It was my first time ever crossing the border on foot. Here’s the view from the footbridge.
Outside the brewery
Inside the brewery.
This was the first beer I’d had since the Prestige in Haiti. Frankly, it wasn’t that impressive…but don’t take my word for it. I don’t know a damn thing about beer…
I wasn’t ballsy enough to open with it, though. First I sang “Déjame Vivir,” one of my favorites from the Juan Gabriel CD I checked out at the library last month.
The crowd went wild.
“O-tra!
Otra!
Otra!
“Well, when the people want another, we have to give them another! Where are you from?” the host asked me.
“San Diego.”
“Yes! This is the kind of singing we like to hear from the people in San Diego. What would you like to sing next?”
I told her.
“Are you sure? That’s one of OUR songs…you have to sing it well.”
I told her I was.
And I sang it.
“…que solo yo…te quisé.”
As far as I know, everyone liked it. They clapped at least as much as they did for Déjame Vivir. I smiled, bowed, and returned to my seat, where I applied myself to a plate of soggy nachos. My dream had come true. I dearly wished that my life were a CD and I could put my moments of Tijuana Karaoke Glory on repeat for the next five years.
My friend wanted me to sing another song…something “más movida.” She had a point; there’s something about karaoke that makes everyone want to sing slow, downer, depressing ballads. Did I know anything by Shakira? I honestly didn’t. Could I sing something in English? I honestly couldn’t…but I did remember a song I’d heard on the radio a few days earlier and I decided to attempt it:
It didn’t go quite as well, and I sat down wishing I had stuck to what I knew. Oh, well…it’s only karaoke, right?
Next we caught a van to a restaurant with mariachis. They have similar vans in Brazil; they run when the buses have stopped for the night. I’m not sure whether or not that’s how they work in TJ; all I know is that this particular van was in a state of disrepair pretty consistent with the vans in Brazil. When it was time for us to get out, the door wouldn’t open. The sole gentleman in our party struggled to pull the door open…and finally, he succeeded…but he was still holding a huge piece of the door. He handed it to the driver. We all had a good laugh and we got the hell out of there.
It seems I can’t go to Tijuana without finding mariachis. I wish I had asked them where I can buy some charro pants, but I was too busy trying to stomach the menudo…
This was in the bathroom at the restaurant. I thought it was funny.
Another cool Tijuana bathroom.
We ordered jamaica and menudo while we watched the mariachis. I had never eaten menudo before, and I am ashamed to report that I am not a fan; the texture of the stomach meat is a little too squishy and strange for this gabacha.
At last it was time to go home. We took a taxi “hasta la linea” and then waited in line to cross the border. I handed my passport to the immigration officer.
“What was the purpose of your visit to Mexico?”
“To have fun.”
He looked at me. “Did you have fun?”
“Yes. Yes I did.”
“Okay. Here you go.”
I wonder if he would have told me to go back if I’d said no?
Crossing back to the U.S. side of the border felt like entering a parallel universe; even the smell was different. I started talking with my new friend who had torn the door off the van about what we’d just experienced and he mentioned that many people in Tijuana think that “Lo bueno de Tijuana es San Diego” (the good thing about Tijuana is San Diego). We both agreed that in many ways, the opposite is also true: “Lo bueno de San Diego es Tijuana.” I will admit I have been very down on my hometown lately; the music scene is lousy. The beach is cold. The sports teams never win and are always whining for the tax payers to cough up money for new stadiums. However, I am very fortunate to live in a city where I can cross over to a completely different country with such ease. Tijuana really is what makes San Diego special, and I plan to continue seeking reasons to travel there for as long as I remain stuck here.
One of the things I’ve started doing as a result of the Artist’s Way that has nothing at all to do with art is riding a bicycle. It isn’t because I have any desire at all to become a competitive cyclist (except for the part where you get to eat ice cream and drink coke…that might be cool…but the physical pain you have to endure to get to do that just doesn’t seem worth it); it’s because one of the “hidden desires” that kept getting unearthed in the various Artist’s Way essay questions was the desire to ride a motorcycle. I don’t exactly have a lot of spare change lying around to purchase a motorcycle, so I decided to do the next best thing: borrow a bicycle from my dad. It’s much better exercise and a lot better for the environment…but I won’t lie, I still plan to buy a motorcycle as soon as I win the lottery, write a best seller, have a record go platinum or marry a Venezuelan oil tycoon…
Here are some pictures from last week’s brief bike tour of Coronado:
In my day, we called this The Chart House. I think now it's called the boat house, or something.
