Open Mic Night

In addition to being a writer wannabe, I am also a musician wannabe and this manifests itself in a rather embarrassing activity. Yes, I play at open mics. And no, you can't come.

The open mics I tend to play are all in the boonies of Massachusetts by design. Out in the sticks, you can get a half hour set and the talent level is pretty middling, so if you're decent, it's quite an ego boost. If you play in Boston, you get one song in a coffeehouse and it's always really challenging following some ultra-pasty white disaffected college sophomore who is covering Lili Taylor's "Joe Lies (When He Cries)" from Say Anything...

So, instead of putting up with that nonsense, I end up playing to a bunch of hillbilly drunks and Golden Tee fanatics. The price I pay for my art.

Anyway, last night was a pretty decent gig. Good turnout from friends...good turnout from friends' friends. But the funny thing about playing these things out in the woods is that your audience can be weird, or like last night, annoying. Mom always said, "Playing open mics in Central Massachusetts is like a box of chocolates. You never know what annoying inbred wackos are going to show up." Mom's not so good with analogies.

So, me, Joe, and Christine get there and have a couple of drinks to loosen up. I usually get to the place and don't drink until I'm just about to go on, whereupon I have a shot of Southern Comfort which doesn't hit me until my set is over. I strayed from my routine last night and starting having anxiety attacks about that which rivalled the ones I get when I see Bumbles. I'm a ritualistic kind of guy and foregoing my shot of SoCo could have been a harbinger of things to come. And in a way, it was.

Joe goes on and plays a great set. I'm always envious of him because he is a great guitar player and knows great songs. Joe's hopes to do a Jimmy Buffet song were squashed by the guy who went on immediately before him who apparently knew of no songwriter other than Jimmy Buffet and proceeded to play most of his catalog. I never got the whole Parrothead thing, but that's a rant for another time.

Joe's set ends with "The Weight" by The Band and I join him on stage for that one and we have dueling guitars and vocals. It's always fun and it loosens me up for my set. We finish that tune and Joe goes and sits in the front of the stage with some cool friends of his that came out.

This is when things got...strange.

As soon as Joe finished up, there were these two people who took an immediate idolizing to him. I can't believe it. Joe has himself groupies! One was a smallish guy dressed in the most overbearing turtleneck sweater this side of Dane Cook's on the Saturday Night Live skit a few weeks back. This thing was like 20% wool, 10% sheepdog and 70% yak hair. It was a beast and quite possibly still living. The other person who saddled up to Joe was this large and LOUD woman. Now, normally, I would leave out the fact that she was large, but it will come into play later.

I go on and start my set off. And all I can hear is this really loud, abrasive woman fawning over Joe. As a performer at these things, you get used to the chatter that goes on, but this lady was as piercing as Sam Kinison using a bullhorn. Their conversation is something that I'll get to later, but in the course of my set, one of Joe's friends proceeded to shoot this woman the hairy eyeball because she was literally drowning me out, and then finally had to tell her to knock the volume down. It got to the point, during my last song, that I just said "Fuck it" to myself and sang the loudest I could while still staying in key. And I could STILL hear this woman's caustic cackle. In fact, here I am, about 11 hours later, and I can still hear it. Something tells me it will be something I will carry for the rest of my life. Now, I know why you see disheveled people walking down the street, swinging maniacally at the air, blocking their ears, cursing at the sky. They know this chick.

In the meantime, Christine gets up and sings a few tunes with me. She kicks ass in that she is a better singer and better guitar player than I. And everyone makes sure to tell her just how great she is when she is done. I'm rapidly becoming Sonny to her Cher. Captain to her Tennille, Tito Jackson to her Michael Jackson. Whatever.

So, I get off stage, and settle back in at which point, Joe informs me of one of the funniest things I have ever heard. This annoying paper-cut of a woman interjected herself, did I mention loudly?, into Joe's posse (who were exchanging early Christmas gifts) and saw that someone had given Joe a gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods. The conversation went something like this:

Chick I Just Wanted To Pound and Pound with a Shovel: "Are you a sportsman?"

Joe: "Yes."

