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Boston Globe The (Thursday) weekly Calender section of The Boston Globe Newspaper covers the entierty of the exploding Open Mike and open jam scene.

Open mikes

by

Cate McQuaid

November 8, 1997

Volume 22 Number 55

   C.C. Arshagra sits on  futon couch at the Phoenix Coffeehouse in Cambridge with a guitar resting on his lap, trembling. 

     "The first time i did this was at T.T. the Bears, the Stone Soup Poets. I was shaking" says Arshagra. "I still shake." 

     Arshagra, dressed all in black and wearing a worn top hat and wire-frame glsses over a trimmed beard, is about to take the stage at the coffeehouse'd Sunday openmike. He's a poet, but he's borrowed a guitar from the singer-songwriter sitting next to him so he can accompany himself.

     His first open mike was a Y.T.'s years ago. "I thought I was good," say the 39-ear-old poet, who supports himslf bu driving horse carriage in Boston. " But I've come a long way since then. Open mike has been my school. If you become a regular, you're challenged to write something new each week." 

     Arshagra is more than a regular. He's a self-described "open mike junkie." From the Phoenix, he'll head up Massachusetts Avenue to the Lizard Lounge to perform again, this time backed by Jeff Robinson Trio at what Robinson likes to call a "poetry jam." Often, Arshagra admits, he performs up to five times each week.

     Dozens of open mikes and open jams luring aspiring, practicing, and secret artists on stage around Boston nearly every night of the week. If your a poet, actor, dancer, musician, or comic, you can try out the spotlight and develope your skills. Open mikes and open jams often act as the threshold between a living-room performer and going pro.

     Ask Steve Watt, who sits in with his banjo and mandolin at the bluegrass picking party the Geoff Bartley hosts Tuesday nights at Cambridge's Cantab Lounge. "If we didn't have this, people would be playing in their living rooms," say the 53-year-old Watt, a software engineer. His true Life Bluegrass band occasionally gets featured at the picking party. "They'd have less, and they'd be less likely to be playing out." 

     Most open mike events highlight feature performers. They provide polished, professional performances that draw an audience beyond would-be musicians and poets who have signed up for the open mike. They're good role models for the amateurs in the house. 

CHEAP NIGHT OUT

     Clubs usually hold open mikes and open jams on off nights, such as Sundays and Mondays. The events come with ready-made audience and no-cost acts. Even the featured performer often gets paid when the hat is passed, or with a free dinner. The low-budget entertainment trickles down to the audience: Covers vary from zero to $10, but usually don't go  over $5. If you have a hankering to perform, show up a half-hour before show time and sign up. 

     Every open mike has it's own style. On this Sunday at the Phoenix Coffeehouse, as Arshagra strums his borrowed guitar and recites his lyrics about rhinos turning to stone, the lights are up throughout the house. Coffee drinkers chat in the back. other poets and singers loll about on sofas, waiting for their turn on stage, applauding heartily after each performance. 

     Across the street at the Dance Complex, actors, singers, and dancers at the weekly improve workshop Gardening at Night might wrestling on the floor, engaged in a movement warmup called Contact Improv. Here, if you straggle in to sit on the bleachers and watch, you be invited to join in, as Studio One at the dance Complex becomes a giant playroom for adults. This is also one open mike event where constructive criticism is built into the format after each performance.

Singer Dinah Steward has been coming to Gardening at Night for about six months. "I'm terrified of improv, " says Steward who is 26 and pursuing a career in music. Still, virtually every week since she's been coming, Steward has stood up and improvised a song. her incantatory style is at once commanding and vulnerable. lately, Gardening at Night facilitators have urged her to improv with dancers, or to sing poems that others have brought in. 

     the experience has transformed her. "I'm starting to go to open mikes around town," Steward says. "This has helped me redevelop a totally new craft doing music. I feel so much more brave. The people and the set-up here - it's so comfortable and safe and everybody wants to be here." 

