Spent the evening at home again last night for around the fourth night in a row, again working on the new song and memorizing a cover. The cover, as it turns out, is by Bob Dylan – of all people! But that brought to mind another rejected piece of my juvenalia, a segment of a memoir I wrote about my early life in show business when as a teenager I decided I was going to be a star…and ended up starving and busking in the streets of London to pay the hotel and food.
One particular day I had to employ strong-arm tactics and sing my most profitable song for 12 hours non-stop. That was Mr. Tambourine Man, by Bob Dylan. So here is the abridged busking chapter of a memoir, written at age 25, that I had never intended to publish, but just to write as a photograph of the period while it was fresh in my mind. A few years later I did try to sell this abridged chapter – a kind of modern Orwellian down-and-out in London – to literary magazines, but it was rejected – and so now joins my series of Brad’s rejected writings…. Like all the other rejected pieces, I have not edited the writing, but publish it here as I found it on my computer. (Even with a typo or three.)
Tonight I plan to finally return to play music at the open mic(s).
I have decided to create a new section on this blog, one for an archive of my rejected stories. That may sound like a really weird idea, and not the sort of thing one should really show off. But in the end, I feel able to do this because I don’t feel insecure about my writing, yet I also feel as if a lot of the suffering I had to go through with rejections was pointless! Of course, in many cases I may not have tried hard enough to sell a story – ie, I had to submit my biggest break-through article to at least 11 publications before it got accepted over the transome as the front page essay on the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review in 1991!
I am also doing this in order to use the rejection stories area to fill up the blog with a nice little juvenalia archive, and also because I feel in most of the cases the stories will have some kind of cool historical value to read – like take today’s story, for instance, which is a review that I wrote of Paul McCartney’s show at the Bercy Stadium in 1989 and which was part of his world tour. It was pretty historic as a world tour, and when we look back now at a time when this concert was further away than the actual Beatles breakup and he is STILL performing!! Very cool.
I cannot believe how snowed under I have become on a vacation!!! I am behind on the blog and I have so much to say and recount over the last couple of nights. But I will not have the time to do it. So I will keep it to a minimal report, just saying that I attended the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic on Tuesday and heard some very interesting musicians as usual, and this time the show was MCd by Rachel, who did one of her nifty ukelele songs at the end. She then handed her uke to Luca who did a very cool number on it too…. And then last night I did my gig at the new and interesting 9b bar on Boulevard de la Villette….
I am very behind, in fact, because I also did my last of all interviews for my open mic film. Because I had travelled all around the world since March I had put off my interviews with organizers and MCs of the Paris open mics. So yesterday I did an interview with Thomas Brun of the Highlander open mic. We did a very cool and complete interview in a neat bar restaurant beside the Cafe de la Gare.
I have been capturing all the video footage into Premiere Pro in the last few days also, and then last night I ran off to the 9b to do the concert. I was the third act, following the delightful Paloma Gil, whose great voice you can hear in the videos on this page. I missed the first act, though, because of all the stuff that had snowed me under. That was the personally genial Raphael Kidd. My own set was a true regale as the French say, meaning a great deal of fun. This was primarily due to a wonderful matchup with Joe Cady of the band the Romantic Black Shirts, whom I had invited to play violin with me, and who decided he also wanted to do lead guitar. And that was inspirational. I want to do it again with Joe!!! We ran through some of my songs, and some of the covers I do a lot, finishing off with an audience request for “I Shall be Released,” which two members of the audience joined me in singing. Wonderful evening!
Sorry for speaking of myself in the third person. But there has been a very cool and satisfying thing that has happened in the last two weeks that kind of makes a little concrete confirmation of a project I’ve been working on all year. As regular readers of the blog know, I have been filming people at open mics, and especially interviewing people on-camera at open mics and jam sessions around the world since last February or March in a nearly one-year filming project that will come to an end at the end of this month, or early December. In the last two weeks, two different talented young French musician friends of mine have taken some of the rough footage that I shot of them during performances in Paris and edited these into video clips.
