art of the jam 46
OR, "HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE JAM"
since i'm taking the week off to celebrate 4/5/06 (my sweetie and i have a custom of celebrating sequential dates, e.g., 2/3/04, 3/4/05, etc., and this year, we plan to set an alarm to wake up in time to do something silly at 1:02:03 on 4/5/06), it seemed a good idea to do my li'l bit o' jam bloggage for the week early, since i don't have to wait for the actual jam itself to go down to set down some generalized impressions / observations, and perhaps debunk some myths, too.
to wit: while the wreck room wednesday night ritual might go by the moniker "lee and carl's invitational jam" (after jam-meister lee allen and occasional vocalist / ex-gideons frontman carl pack), _you don't need an invitation to play_. there are _no invitations_, unless you count the ones the jam-meister occasionally posts on myspace (where the relevant page is under the name impulse of will, which actually refers to a much larger floating crapgame of musos from austin, el paso, and elsewhere). whoever's been calling wreck bartenders lu and graham and harassing them about "how can i get an invitation?" -- please stop. such thangs don't exist. the pool o' invited musos / singers / spoken word artistes is large but not stagnant; if you wanna participate, just _talk to lee_. he's the tall white dude with the long beard; kinda looks like a mad scientist behind the mic and a five- or six-string bass (greedy bastard, him; four wasn't enough). lee is _not_ the older asian dude (altho i usedta use a fake i.d. that belonged to a black cat named joe lee, a million yrs ago when i lived in another state that didn't have a picture on its driver's license -- but i digress). that's me, and it's _not my gig_. i'm just there as gtr strangler 'n' chronicler o' events, and that's fine by me. i donwanna be the boss, i'm just happy to have a gig that doesn't require 1) rehearsal, 2) extensive time spent hangin' out / gettin' up-close-and-personal with other bandcats, 3) traveling more than five minutes away from mi casa. so remember: no invites; talk to lee.
to quell another vicious rumour: the jamcats don't diss ppl who show up to play, and i can only remember one instance of anyone being "thrown offstage," which occurred when the individuals involved didn't, um, talk to lee. think about it: you wouldn't just walk onto somebody else's stage and set up yr shit without at least _asking_ 'em first, wouldja? jam or not. c'mon. for real. courtesy is contagious.
what makes this jam different from all other jams? first 'n' foremost, the jam-meister hisself. he's got a degree in conducting and he's better at directing a random assemblage of cats that haven't played together before, doing material with which they're unfamiliar, than any bandleader i've ever witnessed. admittedly, that's happened less frequently as the "reg'lars" got more familiar with each others' styles and a limited repertoire of toons over time (the night marcus lawyer told me, "you guys are getting _really good_ at playing _those songs_," it occurred to me that the mandate of heaven might have shifted a li'l bit), but there are still nights when it happens (like the recent "order by key and mode" set over on the li'l "wreck west" stage).
of course, lee's ability to realize unique, extemporaneous improvisational events out of the damp clay of simple musical forms has a lot to do with the quality of the jamcats. there are no slouches onstage; over the past 10 months and change, the jam-meister has played host to legions of players from across the spectrum of foat wuth music. what's in the resultant musical gumbo from week to week depends on who shows up and what they bring to the party. to date, participants have included members of pablo and the hemphill 7, goodwin, confusatron, the burning hotels, sally majestic, sunward, the me-thinks, the collin herring band, saint frinatra, chatterton, the brokers, kulcha far i, jasper stone, addnerim, ghostcar, and i'm prolly missing a few. spoken word artists william bryan massey III, claudia acosta, and rob bozquez have performed.
color the music rawkfunkreggaebloozemetaljazzbluegrass. sometimes it's not what you'd expect: f'rinstance, jam audiences have heard bluesman james hinkle wrestling clouds of feedback from his hollowbody axe on a version of funkadelic's "maggot brain" (a jam standard), while on another memorable night, woodeye / chatterton mainstay kenny smith showed off his skills as a fonky fatback drummer side by side with some confusatron musicians. some good things have come out of chance meetings: metalhead-turned-'meercun-primitive darrin kobetich and electrified paganini steve "vikingo" huber first duetted at the jam, and before sleeplab was a band, the principle members tested the waters at the wreck on a wednesday night.
while there's room for skilled copyists, the _best_ jamcats are those who can listen and respond in the moment to what's going on around them and take direction on the fly (drummers: when in doubt, _watch lee's foot!_). and, um, regulate their stage volume. perhaps this spirit is best exemplified by gtrist ron geida (kulcha far i, jasper stone), who sums up his approach thusly: "i contemplate the quality and team attitude vs. the 'it's just a jam' attitude." in other words, it's s'posed to be a _conversation_, punky, not a monologue, and one in which spontaneity is of the essence, which is one reason there's no "setlist." while a few old standbys remain, the repertoire has gone through a few evolutions over time. if the jams have become more structured and song-oriented and less free-flowing than they once were, that's prolly not a bad thang: many good musos don't dig the discomfort and ass-showing potential of performing unrehearsed, without a net, while most listeners donwanna sit through 30 minutes of "the 'manic depression' variations." on the other hand, don't show up expecting to hear "brown eyed girl" or "mustang sally," either.
last but not least, there's the wreck room's wizard o' sound andre edmonson, who lovingly tweaks the tones whether the action is on the big main stage or the li'l one over in wreck west, and records the proceedings as well (when they're happenin' on the big stage, at least). now that it's been established that the copyright in myspace's terms 'n' conditions refers to _recordings_, not _compositions_ (as demonstrated by the presence of cover material in some bands' mp3 selections), perhaps we'll see some sound snippets on the impulse of will page sometime before i die. or perhaps not.
