Open Mic Nights

Salut,

sitting in a café... not the bus the train or my sofa this time... It's a nice little place near my kids school where I used to go often before I switched jobs 2 years ago... now that I can have breakfast at work (including a very good coffee machine) I don't get to come here as often... But this morning, I wanted to take the train. I must come back home early tonight to pickup my kids at school, and also I'll be more comfortable to type the blog posts I wrote on a notepad while I was on vacation...

I didn't get to start that process yet because I worked late on Monday, and last night I went to sing at an Open mic night at the Arts Café... I started doing that about a month ago and it is a lot of fun...

The first time I tried it, I decided to try out the piano. I started playing more and more piano in the past few years (having a good electronic piano with a real piano touch in the living room helps a lot). Also, I learned "Your song" from Elton John recently, and one of my most "popular" composition (Emotion Recall) renders pretty well on the piano (though I also play it OK on the guitar).

Damn! I just tried to give you a link to the recording of Emotion Recall on music.download.com, but they took it down and it now redirects to lastfm.com and the content isn't there, I will have to re-upload it... snif... snif... Ho well... But I do have a recording of my performance for that night, on YouTube.

So back to open mic night, my first appearance was actually a good humility lesson... First, there are a lot of very talented (and very young artists there). Second... I had not practice "Your song" a lot before presenting it there (too confident?), and I missed every second chord or so (but I managed to keep my voice on the right track at least... It's a good way to accept the fact that I'm still a computer programmer as opposed to a performing artist... But it still doesn't stop me from dreaming about it and go back to perform at the Arts Café on Tuesday nights, as often as I can ;-)... And also, I proved, once again, that a good sense of humor can compensate for a lot of things... All I had to do was change the lyrics here and there to insert jokes about my bad piano player performance to still entertain people and make them appreciate my performance.

The following week, I went back with my guitar. I played another cover, but this time I played one that I have been playing for almost 20 years now (Losing my religion). And I played my personal favorite composition (Fais-moi rêver). And after the night, we went to jam at one of the performers apartment... It was a blast... We were 6 guitar players, a harmonica player and a few female signers... Très cool...

So the week after that, I was more confident, and I decided to play the piano again. My friend GG was there to encourage me, so nothing could go wrong... And all went pretty well... I sang a French song that I render pretty well on the piano (Dis-tout sans rien dire) and then played another composition (most people do that, one cover and one original), which is one of the first good songs that I wrote (at least the first good one I wrote in French), and it is called "Belle Isabelle".

So last night, I decided to continue the alternating pattern and go back with my guitar this time... I played, again, two songs... One cover (Father and son from Cat Stevens) and one original (La couleur des rêves, for which I don't have a good recording yet, soon... maybe)... The overall room mood wasn't as exciting as for the last few weeks, but it was still a lot of fun... If you ever find yourself with nothing to do on a Tuesday night... Come and join us... If you like music, are interested in discovering completely unknown yet very talented artists... Or if you feel like sharing your own completely unknown talent... Go ahead... It is a lot of fun... and if you are too shy to go alone... Let me know... Maybe we could do a duo... :-)

Till then...

HAVE FUN!!!

BYE
MAD
P.S.: Yes, I know, some of you can't wait to read about my vacations... Patience... Patience... I'll start typing what I wrote there... Yes... I'm in the train now... I had to run across the parking lot, because... As usual... I got here at the last minute because I was trying to complete this post at the café... As I often say... Ho well... ;-)