Quilt’s first open mike night of the year featured both the debut of talented artists and the return of familiar faces last Friday night.
A common thread that wove through the eclectic blend of poetry, prose and song was the use of disclaimers before nervous performances.
The event moved at the last minute from Plant Hall’s Music Room to Fletcher Lounge, a spacious room with a high, dome ceiling and a grand piano. Everyone casually piled into the room and moved small tables toward the stage to facilitate the evening.
Quilt’s chief editor, Chris Janus, and assistant editor, Victoria Alt. read one piece each. Janus shared a short work of prose called “The Scent of Being Away” that The Minaret featured in Quilt’s Corner this week. Alt modestly introduced her creative non-fiction piece called “Spinning,” in which she reminisces about times spent dancing with a past love. She said her writing had room for improvement in its creativity and suggested that that might have something to do with being an English major. Upon hearing that comment, English and Writing professors Audrey Colombe and Martha Serpas perked up from the audience and congratulated Alt for having the best disclaimer before reading. The floor was open for challengers.
Her claim to the crown survived poet and Minaret columnist Derrick Austin, who earned the honor of reading the most works: a whopping eight poems.
This prompted fellow freshman, Gerard Sukhram,to follow up with the disclaimer that he couldn’t be as good as Derrick, because he only had one poem to read.
The saxophone player described the struggle of jazz musicians barely “getting by” during the Great Depression.
The disclaimers continued with Jenna Risano, an upper-classman of Quilt, who announced that putting together which poems to read had been “really last minute.” .She read two poems that had both been previously published-one in Quilt’s Corner in The Minaret and the other in its 2007 magazine. Another she had written for a class assignment involved incorporating the unused lines of poet Theodore Roethke.
One of the music acts had a different kind of disclaimer. Kirsten Campbell announced that she had had a drink before arriving. She played two original songs on acoustic guitar-one of them written last week about a crush and the other over summer vacation in the mountains.
Later on, Campbell reappeared, volunteering to hold Ben’s harmonica to his mouth so he could play both it and the guitar simultaneously.
What sounded at first like it might be a Sublime cover song turned out to be original lyrics set to familiar guitar chords. Ben’s lyrics took the audience off guard with profanity and name calling in reference to a promiscuous girl.
What was shockingly comical was hearing vulgar lyrics sung in such a melodious voice and accompanied by such mellow guitar-style.
The last act of the night unleashed a similarly shocking and humorous original. Grex, a band of three female vocalists harmonizing over acoustic guitars and a violin, wowed the audience with a self-described PDA about a dorm roommate contracting some STD’s.
Brittany Friesen, Nickole Hanna and Karina Wilder harmonized beautifully on the chorus, repeating the lyrics “Herpes, Syphillis, Aids” with big smiles on their faces.
They played two other original songs, the last of all being a harmonious ballad reaching soprano octaves. The chorus repeated the lyrics “When I die, lay me down on a bed of white roses,” and in the background, the violin played smoothly like liquid behind their voices.
After the show, members of Grex (http://www.myspace.com/grextheband) were trying to sell tickets to their battle-of-the-bands show scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 23 at a club called Boomerz. Meredith Pride and Emma Larson, who had been the first act of the entire evening, bought tickets for the show.
Pride and Larson performed one original song, with Larson playing guitar to back up Pride’s vocals.
Musicians and writers alike are invited to share material at Quilt’s next open mike Friday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. in Reeves Theater.