Neil McKenzie - Solo - Cafe Del Mondo, 26.02.2011

Last night was a special occasion. It was my first ever solo gig. I've had lots of opportunities to prove to myself that I can do it, but this was the first time that it was only my name on the bill and I had no one to hide behind.

I swithered as to whether to take the gig or not, but I knew I had enough material, so I went for it in an attempt to take new steps and grow a little.

Cafe Del Mondo is a great little bar on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam which itself is full of terraced bars. By day these are full of coffee-ing tourists having a well earned rest on one of the most picturesque squares in Amsterdam. By night the place opens up to a nightlife that is a little more respectable or older than that on Leidseplein or Rembrandtplein. The Proximity to the red light district means there is also a steady traffic of tourists wandering around.

I'd been in the bar before for coffee on a saturday to recharge the batteries during a morning market session, but I'd never been in at night. The bar is quite small as a music venue, but let's call it "intimate". This is good news - I'm not expecting a big crowd.

Karolina and I introduce ourselves to the owner and set up a makeshift stage on the mezzanine level at the back. It creates a lovely homely atmosphere:

I play my first set(see below). The audience are unresponsive but seem pretty happy, The odd person sings along and people slowly trickle in which at least tells me that I'm not scaring punters off. A few times, big groups of English tourists in track suits pass the door and I pray that they don't come in. Luckily they don't.

Before I know it the first set is over, which lets me know that everythings gone fine, the owner is happy and all the equipment works. I am able to relax over a beer and talk to karolina about how it went. By now it's about 10:30 and the night is in full swing for most people. Everyone has had a few more drinks. The rain has started which means we're unlikly to get many new audience members but it also makes the ones we do have less likely to leave.

I kick off the second set, and the crowd are clearly far more responsive. The singing is geting louder and I think they are enjoying the laid back but well known songs that I'm playing. Before I know it the set is over and it's time to go home... All in all - another mountain climbed!!

Here's what I played:

youtube infamy awaits.

I was clearing out some hard drives at work when I found these:





I'm not a big youtuber, but I thought I'd stick them up. They are far from perfect, but I wouldn;t have any up at the moment if I waited for perfect. If anyone really enjoys them I can do more video and see if I can get the output fomr the desk into the camera for super good(then compressed) sound.

Talia Couch Jam

Last night I dropped in a new event in Amsterdam. The CouchJam at Talia. Talia is a great little Deli, come catering business, come living room, come small venue. I heard about it through Bernie who played in the mine a few times and was a regular at the Jam Sessions. The plan was to have a chilled unamplified Jam Session on couches - sounds like a good way to start the weekend.

I walked in a little apprehensivly, unsure if I was the only outsider attending. It was chilled right enough. Bernie was sitting on one couch and there was a guitarist(Tim) on the other sitting beside a guy(Mauricio) playing a snare and a set of hi-hats.

I wouldn't often just sit down and join in - but for some reason it felt right. There were various people mingling, eating great food and joining in with some random shakers and tambourines:

The evening passed in a blur. I had brought my Open Mike song book and some people sang a few songs from there. This worked pretty well. I also tried in vain to keep up with some Gypsey Jazz Jam's, but eventually I had to just tap out the rhythm on my guitar. Before I knew it - a few hours had passed and it was time to stop.

After everyone had been out the front of the place a for a photo - Nicola(One of Talia's owners) called us through to the back room and fed all the musicians a Tiramisu:

Perfect end to a perfect night.

Cosy January Open Mike.

Last night we had a great Open Mike night. It was that great mix of having practiced, having an audience and having enough friends there to make it good fun.

When we started the bar was actually empty. We’d hit the spot between after work stragglers and late night drinkers. We decided that we’d start rather than hang around. We started with Goodnight Girl by Wet Wet Wet and by the grace of Marti Pellow the bar had an extra 20 people in it when we finished.

It was Burns Night and we had planned to give some Burns songs a go, but the preparation hadn’t amounted to any more than printing out the chords. We thought we might have got away with it when the bar was empty, but once we spied some strangers in the bar, we lost the bottle and plumped for a good crowd pleaser – Fat Bottomed girls.

We now felt we had sufficiently impressed to try the first of our new additions for the night – the boys are back in town. I think we did it justice. There were a few little stumbles in the vocals, but otherwise I think it was pretty good fun.

Onto the guests…. Andre was up first. He did some great original versions of While my guitar gently weeps, Moon river and one of his own about an island where it’s always raining.(The UK???)