The Coronado Bridge and some barbed wire
San Diego
The other side of the bridge. This is roughly where I took the Chicano Park pictures from.
San Diego: The (Very Expensive) Gateway to Mexico
Okay, so I didn't ride my bike to get here...but I wanted to include this picture of the other side of the island. This is Point Loma...
Los Coronados...the gingerbread cookie islands.
Unfortunately the light wasn't good enough to get a good shot of Tijuana, but I did my best...
...nor was the light really good enough to get a shot of the Hotel Del, but I tried. Can't wait to come back to when there is more daylight and ride my bike down the Silver Strand!
Yesterday I looked at my stats and I was shocked; seventy-seven hits on my blog and I didn’t even write anything I considered particularly worthy of attention. I can’t figure out how it happened; maybe somebody tweeted me or something. Regardless, it was pretty cool; people on the Internet seem to like poetry. So I’ll post another poem.
If I had twenty-five cents
For every hour I have spent
Trying to forget you
I would not be driving my mother’s car
Nor renting a frigid room in a house with peeling paint
From the World’s Most Interesting Man.
Even if I had a nickel
For every hour devoted to
The Womanly Art of Getting Over It,
I could at least pay my car insurance each month.
I wish somebody would acknowledge it
And give me a medal
Or a prize,
Some raffle tickets I could exchange
For a giant stuffed bear,
A merit badge,
Or at least a sticker;
But no–
There is no merit badge
For every night I strapped black suede rhinestone porcupines to my feet
(The spikes would start to dig in after about an hour or so)
And subjected myself to either:
a)a roomful of Barbie Dolls in booty shorts endlessly twirling with their hands contorted into exotic tropical flowers while I did my best to force my ungainly, inflexible wooden limbs into some semblance of their glorious plastificence,
-or-
b)hurtling through a gauntlet of spiked ankles and sharp elbows in the sweaty arms of a paunchy middle-aged man barely attempting to conceal his erect penis as he forced me to move against the beat and gave me instructions like,
“Relax…the dance floor is the only place where a woman can be a woman these days!”
(a direct quote, I am not exaggerating; I wish I were…)
Of course, there would be the occasional dancer who understood how to move in time
(Or if not, sometimes one who was well-groomed)
And with him I would close my eyes
As he held me against him in closed position
And imagine he was you
(Even though you don’t dance
or do much of anything at all
except handle packages,
look at pictures of Megan Fox on your phone,
And act like a useless pendejo.)
Then I decided to try leaving the country.
I picked the least hospitable place I could,
Where our turds festered in unflushed toilets for days
And we sweat in places we never imagined possible
Where I hoped the plight of those I saw around me
Would whip some gratitude into my lily-white privileged American soul
And I would forget you as I tended to the searing pain of the welts;
Instead, I found myself on a tiny boat in an enormous bay
Stranded on an island as the sky was streaked with veins of lightning
Sleeping in a tent with a lullaby of vomiting,
And as I contemplated my potential death
I saw your face
And the mole on your chin
And I wondered whether or not you would even notice I had gone.
But I made it to the other side of that watery grave
And I came back to my native shores
Where I was advised to attend meetings:
“Hi, my name is gbera.”
And there is something wrong with me.
(Really, it’s my damn grandparents who should have gone to meetings
or even my damn parents
Why did it take three generations for someone to admit there was a problem?)
We complain about our lives
And wallow in our weaknesses
And submit ourselves to never-ending stepping that always brings us back to the same place.
I’d much rather be in the back of your truck
Waiting to see what you’ll chose to do next with your mouth
(Probably just open it to say:
“If you want to come, then you have to relax!”)
But of course, that’s why I’m in the meetings to begin with:
To ensure I don’t return to using you
As my drug of choice
To get through the mill of pain called life.
So much for my recovery.
And at last, it has come to this:
Writing poems.
Poems that will earn me nothing
Except perhaps some uncomfortable chuckles.
Poems that will do nothing to enhance my credibility
As a Potentially Date-able Individual.
Poems that are just a few small drops
In the endless ocean of encoded ones and zeros
On gleaming portals all over the world.
Will you ever stop looking at Megan Fox long enough
To type my name into Google
And stumble across them?
