Martin Joiner’s Blog Confessions of a binge thinker

Chat roulette open mic and the events cultural foundations

Last night was a Chat Roulette themed Open Mic.  Quite a simple concept I thought.  Inspired by Merton's Piano Improv videos I decided to recreate the situation on a live stage.

This idea appealed to a lot of people and out of all the themed open mic nights I have done so far this one drew the most pre-event interest.  I received several messages during the day checking that it was still happening.  Performers like Lawrance and Paul both worked with the images on the screen to entertain our randomly selected chat partner and as they expressed delight with smiles and raised thumbs on the screen, the live audience in the venue responded.  The intertwining relationships between the stage, the remote webcam connection and the punters in the room was a lot of fun and I received a lot of compliments for making it happen.  But for one person in particular this was a highly offensive and inappropriate thing for me to do.  And although you may now be expecting me to talk about nudity in fact it was something else entirely that angered this performer.

Before I talk specifically about him let me lay down some background.  Open Mics are unplanned environments where everyone in the room can posses a different set of expectations. Therefore performers are tested on their skills to improvise more than anything else.  I believe the ability to adapt and work with the crowd you get given is way more important than technical ability.  At most open mic events the challenge comes from natural things, like predictable audience types (large and noisy or quiet and respectful).  Then there's planned tests of creativity thrown in by the host like my addition of the Chat Roulette screen or Simon (Monday nights @ Oddfellows, Exeter) organising his poe-offs where he gets 2 previously unacquainted poets to take turns reading verses.

Whatever new things get thrown at a performer they have three choices:

1. They think on their feet and adapt to the situation or challenge as best they can.
2. They accept they cannot adapt and gamble by doing a pre-planned performance hoping it will be a hit.
3. They get themselves all hot and bothered and attempt to change the situation to match their preconceived image of how the night should be and when they are met with failure, blame everything but themselves.

The first two options are legitimate approaches to performing, both with equal chance of success but the third is an attitude doomed to failiure and it was exhibited last night by Sideways Dave.

Above is a picture that I took showing the laptop, the camcorder and Sideways Dave just before he stormed off stage mid-song announcing "I've had enough of this".  Dave's interpretation of the situation was that more people were paying attention to the screen than him.  My interpretation is that Dave had completely failed to grasp the concept that he was ON that screen and had the ability to interact with it however he wished.

Ironically the final nail in the coffin was when the battery on the laptop died causing the screen to go blank.  This resulted in a collective roar of disappointment from the audience similar to when England miss a penalty shot in the World Cup.  Dave could have used this as an oportunity to get one back at technology, he could have made a witty remark and regained the attention.  But no!  He was just stuck in this miopic attempt to bash out a generic performance and as such left the stage.  His rebellious protest actually earned him the biggest round of applause I have ever seen him receive which has me confused.  I genuinely do not know whether the rapturous applause was in support of his protest against a noisey audience (technically not possible), whether it was in support of him leaving the stage (a bit too nasty of the audience to be so), or whether is was the product of a confused audience hearing one person clapping enthusiastically and following suit (the most likely reason).

Apologies if I sound harsh and unfair.  Dave is a talented player who has studied Bob Dylan intimately but he's a serial offended when it comes to moaning and it's simply pushed me to my limit.  He has previous for this kind of behaviour and is always very vocal and critical of my ideas in contrast to several others who give me words of support for ingenuity.  I see him as a bizarre kind of workman turning up to a job with only one screwdriver and then blaming the client for having different sized screws.  He has a repertoire that ranges from slow sombre to moody melancholic and a preoccupation with this idea that all open mic events should be quiet straight-edge affairs where the entire audience sit in perfect silence watching the stage for the entire night.  And when he turns up at The Perfect 5th on a Sunday to find an energetic audience, intoxicated and demanding, guess who gets an earfull... me, the host!  Now I don't mind people disagreeing with me.  It's perfectly natural for my ideas to be incompatible with other people's plans, but he expects me to change the unchangeable.  You can't outsource an impossible task to me and then blame me for failing.  Dave has been to the event on previous Sundays when it's quiet and he's had a completely attentive and sober audience hanging on his every word.  He knows it's unpredictable but does he change his act at all... no!

So my words to any performer is this.  If you are not prepared to have a large repertoire and adapt your style of delivery and set content in the 10 minutes before you walk on stage, get used to failing to entertain and accepting that failure.

There is of course ways that I could change my night to provide performers like Dave with what they want.  I could charge a fee on the door which would discourage those there only for the drink.  I could verbally tirade the audience demanding complete silence before a performer begins and ask anyone talking during songs to leave.  I could pre-book acts and advertise them in advance so audiences know what to expect and can choose not to attend.  But I don't want to introduce any of these because I don't think Taunton can handle that kind of specific event.  The population of pro-culture punters is so small that when you divide it into subgroups you are left with unsustainable audience sizes.  The only option is to combine mis-matched genres and let he who shouts the loudest win.  It's a horrible situation for any venue owner or individual music lover to be in but why do you think I spend hundreds of pounds in transport costs each month taking my poetry to places like Bristol and Exeter.  Because they are the locations who have enough cultured people that you can drill down to very niche groups and still be able to fill a modest venue.