It was done with footage I had NOT intended to use in my open mic film, and some of it was pretty rough stuff done with simple cameras – to say the least. But these two guys, Niki Demiller, and a guy who calls his act/band, All-The-Roads, both put together very cool little music videos with what was available. And they both credited me with the filming. Talk about a beautiful encouraging thing. Check out the footage below. They’re both interesting musicians as well, I have to add. Niki used to front a band called The Brats, which along with BB Brunes, was one of the great hopes of the last decade in the wave of new bands that came out of French youth. He’s now worked on this solo project. All-The-Roads has just begun playing in the open mics around Paris, and I think the guy has a lot of talent – to say nothing of both a physical look to him and a sound/quality of voice as well, that reminds me of Elvis Costello…
All-The-Roads:
Niki Demiller:
PS, these were not the first time my video footage was used in a cool little video. The Red Bulletin Formula One paddock newspaper used more than an hour’s worth of footage I shot on my Canon HV20 HDV tape camera in 2008 and they edited it down to a minute and a half for a little trailer on their web site. It was a race of former F1 drivers and journalists in go karts near the F1 circuit in Spain. Check it out:
As regular readers of this blog know, I love – and many other people love – my Seagull S6. But the Seagull has become very war-weary and battered in my round-the-world travels, and the latest incident – smashed on a flight to Singapore – made me decide finally to splurge my life’s non-savings on a new guitar that will remain with me in Paris, while the Seagull goes off to battle around the world, but carrying less weight as my main axe. So yesterday, after more than a year of zeroing in on Gibsons, I finally bought a J-200 Standard.
The thing that really, finally clinched it for me was that earlier in the week I had gone to the store in Paris and tried three or four of the J-200s and others, and I had found one that I kept saying I liked the best. Yesterday, I returned to the Pigalle area and visited all the music stores that sold the J-200s and I tried them all out. I even tried some 1965 Gibsons, although mine is a new one. I then returned to the same shop where I found the one I liked, and where I had noted down the serial number two days before. Playing the guitars, I almost immediately found the one that I was sure was the same one: I checked my noted serial number for the guitar in my iPhone, and yes, it was the same one. So I bought it.
It was not THAT easy. This is a natural wood – as opposed to Sunburst – Gibson J-200, and it cost a fortune. But it matched my playing and my needs and was sufficiently different to the sound of my Seagull, that I had to have it. But the other thing that decided me on buying this particular one at this moment was that I felt very much at ease in the store where I bought it, as opposed to several of the other places. It is a shop called “Acoustic Guitar,” at 18 rue de Douai, and the service is fabulous. They recently refurbished the store, and all the people I have dealt with there are very agreeable, honest, and provide all the explanations and information that you’re looking for. I had been showing up occasionally for more than a year and there would be plenty of reason for them to think I was not going to buy a guitar, but they let me play for an hour or more early in the week, and then again a few days later. A young woman named Aurélie also dropped by and wanted to play a Gibson and they let her, and she asked if she could sing while playing – since that was the best way to know if she liked the guitar – and they allowed that too. I filmed her. (I had also sung the previous day.)
Another example of the great work they do is two different salesmen said to me that every Gibson J-200 sounded different and you really had to play them and compare and find one you liked. At another shop on the same street, the salesperson told me they all sounded alike, so there was no point in her going to get the natural colored one if I liked the Sunburst…. Sure. Okay.