After that we had Grandpa Death at our open mike for the first time. He must have been keen, cos he bought a new guitar for it. He added to the Scottishness or even the Ayrshireness of the event and gave us some amazing original bluesy tunes.

Gareth then showed us how it was done and knocked out some great cover choices – including Purple Rain and Take your Mama by the Scissor Sisters and Driftwood by Scottish band Travis. :

By this point it was clear that we had enough talent to sustain the night and there were lots of smiling faces and happy musicians, so my job was done. Fraser and I even managed to sit down for a pink of the black stuff:

The photo makes me look a little satanic, but I was really enjoying the night and even relaxing a bit.

Tamira, Lorenzo and Lisa had come along ahead of their Debut gig on Saturday at CC Muziek Café. The play some Tubthumping, some Natalie Imbruglia, and some Stealer’s Wheel(more Scottish music). Things are coming together and I think their gig should be pretty good if anyone needs anywhere to go this Saturday.

We then had a folk group, but I’m afraid I don’t know their names. They’ve been down before and they are a great bunch. Me and Fraser even got up for a jam for their last song:

We had now got to the stage where there had been enough drinkers to make the bar happy and enough musicians to remove our fear that we were going to run out of material. We could now sit back, relax and knock out a few tunes. The tunes included “Guess that’s why they call it the Blues”, Man in the mirror, the boys are back in town(again), and then I broke a string on Lola. So we finished with a 5 string medley of Pokerface, Kids and Zombie.

Here’s some of the songs that were played:

Monday night practice fuelled by Peking Duck

Fraser came round with a whole peking Duck last night and some Japanese beers. On fuel like that it was impossible for it not to have been a good practice.

We video'd the songs to get an idea of how they are sounding. I really need to learn to use the video functions on my camera though - cos the 5 minute video was 2 GB... so it's almost impossible to do anything with.

We've moved yesterday's songs from the level where we can't sing them, to the level where we can't sing them but people might just appreciatte that we put in the effort. One of the biggest cheers we've had at the Open Mike is when we did Somebody to love by Queen. I think people liked the fact that we played it even though it was clear that we would never do it justice.

Anyway... the sun is shining... we're practised and it's the Open Mike tonight....

Sunday night practice

Fraser was round last night and we had a practice for Tuesday's open mike. It's been a while since I even played an acoustic guitar never mind practiced with Fraser.

After watching a documentary on the greatness that is Thin Lizzy, I gave Boys are back in Town a go. We had tried it many moons ago and it hadn't worked, but I surprised myself and it seems to come together. It's pretty fast so you really have to feel the rhythm if you're going to spit out the lyrics in time, but I think it should hold itself together and the crowd should enjoy it.

The other one I have been toying with is Two of Us by the Beatles. I think it’s an excellent duet, but it’s a bit high for one of us and I'm not convinced we'll get it pinned before Tuesday.

We’ve been wanting to do an Elton John song forever. My favourite(due to a love of the film Almost Famous) is Tiny Dancer – but it has a bridge that we just can’t get to sound right. We also tried Your Song….. but we couldn’t pull it off. We’re now giving 'I guess that's why they call it the blues' a go, but even that is proving quite difficult – Elton’s deceptively hard.

I’ve been listening to loads of Stone’s recently. I wanted to do Prodigal Son, but we’re not going to have time to get it prepared. Under My Thumb is a lot simpler, but it needs some orchestrating to make it interesting.

Anyway… we’ll work it all out tonight and anyone that fancies hearing them can pop into Mollys on Tuesday

Neil, Tamira and Sandra - Live @ Mollys 10th Sept.

Wednesday night after a fruitful writing session, Fraser and I decided that a celebratory pint of the black stuff(no… not Bovril) was in order. We headed down to Mollys where Matty asked if I could put a “band” together due to a last minute cancellation. At such last minute notice it turned out that both Fraser AND Eric Clapton were busy, so I put a call in to Sandra and Tamira and we agreed that Tamira would handle the first set with a little back up from me and then Sandra and I would do the rest of the night to allow Tamira to get home for work the next morning.

Friday night means little pressure to invite people, which means no posters and not a lot of Facebook action. I focused on trying to scratch together enough songs to get through 3 45 minute sets. Sandra and Tamira are both match fit due to travels and holidays that involved lots of guitar playing, but with flu’s going round and the need to pull out some crowd pleasers, I felt enough pressure to keep the adrenalin flowing.

