Really Bad Open Mic Experience

[ChrisE]

When I first decided to get off the couch, I went to an open mic at a coffee house in a bad part of town that was a meeting place for recovering addicts. The host was very encouraging and the crowd was attentive. I really enjoyed it and did it several times to get more comfortable on stage. I’d say it was probably the “perfect” kind of open mic.

My only bad experience there was the time I was playing my tunes and another performer began to set up his huge rig (giant pedal board, stereo amp setup, etc). Just walking back and forth across the stage running cables and carrying his crap right in the middle of my songs. I stopped and said, “Am I in your way?”

I used to work at a nightclub and the owner’s son (24 years old) wanted to have a “full band” karaoke night. He and his friends had a full band setup so they could pretend play as a band. They even had a rehearsal space and held rehearsals every week.

The idea was that a group of friends (hopefully women who’d had a few drinks) would want to get up on stage as a lark and pretend play to their favorite song as a band.

It ended up turning into a full “concert” by the owner’s son and his friends (all grown men ages 24-50) pretend playing real gear (unplugged) for over an hour while the patrons who had gotten on the list gradually grew tired of waiting and left.

It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. The concept of a “full band karaoke night” wasn’t ridiculous (it could work) but these grown men being so serious about their fake band was just completely ridiculous to me. They even bought really nice gear—amps, pedalboards, wireless units, etc and carried it all from their rehearsal studio to the venue, but couldn’t play a lick and never even turned the power on.

This went on for about a month before club owner/dad pulled the plug, so to speak.