Last night I performed four songs at Frazier’s in Hampden. They have an open mic every Monday night, starting approximately at 10pm. Sometimes you’ll have to wait around a little while in order for things to get started. I believe there are two or three different dudes who act as host/MC for the event, with varying degrees of skill with the PA and with actually playing songs. Last night was my second time doing it, but certainly not my last.
Open mics are funny because most everyone is so nervous that nervousness becomes sort of the new normal. And everybody faces it to some degree and different performers deal with it differently.
Been thinking a lot about open mics and similar lately from a zoological perspective.
A lek is a gathering of males, of certain animal species, for the purposes of competitive mating display. Leks assemble before and during the breeding season, on a daily basis. The same group of males meet at a traditional place and take up the same individual positions on an arena, each occupying and defending a small territory or court. Intermittently or continuously, they spar individually with their neighbors or put on extravagant visual or aural displays (mating “dances” or gymnastics, plumage displays, vocal challenges, etc.).
And there was some article out on Discovery lately about how male birds will “angrily” sing challenges to their neighbors, and about male-female duets, etc. Not that I think the environment at Frazier’s is particularly competitive. It’s really not. Everyone is totally chill and friendly. Frazier’s kind of looks and feels like an old VFW hall on the interior and the area where the open mic set-up is has a bunch of old grungy couches. Nor are there really any girls there to show off for, as in the above zoological reference. Last night all the singers were guys. I saw maybe like six or seven people all told. There were a couple who were really good and plenty of people who were better than me.
That’s something somebody asked me about juggling one time. Is somebody who can juggle more balls necessarily a better juggler. My immediate answer was simply, “Yes.” No two ways about it, really. It’s more complex and difficult to juggle more balls. I think singing in certain contexts is similarly clear cut. You can just see or hear somebody and be like, “Well, dude is better than me.” Which need not be the case for all singing events though: Wednesday night at El Rancho Grande (arounnd 9pm usually) there is another style of open singing event where people just sit around in a circle and actually sing together. Though if somebody has an original or unfamiliar song, people may just follow along on guitar, mandolin or fiddle. It’s fun because it’s more actively supportive than an open mic situation, and because there’s no mic or stage or area that everyone is facing, you’re not put “on the spot” quite so much when you decide to pipe up and play a song.
In any event, I intend to go back to Frazier’s next week, so look me up if you’re in town. I have been watching this Bruce Springsteen concert DVD from NYC 2001, and it’s been making me see vividly just how awesome a live performance can be (and this is just a video!) and has been inspiring me to work harder, gain more experience, and get as good as I can.
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