CHEERS and JEERS

     Many open mikes are as supportive as gardening at night, where audience is made up of mostly sympathetic performers. Open poetry readings have a reputation for warmth as well. Comedy open mikes, however, are only for the strong of heart.

     "some people, their friends tell them they're funny, so they come in and go on stage, and find sometimes it's not like in their living room," says Vinny Favorito, who runs the Wednesday open mike a Nick's Comedy Stop in Boston.

Stand-up comedians are perhaps the first thing you think of when you hear "open mike." Comics hoping to be the next Jay Leno or Kevin Meaney -- who both got their start at Boston Club -- better be patient. Favorito says he's booked a coupe of months in advance. If you're eager to wait, stop by Jacques's amateur talent night on Wednesdays. Comics, poets, and singers have all been known to take the stage with more regular drag queens, who make up more than half of of the performers each week. 

     Unlike comedy, open music jams are first come, first served, Arrive early, sign up, and sit in for two or three songs. As who comedy, though, audience at music jams have high expectations. Blake Newman, 30, who now makes his living as a bassist for the Jeff Robinson Trio, used to sit in on blues jams at Wally's when he was a student at Berklee. 

     "It was tough," Blake Newman remembers. " People could get booed off the stage. That doesn't happen in poetry. When the poet's finished, everybody realizes it's scary to be up there: it's a risk. "

     Wally's, the venerable jazz and blues club on Mass Ave. in the South End, holds open jams every night .. Latin music, jazz, and blues, fusion, and blues,  The place gets packed, and in the heat of the grove, musicians have been known to make their way through the crowd, out onto the sidewalk, and back again without missing a beat. 

CATCH AN  AGENT"S EAR

If you're a musician who is new in town, the jams are the best place to hook up with other musicians and begin to find paying gigs. Who knows -- maybe your style on blues guitar with catch the ear of a booking agent in the audience.

     "I had a saxophone player stop me and say "I need some work,'" recalls Jeff Robinson, 33. "I said, " Well, go down to Wally's,"

      Over at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, where music and spoken word mix, the scene is dark and smoky. The smooth jazz playing behind each poet gives the evening a distinctive beat feel. Te crowd gets behind Jamarhl Carlton Crawford, humming and nodding and crooning "amen" as he swings through his fully edgy, rap-infused rhythms.

     Ultimately, it's the energy the performer and audience." says performance poet Michael McIntosh, 38, who has made a career out of coaching budding performers. "It's this whole trauma/epiphany that i go through. It's so important to have a space to do something important, and have people to witness it. It's terrifying and delightful. It's the thing I do that makes me feel most like I'm alive."

     At the end of Arshagra's set at the Phoenix Coffehouse, he returns the borrowed guitar and settles down at a table behind an empty coffee cup. Listeners have shaken his hand and told him they liked his work. The shakes are over -- until two hours later, when he goes on at the Lizard Lounge.  

     "Each venue has it's own richness, is its own microcosm of the open mike culture, " Arshagra reflects. "Open Mike culture is part of Americana. More people should go, as both listeners and readers.

     They should come and go up for the first time," he says smiling. Go ahead. Do it. Be scared." 

Cate McQuaid 

is a freelance writer

Boston Herald Middle East 

Friday May 19, 2000

A 100% creative fluke of wonder

C.C. caught in the press jest being an artist, just doing stuff that artist do.

MIDDLE EAST CROWD IN EXPANSIVE MOOD

Places

by ROBIN VAUGHAN

   It's the end of the night at Friday's installment of the WBCN Rock'n'Roll Rumble at the Middle East Up-stairs. The Big Bad Bollocks, led by mutton chopped, Northern English Artist and lyric poet John Allen, have just won their preliminary night with a pounding round of wild, beer soaked folk-punk, seemingly informed by the Pogues and "Braveheart. " 

The effusive crowd moves into the front bar. The usual tangle of stalled traffic forms in the aisle beside the wall ---- known as "Joseph's table" It is prime Middle East real Estate, in the gracious company of co-owner and resident host Joseph Sater. Joseph hopes to see the bottleneck pattern of customers and kitchen traffic, thanks to the forthcoming annexation of the Indian restaurant next door (Between the Middle East's restaurant room and the corner bar/dining room). 

