art of the jam 51

i think the wreck room's wednesday night jamcats musta all still been skyin' from fredfest, where we played a muy well-received set sunday evening in place of the cancelled gideons (whose bassist johnny singularity was in da house and promised they'd be back in action by the summer). we actually _hit at 10 o'clock_, which hasn't happened in a real long time, if ever, and played right up until 1:30 with minimal break time.

the plan was for the evening to commence with an unannounced performance by some musos from sleeplab, but when a few of the expected guests were still elsewhere when the clock on the wall said 10, jam-meister lee allen sidled up to the reg'lar jamcats seated at the bar and suggested, "let's play some music."

the goal for the evening was to make it all the way through without playing any of the toons we'd played at fredfest, and we _almost_ made it. jasper stone / james and myles / barber mack gtrist ron "the velvet hammer" geida was making his last jam appearance for awhile (his tuesday night gig at the moon shifts to wednesday night next week), so after some impromptu funk improvs, he called freddie king's "goin' down" and lit up the strings on his epi les paul with some out-of-kilter chromaticism that jeff beck (who famously covered the toon on his jeff beck group alb back before he discovered the _final solution_ to the lead singer problem) would have appreciated. after the fact, ron said the night was kinda anticlimactic for him, but coming off the high of fredfest, what wouldn't have been? and from the coupla songs i watched on video back at the house with wreck room wizard o' sound andre edmonson, the velvet hammer was still burnin' in fine style (altho perhaps a tad less adrenalized that he'd been on sunday). as for the jam-meister, three grueling days of steering the ship at fredfest had left him ready to rawk, which he did -- kicking on his f/x and wrestling peals of thunder and flashes of lightning from his bass (through two amps, no less).

after an abbreviated romp through zappa's "sexual harassment in the workplace" and an attempt at jeff beck's "you know what i mean" that almost came off the rails before joe "drumzilla" cruz figured out the tricky tempo change, the jamcats vacated the stage to make way for the sleeplab folks -- gtrists jeffa and fern palomo, congero / m.c. jesse sierra hernandez, drummer michael preble, and vocalist crystal casey, joined by bassist chuck brown and violinist tamara cauble from standard transmission -- and i got to hear what jeffa and fern were talking about when they said that andre had made some improvements to the sound out front. i dunno what kinda magic dre did, but i've never heard sleeplab's subtle sound in such exquisite detail before -- the mix out front was full of clarity and presence that brought each finger slide and drum stroke into bold relief (a mixed blessing when fern's gtr had some grounding probs), and they wove their spell like they always do. (afterward, chuck brown, who'd witnessed sunday's energized "impulse of will" set at fredfest, was overheard to comment, "damn, i was all set to play some _rock 'n' roll_." come back again, bro -- it'll happen.)

after the sleeplab ppl's performance, i was pleasantly surprised to see gtrist brock miller, absent from the jam for too many months, setting up his rig. when the reg'lars returned to the stage, jam-meister lee had a headful of requests for the likes of .38 special, journey, foreigner, kansas -- a veritable litany of mainstream '70s rockers that, back in the day, were responsible for my abandoning rawk shows in favor of wrestling for a coupla yrs, and becoming a jazz snob. in typical fashion, the jam-meister handled these by plowing through histrionic snippets of all the audience faves before settling down to a serious trainwreck on led zep's "black dog" (note to self: must check out the form on that 'un), followed by a foreshortened "dazed and confused" with versifyin' by teatro de la rosa director claudia acosta. things got more interesting when violinist tamara joined the jamcats for more zappology -- a surging "willie the pimp" that morphed at the end into a manic country shuffle. no virtuoso tricks here, but homegirl possesses the two essential elements -- a gorgeous sound and a gift for melodic invention -- that mark the most memorable soloists, and she seemed to be enjoying herself (cracking up while playing at the jamcats' onstage idiocy). to close the set, the jam-meister broke his own edict and called jam standard / fredfest retread "manic depression," but instructed the musos that it was to be performed in the hyperdriven style of jazzy-metallic canuck punks nomeansno, which we did with gusto 'n' a fair degree of success.

for the last set, barber mack bassist john shook took up ron's les paul and doubled the line on jaco's "teen town" with lee while drumzilla filled in every nook 'n' cranny of the groove, then ron rejoined the fray for the evening's terminal toon, "cissy strut" by the fonky meters. it seemed the night was over just as it was getting started. can't wait for the next 'un. (and especially hoping that brock, chuck 'n' tamara will all make it out to jam again.)