First Week at Oscar's Pub

Stefan, the Webbie who worked here last Winter, highly recommended Oscar’s Pub, an expatriate joint with live bluegrass, folk, and rock and an open-mike on Wednesday nights.  He used to play with the house band and all the musicians there still remember him well. The house band started up at 9:30 pm with a singer/guitarist, bongo drummer, and mandolin player. The lead guy is American and asked if I was a singer when he noticed I was keenly watching them play. I was pretty happy to finally see live music in Shanghai, let alone good acoustic music. When I replied that I play fiddle but didn’t have one with me, I got a pretty positive response and the guy said he wanted to talk to me at break. Shortly, I found myself being introduced to a bunch of musicians scattered around the bar and then led upstairs to try out the mandolin player’s violin from Beijing. It played pretty well and I was so excited to finally be playing with others for the first time in ages that music was pouring out wildly from my fingers and they loved it. Shanghai has been an overwhelmingly inspiring place for writing and music and I had so many tunes to express at last on the violin. Though I’m classically trained, playing improvisational music is my favorite, both alone and with others. I practiced at the top of the staircase, playing blues outside the bathrooms in the two-story pub. The guy’s bathroom was crowded and I incidentally served as the waiting music. The cleaning woman was my biggest fan. She just walked right up to me and stared at me and my fingers for about five minutes with the biggest smile on her face. It was also amusing when people forgot they had to go to the toilet.

I then got to play with a few expats, accompanying them with chords and harmony and soloing when they’d nod off to me. Since the bar was crowded, only a few people close to us were really listening at first. I then turned up the mike a little, got a drunk Irish guy who said he could play bongos to try to accompany me with whatever he could, and started playing a show-offish Irish fiddle piece. It starts slow and people started clapping, which got attention. I then slowly sped up until I was doing double speed. By the time I got to triple speed (I was really excited to be playing last night and felt almost like I was at my best), the bar was practically silent and then exploded with cheers. By the time I played with the house band, I was well warmed up and alternatively soloed with the guitarist and mandolin player, who is amazing and just got back from studying music in the States. I also played a butchered version of the Devil Went Down to Georgia with a guitarist who sang the lyrics, replacing both “Johnny” and “Devil” with “Simmy” and “Georgia” with “Shanghai.” It’ll be hard to top those two pieces, but the music is fun and I have a lot to learn from these guys.

Thank you to Stefan for this amazing recommendation. You’re a hard act to follow, but I look forward to heading back to Oscar’s on Friday and Saturday to play with the house band.