Open Mic

Yet some still argue that there seems to be fewer avenues for people to express themselves in the real world. More coffee shops have decided to not get user licenses, which can cost somewhere in the $2,000.00 range for people like singer/songwriters to play there. Some my argue they think it will cause more problems than its worth for the business owners.

Musicians have now turned to other avenues of expression such as creating their own music MySpace accounts and YouTube videos, which work, hand-in-hand. Has the Internet become the new “coffee shop” for up-and-coming artists to be heard anywhere not just in a single place on a single night? Has the world lost their interest in this form of creativity? No. They just don’t feel like paying for it, i.e. by driving out to places and buying drinks. Could it be because when your listening to a song on the computer, there’s no reason to throw a dime into a hat?

Eric Wellesley, 27, a San Francisco State University student goes to tons of shows and different local more events. He feels there is still a lot of places for people to go and hear local artists, “the problem is really that in suburban places there are less things for kids to do. I think out in San Francisco there is plenty of ways for a local musician to get heard.”

Wellesley feels that MySpace and YouTube isn’t hurting the open mic nights in coffee houses but rather helping them.
“I think I go to way more shows now because of MySpace,” said Wellesley, “Every time I log on I find out about another show I want to go see, especially local music because before MySpace the only way I would find out about shows is through flyers and most people just starting out don’t have tons of money to make flyers, the Internet makes it cheaper to promote yourself as any type of artist.”
Freddy Gutierrez who is the Co. Director of Teatro L.O.C.O.S., which is a chino gorilla theater group that gets together to discuss political satire and started as a class at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, is now advocating open mic actives for actors, writers, poets and musicians. Gutierrez works hard to support his local community of the East Bay with substantial outlets for creativity.

“We [Teatro L.O.C.O.S.] talk about what most folks are afraid to talk about, there is a core of 6 people, based out of the Bay Area,” side Gutierrez, “I started the open mic nights seven month ago as a solo project. I tossed around the idea and kicked it off at first at Downtown Café in Pittsburg. It was funny because I was handing out flyers for the Pittsburg one and another coffee shop in Antioch called Pizzazz saw me and asked if I would able to host another event there.”

Clearly, this shows that local coffee shops, perhaps struggling to compete with their corporate neighboring coffee shops, are more open to the idea of hosting events.

Gutierrez thinks that websites like MySpace and Youtube are definitely affecting open mic nights because he has to step up his game and offer more to get people to come out to events since many people do their networking on the Internet instead. The open mic nights that Gutierrez runs range from the traditional poetry readings to comedian stand up. He has noticed changes since the popularity of user generated content websites and is looking forward to see how this really affects the art of open mic.

“At first I was critical of myspace but I soon realized that it was a valuable tool for artists to comment on other artist performances,” said Gutierrez.

Since the popularity of MySpace Gutierrez said he has tried to add more elements to his open mic nights to show that there is no substitute to going in front of a live audience.
“It really is more beneficial to be in front of people. The computer screen is a one-way mirror, you can get feedback on you work but there is nothing like being in front of a crowd,” said Gutierrez, “You feed off the energy of the audience whatever you give out you get back, if you are pissed off, happy, alive or sad you feel right away the affect of your words on somebody through their expression on their face.”

Sean Johnson, a Diablo Valley College student, 20, came to read his poetry at the latest Teatro L.O.C.O.S. open mic night at Pittsburg’s Downtown Coffee. He is always looking for ways to get people interested in his writing.
“There really needs to be more stuff like this happening,” said Johnson. I write screen plays and this is a good way for me to come read my stuff in front of other people and get feedback.”

What needs to happen to keep up the local open mic nights is less corporation coffee places like Starbucks and more of the family owned coffee shops that seem to keep their community in mind more often than huge corporations. There is always places that will open their doors to you, you just have to know where to look. No place is too small to do an acoustic set and the more people you get interested in your shows the more your music gets heard.

It seems than the problem isn’t really that there are less open mic nights or artist out there, it just seems that every time a local restaurant or coffee shop closes a chain restaurant or coffee shop takes its’ place. The more Americans allow their neighborhoods to become large chain malls the less variety they’re going to have when it comes to dinning out or hearing a new local artist they may have never had a chance to discover before.

There is too many good musicians and other types of artists out there that are going unheard. Websites like MySpace and YouTube are great because now the artists can reach people from their very own computer. It sounds simple and it is, MySpace Music profiles work and the bands are living proof of that

The conglomeration of large corporations is showing its negative side tenfold. With local coffee shops becoming an endangered species the once prominent “open mic” nights at the local hometown café have fell by the wayside to corporation giants like Starbuck’s and Pete’s Coffee, who would rather spin their latest promotional light jazz albums on repeat. Is this drowning out the local musicians, poets and comedians? Many places like Starbucks started out proclaiming that this problem would never happen because they love live music, but after some cities asked them to pay a user fee for a live music license they opted for the 6-disc-cd changer instead.

So what’s happening to the coffee shop open mic nights? I never see anyone playing outside of a Starbucks. The loss of little mom-and-pop businesses and the surge of the corporations has led this nation to less pouring out of the soul in your neighborhoods.

Yet some places are trying to preserve the idea of sharing music without having to be an obnoxious corporate wet dream like Avril Lavigne. Social networking websites like MySpace and YouTube have stepped in to fill the music void by creating user friendly profiles and/or video tools for musicians to display their music locally and possibility even better than a coffee shop has to offer, globally.

Millions of users log onto their MySpace.com accounts and see featured artists being promoted. Whether they are aware of it or not they are being marketed towards and invited to become a bands new friend. This fact has annoyed some uses so much that Tom, the creator of MySpace, has added a feature where you can block out friend requests from bands, meaning any profiles that are registered under a MySpace music profile cannot add you.

Yet it seems a new music profile is created every minute in hopes of getting music heard in a cheap, easy, and fun way. This has proven to be successful for musicians with dreams of entering the ipods of Americans and beyond.

Just look at bands like Panic! At the Disco, Cute is What We Aim for, and Hello Goodbye who rack up thousands of friends on MySpace and owe a lot of their success to the Internet.