since i'm taking the week off to celebrate 4/5/06 (my sweetie and i have a custom of celebrating sequential dates, e.g., 2/3/04, 3/4/05, etc., and this year, we plan to set an alarm to wake up in time to do something silly at 1:02:03 on 4/5/06), it seemed a good idea to do my li'l bit o' jam bloggage for the week early, since i don't have to wait for the actual jam itself to go down to set down some generalized impressions / observations, and perhaps debunk some myths, too.
to wit: while the wreck room wednesday night ritual might go by the moniker "lee and carl's invitational jam" (after jam-meister lee allen and occasional vocalist / ex-gideons frontman carl pack), _you don't need an invitation to play_. there are _no invitations_, unless you count the ones the jam-meister occasionally posts on myspace (where the relevant page is under the name impulse of will, which actually refers to a much larger floating crapgame of musos from austin, el paso, and elsewhere). whoever's been calling wreck bartenders lu and graham and harassing them about "how can i get an invitation?" -- please stop. such thangs don't exist. the pool o' invited musos / singers / spoken word artistes is large but not stagnant; if you wanna participate, just _talk to lee_. he's the tall white dude with the long beard; kinda looks like a mad scientist behind the mic and a five- or six-string bass (greedy bastard, him; four wasn't enough). lee is _not_ the older asian dude (altho i usedta use a fake i.d. that belonged to a black cat named joe lee, a million yrs ago when i lived in another state that didn't have a picture on its driver's license -- but i digress). that's me, and it's _not my gig_. i'm just there as gtr strangler 'n' chronicler o' events, and that's fine by me. i donwanna be the boss, i'm just happy to have a gig that doesn't require 1) rehearsal, 2) extensive time spent hangin' out / gettin' up-close-and-personal with other bandcats, 3) traveling more than five minutes away from mi casa. so remember: no invites; talk to lee.
to quell another vicious rumour: the jamcats don't diss ppl who show up to play, and i can only remember one instance of anyone being "thrown offstage," which occurred when the individuals involved didn't, um, talk to lee. think about it: you wouldn't just walk onto somebody else's stage and set up yr shit without at least _asking_ 'em first, wouldja? jam or not. c'mon. for real. courtesy is contagious.
what makes this jam different from all other jams? first 'n' foremost, the jam-meister hisself. he's got a degree in conducting and he's better at directing a random assemblage of cats that haven't played together before, doing material with which they're unfamiliar, than any bandleader i've ever witnessed. admittedly, that's happened less frequently as the "reg'lars" got more familiar with each others' styles and a limited repertoire of toons over time (the night marcus lawyer told me, "you guys are getting _really good_ at playing _those songs_," it occurred to me that the mandate of heaven might have shifted a li'l bit), but there are still nights when it happens (like the recent "order by key and mode" set over on the li'l "wreck west" stage).
of course, lee's ability to realize unique, extemporaneous improvisational events out of the damp clay of simple musical forms has a lot to do with the quality of the jamcats. there are no slouches onstage; over the past 10 months and change, the jam-meister has played host to legions of players from across the spectrum of foat wuth music. what's in the resultant musical gumbo from week to week depends on who shows up and what they bring to the party. to date, participants have included members of pablo and the hemphill 7, goodwin, confusatron, the burning hotels, sally majestic, sunward, the me-thinks, the collin herring band, saint frinatra, chatterton, the brokers, kulcha far i, jasper stone, addnerim, ghostcar, and i'm prolly missing a few. spoken word artists william bryan massey III, claudia acosta, and rob bozquez have performed.
color the music rawkfunkreggaebloozemetaljazzbluegrass. sometimes it's not what you'd expect: f'rinstance, jam audiences have heard bluesman james hinkle wrestling clouds of feedback from his hollowbody axe on a version of funkadelic's "maggot brain" (a jam standard), while on another memorable night, woodeye / chatterton mainstay kenny smith showed off his skills as a fonky fatback drummer side by side with some confusatron musicians. some good things have come out of chance meetings: metalhead-turned-'meercun-primitive darrin kobetich and electrified paganini steve "vikingo" huber first duetted at the jam, and before sleeplab was a band, the principle members tested the waters at the wreck on a wednesday night.
while there's room for skilled copyists, the _best_ jamcats are those who can listen and respond in the moment to what's going on around them and take direction on the fly (drummers: when in doubt, _watch lee's foot!_). and, um, regulate their stage volume. perhaps this spirit is best exemplified by gtrist ron geida (kulcha far i, jasper stone), who sums up his approach thusly: "i contemplate the quality and team attitude vs. the 'it's just a jam' attitude." in other words, it's s'posed to be a _conversation_, punky, not a monologue, and one in which spontaneity is of the essence, which is one reason there's no "setlist." while a few old standbys remain, the repertoire has gone through a few evolutions over time. if the jams have become more structured and song-oriented and less free-flowing than they once were, that's prolly not a bad thang: many good musos don't dig the discomfort and ass-showing potential of performing unrehearsed, without a net, while most listeners donwanna sit through 30 minutes of "the 'manic depression' variations." on the other hand, don't show up expecting to hear "brown eyed girl" or "mustang sally," either.
last but not least, there's the wreck room's wizard o' sound andre edmonson, who lovingly tweaks the tones whether the action is on the big main stage or the li'l one over in wreck west, and records the proceedings as well (when they're happenin' on the big stage, at least). now that it's been established that the copyright in myspace's terms 'n' conditions refers to _recordings_, not _compositions_ (as demonstrated by the presence of cover material in some bands' mp3 selections), perhaps we'll see some sound snippets on the impulse of will page sometime before i die. or perhaps not.
posted by stashdauber at 6:15 PM
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