CIJWTPAPWAS: "What do you do?"

Joe: "I hunt."

CIJWTPAPWAS: "What do you hunt?"

Joe: "Big game."

This is hysterical on so many levels, because, first of all, Joe doesn't hunt big game and, second of all, Joe doesn't hunt at all, and, lastly, this chick was immense. Definite the high comedy point of the evening up to that point.

Then it got weird.

And older guy came up and did some 60s classics, including Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Down On The Corner", which, to this day, I cannot hear without thinking of that scene in One Crazy Summer where George Calamari is buried up to his head in sand on the beach and some big guy doesn't see him and puts his beach chair right on top of his dome and then proceeds to eat a 5-gallon tub of baked beans. That song is playing in that scene and will be forever linked in my warped mind. John Fogerty weeps.

Then, after this dude, was a keyboardist who also happened to be the wearer of the yak hair turtleneck. This was a first. What made it even a "firster" is that this guy and his keyboard didn't do "Axel F". No no no. He didn't even do "Just The Way You Are" by Billy Joel (a song I predicted he would play, and also one that I predicted would cause me to walk out). Instead, he sets up and launches into a Hasidic rap. And, worse, he made it a singalong. By now, the only ones that were left were me, Christine, Joe, and some of our friends, and, of course, the omni-present CIJWTPAPWAS.

This guy begs, implores us to take part in the singalong, which we do out of sheer pity. I'll never be able to get my Gentile dignity back after helping him rap, "My name is Dr. Dreidel, eat soup from a ladle, bust rhymes from the cradle." I shit you not. 50 Cent weeps.

And to top it all off, CIJWTPAPWAS LOVED this dude! In the irony to decimate all ironies, she made sure we gave Dr. Dreidle here our absolute, undivided attention. And there she was, apple martini in one hand, doing the Elaine Benes dance, and shouting out all of these Jewish words that, for all I know, would have caused my mug of Harpoon IPA to part down the middle if I sang them too.

This routine resulted in yet another exchange that went like this:

CIJWTPAPWAS: (unconvincingly, at least, to me): This is hysterical!

Dim: OK.

CIJWTPAPWAS: (incredulously): You don't think so?!

Dim: I'm not Jewish.

CIJWTPAPWAS: You don't have to be!

Dim: I kinda think you do.

And then, during another song, she turned her nasty wrath on Christine.

CIJWTPAPWAS: (turning red, like a really really big lobster) Didn't you see Fiddler on the Roof??!?!!

Christine: Yeah, but I don't know all the words.

Classic.

Then, after this mercifully came to an end, yak haired turtle neck guy came up to us and thanked us for our participation, saying that he is learning the keyboard and writing these songs to play for patients who have Alzheimer's. A noble cause for sure which then caused Dave (who is going straight to hell) to say, "That must be great, because each time they hear it, it's like it's brand new."

As if anyone can follow this up, some guy got up on stage and played a bunch of original tunes. He was actually pretty decent and not very noteworthy except for one thing. He prefaced one of his songs by saying "This one goes out to the soldiers in Iraq!" Yet another noble gesture, only if you are on a world stage or are playing to more than 3 people, which includes one guy, asleep face-first into a bowl of stale popcorn while his Hennessey Cream Ale is still in his kung-fu grip. Not exactly a message to the masses.

And with that, we left.

Here was my selist for those curious. In the parentheses is the artist who does the song originally and infinitely better than I.

1. Lone Star Song (Grant Lee Buffalo)
2. Miss Misery (Elliott Smith)
3. We're Going To Be Friends (The White Stripes)
4. Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground (The White Stripes)
5. Magnolia Mountain (Ryan Adams & The Cardinals) - with Christine on background vocals
6. Dragonfly (The Thorns) - with Christine on background vocals
7. Come Pick Me Up (Ryan Adams) - with Christine on background vocals
8. Your Ghost (Kristin Hersh) - Christine on guitar, lead vocals, Dim on background vocals
9. Long Slow Goodbye (Queens of the Stone Age)

Long post. Not very funny. But it's all true.

- Bo Bice

I mean,

- Dim.