Tamira and I started with “These boots are made for walking” as a sure fire well known song that we wouldn’t mess up:

Audio here

We then continued with Blue Suede Shoes, Sex on Fire and Blitzkrieg Bop, before play Use Somebody herself and then We introduced Sandra for a duet on Last Kiss. By this point Tamira’s cold was starting to play havoc with her voice, so we finished her stint with Randy.

Barely 30 minutes in, and one player out due to injury… I could see I was going to have to sing a lot more than I’d planned to.  I got up and sang, All along the watchtower as my goto for easy songs that I can sing. We still hadn’t had much feedback from what had become a pretty packed bar, so I took the mood down a little and did Wonderful Tonight and Wind Cries Mary, and then closed the set with Fat Bottomed Girls.

audio here

Set 1 was now out the way, but the bar was now absolutely packed and things were getting very hot and sweaty on the stage. I was beginning to feel real pressure to fill a set with crowd pleasers and not have to resort to Pearl Jam B-sides.

I started set 2 by having Sandra let her hair down a little with Yer Blues, but other than a few glances at the wonder that is Sandra, the bar still didn’t show us much love. Big Yellow taxi followed this, and then the crowd finally started to sing along when Karolina came up to play Lola with me(I never thought of Lola as that popular.) Since Karolina was on stage, we ‘knocked out’ Knockin on heaven’s door and then Sandra came and sang a version of Little Wing.

Audio here

I then let Sandra finish the set – safe in the knowledge that we only had one set to go. She managed to rouse the crowd with some Bobby McGee.

For Set three I started again……..

……….then Sandra played a little more. By this time, the bar was getting quieter, and people could hear us a little better, so we got a little self-indulgent and played a version of Seasons by Chris Cornell , before finishing the show with Thank You and We are the Champions.

All in all it was a good night and I’m happy with how it went, but without other guests to rely on it was quite stressful hoping that we’d not run out of songs and that I’d not have to inflict my singing voice on the Friday night crowd too much. 

Open Mike @ Mollys - August 2010

For the second month in a row, the Open Mike has been so busy that we’ve been turning people away from the stage. Everyone who has ever hosted the Open mike was there last night - Fraser, Sandra, Tamira and Javier. It’s just a shame that the night was such a success that we didn’t get to play more together cos I really enjoy jamming with all those guys. Fortunately we had some great talent on the stage and I got to listen for once.

 Fraser and I opened with yet more Queen(Fat Bottomed girls)

…then Tamira joined us for Boots are made for walking and Blue Suede Shoes. Craig Coe then played for his second month in a row(He must have enjoyed last month):

He did a good job of fitting in the with out vision of the Open Mike night, not only does he get extra points for continuing the Queen theme, but he managed to put together 2 impromptu pairings, firstly with Sandra on Nobodies wife by Anouk, and then with Fraser and I on Somebody to love. 

We than had some new comers: Andy and Mike from Cheshire who performed some very nice harmonies despite the ropey onstage sound:

After that Marco, Javier, Fraser and I jammed out a few songs with Mandolin, 2 guitars and Bass which was a lot of fun. For the remainder of the night; Lee Clark wowed everyone with his self penned numbers; Amsterdam “weel kent face” Cindy Peress classed up the place; Sandra showed us that a month on the road keeps your music skills at maximum potency and Fraser and Tamira fired out some gems that they had been sneakily practicing on the side.

To close the show, the extremely able Giovanni and James played us out with Fraser supporting on Bass and vocals. Thanks to everyone that came along, musicians, listeners, hecklers and drinkers alike. Does anyone have any ideas for next month? A theme? Suggested Covers?

Open Mike July with N.F.S.

We had a great Open Mike last night. I think we've now being doing them for a year, and it was Fraser, Sandra and I for the first time in while definitely the first time this year. As usual we were ably assisted by Javier and several other friends. So many people wanted a spot on the stage that we were turning people away. Andy from the Stun was there so there is a write up and photos here.

