The Blue Marsh Canteen: Blue Marsh Idol

Irony is a great thing, most of the time.

A lot of times it comes at the end of a moderately bad situation, adding some comedic relief if you can see it that way. Usually, that’s my stance on things.

This particularly case of irony came from a post a few days ago. I’m at work, so I don’t have the exact words that I wrote, but it was something like: “you need to be told that you’re not good enough and that your music sucks.” The post was on motivation.

To give some more context of this story, understand my position – I know I am a decent guitarist. But I’ll seldom say any more than that. Sure, I’m better than a lot of people, but that’s not good enough. I’m proud of what I’ve written and what I do, but it’s a far cry from what I’d like to be able to do.

So where this all comes into play is at The Blue Marsh Canteen open mic. They’ve been running the “Blue Marsh Idol” for the past couple months and I had made it to the final round. Honestly, I wasn’t concerned. Sure, I can be a bit arrogant. There was one guy, Byron, who I had seen play there before who was a legitimately decent songwriter, so I figured it’d come down to the two of us or something like that.

Oh yeah, and the winner gets a new Jackson guitar. As many of you know, I have moved into the realm of collecting guitars. A new guitar as a prize would be a great addition to the lot. So you could say there was something riding on it. Given the nature of the event, I even went out of my way to come up with different arrangements for a couple of my songs, just to spice things up a bit.

Anyway, everyone played and really only one person stuck out to me, Byron. Actually, he was the only other person to play all originals. And they were good. The others were pretty cut and dry covers – not different arrangements or anything uniquely their own. That bugs me.

Then the results were tallied to make the top 3, where there would be a one song flash round. I didn’t make it (Byron ended up winning. Congratulations! You played a great set.).

There are different ways of looking at the phrase “not good enough.” In one sense, you could be not good enough technically or vocally. Maybe your songwriting is just not good enough. Then there is a seldom used not-good-enough, where you are not good enough to sway opinion.

See, at a place like the Blue Marsh Canteen, you have to sway people onto the side that says that music doesn’t have to have words. It’s common among society. Regardless of how much technicality or passion is behind a song, you still have to be good enough to sway peoples opinion in your favor. If someone is predisposed to like covers and sing-alongs, then you have to be good enough to pull their attention away from that.

Given my technical ability and progressive writing ability in comparison to some of the other contestants, I don’t think that those were the shortcomings of the set. I think it boils down to not being good enough to sway opinions on what I was playing. Regardless, at the end of the day I wasn’t good enough at something to be able to move to the final 3. That means I have work to do.