I’m not holding my breath.
And in the meantime,
I’ll wait for the FedEx guy to deliver my merit badge.
A poem and some pictures from an Artist Date I can’t blog about because it sucked. Enjoy!
I really wanted for this Artist Date to be cool. It wasn't.
Another day of freaking out
Like the red button they told you never
ever
ever
under any circumstances
to even consider pushing
Is stuck
And has been since you were very small
Six, five, four years old
(maybe younger)
You can’t differentiate
Between a hangnail and the end of the world;
To you, it’s all the same,
All of it requires curling up
into the tiniest of punctuation marks
Beneath a mountain of cheap blankets
And sobbing until you start to hiccup
Because it isn’t just the hangnail;
The Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown San Diego. I have fond memories of having one or both brothers in a headlock while my dad tried to get us a table here when we were kids...
It’s the back of a delivery truck in the rosy glow of an April evening;
It’s an empty room in the echoing hospital guesthouse,
And the mouth wash you left in the bathroom
(Was it my breath? My insecurities? My inability to pretend you pleased me?)
It’s the last time I saw your face,
In that gray netherworld of faceless signs;
I’m ashamed to say that although I admired the announcer’s husky voice,
She would have never caused me to miss that plane.
if you're in San Diego, don't ever go anywhere near the Gaslamp on a Friday night, because you might see stupid stuff like this...
It’s the bitter truth that, at twenty-five,
I still do not rule the world,
Nor would it particularly matter to him if I died tomorrow
(Or to you, for that matter–
Don’t pretend you never wished you could throw that howling baby out with the bathwater).
The truth is, I’ve been crying like it’s the end of the world
Since the moment I came into it.
I was born pushing the red button,
With the shiny red plastic End of the World phone in the other hand,
Calling to tell the Russians (who were still the Bad Guys then,
And how I wish they still were–they were such wonderful Bad Guys)
To go ahead and nuke us into oblivion;
When God wants to ruin my life, She sends me Carlos
El Chacal.
I was born at just the right time;
It’s 2012,
and my red button is stuck.
Dick's Last Resort.
Confucius is one of my favorite downtown San Diego landmarks.
Confucius would advise you to avoid the Gaslamp on a Friday night unless you want to pay $15 to park and be surrounded by douche bags.
I’m really not sure why. Lots of people, Mexican and gabacho alike, think it’s really annoying. Hell, I even think it’s annoying sometimes…but for whatever reason, I still enjoy it. It might be because:
I like wind instruments (especially brass instruments) a lot. I always have…be they used in marches (which my parents always used to listen to in the car when I was a kid), or big band (which I was particularly partial to as a teenager), or ska (ditto big band). I also went to arguably one of the best music schools for brass instruments in this country, so I have a certain fondness for brass instruments even if I don’t play one myself.
I respect the level of musicianship necessary to play banda music. Yes, bandas are not the Eastman Wind Ensemble, but in order to perform this music, one has to have achieved a reasonably high level of mastery on his or her instrument. This is especially true for tuba players in banda music (if I were a tuba player, I would get myself a Fulbright to Mexico and head down to Sinaloa to learn how these guys lay it down…but I’m not a tuba player and I’ve already had my adventure on Uncle Fulbright’s dime, so someone else is going to have to jump on this brilliant idea of mine…)
I’m used to weird polyphonic music. I played Charles Ives’ “Country Band March” in high school, which is probably as close as any gringo ever got to composing banda music without even being aware of its existence. I also did my time in Contemporary Music Ensemble during college and had to play all kinds of godawful experimental polyrhythmic noise more akin to a math problem than an actual piece of music (this, by the way, is the reason I have not gone to graduate school…the desire to perform music people actually want to listen to instead of the music my professors tell me is “good”), so my ears are probably a lot tougher than most people’s.
I like the energy of it… especially when there are percussion instruments involved like in this example (this is one I want to do for a future Pandeiro Video Project…).As far as I’m concerned, life is just too short to listen to slow, relaxing music. Banda is ANYTHING but.
