Jackercrap

Like OMG kid! As promised here is my recollection of the open mic from last night. I keep my promises even when I’m extremely hungover, which I am not.
On the myspace for Doyle’s Corner it listed the open mic as “Thursday at 9pm”. If you’ve ever been to an open mic you’re probably familiar with the signup sheet that comes out about 30 minutes before the actual open mic. Being the punctual musicians that we are we showed up at 8:30pm with the expectation that there would be a signup sheet out or at least some other performers. We walked in on three or four beer guzzlers and the bartender. We looked around for a second to see if perhaps there were some open mic gnomes hidden amongst the pool table and videogames. Nothing. I approached the bartender with a simple “Hi, do you know if the open mic is going on tonight?” or something even more eloquent. “Yeah. The guy usually shows up around 9:30 or 10.” I said the obligatory “Thanks!” and as we were leaving he said, “So you guys will be by later?” and then I was all like “Yup.” and he was all like and then she was all like “Wha’?!”

We were as out of place as this dead horseshoe crab in Boston Common.

We walked around the area for a while killing time. We stopped in the nearby Starbucks to see if anyone I knew was working. They weren’t. Then we killed some time in a sad looking video store that still sold some good old VHS. They didn’t have any of the four movies that I’m looking for on VHS so we just did some knitting in the adult section. Not really…yet. We looked in Doyle’s again since we were expecting some friends to come out and play. Nothing. Then we got really adventurous and sat in the car just talking about our feelings and what not. There were a lot of revelations. Around 9:30pm we went in after I got a text from a friend who was inside and sat around chatting like some real Chatty Cathys. Besides our friend we were the only other people with instruments among the growing number of frat boys. Finally around 10pm an older gentlemen(not to be confused with old guy) came in and started setting up the PA. He then began what wound up being about a 30 minute set of originals and maybe a cover thrown in there. It was hard to distinguish the acoustic blues originals from the acoustic blues covers. My ear isn’t that good. After this he announced, “If anyone wants to sit in just let me know.” Now where I’m from, the Maldives, to “sit it” means to “jam” or play with other people that you have probably never played with before. Our friend spoke up first and the acoustic blues older gentlemen left the stage(there was no stage). He played some sweet tunes and my bandmate/friend talked to ABOG briefly about our obnoxious setup.

Another professional shot. Here's the host melting our faces and hearts.

A big part of the reason we were going play to this open mic was to test run some stuff that we’re preparing for a show later this month. We’re both in another group, which is our “main band” or “mand” and this new band/side project is quite a departure from our usual hard rawkin’ technical muzak. What makes it even more convoluted is that the only difference in terms of members is that the new project has the same two out of three members except instead of a drummer the new project has a computer. Did that make any sense? Eh.
Like I was saying, we went up to play and setting up the computer and all the technical stuff took a couple of minutes so I won over the crowd by repeatedly saying “Computer.” and breathing heavily into the microphone. Once we got going everything went fairly smoothly except for the host turning our backing track volume way down during the middle of a song only for some other guy turn it right back up. Weird. They asked us to play another song after our two hit singles. We were prepared to drop another music bomb on everyone sans computer and did in fact drop that bomb, which brought about the end of the open mic. Afterwards, we did all the handshaking stuff and were invited to come back and have our own show there. The prospect of being able to have a show there was a nice bonus and we connected with a local promoter who wants to “work with us” or whatevers. We walked out feeling a lot more confident about our upcoming first show with the new project.

I’m sure we’ll be spending some more time there. It wasn’t the most ideal place to play music but there was a built in audience and not a lot of competition considering only three acts played. It’s definitely worth checking out especially if you like your open mics like I like my mail couriers: loose and cheap. I’ll shut up now.

~ by jackercrap on September 11, 2009.

Posted in Music In My World
Tags: Boston Common, Cholesterol, Handshake, Horseshoe Crab, Open Mic, Starbucks, The Hangover