April 14, 2013
I did not do any open mics or other musical performances in Shanghai last night, aside from writing a song in my hotel room and putting together the promised Shanghai version of my Thumbnail Guide to Open Mics.
So here is the Thumbnail Guide to Shanghai Open Mics, Jam Sessions and other Live Music, to add to the other three, for Paris, Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur.
April 12, 2013
When I left Bee Dees bar after the jam session last year I have a vivid memory of my talk with Jeffrey Davis on the sidewalk out front. I had been coming to this great bar to play music in the Tuesday and Thursday jam session on my visits to Shanghai for the previous two or three years. Jeff told me that there was bad news: The bar was going to close in June. The rent was going up too much for him, but he did not despair because he had a new plan he could not tell me in detail. But he said it involved music, and jam sessions, and the spirit of Bee Dees would live on.
I could never have imagined that I would return this year to find that Bee Dees is still here, the jam session is still running but Jeff is gone. He died in the fall of some kind of nerve disease, thought to be Lou Gehrig’s disease. In fact, I had learned of his death in the fall over Facebook, but I knew few details.
Upon returning to Bee Dees last night I found the great news that the bar was only closed briefly before it was taken over by a new manager, that it is been cleaned up to a degree but without losing its charm or the original concept of being like in someone’s living room, and that the jam sessions do continue in the same spirit on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And I learned a little more about Jeff’s unexpected death. It is clear, however, that Jeff would be very happy that his creation has lived on. I thought of him quite a bit last night, during the sets of the other musicians, when I hoped to see him go up with his guitar and screaming blues vocals, and when I went up to play, and thought of absence.
For the first time at Bee Dees I played with other musicians, a drummer, bassist and lead guitarist. I started solo on my “Crazy Lady,” and then did “Wicked Game” and “Mad World,” in order to facilitate playing with the other musicians.
There were some other great acts, like the guys who did the jazz fusion, and the African with his bamboo xylophone – or whatever it is. And now that Jeff is gone, the genial Nathan, of Kentucky, is acting as the organizer of the jam. Nathan is also a singer and guitar player.
Another interesting moment was my talk with a French drummer who lived in Belgium until he moved to Shanghai a week or so ago in order to look for work as a musician. He said he thought Shanghai, China was the place to go for European musicians looking for a future in music….
April 11, 2013
Unfortunately, my first night in Shanghai last night was all about having my style crimped and finding two of my former open mic haunts either closed or no longer offering an open mic.
On the style side, I’m talking about the difficulting of accessing Facebook and a blog via the Internet here in China. It’s not really supposed to happen at all, and at the moment my only solution has meant that it happens very, very slowly. There may quite possibly be a long delay before my videos of open mics make it to the blog in the coming days.
But I will continue the open mic adventure, and I will post my latest edition of the Thumbnail Guides to open mics, Shanghai Edition, when the right moment comes.
Last night after a great meal at the very cool Bao Luo restaurant – delving into a menu I had little idea of what I was getting (boiled beef, noodles, beans, unidentifiable whatevers) – I walked on to Oscar’s pub, where I did a great open mic in previous years, to find there was a house musician but no open mic.
No big deal, the real plan was to go to the sublime and hip Not Me bar, where I had discovered the wonderful Chinese-run open mic two years ago – as opposed tothe “Irish Pub solution” of Oscar’s. I went with a fellow Formula One journalist friend in order to introduce him to this cool establishment.
When we got there, we found it was no longer there. It no longer exists. Not Me, is now Not Here. Gone. We popped into a pub next door and I learned that Not Me closed down five or six months ago, but no reason could be given as to why.
Such, in fact, is the open mic adventure: Open mics, and the bars in which they take place, tend to be very quickly moving targets.
In reading over my report on this same day last year, I see there is not much that has changed in my life in China, and that things were already moving in the same direction last year, with Oscar’s having already stopped its open mic. There was no warning on this Not Me closing, though, as you can even hear in my podcast interview of the manager of Not Me last year….
May I have more luck in the coming days….
April 19, 2011
I just arrived back in Paris after a 26-hour trip home via Kuala Lumpur, so I had no time to report on my last night in Shanghai, which was spent, after that exceptional Grand Prix race, at the jamming night of the Melting Pot. I had played at the Melting Pot’s open jam session last year on the Monday night when I got held over thanks to the Icelandic volcano. It was Frida Andersson, ie Sister Fay, who told me this year that there was another jam at the Melting Pot on Sundays as well. So we both went.
The Melting Pot has a fabulous stage, bright lights, nice seating arrangement for the clients, and a very lively vibe. As I learned Sunday, there is even good food. (I had a dinner of chicken something or other and onion rings, and the wine was fine.)
The evening started with a few songs by Sherry, the American MC. But as the evening progresses, anyone can go up and play the drums, keyboards, bass, lead guitar, etc., and take up a role as singer or – as with Frida and I did – with guitar and vocals.
I did four songs, and it was interesting to play along with a drummer, keyboard player and bassist who didn’t apparently know any of the songs. I played much of the time with my back to the audience so they could see the chords I was playing. But I enjoyed it immensely – as usual….
My mind is now partly in Malaysia, partly in China and partly in France. Mostly in the ether, though. Now to lay down all those recorded interviews and other videos for my open mic adventure film….
April 17, 2011
I did not expect to play for my fifth time in Shanghai last night. I was invited to Bee Dees to hear Sister Fay, otherwise known as Frida Andersson, play as the opening act to the house band. But Frida and Jeff and a request by some people in the audience led to me doing a few songs part way through the night. I was really grateful, since I just love playing – but the biggest news was the fabulous concert by Frida with the house band, and the discovery of the music of the man who calls himself Bone.
Bone first. I met this Chinese guy who works behind the bar on Thursday when I first went to Bee Dees on this trip. He complimented my singing very warmly, and I thanked him. I had no idea that he wrote songs, and played guitar and sang and that his voice is bloody fantastic. So the compliment came back to me as being even stronger. Also, last night when I was invited to play, it was Bone who offered me his Ovation, since I did not have my guitar with me.
Frida did a first set all by herself, and I will not put up the videos here since I have put up a few other videos of Frida’s solo stuff in recent months. But it was very cool to see her do a second set along with the house band, a lead guitar player from Russia, Jeff on bass, and the house drummer. Frida did a wide cross-section of cover songs, including stuff that really surprised me like, “What a day for a daydream….” (Which reminded me of when I met John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful when I was a teenager on a TV program he played on.) And the video I put below with her “Georgia on my mind.” The band was quite together, given the fact that it was essentially an unrehearsed jam.
After promising Frida I would not take too much time, just doing four songs, I got a request for a fifth song – “Memories.” So I did that, and it was nice to have the request for my own song. Frida did a video of me doing two or three of them, and I put up “Borderline,” below.