Brad Spurgeon's Blog

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.