Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Arrived back in Paris on Tuesday morning early, as I think I said before, and spent the day working like a mainiac doing stories to close my year of work. Then I went off to the open mic of the Ptit Bonheur la Chance bar, near the Pantheon. I had a couple of reasons for insisting on going, and one was to show the owner of the bar the page out of l’Express magazine devoted to open mics and in which there was a little story about the Ptit Bonheur la Chance, in which my name was mentioned!

It turned out that he had not seen the magazine. I had picked up a copy of it on my flight back from Brazil, and there was my name. The story also covers places like the Bus Palladium and the Pop In. For some reason I find no trace of it online, or I’d put a link to it. But I was able to find it in the Nexis newspaper database, so here is the bit about the Bonheur and yours truly:

La folie des scènes ouvertes
AUTEUR: Marie Audran
RUBRIQUE: STYLES DE VIE NUITS; Pg. 134 N°. 3151
LONGUEUR: 452 mots
ENCART: De plus en plus de salles invitent le spectateur à pousser la chansonnette ou à faire l’acteur. De quoi réveiller l’artiste qui est en vous et, qui sait ? susciter une vocation !
Au P’tit Bonheur la Chance
Caché dans une ruelle, au pied du Panthéon, c’est le petit bar qui monte. Dans sa cave voûtée, une vingtaine de chanteurs se succèdent, en solo ou en duo, au milieu des spectateurs. Si vous n’osez pas pousser la chansonnette, foncez-y pour découvrir un vivier de talents de toutes les générations, dont Brad Spurgeon (journaliste au New York Times) ou les jeunes membres du groupe pop Apes & Horses, qui y testent leurs futurs tubes. Les mardis à 21 heures. Entrée gratuite.
18, rue Laplace, Paris (Ve), 01-43-54-42-32.

Now for some strange reason, this article did not have the effect of flooding the open mic with three times its regular number of attendees. Quite the opposite. For some reason there were fewer people there on Tuesday than in the last few times I have been, but that made for both more intimacy and more time to play for each performer.

It was great to find some new performers there I had not seen before, too, including the genial Basile, Brice and Bastien – only the first two of whom made up a group, the other being solo here.

And there was the very unusual act of this young French guy doing a song by Love!!! How did he find them?!?!