Please do comment on this post:

• Is Taunton cultured enough to play host to specific sub genres like Poetry/Flamenco/Grime/Folke?
• Should I introduce measures to my open mic to discourage non-musos at the risk of killing it's popularity?
• Is Dave representative of performers and should I stop expecting acts to be creative?

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Open Tales (open mic) at The Junction, Bristol

Last night I headed up to Stokes Croft in Bristol to a quirky little venue called the Junction.  Still open for business through it's ongoing renovation the ex-metal bar is now under the same ownership as city centre trendy-magnet, Mr Wolfs.  It's obvious the building is still in the early stages of a facelift but so far the new ownerships have brought with them box fresh air-conditioning, replacement plaster-boarding, tabletop candles, ambient down-lighting and I think the bar and furniture are new too.  Work is happening daily and with plans for a pizzeria upstairs I have a feeling this will soon be a key venue for this part of Bristol.  I can imagine the footfall that Invisible Circus pull down this end of the graffiti clad area of the city will do well for them too.

So on to the live performance aspect of the night.  The Northern Irish folke act who host the event are Annie and Jimmy, a young duo with captivating sincerity and talent.  The name of the event is open tales and every performer is made equipped with a Wolf's tale before taking to the stage.  The night drew an excellent crowd of attentive listeners just perfect for a relaxed Monday evening.  The acts alternated between folke music and contemporary poetry all evening with a bit of acoustic rockpop thrown in.  I really enjoyed my evening and it was a pleasure to perform there.  I will definitely be heading that way again on a Monday night in the future.

2 Very Different Devon Open Mics

For some unknown reason creative block had shifted earlier in the day and I finished two poems including my first super-positive (yet not soppy) love poem.  It was the product of a 4 month drive to write something that just makes people smile without a negative twist or gritty analysis of contemporary Britian.  It's called Junk Food Date and is about the intertwining relationships between me, a girl and junk food.

On Monday night I attended Oddfellows open mic.  The night, which has recently been taken over by new host, Simon, is gaining momentum and frequently fills the tiny Exeter venue with quality performers and a polite audience.  When Simon requested silence for the poetry everybody in the room happily obliged and as such I was able to produce a crisp and focussed performance of my new works, resulting in a fantastic response.  A member of the audience who was there scouting for talent invited me to read on his forthcoming Phonic FM show and I even had someone at the back yell "Read the one about Russia" which put a smile on my face.  It's nice to be remembered.

The benefits of warming up my face muscles and voice prior to reading is becoming very evident.  I have started reciting tongue-twisters before going on stage.  As well as a few of my own difficult combinations of sounds I have been using the ones Ron Burgundy does in the intro of Anchorman. To write your own tongue twister simply find two words that use the same sounds but in a different order and pronounce them in rapid concession.  The Paedophile's Feeder Pile or Scooter racers' re-route skaters through suitcases.

The following day, Tuesday (last night) I attended Ride Cafe's open mic in Plymouth. I found a tough crowd consisting mainly of young university students. A lot of ambient noise and a lack of audience etiquette. Very different to the previous evening.  But by exaggerating my performance and really throwing my voice around the room I was able to overcome the ignorant mass and gain the support of a hardcore niche of people who were paying attention to the performers on stage. I think my humiliation of a heckler earned me some respect too. The host, Joe, seemed embarrassed of the audience and congratulated and apologised in equal measure, actually taking the defensive move to call the audience a "bunch of pussies" on the mic immediately after my set, which I found highly flattering and amusing.

It was a unique, adrenaline pumped experience for me which resulted in more post-performance hand-shakes than any previous reading. I would recommend every performer try playing to a crowd like this at least once, even as a conditioning exercise.  It's the straight-out-of-college-uni-student mentality and is probably one of the hardest social barriers anyone could attempt to battle.

So with a sore throat flagging up the first signs of a cold virus and two new business cards to add to my address book I can look back on these past 72 hours and smile at the memories of two very different open mic experiences.

Thanks to Steph Howe, Josh Enright, Greg Brookes and Chris Good for their support.

My first experience of chat roulette

Well I plugged in my camera, loaded chatroulette.com and started freestyling songs for all the lovely cam'ers out there. After about 45 minutes of this I received an error message explaining how 3 people in the last 5 minutes didn't like what I broadcast and I am therefore banned for 90 minutes! Now considering how many dirty old men wanking on camera there were that's a pretty slating review of my musical ability!

If you'd like to see people with webcams from all over the world delivered to you at random visit http://chatroulette.com but for god sake you'd better be more interesting than me!

(Afterthought:  Maybe this was racism against my moustache)