Having bought the guitar – and having fallen in love with it – I immediately rushed home to play it, but then saw on Facebook that there was an open mic last night on Rue St. Maur, near the Metro Colonel Fabien in a bar called O’kubi Caffé, at 219 rue St Maur, that does not usually host an open mic. So I ate quickly and decided I had to baptize the J-200 immediately. I went to the open mic, was immediately welcomed by some musicians and the woman who ran it – Ajahlove – and then played, and played and played and let others play my new Gibson too, as there was no other real acoustic guitar set up. I was a little nervous about that, since I have decided this will not be a guitar for everyone and anyone the way the Seagull was – and is – but it was a pleasure to see it played. And most of all, it was a pleasure to play it. The open mic turned out to be more of a jam session, but with the J-200 I dived right into it and had the time of my life.
I bought this guitar for the deep bass and beautiful high strings as well. They describe the sound as being in something of a form of a V, with great bass, great highs, and in between, space for the singing voice. It is also a great guitar for strumming, which is what I do most of. Needless to say, I have been watching videos of great moments on the J-200, like Elvis Presley during his comeback in the late 60s (he used it before that too), like Pete Townsend of The Who, like the Everly Brothers, like Neil Young on “Hey, Hey, My My,” like so many of the Oasis songs, and like others too numerous to mention. I am not let down. And while I have grown so used to my grunge look and feel with the Seagull, I got so much into the playing of the J-200 last night behind the mic in public, that I felt totally at one with the guitar and didn’t care how it looked – which was probably pretty cool, when you think of it.
I may have been wandering around Mokpo, South Korea last night desolate not to have found a place to play music, but I was also floating on clouds of satisfaction at the knowledge that the Istanbul chapter of my open mic book has just been published in French.
The only place I found to place in Mokpo last year was in the street with some young Korean buskers, and last night I did not even find them again. But I will continue my explorations. I stopped off at Moe’s bar only to learn that there WILL be an open mic there… next week, on Friday. That’s one of my biggest frustrations on the neverending open mic adventure: Being in the right place at the wrong time.
But one of the most rewarding bits of the adventure to have come into fruition yesterday – or was it the day before? – was that the Istanbul chapter of my book about the first year of the adventure was published in a French magazine that has just hit the stores in France this week.
The magazine is called Grand Prix, and it is a large format color magazine that despite its name covers much more than Grand Prix racing, and other forms of racing. The best way to describe it is the way the magazine describes itself, here in French with my English translation:
“Un beau magazine, sur un beau papier avec pour seule ambition de parler des hommes, femmes, lieux et histoires de que l’on aime. Automobile, moto, horlogerie, voyages, littérature, aventure… Juste du plaisir. Un magazine à conserver dans sa bibliothèque, à prendre et à rlire avec plaisir”
“A beautiful magazine, on beautiful paper, with its sole ambition being to speak of men, women, places and tales that we love. Automobiles, motorcycles, watches, trips, literature, adventure…. Simply pleasure. A magazine to collect in one’s bookshelves, to take and reread with pleasure.”
In short, it is the perfect place for a chapter from my own personal adventure of playing music around the world at the location of each Formula One race and then some. The open mic book covers the first year of my adventure. The second year was covered more loosely in the blog, and this year I have been doing blog entries AND videos that I will turn into a documentary film.
The Istanbul chapter used in Grand Prix – actually, it’s just the first day of the chapter – describes, funny enough, not the open mic I ended up doing in Istanbul, but an encounter I had with a gypsy street musician, and the time I spent busking with him within my first hour of arriving in the city. It talks about Turkish music and culture and my own feelings of trepidation in busking for the first time in nearly 30 years!!!!!
It has been translated into French, and I believe it is accompanied by a photo or two – although since I am in Korea, I have yet to see the magazine! But judging by my look at the previous issue, the magazine is well worth buying and reading. This issue has a large feature focusing on the French racing driver Francois Cevert, who was a teammate of Jackie Stewart back in the early 70s. Cevert was killed at Watkins Glen in 1973. He was about to become the No. 1 driver for the team as Stewart, who won the title that year, was about to retire.
It has stories about helicopters, motorcycles, a Belgian graphic novel thing… lots of stuff.