In the tradition of the other 4 room at the Middle East (familiarly known as "upstairs" "downstairs" "bakery) the new dining room (now undergoing renovations) has yet to  take on a new name of it's own. " I' don't know>" said Mr. Slater says with a shrug. "Maybe we'll just call it the "middle'... or the 'Middle middle.' "

At the next two-seater booth along the wall, other riddles of the universe are pondered. A succession of bar customers volunteer to sit down opposite Cambridge poet C.C. Arshagra and his video camera to answer the question "What is the difference between life and a work of art?" Eventually Arshagra, who video tapes poetry reading for Public Access television, the foot will be used as filler between segments in a three-hour block he's preparing for the internet channel Boston Band-width.

     "The idea just popped into my head as I was sitting here." say the poet. "I asked a few people and then those people were telling their friends and before you knew it, people started waiting in line" to be interviewed. Their answers range from earnest diagnoses of their personal lives and artwork to more spontaneous physical reactions (two young women indicate that life and art meet in their tattoos, which they display on camera with proud howls.).

     At another moment, a Middle East regular with a strong resemblance to Hoss Cartwright from "Bonanza" plants himself in the little booth and insists through the have of many beers that no matter what he is asked he will answer with complete honesty. he begins by introducing himself by name, height, age, and religious affiliation, then digs into some abstract philosophy vaguely related to the question. His buddy listens in from the aisle. Meanwhile" he says "this guy can't find his house." 

Boston Herald  rises up to mention C.C. Arshagra Jack Powers protoge

Harford Advocate XY Eli CD Relese Party brings Boston Poet home to Hartford to open the night with Poetry from The Open MIke Poems.; tonight he's backed by Eli and his mates - January 2000

by

India Blue

This seemed to be the week for eclecticism. Not only was there a lot of stylistic crossover in music over the weekend, but the local musicians played in a variety pf repertoires.

X Y Eli band held their CD release party. on Saturday night at Scarlet O'Hara's. There was more than just music on the bill. Starting the some was Boston poet C.C. Arshagra. Three members of the band backed Arshagra while he delivered a set from th4 third bbok of his Open Mike series called "What Manner of Character." "When Gas Mask the poet walked in to the reading, all heads would suddenly turn/The word sprayer, hate maker and poetic fumigator/ He always set a flurry of panicking whispers/Most of them suggesting  he call 911" exclaimed Arshagra. 

    Rapper Knotty Head-----or as X Y Eli called him "a lyrical stylist"-----joined the band, sometimes as front man and otherwise backup singer. The steamy, passionate blues of Redhouse's guitar combined with the showmanship of X Y Eli made a spectacular expression. The group performed songs from their CD Come Into My World,  a mix of Louisiana blues, rhythm andbles, rock, and rap. All the lyrics and music are written by X Y Eli except for the the lyrics of "I Got A," which was written by Arshagra. That is one of the best songs on the CD, with the union of the two different mediums-----poetry and music----making it all the sweeter. Adding to the sound is the bass of Dave Kinney and percussion of Brian Marcus. 

A few covers were included like "Just My Imagination" by the Temptations and "It's Your Thing. Do What You Want To Do" of the Isley Brothers fame, which got the party Started right. 

The Nations Oldest news paper) covers C.C. Arshagra's New 2-tier (organically thought out social redesigned hybrid of a free speech / Open Microphone venue Concept.; namely: TheHumanRoom & TheOpenVoice written by Susie Davidson 

New York Times RNC in NYC 2000 / Bowery Poetry Club