Saturday night at the open mic
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:40 pmThese videos are up on my profile too:
Opening song
http://youtu.be/bb2EScSKMQw
One original I did:
http://youtu.be/3CPUpwSF-TE
Never can predict how traffic will be getting into the city on the weekend, so we were early. Other band guys were there already, but the room where everything was to be set up was filled with a bunch of UCLA (?) alumni watching a football game on the big screen. The guys organizing the open mic had to wait for the game to end before setting up.
During Friday night's practice, the details on the thing all changed - they had been telling me this would be an hour opening set, in reality it was 30 minutes, maybe an extra 10 minutes, depending on timing. I only discovered this when Steve started talking about picking which songs to do in the set list - he had already pared it down to 1 hour.
So we went on at about 9:45 and did 7 or 8 songs. The alumni had cleared out and the room was mostly the 5 people Steve had brought, my wife and the others there for the open mic.
After us, a trio called the Grey Dogs played - a couple in their mid-60s, him on mandolin, she on upright bass, with a younger guitarist. They opened with 'Panama Red', but the mando player sang so softly you could barely here it. Then Maggie Mae, with the woman singing, but not remembering the words (even with a lyric sheet in front of her) and at one point they all got lost. They did a couple of other songs including a Dead cover.
Next was a solo guitarist I had talked to earlier . He said this was his 7th open mic night in a row, from Colorado, visiting his girlfriend. He recruited our bass player and the mando player from the Grey Dogs to play with him, did one original and 3 rock songs like Dead Flowers, strumming pickless on a nylon-stringed guitar. Not bad, but not good either.
When I had told the organizers I wanted to do a solo set, they put me on last, but another person showed up - 'Lisa the singing poet'. My wife went to the ladies room at one point and Lisa was in one of the stalls warming up!
She got up to play (or sat down -sitting in a chair where no one could see her, if there had been anyone left in the place). She fingerpicked guitar very well, but then sang off-key her poems which were all like "you may think I'm strange, but ...".
Anyway, it was 11:30 by the time I got up there and I rushed through (literally) 5 songs to the almost empty place (Lisa had cleared out a few stragglers already).
Now I'm wondering if all open mics around here turn up these unprepared/unready-to-play-out folks, or if this was a fluke! My wife is usually my worst critic, but she said I was the best one there that night.
Opening song
http://youtu.be/bb2EScSKMQw
One original I did:
http://youtu.be/3CPUpwSF-TE
Never can predict how traffic will be getting into the city on the weekend, so we were early. Other band guys were there already, but the room where everything was to be set up was filled with a bunch of UCLA (?) alumni watching a football game on the big screen. The guys organizing the open mic had to wait for the game to end before setting up.
During Friday night's practice, the details on the thing all changed - they had been telling me this would be an hour opening set, in reality it was 30 minutes, maybe an extra 10 minutes, depending on timing. I only discovered this when Steve started talking about picking which songs to do in the set list - he had already pared it down to 1 hour.
So we went on at about 9:45 and did 7 or 8 songs. The alumni had cleared out and the room was mostly the 5 people Steve had brought, my wife and the others there for the open mic.
After us, a trio called the Grey Dogs played - a couple in their mid-60s, him on mandolin, she on upright bass, with a younger guitarist. They opened with 'Panama Red', but the mando player sang so softly you could barely here it. Then Maggie Mae, with the woman singing, but not remembering the words (even with a lyric sheet in front of her) and at one point they all got lost. They did a couple of other songs including a Dead cover.
Next was a solo guitarist I had talked to earlier . He said this was his 7th open mic night in a row, from Colorado, visiting his girlfriend. He recruited our bass player and the mando player from the Grey Dogs to play with him, did one original and 3 rock songs like Dead Flowers, strumming pickless on a nylon-stringed guitar. Not bad, but not good either.
When I had told the organizers I wanted to do a solo set, they put me on last, but another person showed up - 'Lisa the singing poet'. My wife went to the ladies room at one point and Lisa was in one of the stalls warming up!
She got up to play (or sat down -sitting in a chair where no one could see her, if there had been anyone left in the place). She fingerpicked guitar very well, but then sang off-key her poems which were all like "you may think I'm strange, but ...".
Anyway, it was 11:30 by the time I got up there and I rushed through (literally) 5 songs to the almost empty place (Lisa had cleared out a few stragglers already).
Now I'm wondering if all open mics around here turn up these unprepared/unready-to-play-out folks, or if this was a fluke! My wife is usually my worst critic, but she said I was the best one there that night.