First night in Japan, first night lucky. I had a cheap meal of noodles – very good – and then made my way directly over to the R&B Melrose bar in Nagoya. I first played here two years ago, and when I returned last night, the owners not only remembered me, they actually had a piece of scrap paper on which I had drawn a little map-like thing showing the location of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
This is a very cool bar that has a full stage of equipment – drums, Marshall amps, microphones, and a collection of guitars, all there for the public. It is a cross between an open mic and a jam session, and last night I realized that it reminded me a lot of the Actors’ bar in Singapore. You can show up several days of the week and take the stage either alone or in a group, or joining people who are present, and play whatever you please.
So it is indeed an open mic, and a jam. The owners love music, and just let people play what they want, while making sure that each client has a chance to play. A really classy place.
Last night I played alone, and then with the drummer. Then I ended up playing with all the other musicians and we did a lot of songs, and I got a lot of them on video – me, a bass player, two guitarists and the drummer. But the videos are too long for the blog and I’ll save them for bits in my documentary film.
For the moment, though, I have the What’s Up video and a couple of others of the other guys jamming.
What luck, first night and I scored! (Well, yes, musically, I mean.)
Last night turned into another of those exceptional moments that only the open mic can do. From time to time the people who attend and the musicians who play in open mics get treated to the surprise visit of a star musician wanting to get back to their roots or maybe try out new material or just have some fun. They show up unannounced and play like anyone else at an open mic. After Johnny Borrell did that at my brunch at the Mecano back in February, the Razorlight singer and songwriter decided to try out the Bus Palladium last night.
Of course, the Bus Palladium is a legendary venue in Paris that is well worth the visit of any musician. As I wrote the first time I visited the Bus Palladium in April last year: Started in September 1965, it began by sending out buses to the kids in the suburbs to bring them in to see the shows, since they didn’t have much money to make the trek into Paris. It quickly became a real center of the rock and pop scene, and even Salvador Dali showed up one night with a bunch of his friends. The reputation grew outside France too, and in addition to performers such as Johnny Hallyday, Eddy Mitchell et les Chaussettes Noires, Julien Clerc, Alain Bashung, CharlElie Couture, Indochine, Etienne Daho, Stephan Eicher, Noir Désir, La Mano Negra and the Rita Mitsouko, it is also famous for the fact that Mick Jagger decided to celebrate one of his birthdays there.
Borrell attended my brunch in February thanks to his friendship with my friend Earle Holmes, and it was again with Earle that Borrell showed up last night at the Bus Palladium. He has been spending a lot of time in Paris lately, and is hard at work on new songs. I was pleased to lend him my guitar again for the several songs, his own and covers, that he played last night. The Bus has been doing an open mic for the last six months or so, on Tuesdays, and normally the musicians must send in a request to play along with links to their music. Obviously, Borrell needed no such introduction or examination….
He seemed more relaxed than when I saw him in February, and he played more songs. But there is something about the restaurant room of the Bus Palladium, something about the small stage and the lighting, that makes you want to continue playing on. It’s got some kind of 1960s or 70s cocktail lounge feel to it. It may not be the quietest or most attentive audience, but there are always a sufficient number of listeners to make it worth wanting to continue. I enjoyed making some videos of Johnny playing while trying to keep the portrait of Serge Gainsbourg as visible behind him as I could. The only problem was the lighting was so dark I had to set the Zoom Q3HD to night light, which cust a lot of the clear definition of the image.
Earlier, I did my songs and a few friends showed up – like Calvin McEnron and Olivier Rodriguez – and did theirs. I heard a few new people too. All in all it was a spectacularly wonderful evening.
I am still recovering from the cold I concocted in New York’s torrential rainfall and torrential air conditioning. I therefore did not play any music in Paris since my return, as I’m in a state of “can’t sing very well.” But looking back over my one-week trip to New York City, it occurred to me that maybe I had something to blog about anyway. Sometimes it is difficult to judge between pure self-indulgence, and showing off, and something that will be of interest to others. Not sure which one this is, but there was something fabulous and unique about my trip to NYC.
