Friday, June 06, 2008
Open mike night
Was playing guitar in my room the other night. When I finished, I put some dinner on. To my surprise, I could still hear guitar-ish noises coming through the air vent above my cooker. I wandered out onto the roof of the building and there was Thom, one of the guys from downstairs, jamming with a friend over a bottle of wine.
I was all up for a rooftop sing along, but time was scarce as Thom had to be at a bar in America-mura for an open mike night that he was hosting. He invited me to go along and help him out.
The open mike night is held once a month and Thom is away next month, so he's looking for someone to fill in as host. He offered me the job, but I'm not too sure about my work schedule at the moment.
As a co-host, I did a pretty good job: I called one act a "pair of pussies" for bailing out after only one song. Thom said this made me ideal host material.
I also managed to deal with the one act that no one wants to follow (a pretty common occurrence at such events): some guitar hero with his wife on drums. The wedlocked wailers treated themselves to about ten minutes of high-octane musical self indulgence, then left the stage.
As no one wanted to fill the void, I decided it was time to hit the "reset" switch. Up I went and got on my best Simon and Garfunkel-style fingerpicking. Extremely soulful stuff. The lyrics left a little to be desired though:
Postman Pat
Postman Pat
Postman Pat and his black and white cat...
Still, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it: several of the Japanese patrons, failing to comprehend the lyrics at all, were visibly moved by the performance; even the Welsh guy who'd been heckling me admitted that I carried it off pretty well.
And no one was scared about coming onto stage after that.
I was all up for a rooftop sing along, but time was scarce as Thom had to be at a bar in America-mura for an open mike night that he was hosting. He invited me to go along and help him out.
The open mike night is held once a month and Thom is away next month, so he's looking for someone to fill in as host. He offered me the job, but I'm not too sure about my work schedule at the moment.
As a co-host, I did a pretty good job: I called one act a "pair of pussies" for bailing out after only one song. Thom said this made me ideal host material.
I also managed to deal with the one act that no one wants to follow (a pretty common occurrence at such events): some guitar hero with his wife on drums. The wedlocked wailers treated themselves to about ten minutes of high-octane musical self indulgence, then left the stage.
As no one wanted to fill the void, I decided it was time to hit the "reset" switch. Up I went and got on my best Simon and Garfunkel-style fingerpicking. Extremely soulful stuff. The lyrics left a little to be desired though:
Postman Pat
Postman Pat
Postman Pat and his black and white cat...
Still, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it: several of the Japanese patrons, failing to comprehend the lyrics at all, were visibly moved by the performance; even the Welsh guy who'd been heckling me admitted that I carried it off pretty well.
And no one was scared about coming onto stage after that.
Labels: MOMENTS
