Open Mic Night @ The Slow Rezz Cafe

Location: Athena Isle (203,179,23)

The Slow Rezz Cafe presents Open Mic Nights on Tuesdays starting this week! Try out those new songs and/or gain some exposure. Not performing? Show up and enjoy live music by the shore.

This is a brand new venue – a small and cozy coffee house – a comfy atmosphere with pillows on the floor, a fireplace and the soothing sound of waves in the background.

This Week’s Schedule:
7:00 pm – OPEN
7:30 pm – Anek Fuchs
8:00 pm – Ceedj Beaumont
8:30 pm – Quinton Whitman

That open spot at 7pm SLT was taken by a performer named Naga Flow, who was making only his second appearance ever playing music (sounded like originals, but I arrived late). So far, I’ve heard his short set, now followed by Anek Fuchs. Both great rock-singer type male voices, good guitar work. Some technical glitches, and the kinds of problems that better streaming equipment as they progress will correct.

But musically, really accomplished stuff, whether covers (with very original treatments, so far) or their own songs.

The venue is a pleasant, homey little coffeehouse on the waterside, and everyone is “sitting” on cushions and oriental carpets. When I arrived, someone was running a particle animation, and hundreds of little green 5-lobed leaves were drifting in the air, along with virtual smoke. Jokes about “not inhaling” were made by yours truly and others.

In Second Life, you don’t have to breathe unless you’re animated. Kind of bass-ackwards from First Life.

This seems like a great place to work out the kinks before going out on the SL live music circuit, which goes pretty much every night of the week, with some popular performers going from gig to gig every hour or 90 minutes, most of the afternoon and into the night. They survive on tips, mostly… and with SL currency being the pittance it is against the US Dollar, they’re probably not clearing gas money… but they don’t need gas to get from gig to gig, dig?

Earlier tonight I was at another really nice venue at a place called Cascadia Harmonics (SLurl, direct link to location in Second Life). It was part of a sim that’s like a state park out on an island. Very pretty area, very into putting on live music and spoken word/poetry events. I’ll definitely return there – I heard the last couple of songs of Ray Weyland’s set, a performer who’s been around long enough in RL that he doesn’t need to put on a big muscled male AV and sport dreadlocks; he played 12 string guitar, sang standards, and had the audacity to be bald. And slightly built. Very gracious performer, too – there were only about 6 people there, and he played as if it was a concert venue full of hundreds. I look forward to returning there again. And this place, too.

Second Life isn’t just shopping and sex and camping for $Lindens… it’s about music and art and dance and theater, too. And I’m interested in experiencing as much of it as possible.

Next up, a performer that is somehow lagged so badly that his voice sounds like Darth Vader on Prozac. Oh, dear, he’s singing and playing and… it’s Take it Easy by the Eagles…

This is excrutiating, poor man. Or, it could be a woman.

OH! Problem solved. All I had to do was turn the media stream on and off. It happens in the opposite way when I hear a speaker at the Virtual Anglican Cathedral – it must be a function of the various ways media connect to Second Life. Sometimes our vicar preaches like a very earnest Christian chipmunk.

Anyway, we’re now on the right track for this performer, Ceedj Beaumont. And we’re off for the next part of the evening’s entertainment. So far, he seems to be doing folk-rock standards; next song is Supertramp’s “Give a Little Bit.”