Blogathon 10/25: Pub

Last night (Sunday) I threw caution to the winds, left the house at 18.45 and walked to the pub. The special occasion to get me there on a Sunday evening (or pretty much any other evening really) was the village pub’s inaugural Open Mic (not Open Mike, that’s something quite different) evening. There were a bunch of people I knew (in a village this size that’s hardly surprising) but the pleasantly unexpected thing was the pub was packed. The ‘do’ was scheduled to begin at 19.00, I got there 10 minutes early and only just found a seat (after sorting out a drink, obviously). By 19.10 it was standing room only.

I have a few favourite moments from the evening. The young woman who sang an Amy Winehouse song to a backing track brought the whole pub to silence (in a good way, she was awesome!) was notable, as were the two chaps (one playing acoustic guitar, the other singing) who did a brilliant rendition of a Shed 7 song (I’m a big Shed 7 fan – and said as much to the vocalist when he said to me afterwards “I saw you singing along”. But the sharpest point of the evening was a chap who performed a seamless instrumental medley/mashup on his acoustic guitar. He started with an andante version of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and then segued into a pacier, more upbeat selection. I appreciated how seamless his performance was, and when he hit the penultimate theme from Tubular Bells (side 2) my jaw dropped. Brilliant!