Monday Night Open Mic, July 27, 2009

Ben K. kicked things off with a cool, funny song about singing along...well you couldn't really sing along to it. Ok, you'll have to hear him do it for this to make sense but it was a really good song. Ariel Bitran played on it too.

Joe Crow addressed the piano and also played Over the Rainbow

Nan Turner sang a song about "how high your ceiling can go," which ended up in an impossibly high falsetto. She also did a rap while using a chair and music stand as a makeshift drum set.

It was nice to see M. Lamar back at Sidewalk. Did you see the nice item about him in The New Yorker, with a big blue drawing of him?

Alex P. covered Aaraon Invisible's song "If I was a tailor.." that was cool.

Jon Berger said that he thinks The Who is pompous and bloated. First of all, look who's talking. Secondly, yes, but they're awesome.

Kid Lucky was a beat boxer who sang/rapped and did beat box sounds at the same time. One of the songs he did was about waiting for the subway.

Ben Sadock played I Don't Live in Portland Anymore. Very catchy. The audience was singing along.

I played "I've Looked for Love" but I was really interested in trying to get more comfortable talking on stage, so I told a story about the time my parents and I ran into Daniel Bernstein in Times Square and my mom got into a long conversation with him. There was something that struck me as funny about that, although I don't know how much sense it made if you don't know my mother and Dan. I ran into a few Sidewalk folks over the last few days...Isaac Gillespie in midtown and Brian Speaker on the L. Brian was saying how he'd run into people all over the place recently too, so I guess it's in the air. For me I know it's always nice to connect with people from the comfort zone of Sidewalk in other parts of my day-to-day existence.

Susan Hwang played a song she'd written inspired by James and the Giant Peach. I think it was called "Changed by Fruit." Susan also played with Debe on Close the Door.

Lots of other folks played. JT Hathaway, Brian Speaker, Dan G. Connor, Aaron Invisible, Steven Cappazolli, Anat, Awesome Witch of Rad, Maggie Nuthall, Nick Nace (with Jordan and Isaac), Charles Mansfield and Richard Ringer to name a few.

Ravi the puppet was also on hand to tell some corny jokes and spice things up between acts.