Straight from the Boogie Down

“That mofo must be lying! All the shows can’t be that good!” Well, this mofo aint lying because the last Acentos was a 4 out of five stars affair.

The positives: first and foremost, Emanuel Xavier rocked the house. His set was well thought, well paced and extremely well written. The crowd was into him throughout and he never let them down. Providing the perfect blend of English, Spanish, slang and poetry would be one of the quintessential Acentos features. Really hard to pin this one down as THE quintessential features as it is so hard to pin down what exactly it is to be Latino but it was sure up there.

My hosting was very smooth this time around and I was able to conversate without be condescending or sounding forced. The little convos that I had with the crowd between open micers were chill and even though I was plugging the feature, CD and other venues it all seemed like fun.

The Open Mic is a double-edged sword. We are attracting ten plus readers for every show and have had to limit the mic at times. (Make no mistake, your Open Mic will make or break your venue because there is no such thing as a guaranteed feature and the Open Mic is where you will eventually cultivate new talent.) The quality of the mic is a bit less than what I would want. At this point of the game, I would want to see some serious forward movement in regard to some of our regulars work and will have to start suggesting some workshops or even may have to facilitate something in order to get them more on track. I have been lucky enough to have an almost 50/50 mix of nervous awkward readers and then more sure accustomed readers. Don’t get it twisted, that is not my ratio of bad and good poets because I have heard some damn good things from some shaky people and utter crap from some arrogant mofos. The lady quotient is rising to three out of the twelve and I can just see it getting better.

Attendance wise, the show is staying at a steady rate of about 35 heads and that’s cool for now but we need to get some young locals into call the place home and use it as a jump off for 13, the Nuyo and any other spots they may want to go to.

That and we banged out some CDs at a discounted rate with Acentos making up the difference. More on the CD another day.