I have spent very little time in NYC in my recent life, but it was pointed out to me by a friend with whom I had a brunch in NYC that although I live in France, I have a whole other life in New York City. This, in fact, was very true, and very surprising to me. When I first went to NYC in 1976, it was with an ambition to succeed in show business. I ended up living in a crappy building in the horrendous, war-torn neighborhood of the Lower East Side, East Third Street, between avenues B and C. I was about as much of an outsider as you could possibly be, and my talents were un-honed to say the least. Last week I returned for 7 nights and eight days, and I found myself in the following strange situation, ending up at the following places:
1.) a full afternoon tour and (attendance at the Page 1 meeting) of the New York Times, where I work at both the global edition of that paper, also known as the International Herald Tribune and do an F1 blog on its web site, and see my newspaper stories occasionally published in the local NYT pages as well;
2.) a meeting at About.com where I went out to lunch with my editor there concerning the next step in my career as the Formula1.about.com “guide”;
3.) an interview for my documentary film at the Music Building, a huge building devoted to music studios since the late seventies, where so many of the punk bands and many more since then worked and jammed – including even people like Madonna – and where my interview took place with someone from the Bitter End in his studio, which was formerly the studio of The Strokes;
4.) an interview with a top executive from Warner Music, also for my documentary, and in the offices of Warner Music;
5.) a lunch and talk with a friend at HBO, the massive television channel and production company, whom I had met at an open mic in Paris, along with her friend, the musician Woody Lissauer;
6.) attendance at the opening show of a Formula One film about Ayrton Senna at a Houston Street cinema and being warmly welcomed by the writer of the film, and later the next day having a drink with one of the film’s main players at a bar around the corner;
7.) playing music and receiving truly felt applause at places like the Bitter End and certain other – but not all – bars and clubs throughout the city;
8.) staying in a hotel in Chelsea that was miles above my former residence in terms of earthly comforts;
But also learning that if I wanted to live on East Third Street between Avenues B & C now, I could not afford it as it has become “the” place to be. Yes, I may not be the huge star I had envisioned in 1976. But the life principles I learned around that time and decided to apply to my life, without seeking out fame or fortune, have meant that I returned 35 years later kind of on top of the same world I used to be on the bottom of – and having, indeed, another life in New York City.
I have just arrived in New York City for a week of open mics. With the time difference from Paris to NYC it means I have a 30-hour day today. But it also turns out that is not nearly enough for all I need and want to do. For instance, I would love to give a detailed report of the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance in Paris last night, but a), I have to run out to my first open mic in NYC, and b) I don’t think the wi-fi in my hotel here is going to be nearly fast enough to upload all the videos I want to upload.
Anyway, it started off being kind of like an oldies night at Ollie’s open mic last night as Ollie sang an oldie, Thomas Arlo sang an oldie, a Frenchwoman named Vanessa sang an oldie, Wayne did to. In fact, it was Jesse Kincaid who mentioned that theme to me early on.
So then I decided to try an oldie too, although it is only a 1990s oldie, called, Runaway Train, by Soul Asylum. I had begun to sing this song two days before… or was it the day before…? An and so my memory had no time to memorize it. But I wanted so desperately to sing it that I decided to read the lyrics on my iPhone. I failed at that, Ollie saw my problem and came and held the iPhone in front of me, I still failed, made a bloody mess of the song, and should know better than trying such a thing. It was a most embarrassing and horrible experience. So what! It was an open mic, after all. (Even though that was TWO bad nights in a row for me…what do I have?)
The other acts were of a pretty high level and the night was full and crowded as usual.
Looking forward to many discoveries here in NYC. Keep posted as I post it… 🙂
PS, yes, my wi-fi connection is far too slow for the uploads, so I will have to wait until later to upload the videos. Bear with me.
