"Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave as soon as you've done your shitty little poem or song you self-righteous ******" - Scroobius Pip

Recently several different people have chosen to accuse me of breaking this rule, so in keeping with the second last tenet of that great song by a man who clearly knows what's going on, I think it worth amplifying MY POSITION HERE.

(which, broadly, is that you spell "phoenix" "phoenix")

...

YES! Mea culpa. I have left open mics before the end before! I have left directly after my set a couple of times! 

What I have never done is left whilst somone was playing. Open Mic is about the free exchange of positive performance vibes amongst artists of all levels. It's much more important to support the idea of an open mic and the community it generates as actively as possible than to simply commit yourself to sitting in a room for an entire evening when actually you're quite tired and work's at 9 tomorrow. The important thing is that everyone present is a good audience member as well as a good artist*. If someone isn't going to get into the spirit of things, you want them to leave as soon as they're done. And you want the people who stay to want to stay, to stay because they're loving the music and the company rather than because they feel an obligation.

It's liking making friends - in fact, it often is making friends. You achieve this through some recognised counterpoint of spirit, not by forcing everyone to sit in a room together until last orders.

At a good open mic, everyone listens, everyone chats between sets, joins in where appropriate, politely applauds everyone onstage regardless of their quality, and goes home whenever the hell they want. At a good open mic, people who might have a good reason to leave early aren't stigmatised for it, and people who are mercenary with the system will swiftly get found out in other ways, not least because they're probably not that good**.

Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry. That one I'll go with them on.

(a full and probably 50,000 word entry on how I feel about open mic has been due for at least two years, maybe one day I'll get round to it)

* what am I saying? they don't need to be a good artist at all.
** i've yet to see a single person who approaches open mic culture with arrogance prove themselves worthy onstage