I am not Mexican. I told one of my Mexican friends I like banda music once; he wrinkled his nose and said, “Dude, that’s naco music!” I am one of these guilty white liberals who disparages my own culture and puts other cultures on a pedestal; for example, I can’t STAND my dad’s old school country music, which is probably the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of banda. On the other hand, there are no brass instruments in old school country music…it’s just a bunch of whiny dudes with guitars…and we’ve already established I can’t stand the guitar when unaccompanied by other instruments…so maybe a better example would be German beer hall music. But I actually think that music is pretty cool…so WAIT…maybe it IS okay for me to like banda music, after all, because…
Banda music has a lot of German influence from the German immigrants that got kicked out of the United States in the 1800′s and had to go to Mexico…(at least, this is what I learned in high school…don’t quote me on that)…and I have at least one German ancestor…
Golly gosh! Maybe it is OK for me to like this music, after all…
So anyway…now that we’ve established that my one great-great-great-great (not sure how many great’s, actually) grandmother from Baden-Baden, Germany gives me some kind of cultural link to this music…let me tell you about Artist Date #8, where I went to a restaurant called El Camaron in Chula Vista to hear live banda music last Saturday night. This was actually my original idea for an artist date, but I decided it was too risky to do by myself. There’s kind of a stigma in our culture about going to restaurants alone, and I wasn’t sure if this particular adventure would count as invading a safe space for Mexican people, so I tried to get some folks from a Spanish language meetup group I belong to to come with me. It actually worked out quite well that no one wanted to join me; it meant I got to count it as an artist date, and I could sit and enjoy the music without worrying about whether or not anyone else was having a good time.
I was initially pretty intimidated when I arrived at the restaurant. The parking lot was tiny and completely full; I had to park several blocks away, and it took at least ten minutes to find a parking place. There were two security guards outside. When I walked in the door, the hostess glanced at me and turned away. Soon there was a line of people behind me crowding their way toward the hostess stand. I wasn’t sure I was welcome; I ducked back outside and stationed myself by the window where I could see the banda.
The security guards noticed me and asked if I was waiting for someone. I told them I was alone and unsure if it was okay to ask for a table when all I really wanted was to watch the banda (hearing them was not an issue…I probably could have heard them down the street if I’d wanted to!). The security guards reassured me that I was a customer and entitled to a table; one of them went inside to speak with the hostess. I was taken to a table in the corner where I had a decent view of the action. Inside it was so loud that I couldn’t even hear the chorus of anxious voices that are screaming in my brain twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (“You’re broke! You’re underemployed! You’re a lousy musician! You’re too naive to make it in this cold, cruel world! Sell your soul to Corporate America, that’s the only way you’ll ever survive! Kiss your silly musical dreams goodbye! You’re a woman, anyway…you’ll just wind up barefoot and pregnant in a house full of screaming kids with a husband who doesn’t love you anymore and is at work all the time, and that’s if you’re lucky, because you know men are crossing the street to avoid you, unless there is something seriously wrong with them…”). All I could hear was:
And it was amazing.
I sat for about forty-five minutes until the banda took a short break. I felt guilty because all I had was six bucks in my wallet and all I ordered was a diet coke (in my meager defense, I left them all six). I would love to come back to this place with a group of people (if I can find a group of people who will cheerfully sit through banda) and order lots of food and buckets of Coronas. I want this place to do well. More importantly, I want the banda musicians to do well. Unfortunately, I am just one brokeass gabacha and there’s only so much I can do. Maybe my blog post will generate some publicity for this place and more people will go check it out. I’m not holding my breath, but one can always hope…
Everyone go to this restaurant to have your ears blown out by the banda; it will totally change your life.
I really liked the inflatable pink flamengo inner tube with an inflatable Corona in the middle and the Mexican boxing on the TV.
A better image of the pink flamengo in profile...
The tuba player was balls-out the entire time (of course...it's banda music!). I tried to get a good picture of him but alas, didn't succeed...
Banda Reina de San Diego
Their business card
Banner for the banda outside the restaurant...these guys rock, go check them out!
I’m currently on week nine of Julia Cameron’s twelve week creativity-unblocking self-lead program. I’m pretty astonished I’ve made it this far. I haven’t missed a day of morning pages (knock on wood). In fact, I love morning pages…so much so that I worry about it. If I love them, they must be a self-indulgent activity…they obviously wouldn’t be working unless I hated them, right? No…that’s the kind of thinking I need to unlearn if I’m ever going to unblock. Still, I won’t lie…I’ve been suspicious at times of whether or not the program is actually working or if I’ve just discovered another way to distract myself from practicing my instrument or earning an honest living. I think the reason I’ve kept at it is that I truly believe my life has become a more fun and interesting place since I committed to the weekly tasks and artist date. I’m also starting to see small signs of unblocking (such as re-starting the Pandeiro Video Project after a hiatus of more than a year). And the morning pages give me a set time every day to write, which helps me to be better organized…before the Artist’s Way, I just wrote whenever I couldn’t take it anymore and HAD to sit down and get the thoughts out on paper. This way, I know I’ll take care of writing first thing in the morning and don’t have to worry about fitting it in to my day.
