I wrote a little bit on the folkies vs singer/songwriters thread open mikes, but I'm really curious about others' adventures with them. My own perception is that they are a very mixed bag, and my experiences range from going to the Folk City Monday Night Hoots in the early 80s to the Stone Church in Newmarket, NH to (I hope)tonight's open mike at Artichoke Music in Portland, OR, and lots of others inbetween. I tend to think of open mikes as a kind of musical alchemy, which I find much more apparent on the East Coast as the open mike "scene" drifts relatively intact from one venue to another, while on the West Coast, people seem much more spread apart. Life imitating the landscape, perhaps. In any case, what do folks think of open mikes, what are your experiences, favorite stories, and what are the regional/international differences? Just curious.
blt