I arrived a little late at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance last night as I get back into the rhythm of life in Paris and the open mics. I descended into the cave cellar where the open mic takes place and found the place almost standing room only. But to my great surprise, there were only around six musicians, and all the of the people were spectators. What an almost ideal situation that was. It meant I did not have to wait long to play my three songs, and then I listened to all the other musicians before going up to play another song – as did everyone else. But there were also some great musicians to listen to….
I came in on some American guy whose name I did not catch, but who sounded fabulous, and I managed to catch half of his last song on the recorder before he left for the night.
Then there was the usually solo-playing Wayne Standley who had a friend with him playing lead and singing harmonies. It was superb.
I chose to re-tell my Dylan quote and story and sing again “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” since I had failed so badly the night before at Coolin. This time it all worked perfectly, but it is a different kind of audience too, entirely there for the music.
“When people run in circles, it’s a very, very, maaaaad world….”
I sing those lyrics often when I do “Mad World,” my version falling somewhere between that of the original by Tears For Fears, and that of Gary Jules. But in the last several days I can really apply those words literally to my life, as opposed to the figurative sense that I play in my head when I sing the song.
There has been an uncommon break on this blog, because I’ve been running in circles in all sorts of senses. First, my third cold in about six weeks meant that upon my return from Istanbul I was more wiped out than at any time in recent memory, and therefore did not go out to an open mic on Monday.
(I later learned that despite my doctor’s belief that the cold might be allergy related, the entire Lotus Formula One team apparently came back from Istanbul with the same cold.)
Well, that was the first running in circles: a third cold in six weeks and never seeming able to kill the virus, or whatever it is.
Second, I decided to sit down and read into my computer from my Canon HV20 HDV video camera the footage that I took in Istanbul, including my interview with Safak at the Kooperatif. And that is when the real running in circles began and has still not ended.
There is no problem with the ultimate fate of the footage. It is on mini DV tape, so I can read it into the computer with any HD DV camera. But with MY camera and MY computer, it has been a full time job for the past three days trying to overcome technical difficulties that I see on Internet forums are very common for people with this and other camcorders, but that no one has a solution for.
The problem is that the computer does not recognize the existence of the camera through firewire, which is the only way to connect to download the video from the tape to the computer. This had happened repeatedly with the camera in the past, but I was always able to somehow eventually hook into the camera and it would pop up on the computer.
Now, no luck. Dead! So that led me to deciding finally to download Windows 7 and loading it on my Vista computer…. But THAT process has now taken two days and my computer keeps on rejecting it!!! I am currently using my work lap top to write these words, as my computer has been setting up Windows 7 for about six hours….
In short, between the cold, the video and the Windows I have been running in circles, and going very, and completely MAD.
I did, however, decide that while I might get a little behind on the blog entries, I could not let myself go completely mad. So I went to Ollie’s open mic on Tuesday, and I went to the Highlander open mic last night – and in order to run continuously in circles I took a brief break from the Highlander to walk the 10 minute sprint walk over to the Be There bar on the Ile St. Louis to see a friend’s band. I missed his band, but I saw another, and it was good mad world fun, so check it out – the C*caine Rodeo.
But the highlight for me at Ollie’s was most certainly Victoire’s rendition of “Look What they Done to my Song…” of Melanie. I had mentioned her on this blog a couple of weeks ago after that wonderful women’s night, and I said that I told her she ought to do the Melanie song. She listened to it on my iPhone, liked it, and two weeks later, there she was performing it in public for the first time. She did an excellent job, and I think her voice DOES match up well with it. She was a little more at ease on her next song, but once she gets going on this Melanie one, Victoire will definitely wipe us out.
