There are far more jam sessions in Barcelona than open mics as such – but the jams act as open mics too, and this is a guide to venues of both philosophies.
PARIS – My article with Michel Onfray, which received several rejections before being published in the top selling Toronto Star newspaper as the lead story to its Sunday Insight section in December 2006, was one of the most fun stories I ever got to write. Attending Onfray’s “popular university,” and then returning to his home to talk to him with his professors, and meeting his parents and seeing the town where he lived, it was all a great moment with one of my favorite French authors. 