Prior to this week, my favorite week of the program was week five, the week immediately following the reading deprivation. While I didn’t much enjoy the reading deprivation itself, the week after was one of the most creative weeks I’ve had in a while. I sat down and started transcribing El Principio by Juan Gabriel, one of my favorite tunes from a CD I checked out at the library on my third artist date, for various percussion instruments. I’ve wanted to transcribe songs I like for instruments I know how to play ever since college, but I never allowed myself to spend time on it; I considered transcription to be something silly and frivolous that would never make me any money, so why bother spending the time? Thanks to the Artist Way, I’ve given myself permission to spend time on things like that…because as it says in the Artist’s Way Basic Principles:
Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
I think my new favorite week is this one with its emphasis on forgiving creative U-turns; I’ve made so many of those since returning from Brazil that it pains me to think about it. I wish I could have forgiven myself and moved on without this book…but sometimes we human beings really need someone on the outside to tell us it’s okay, that we’re forgiven…and that’s what I found in chapter nine. I also had a series of somewhat crappy artist dates during weeks six and seven and was starting to wonder if I was doing them all wrong. Fortunately for week eight I allowed myself to “do something really daring” (as Ms. Cameron continually encourages her readers to do throughout the book) and had a great experience…but that one is going to get a post all to itself…
Anyway, I love the Artist’s Way. I’ve got less than three weeks to go (although I cheated and looked ahead in the book…it ends with a contract to continue Artist’s Dates and morning pages for another ninety days…), and I’ve already made some “gentle but powerful changes,” met some cool people, and just generally had a blast. Seriously…who cares if it’s “working” or not???!
My week six artist date was to go see The Artist. I freakin' loved it. One of the best movies I've ever seen. I got this photo off of a Google image search...it is definitely copyright someone else...
The trolley station by my house as I was leaving for Artist Date #7.
A covered wagon at Old Town San Diego, my destination for Artist Date #7.
Hoop skirt dress on display at Old Town. I had to wear one of these for a play once and it sucked.
An artist's rendition of the Kumeyaay, the native people of the San Diego area. This was in one of the museums in Old Town. I REALLY wanted to stay and go through the whole museum, but they were closing right as I got there. I guess I'll have to go back on a future Artist Date...
Reading this panel at the museum broke my heart. The regulation of time in music and in life is a fascinating subject for me, especially after studying in Ghana, where there is a very different cultural understanding of time both in life and in music. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for the Kumeyaay people to adapt to the rigid European Mission system.
Waiting for the trolley at Old Town. My city is beautiful.
This is my Artist's Way collage (week 7, task 7). It came out way bigger than I was expecting...
This past Saturday, a friend of mine named Jon Whitledge invited me to hear my newly released single, No Te Quejes, on his state-of-the-art mobile audio system. I had heard Jon talk about the Magic Bus before, but this was the first time I had ever experienced it for myself. I actually think this opportunity came at the perfect time; any earlier in my fledgling sound engineer career and I wouldn’t have been able to fully appreciate the enormous amount of work behind the system.
The track sounded really fantastic in the van, which was a HUGE relief because I mastered it myself. I found this interview with Jon where he says he only likes to listen to well-recorded music in the bus…so I guess this means a master audio craftsman thinks my first original song was well-recorded. I also signed my first-ever autograph on the wall of his van. In fact, Jon even interviewed me about the single and my impressions of the audio system:
This is the battery he uses to run the audio system.
He plugs it into a regular wall plug in his house to charge it. I asked him if that ever tripped the circuit breakers or dimmed the lights; he said no.
The battery and the super cool acoustic wall treatment. I forget whether these ones are for absorbing or diffusing (bouncing the sound around so you don't get any standing waves). The amplifiers were hand made in England.
Wall Treatment and Autographs
Heavy-duty acoustic treatment next to the subwoofer. They absorb room resonances in the bass.
