It’s good to be back at open mic—finally!—and I’m getting some of previously unreleased tunes posted to YouTube. One original tune I played last Tuesday, 13 June 2023 is a piece I wrote in 2018 about the open mic scene called “Private Lessons (Goth Chick)“—the cattiest song I’ve ever written.
The premise behind the song derives from the open mic scene, at least as it was in a specific portion of South Carolina in 2018, although I suspect the phenomenon is universal. There are different “types” at open mic nights, which could briefly be summed up as follows:
- The singer-songwriters, like my buddy John and me
- A guy who is really into the blues
- The older guys that just play stuff from the 1960s (usually friends with the blues guys)
- One guy who plays harmonica and sits in on everyone else’s songs
- The radical poets
- The rare good poets
- Super attractive girls who think they can sing and play guitar or ukulele, but are usually incredibly pitchy and don’t tune their instruments.
“Private Lessons” is written about that last category. In my years teaching music, one thing I have learned is that every girl thinks she can sing (well, not every girl, but I’m making a point here). Many of them can sing reasonably well, but very few of them are actually as good as they think. Rather, no one has ever told them, “Okay, that’s pretty good, but watch your pitching on this phrase” or what not.
I’m sure this phenomenon occurs with young men, too (probably me at one point!), but we’re much quicker to correct boys than girls. Kudos to my school’s choir teacher, who is a sassy middle-aged mother and grandmother; she tells it like it is, and the kids are better off for it.
But in the world of the open mic scene, there are a plethora of simps and hangers-on who don’t know good music from bad, and they just want to support their friends. An admirable trait to an extent, but it doesn’t exactly lead to musical improvement.
So it was that I wrote “Private Lessons (Goth Chick)” after hearing a Goth-y girl in high-waist “mom” jean shorts and a NASA shirt pitch-bend her way through a song on a really cool teal-green electric guitar that apparently had never been acquainted with a Snark tuner. She was an attractive college student and—Heaven Help us—a Music major. I can only hope her professors taught her how to tune her guitar—and her voice!
The bitter irony is that, whenever I play this piece, I always mess up. The central message of the song (aside from the lewd innuendo) is “you’re not all that good; people just tell you that because you’re hot; go and actually practice and get better,” so it’s always a tad humiliating when I botch it, as I do in a few spots on this recording. I suppose it’s payback for writing a somewhat mean-spirited song.
And here’s the YouTube Version:
Do you know someone who thinks she (or he) can sing, but who can’t carry a tune in a grande latte? Leave a comment below or on YouTube!
Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Editions of Open Mic Adventures:
- “Open Mic Adventures I: Oingo Boingo’s ‘Just Another Day’“
- “Open Mic Adventures II: Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’“
- “Open Mic Adventures III: Joanie Sommers’s ‘Johnny Get Angry’“
- “Open Mic Adventures IV: KISS’s ‘I Still Love You’“
- “Open Mic Adventures V: ‘There’s a Light (Over at the Frankenstein Place)’“
- “Open Mic Adventures VI: Journey’s ‘Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’“
- “Open Mic Adventures VII: ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’“
- “Open Mic Adventures VIII: Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’“
- “Open Mic Adventures IX: Journey’s ‘Faithfully’“
- “Open Mic Adventures X: ‘Time Warp’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XI: Spooktacular Supergroup Covers ‘Monster Mash’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XII: ‘Ghostly’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XIII: The Penguins’ ‘Earth Angel’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XIV: ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XV: ‘O Holy Night’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XVI: ‘Please Come Home for Christmas’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XVII: ‘L’il Divertimento in C major’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XVIII: ‘Satiean Motion’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XIX: ‘Two-Day Minuet for Left Hand’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XX: ‘Sleepy Student’s Serenade’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXI: Styx’s ‘Come Sail Away’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXII: ‘Blessed Assurance’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXIII: ‘Gabbi’s Gavotte’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXIV: ‘Softly and Tenderly’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXV: ‘Venite, exultemus Domino’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXVI: ‘Sonatina’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXVII: ‘Heavenly Sunlight’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXVIII: ‘Song of the Bigfoot’”
- “Open Mic Adventures XXIX: ‘Lavender’s Blue’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXX: ‘Chorale for a Sleepy Wednesday’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXI: ‘Carousel’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXII: Hymn Medley“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXIII: ‘Spore Song (Mushroom Dance)’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXIV: ‘Chase’s Dilemma’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXV: ‘The Rings of Saturn’“
- “Open Mic Adventures XXXVI: ‘The Rings of Saturn’ LIVE!“
The Portly Politico 
The open mic type people sound very much like karaoke type people. I loved karaoke! No- I never sang, I was ‘that woman’ who sang along – loud, lol!!!
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Oh, yeah—there is tons of overlap.
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Love this, Port! You have me chuckling in recognition at the types. My open mic days were mostly in the Boston area decades ago, but this is spot on. Flubs aside, I never left one without a strong sense of awe and celebration at the surprise magic of brilliant art in unexpected places. Thanks for bringing me back to this : )
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I’m glad I could take you back to your open mic days! I love that “strong sense of awe and celebration at the surprise magic of brilliant art in unexpected places”—very well put, by the the way! The fun of open mic nights is that you never know what sprinklings of pixie dust you’re going to find. There’s always something unexpected.
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