[ Update: see the followup post after you read this ]

A good open mic is one of the most productive ways to play out. No booking agent hassles, no super-late nights - just get in, play a few songs, and get out. Awesome.

Plus, there’s a HUGE benefit to playing out a little all the time, rather than over-rehearsing for The Super Important Big Show (at which you’ll no doubt be stressed and freaked out by the new environment). It’s great to ‘fail often’ - find a new thing to improve every time you do that 2-4 song mini set. I know for a fact that my live performance (and my equipment) has improved massively from weekly testing. I’m lucky to have the excellent open mic @ Mongo’s available to me (thanks, Kurt & Brad) - find your own local open mic here.

There is, however, a downside. Open mics can also suck. Suck. SUCK…

Chief Open Mic Suckyness Enhancers:

• Winey emo f*&A@heads that can’t play - but do it with great intensity, and for too long.
• The Blues. That is, anything but GOOD blues played honestly, not lame-ass ‘I can’t play so I’ll play blues” blues. I know it’s a safe comfortable way for strangers to play together and not sound too horrible, but God Damn, the Blues can turn into a choke-hold of creative death for your average open mic. Blues guys can also play forever… ‘just one more song’ becomes hellish time-stopping nightmare straight out of Abu Graib. [ There are actually a couple of good blues players at my usual open Mic - so guys, the above doesn't mean you. ]
• Uninvited Guests. Guys that think it’s cool to play, uninvited, over your original songs that they’ve never heard before in their life. I had this drunk bass player hop up on stage one time and confidently play a big loud E over a song in F. For the non-players out there…that’s bad. I should have hired a Ninja to kill this guy.
• Jamming. The only way this works is if everyone is a musical killing machine with great ears. Or a very average player that knows when to SHUT UP AND NOT PLAY (that’s me!). If not, jamming turns into a lowest-common-denominator sludge-fest, which is to say, usually, bad Blues.
• Jamming Part 2: Weird Instruments. The guy / gal with the weird instrument that thinks it would be ’so cool’ to add zither/djembe/moroccan frog mallets or whatever to your song (that they don’t know, can’t play, are tuned a half-step down from). Please kill me now. NO, it would not be great if you played that thing on my song, thanks for asking!
• Most Covers. Doing a cover song is SO much less scary than playing something you wrote. Getting up in front of a bunch of buzzed listeners and playing ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ is always going to get a few drunk ‘Fuck Yeah!’s from the crowd, which makes you feel good, so you play another cover, and so the creative death-spiral begins - why do anything new? Truth: unless you are really reworking a song to make it new (like, maybe Jeff Buckley doing Cohen ) take a chance. Play something new - or something obscure and cool. Or at least play your well-known covers WELL.
• The Unprepared Guy/Gal: 5 minutes to tune AFTER your set started? Forgot your pick? Guitar has only three strings? YOU ARE KILLING US! GET OFF THE STAGE!!!
• Smug Folkies. To the story-telling, falsely modest, fake humble, wanna-be Indigo-girl-or-guy Folkie… SHUT UP!!! We don’t want to hear your POMPOUS SMUG INTRO STORY BEFORE EVERY ONE OF YOUR BORING, be-CAPO’d SONGS! (”I was looking at my hands the other day, and I had this vision about how we all have hands, and how our hands together could save the world, and…”)
• Smug Folkies Part 2. Another pointer for the Smug Folkie: STOP SMILING SLYLY AT YOUR OWN CLEVERNESS during the songs. God I hate that. Effing poseurs. Very common at the coffee-house Open Mic (i.e. Santa Cruz, Northampton, Cambridge, etc). Makes me want to drop an irate Danzig or Nugent on stage with them.
• Bad Hosts. Hosts that don’t keep the time-hogs under control, hosts that don’t keep an eye on the PA system, hosts that turn the Open Mic into a private party for their pals only…

But enough bitching. Open Mics are great. If you can find one with a cool vibe, with some original players, a supportive host… buy a few drinks and support the night. It’s special.

[ Update: see the followup post after you read this ]

————————————-
Visit the Instar website:
http://www.instarmusic.com
Free music downloads, photos, and video