Attention musicians: Give up. That’s how I feel every time I listen to Jeremy Hollis at the Grape Street Pub open mic. There are two types of good musicians: those that inspire you and those that make you want to throw your guitar in a dumpster.
I ran into a lot of people at the Grape Street open mic last night. Roz King, Maria, Jeremy Hollis, and Do it for Danny all came out, although Do it for Danny just came to drink, despite Grape Street disposing their weekly drink specials I reported on a while back. The Dannys are free from their indentured servitude at the Wednesday night Carribean Crab open mic which is now hosted by some guy named Paul.
I really liked the alt.country trio “Skilly” and hopefully they’ll get their website back up after they pay the bill. I had an interesting conversation with their guitar player about choosing their band name. The drummer was afraid that having the word “skill” in their name would imply they were musically skilled. It should be noted the word “kill” is also in their name, but no one should assume they are killers either.
One act that stood out for me was the two guys from Delaware who called themselves, “Life in Stereo.” They had a laptop on stage providing drums, bass, and backing vocals, turning the open mic into Karaoke night. I guess these guys expected us to shower them with roses for their performance, because at the end the lead guitarist said, “I know you guys aren’t into the Techno shit, oh well fuck it.” In emoese that roughly translates to, “I know you guys aren’t into the Techno shit, so fuck you.” The crowd didn’t seem hostile at all, but I guess “Life in Stereo” is used to playing for the people on their dorm floor. I had no problem with the arrangement, but I didn’t care for the guitarist’s backing vocals in the 2nd song.
Upstairs, Anime night turned into a screening of the Matrix in honor of the Matrix Reloaded coming out this week. I’m really looking forward to it, especially if it explains some of the glaring plot holes in the first movie. Keeping humans around for energy storage and needing them to stay concious just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t work. I hope that gets explained somewhere.
This is a bizarre story.