The Ups and Downs of Open Mic Nights

OK I’ll admit it: I don’t go to many open mic nights. Why? Well for one thing, I’m a single father which takes up quite a bit of my time and most of them tend to be at bars, or just too late for her at a tender three years of age. But that’s not the only reason. The other is that I have a hard time with performers who can’t sing or play so I tend not to travel too far to do that. 

That being said, there are a few with a fair amount of talent you can rely on. The two that stick out for me are both on Wednesday night. One is at Romano’s in Canyon Crest, off the 60 and the other is at The Vault in Redlands. Both have a fair amount of talent and only a few misguided souls. But, when I do go, I applaud everyone. Why, just for having the guts to get up on stage.

It hard to do that and most people simply cannot. Most people would literally rather die than get up on stage in front of people. And in a way, it’s even more balsy to do it when you have no talent! When I get on stage, I know people will like what I play so it’s easy for me to do. However, may people don’t know that and for them , it’s a great way to get a feel for performing in front of people and hone your skills before embarking on a professional career

My grievance is more with performers who attend to play themselves yet bash the other acts. Guess what? They usually suck themselves! You can tell a poor quality of performer by the way they behave off stage. A professional will give due credit, sit back, and not criticize because they know its open mic and they know that there are people who are either inexperienced or not all that talented. It comes with the territory. Plus, it’s just bad form. But, you will notice that the good players will stay quiet and be respectful. If you hear these guys laughing or being rude, guess what, they can’t play either! They lack sufficient skills and need to compensate by attempting to reduce everyone else to their level. Typical.

Of course, most professionals tend not to go to Open Mics because, well, they have paying gigs but occasionally, its nice to go to one just to try out new stuff to meet new people or just to have a bit of fun with an acoustic guitar, But if they do and a bad performer comes up, they politely go outside away from the stage and smoke or converse with someone until the performer is finished. It’s called courtesy and it is very crucial to a performer because if you have and desire to be respected, you yourself must show respect.

Come one, man, face it. You knew exactly what you were getting into when you came to the open mic and its free entertainment. If you don’t like it get the hell out of there and let the performers do their thing. If I hear you mocking a performer, you lose all of my respect and if you get up there, I will simply not give you my ear, or my respect. Yea it’s not much, but you won’t win over any new fans either and new fans are what we all need, if we are serious about our music.

So in closing, I would just like to say that if you intend on going to an open mic, be respectful of all the other performers and people will respect you, even if you’re not good. That is important because it helps build self-esteem and confidence so if you are serious, you might just keep coming back and getting better. If you’re the kind of douche that has to insult everyone or ridicule their performance, or complain about how much better you are, please, just stay home and prove it to yourself because we don’t want to hear that, and you’re probably not very good anyways.