Plaidophile

An open mic is where people under a time constraint do everything they can to repeatedly violate that time constraint (taking advantage of the fact the MC doesn't want to be a bitch and risk alienating the regulars), while most of the audience is just there to see one or two people.

Also I never realized that my song "Gin Or Ginseng" could actually go over a lot of peoples' heads. I guess only performing it at Song Fight tends to skew my audience towards people who give a shit about video games and are at least somewhat aware of how shitty it is to work in that industry. I think only like ONE PERSON (aside from Spud) actually sung along during the bridge (***SPOILER WARNING*** it's the SUPER MARIO BROS THEME, people!) so I guess I need to learn my audiences better.

I also need to do real gigs. I'm better when I don't have mounting time pressure, and when I have enough time to get over my nerves so I can play something simple for the first song until I loosen up and don't feel like my fingers are frozen.

It's funny, even though most of the people at an open mic are really horrible, I still feel nervous that I might not be good enough, and that always leads me to the same old crap. That's one reason why at SFLive Santa Cruz I opened with Stronger Than, which takes basically no technical skill (the three chords are Emin, Emaj, and Amin, which are all easy and can all be played basically without actually moving individual fingers).

Starting with Run Faster is definitely a mistake. The chords are all simple but they also require the ability to move fingers independently of each other, and the opening takes a bit of dexterity in the pick hand. Though actually I felt that went better for me than Gin or Ginseng did (I really should get around to doing a studio recording of it so I can, like, link to a good version) because for Gin or Ginseng my sound levels were all jacked up. They were also jacked up for Run Faster but it also doesn't really matter so much there since the chords are just there to carry vocals, which really can go just fine on their own. G||G needs the chords to give the vocals context (and to make the bridge musically meaningful).

If I do this open mic again (and if I do, it'll probably be at Spud's insistence) I will probably do easier and more universal songs. People "get" I LOVE YOU (even though I don't think anyone's actually figured out what it's about without me telling them it's about a heat-stroke hallucination) and they also get Paper Cuts (it's about what the lyrics say they're about). Spud said that I really need to do Put Cindy Back On The Bus because that's a fun song whether people "get" it or not (it's about some girl named Cindy who a bunch of people hate and so they slip her some roofies and try to put her on a bus to nowhere unattended). I also have a hell of a lot of other songs I can perform live but they're not worth being the plurality of an 8-minute snippet.

So, I need to gig. Giggity giggity goo.