The coolest subwoofer I have ever seen. It takes up most of the back part of the van, and it's covered in autographs.
There was something cool about these wires and I totally forgot what it was.
Me signing my first-ever autograph as gbera.
My autograph in the Magic Bus. Thanks, Jon, for helping me to believe I might actually be a person of some importance, after all!
Yes, I’ve decided to revive the Pandeiro Video Project.
Thank The Artist’s Way Chapter Nine, which addresses “creative U-turns,” or times when an artist backtracks on the eve of a creative success to remain blocked.
Over a year ago, I had this plan that I was going to make a new pandeiro YouTube video once a week. I was going to try to imitate the beats from popular songs on my pandeiro. I was going to take requests. I started with the beat from “Crush” by the Dave Matthews Band. It came out reasonably well. However, I got some criticism from someone I sent the video to…so I stopped. Also, I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to come up with enough different pandeiro beats for the project to last longer than a few weeks. I wrote it off as yet another one of the myriad failures I’ve faced since returning to Brazil and pretended that it never happened.
After reading Artist’s Way Chapter 9, I’ve decided to revive the project…but with some different rules:
I won’t play beats people request. I will play whatever I want, regardless of how simple the beat or annoying the song.
I will sing (and potentially add other instruments) when I feel like it, even if my singing voice sounds kind of like a cat in a blender. Deal with it; there’s way worse out there…
I will upload pandeiro videos as frequently or infrequently as I want…so none of this “once a week” business. Seriously, I haven’t even been able to get myself to blog once a week (speaking of which, I’m WAAYYY behind in blogging about Artist Dates…I’ve still got week 6, 7, and 8 left to fill you guys in on…plus my exclusive tour of the Magic Bus mobile audio system…). But you know, I’ve been blogging for over a year now even if I haven’t done it on any particular schedule…so there’s no reason I can’t keep these pandeiro videos coming on a quasi-regular basis, too.
So here’s the video. Enjoy. (In the original uncut version I raised my middle finger at the beginning to show everyone I don’t care what they think, but I took it out because I knew my family would complain about it…seriously, I’m such a good kid, I make myself sick sometimes…but I think that flipping off the camera before playing helped me to do a better job.)
I went to my first open mic in November. I didn’t perform; I just sat there watching everyone do their thing, trying to decide whether or not it would be the right thing for me to start doing. Of course it is; I’ve written a whopping grand total of three songs, two of which are less than a minute long. Everyone has to start somewhere.
I wish I could say that I LOVE open mics, that I sit through the interminable line-up of solo guitars and standup comedians and poets and pseudo-producers feeling delighted to be a part of such a vibrant artistic community…but most of the time, I am either thinking about sex or wishing I could play with my cell phone without looking rude. I am a terrible audience member; I always have been. I don’t like to clap along. I don’t like to wave my arms around in the air if the person on stage starts doing it. I don’t like to participate (unless of course the guy on stage is Happy Ron Hill; who doesn’t love to scream “Boy toy!!”?). In my defense, I do show my appreciation if something impresses me, and I like to let people know when I’ve enjoyed their set. The problem is…it doesn’t happen often. And I feel pretty guilty about that.
I also try not to resent the featured acts who don’t have to show up wondering whether or not they are going to get their turn to play, aren’t asked to fork over a cover fee, don’t have to comply with clean language guidelines and get to sell their CD’s. I’m sure that all of them once did their time at open mics, and so instead of resenting them, I should look at them as harbingers of a brighter future for me…but I suck at that, so I usually just smoulder in a jealous rage of resentment during their sets (especially if they’re a solo guitarist. I have to admit I really can’t stand solo guitar…and I feel pretty guilty about that, too).
Anyway, here is a not-so-great quality video of me performing at the Skybox Open Mic. The downside of this particular open mic is that it’s in a bar, so I lost my voice trying to shout over all the drunk people. The upside to this open mic is that it’s in a bar…so if you don’t want to sit in your seat gazing in rapt attention at the performer on the stage, you don’t have to. I played a cover of Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes and then my own originals Angry Girl Poem #2, and No Te Quejes. At least watch Kiss Off…that came out pretty good thanks to some audience help with the “yeah yeah’s”. Also thanks to my friend Lorelei for recording this for me and for having me along to play drum set for her at open mics…these things are much less agonizing if you have a partner in crime…
