I need an angry reviewer persona. Like, really. He’s the guy who can send angry emails to dick artists and who can post mean reviews to openmikes.org and who can just go totally apeshit on negative experiences. And maybe I shouldn’t be so afraid, but the amount of energy that can be wasted in stupid flame wars simply isn’t worth my time – and even the Journal’s not a safe place to vent, not really, because if I put a name in, it’ll turn up in a vanity search and eventually someone will come whining…
It’s happened.
And so, you can put it together via geographical location, simple sparseness of local events and the night of the week – but I’m not going to actively state the venue’s name – but I am going to need to vent a little about the worst open mic in the touring history of ilyAIMY.
Now – let me state – it’s not like this place had the worst talent, the worst host, the worst sound or the worst food… it wasn’t empty, it wasn’t overcrowded, the venue didn’t have shitty service or rude patrons… it simply elevated MEH to a completely mind-numbing, overwhelming level. And then was run at ELEVEN through the PA.
So it was the loudest meh known to man. Kristen got it right and called out sick, went to our host’s house and made an early night of it. Heather and I, however, stuck it out. This was our mistake.
Tuesday I called ahead to get some information. I was informed that they take signups via the phone, and if I get a busy signal, just keep trying. Signup was at 5pm sharp. I like this. It sounds annoying, but it sounds organized and like they probably have a fair amount of demand.
Rowan has joined us in Saint Louis and we WANTED to take him to the City Museum – but it’s closed on Mondays! NOOOOOO!!!! A questionable band selfie. These cakes are all over Saint Louis. Birthday celebration? I have no idea. But I was happy to pretend that that’s Sharif. Store your valuables oout of sight. ilyAIMY’s in town. Happy Saint Louis, MO!
Wednesday rolls around and I’m genuinely worried. It’s 4.55pm and I’ve got zero bars in #middleofnowhere Indiana. At 4.58pm I get a couple of bars and start dialing. Busy signal. Dial. Busy signal. Redial. Busy signal. It’s like when you used to get concert tickets on the phone. Redial. Busy signal. Finally, at 5.03pm I got through and get the last slot on the list, 11.30pm. When does music start? 8.30pm. Awesome.
We go get awesome Thai food. We stroll around and I get the spiciest mocha I’ve ever had. A Red Hottie On The Bar means it’s MY drink and Heather and Kristen and I enjoy Soma’s quite a bit. Heather watches the fishes in the King Kong TV tank get fed. I catch up on email. Kristen does… whatever it is that cellists do with a hot drink and time off… but at this point she’s beginning to feel poorly.
Our friends are already over at the open mic venue, so we mosey on over…. We walk in at 8.23pm to a night already in full swing and the solo acoustic singer/songwriter is being run at the pain threshold. Kristen puts her earplugs in and taps out shortly thereafter.
And we’re off!
The talent is… unexceptional. There are some good moments, and frankly some good music, but it’s like they’ve all taken their cues from the host to keep their performances as mediocre as possible. There are no smiles, there’s no implication that anyone’s having a good time. There are no introductions. The closest we come to seeing anyone getting welcomed is the host expressing an annoyed “get on with it” and at one point approaching an artist aggressively giving the universal “you’ve PLAYED TOO LONG” symbol, drawing a finger across his throat and scowling after shutting off the sound.
Soundguy hint #1. If you’ve cut off the mains to express “you’ve played too long, shut the fuck up” – you’ve got to cut off the monitors too or most artists will probably have NO IDEA that anything’s happened.
Not that anyone had that level of finesse going down. When I express that things were being run at the pain threshold, remember that this isn’t just coming from your favourite folk star, this is coming from a metal head.
I did go up and try to start a conversation with the host. He wasn’t into it. I went up to thank one of the other performers for a cool song and to say “wow, that was cool – I’ve never heard anyone cover that Cars song before” – and he, his partner and his wife looked at me like I was crazy. So much “why the Hell would you talk to me” radiated off of these people that I didn’t pursue that avenue of entertainment either.
Whatever. I was pleasantly surprised that a fair number of people were still around when it finally came time for us to go up. My biggest gripe with timeslots vs a simple list was illustrated by the artist ahead of us who showed up at 11.10pm for his 11.15 slot and loaded out before we were finished introducing ourselves.
We played three songs, rocked the house. We were invited to play more. We politely declined. We sold a couple of CDs and hung around to hear the host play. He did congratulate us from the stage but AS he was doing so he interrupted himself to comment “holy shit, it’s like, really loud up here”.
Kingmakers is the Columbus, OH game cafe sort of like our Board and Brew back home – but these guys only have FOUR hundred games. Psh. Whatever. Passing through Columbus, OH on the way home. Last time we were here this was naught but ice.
Yeah. Yeah it is. Ass. We stuck around for a song. He was solid. He had chops. If he was interested he might’ve even made a decent host as opposed to a mediocre sound guy. But he wasn’t. The whole night was filled with people who just didn’t seem to give a fuck. And that pains me. Because if nothing else, no matter what the experience level of the locals are, the host can knit something out of it.
And by the end of the night neither Heather or I had ever caught the host’s name.
And so – I’m done. And I will try to somehow write a constructive review on openmikes.org that won’t invite retaliatory commentary because damn, I wish I’d been warned. We could’ve hung out with our hosts and roasted marshmallows and made cupcakes. Because that’s what THEY went home to do. And that sounds like it was a LOT more fun.
