Blah Blah Bar, Brooklyn, New York
Blah Blah Bar, Brooklyn, New York, 16th April 2003:
Now, this was a very different affair from the Sidewalk Cafe. The Blah Blah lounge has an atmosphere more akin to a café than a boozer, with sofas, menus and a large video screen playing a bizarre combination of Sade and old Blondie footage with the sound turned down. I had been told that stand-up comedy was “very big” around New York, and this was borne out by five of the seven performers being comedians (or comediennes). Fortunately, one other person turned up to sing and play a guitar, and was kind enough to let me borrow it. As ever, names give me a real problem, but she was good, kicking off the proceedings with two songs very much in the acoustic singer-songwriter vein. Here, the rule was ten minutes to fill, with the implication that this would be truncated without further ado should they not like you! Also there was no real PA, just one solitary microphone, so it was a good job the guitar was acoustic! What was the stand up like? Well, I’d never seen any at an open mic nights in the UK, so I’d nothing to compare it to, but only two of them seemed to tell actual jokes. The others were more in the vein of recounting amusing anecdotes, a bit like wedding speeches. Still, it was all enjoyable and only one, er, “comedian” really bombed — embarking on a kind of poor-man’s Lenny Bruce act, making a series of obnoxious statements and then berating the audience for their lack of laughter (except at him). He got the full ten minutes, but then the landlord (or his equivalent, whatever they’re called in the US!) kicked him out, as he protested “but it’s hard edged comedy!”. well, I did laugh, but only in the way that you’d laugh at the kid in school who tells teachers to fuck off (to their face, I mean) and typically, I had to follow him!
I borrowed a rather nice Epiphone acoustic with a scarily high action and ploughed into a slightly shaky “Cocoon”. By the end of this I was feeling a bit less nervous and warmed up and encouraged by the applause (and Sam Adams beer!), I knocked out “Force of Nature” and “What’s Under The Stairs?” (not having been near a guitar for days, excepting Monday, or rather Tuesday by the time I played, for a whopping three minutes, I decided to stick to songs I knew off by heart). This seemed to get an enthusiastic response (e.g. “You’re from England and your accent is smashing”) and I finished off with a bound through “The Look of Love”, as ever, “for the ladies”. By this time I was finally getting used to that guitar (sometimes it’s a satisfying feeling to have to fight your instrument!).
I collapsed on one of the leather sofas (I think UK pubs would benefit from these) and heard some more stand up and some poetry (more like particularly intense prose monologues, but possibly the better for it, not worrying about having to adhere to a rhyme schemes and the like). I liked this greatly. A whole week grinning like a goon at the sheer size and pulsating, demented energy of the place: towering art-deco palaces, endless eateries,b ars, clubs, museums, oodles of gorgeous women, cheap clothes (Levi’s, All-Stars and the ponciest Italian shoes I’ve ever seen; in the end I couldn’t decide which pair to have, probably just as well), records and guitars. I tried to avoid the latter, honestly! I held out until about three and a half hours before the flight home, succumbing to a midnight blue Rickenbacker 330 in 49th St. Custom Guitars, for a mere two-thirds of the UK discount price. My brain has been thoroughly scrambled and my wallet resembles a porn-star’s testicles at wrap time, but I can’t recommend this place highly enough. Having got the lie of the land I must return. This is only the beginning…