Flunking the Feature
The plan was to enhance the Thursday night Open Mic by diversifying the session. We would start out with a featured artist, run about an hour of Open Mic, and finish up with a freestyle competition. It was (my industry partner) Robert Rick's idea and I supported it.The second part of Rob's idea was to let Ciara White lead off as the Featured Artist. He wanted a young performer, with the idea of making the Monroe Avenue venue more developmental, maximizing the use of young talent. Ciara has worked with Rob quite a bit in the past and she is a very talented poet/actor. However, she also is an 18-year-old (literal!) Drama Queen who suffers acutely from 'Diva Syndrome.'
At 8 pm last night, there was no one there but Willis III and me. A group of about 18 people arrived en masse at 8:10; most of them to see the Featured Artist perform. W3 (Willis III), my son and understudy, has been opening for me the past few weeks. At 8:20 I instructed him to give Ciara five more minutes and, if she was still absent, to start anyway.
Unfortunately, my son was very nervous last night and apparently he was not prepared to hold the mic down for more than a few minutes. I wish he had told me this. Ciara arrived at 8:25 and W3 immediatley announced: "And here she is! Let's give a hand to our featured artist!"
I was in the DJ's booth, spinning CDs to accompany the poetry and scribbling a list of announcements I wanted Willis III to make before he turned the show over to Ciara. For her part, she scowled at W3 when he made his hasty and ill-timed introduction, and then Ciara made a beeline for the ladies' room.
Okay... there's something going on here and Mr. Mindstorm never got the memo...
It was an awkward moment for all, and I wanted sooo badly to rescue my son, but he failed to see my efforts to get his attention. He stumbled on with some more freestyle, but now his confidence was shattered. Lack of confidence for an event host is like lack of air for a land-based mammal: the only thing left to do is to choke.
Ciara returned and sat down in the audience. Willis III tried to dialoge with her while he was still on the mic (a serious faux pas if the intent is to help settle and comfort a person - one doesn't make it public). W3 was desperate to get rid of the mic and he finally noticed me and handed it up the the window of the DJ's booth.
Meanwhile, Ciara decided to make an (only somewhat dramatic) exit. The 15 or so people who had come expressly to see Ciara sort of looked around at each other and departed the way they had arrived - en masse. W3 hung his head in dejection. I needed to talk to him. I needed to talk to Ciara. I needed to save the show.
I sat in the DJ booth with the mic in my hand trying to decide what was my highest priority. Before I could reach a decision, the other three people in the audience got up and left. Now there was just my son and me. Decision made. Oh! Now the musicians are returning, with their instruments and amps. Willis III blamed himself and it fell upon me to rescue his self esteem while allowing him to embrace the lesson that his efforts to help Ciara were (sabotaged!) hindered by his (desperation to be rid of the mic!) haste.
After talking with W3, I went in search of Ciara. I found her, but she was totally unwilling to dialogue. Muttered a few unkind things about Rob - apparently she was really pissed off about his not being there. Well, I was really pissed off about Ciara ruining my open mic, but I did a decent job not saying anything about it. What good would that have done?
When I went back downstairs, Ben had his bass thumping and Sam was laying jazzy notes on that tenor sax. Ben, as usual, was popping out straight funk. Ben, for the poets' sake, I need you to turn the volume down on that axe and hit more bluesy riffs. Well, maybe the night wasn't a total waste.
Hey Ben! Can I see that for a minute? "What? This?" Yeah, the bass. "What? You're gonna play?" The bass player is seldom The Intellectual in a band. Yeah Ben. I wanna see if I can bump this blues beat. You just listen.... "Okay, but don't choke yourself with the strap!" He laughed and walked away.
I'm no musician. If anything, I mess around with drums every now and then. But I know a little about notes and so I started in with a basic blues beat, using just one string. Da-bump, Da-bump, bump, bump... Da-bump, Da-bump, bump, bump... Sam joined in with the sax. I struggled to concentrate on the frets.
"Not bad!" This boomed from the speakers. I looked up to see Ben, the bass player, over on the mic, grinning. "Now you listen, Jahaka!" And he started freestyling....
So the Sax player did his thing on the Sax while the Poet fumbled through a basic beat and its changes on the Bass and the Bass player ripped off some amazingly cerebral shit about humankind's place in the universe with Poetry. My son consoled himself with a pencil and a sketch pad.
Rob finally showed up around 9:30, raised eyebrows to see an empty audience, the Bass player on the mic, the Poet thumping the bass, and the Sax player leaning over, gasping for air from the effort of trying to support the Poet-Basist's too-deep, one-string notes. Rob simply said he had had some personal issues that still required resolution - we'd talk later. He left.
Nonetheless, life was good I had a good time (I'm supposed to have a good time on Thursday's -- it's in my 'contract'.). But we flunked the Featured Artist Experiment. I went home early and got a decent night's sleep. This morning, I played with my youngest son and my grandson. In about two hours, I'll open the mic on the show at Julius Cafe. Life goes on, ya know?
Da-bump, Da-bump, bump, bump... Da-bump, Da-bump, bump, bump...
posted by JahStorm @ 6:05 PM
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