 salt: |
Open Mic Nights |
| Next event: | Sunday 1st June 2008, 8pm
Halo -- 141 Gloucester Road
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Welcome to the Salt Weblog. This blog is about the Salt Open Mic nights that happen at Halo Bar & Restaurant on Gloucester Road, Bristol.
The weblog below is for feedback on the Open Mic Nights themselves, also for other interesting stuff that happens in between. Anyone can add a comment to an existing post. To get notified when new posts appear, click here to register...
Or click here for more information on Salt Open Mic.
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Salt BlogSunday, May 04, 2008 |  hello! just a quick diary-style popup to say that Salt is tonight :)
And if you've not been daunted by the weather and have actually escaped somewhere out of town this weekend, then ...we missed you, of course... & the next one is June 1st.
(pic on the left is from April's open mic night, featuring great solo stuff from Charlie Groves and a warm 'goodbye for now' sendoff for Cheltenham-bound Mr Jonathan Sky-Blue Rees).
M
| | posted by Salt team | Comment (0) |
Friday, April 04, 2008 |  At the March 9th open mic, our guest Rosta Litvin from Czech Republic told a story... it's been stuck in my head since then and been kind of thought provoking. I recorded it on the night so it's available to listen back...
Click Here to visit the Salt open mic Myspace - then click on 'Life After Birth?' in the player.
('fraid I can't post it directly in this site at the moment).
Enjoy! And it is Salt this Sunday... we are back to the First Sunday Of The Month, tra la la laaaa :) :) :) | | posted by Salt team | Comment (0) |
Friday, March 07, 2008 |  It is Salt Open Mic this Sunday 9th March...already!
I am looking forward to being able to record again from the PA desk... and also maybe to take some better photographs than last month (can you believe all we had was a camera phone?)
But don't let the somewhat grainy pictorial record fool you -- it was a peachy night. Halo has gotten a bit cosier over the last year , and on a chill February night we were glad to snuggle in to warm sofas and enjoy hot chocolate and...olives? Both fab on their own - but best kept apart.
Musical highlights included...
Anne-Marie Rawden [who is playing the Lousiana the following Sunday 16th - Ed.],
Kim Power with a totally heartfelt original song
A seriously smart debut from Laid Back Ruby (pictured)
Rob Tipping with a pair of sublimely unexpected Duran Duran covers
Andy Williams tackling Paranoid Android with elan
and lest we forget, a sparkling ice breaker from our resident Paul, starting the night with a slow-mo My Funny Valentine.
See you there this Sunday | | posted by Salt team | Comment (0) |
Monday, February 04, 2008 |  The last one was 3 weeks ago and the next one's this weekend! Highlights of January's Salt open mic:
* A welcome return by The Great Admirers... including a frenetic cover of The Cramps' Human Fly, described by frontman Pat Reid as 'psychobilly stomp' and featuring the line 'I've got 96 tears, and 96 eyes'... these guys are irrepressible entertainers. Their own songs are just as inventive: 'You killed my cat, you mocked my face, and now you want to move into my place?'
* Frank Campbell's lyrics are even more humorously sardonic in the football-inspired song Falling, about those forwards who can't resist taking the swan dive for a penalty... 'And underfoot the surface becomes like ice...'
* Bones At The Bottom Of The Barrel showed fascinating originality in their guitar / melodica / violin trio, making a kind of East European gypsy folk / funk melange ...and drawing spontaneous percussive support from The Great Admirers' bodhran player...
* Tim Rice drew cheers and raised glasses with a tongue-in-cheek 120mph version of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy...
Apologies for the quality of photography, with no digital camera I turned to my mobile phone! But these four shots didn't turn out too bad.
Join us on Sunday Feb 10th for more musical melting pot adventures... no need to get in touch if you want to play, we'll simply see you there :).
Mark | | posted by Salt team | Comment (0) |
Friday, January 11, 2008 |  Salt Open Mic is this Sunday - 13th January!
Happy New Year from all the Salt crew :). 2008 brings with it a date change - we are no longer on the third Sunday of the month. More on that later, but first a quick reminiscence on the last open mic night of 2007...
Regulars will know that it's usually our own Paul P. who gets things going musically, breaking the ice with a song or two. But on that December evening he was on a last-minute train to London instead; what were we to do? Fingers were pointed at me (Mark), a musician yes but an almost complete non-singer or guitarist! But the gauntlet was thrown when when I was chatting with a guest who could speak Russian, and I eventually decided to risk it & start the night with the Russian birthday song (see last month), with very tentative accompaniment on the 6-string acoustic. And thus off we went...
The aforementioned guest was Rosta Litvin from the Czech Republic, a first timer at Salt who in the spirit of things then contributed a poem in his mother tongue: Král a vosa. A surrealist poem by Vítezslav Nezval. 'Byl jeden král, byl starý, už netešil ho svet. Netešily ho dary. Ten král rád jedl med!...'
We guessed, and guessed, but didn't get too close: it's about a king, and his strange withdrawal from the world and into an exclusive love of honey... (see comments box:).
So now you're thinking, 'Was December open mic completely incomprehensible, then?'
Not quite! Rosta followed up with his true story, in English, of an audacious squirrel. 'I was a bit shocked. Never before was I bluffed by a squirrel!'
We had two outstanding original poets. The one who signed the guestbook was Malusi. If only the other one had also signed his name (or that I could remember it, sorry). Their poems were raw, exciting and hard-hitting. One described various scenes of an ex-addict's mind and memories; Malusi's poem covered an epic amount of rhythmic, rhyming urban disaffection.
Frank Campbell has been a real Salt discovery of 2007. He does a mean cover version of Norwegian Wood (somebody lend this guy a sitar), but the real highlights are his original songs with a slanted, witty take on everyday life. It seems there's almost no situation in which Frank couldn't see the humour and twist it into a wry couplet. For example, in a song about the pains of frequent dental problems,
'I think I know what's doing it
Eating food and chewing it'.
Nicky and Adam have teamed up with great success. 'What's in the box, Pandora?' they ask in a song about environmental complacency (which has a way of gently getting into your conscience). The essence of the song seems to be in the line, 'it's impossible to recapture what is gone'. They followed this up with what Nicky described as 'too good a Christmas song not to play at Christmas': Steve Earle's Christmas Time in Washington. Again the music is warm but the outlook is hardly hopeful: 'another 4 more years of things not getting worse'.
A performer with incredible confidence is Tim Rice (...perhaps I noticed his confidence all the more after my nervous opening number ;). Catch The Falling Man is as strident and catchy a tune as you'll hear outside the charts, and a cover of Razorlight's Golden Touch is recognised with a smile; it even does a few favours to the original.
Perhaps one of the things that boosted all the performers in December was the industrial quantity of mince pies that we gave out on the night? Or the still-warm mulled wine from the Bristol Vineyard carol service an hour before? Well, I guess we can only do that in December...maybe we need to find a January substitute for this Sunday. Suggestions please in the comments box!
See you there :)
More about dates / plans ahead in the next post. | | posted by Salt team | Comment (1) |
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