Tamira and Neil - Live @ Mollys

With Sandra off on an Iberian adventure, I needed some help for this Month's Open Mike. Tamira willingly obliged. Preferably we would have had more time to practice, but I got held back with finishing Sandra's album. It's interesting how the mood changes when you add something else to the mix. We were able to rely on stuff we had prepared from the jam Session’s a little, and they were tried and tested so we knew that we could knock them out no problem with Stephen and Javier as well:

We did an excellent version of These Boots were made for walking… we had monitor issues on Crazy train, and we had chord-forgetation problems on Paranoid by Black Sabbath.. then I sang a few of my regulars…

and then Kevin took the stage for a set:


He’s a human juke box with much more capacity to entertain a crowd than I have.
After that – we had a first for the Open Mike’s at Mollys – a guy got up to give some poetry readings:

In times gone past, I’d like to think that poetry sat side by side with music in Irish bars… but alas times have changed and he was faced with a tough audience… still he gave a good ten minutes of various poems that he had come across on his travels, before I got up again and sang Lola by the kinks cos Katy had requested it.
Tamira sang some of her own songs, then I did some… then Kevin finished us off.. It was one of the better open mikes - - a good packed bar and a happy crowd.





Audio from the show here and here

Sandra's last Open Mike for a while

NFS is no more... first fraser got too busy with Coco's Mine, and now Sandra has to give up the open mike nights for the summer to go travelling. We had a great last night with Sandra.

Open Mike - March

Great night last night, we had a very busy stage with lots of musicians coming and going. Including the largest combo to grace the stage at our open mikes yet: Uncle Meat and the Highway children

Liam Glen was also a new face. 

I reckon I sang about 6 songs which is a pretty good record for me.

Stephen attended his first open mike and along with Javier we brought a much more "jammy" feel to the proceedings. 

Open Mike @ Mollys - 24th November 2009

Last night we had another Open Mike Night. It started a bit quiet, but got going eventually. Sandra was ill so she wasn’t there and neither were her entourage. Luckily we had a few of the “Shades” down to help us out. Fraser and I started out with a few comfortable classics(Ziggy, Behind Blue eyes, Fat Bottomed Girls) before Marcel came and joined us and belted out Beautiful(Aguilera) and I wanna know what love is(Foreigner). Marcel nailed it as always, which is surprising, because I still have no idea what the foreigner track sounds like outside of the chorus.

Marie came up to the stage next. Many thanks to Marie for showing up, she came straight from the airport and still had her suitcase with her. We took it down a notch and provided the (gradually filling) bar with Alanis Morisette’s rendition of My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas and then Karma Police by Radiohead.

After this I got a rest… Hugh(http://www.myspace.com/icosounds ) came up and as always provided us with his unique beautiful textures on an alternatively tuned guitar.

To inject a little bit of Funk back into the room, we brought Marcel back up to do I want you back, but in the style of KT Tunstall rather than the Jackson 5.

This was followed by Angela, who did Zombie, Sex on Fire and Hit the Road Jack with Fraser and I

After this we brought in the pros. Tom played a few songs with a new guy from Philadelphia called Mike and then they each played some songs on their own. After this another new guy called Allessandro gave us a Classical/Ska/Reggae/Folk set which included an extremely original version of Apache by the Shadows.

To close the show Fraser and I played Fire and Rain, tears in heaven, then brought it up a notch when Angela sang Nobody´s wife by Anouk and then we closed the show with Pokerface by Lady Gaga….

The next Open Mike night will be on the 29th of December. If you are about over the festive period then head on down. It should be a great night, as I will be on holiday and we should be able to prepare some aural delights. 

After this I got a rest… and James and his new flat mate Matthijs gave us a self written instrumental:

Marie came up to the stage next. Many thanks to Marie for showing up, she came straight from the airport and still had her suitcase with her. We took it down a notch and provided the (gradually filling) bar with Alanis Morisette’s rendition of My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas and then Karma Police by Radiohead.

Hugh came up next and as always provided us with his unique beautiful textures on an alternatively tuned guitar.

To inject a little bit of Funk back into the room, we brought Marcel back up to do I want you back, but in the style of KT Tunstall rather than the Jackson 5. This was followed by Angela, who did Zombie, Sex on Fire and Hit the Road Jack with Fraser and I.

After this we brought in the pros. Tom played a few songs with a new guy from Philadelphia called Mike and then they each played some songs on their own. After this another new guy called Allessandro gave us a Classical/Ska/Reggae/Folk set which included an extremely original version of Apache by the Shadows.

To close the show Fraser and I played Fire and Rain, tears in heaven, then brought it up a notch when Angela sang Nobody´s wife by Anouk and then we closed the show with Pokerface by Lady Gaga….

The next Open Mike night will be on the 29th of December. If you are about over the festive period then head on down. It should be a great night, as I will be on holiday and we should be able to prepare some aural delights.