Jan 122009
Jam on it!
Rock Town Hall, here’s your chance to share your most memorable jam session, as a participant or a witness. It doesn’t matter if it took place at a huge festival or a musty high school mate’s basement. It doesn’t matter if the jam, in retrospect, was actually great or not. The only things that matter are you had to be there and it had to be the most memorable jam session in your life (to date, of course).
If you have a recording of this legendary (at least in your mind) jam session and feel brave enough to share it with your fellow Townspeople, by all means let me know. We’ll get it up here for the world to jam along with. It is JAMuary, after all.
the mansion on the mountain.
a guy named Pete Snyder took about 30 friends, most of whom were University of the Arts music grads, to a massive chalet in the woods near Allentown, PA in 1999.
The house belonged to the parents of another friend, Bill Pearce, who’s stepdad designed and built guitars for Martin. The house had a 3 story high living room with balconies. it had also had an awesome analog 1/4″ 8 track studio, and a massive woodpaneled, humidity/temperature controlled guitar storage room. hot tub, unlimited food and drink etc.
everyone brought their instruments: drums, upright bass, electric bass, 2 sax, 2 trumpets, lap guitar, mics, sampler, and baby grand was already there.
When you got there, you had to give away your clothes, and wear one of the robes from the masive African ceremonial closet, with sandals. Once you did this it was cool to go to the hot tub get some sandwiches or drinks, and watch or join the band.
It was astounding. sometimes the combos were large, sometimes they were small, sometimes faint and quiet, others big and bombastic enough to fill the 3 story space. sometimes it sounded like duke ellington, and sometimes like pink floyd, and sometimes like john cage.
and it all got recorded.
even edited.
onto CASSETTE.
THAT’S what I’m talking about, Shawnkilroy! Thanks for sharing. Maybe we should all change into robes for this thread.
Two stand out
Winner: A buddy of mine was house sitting for the late Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright (he had a house in Atlanta but was living back in England to raise his son there). My friend had a party and at some point we decided to sneak out into the studio and jam, trouble was that my friend only knew how to play classical music on piano and I am a rock guy. The only other intrument besides the “Floyd” tour keyboard was Richard’s son’s drum set (a kids size kit at that) We didn’t want to let that stop us so we ended up jamming on RAGTIME music, just keyboard and kid drums – for about an hour. Later I saw the David Gilmour at Albert Hall concert DVD and Rickard used the same keyboard!
Runner up was my band The Stonesouls’ 10th year reunion show. After our “classic” lineup played a 2 hour show we invited all former members up to jam on “I’ve Got A Feeling” by The Beatles and The Killer’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” Four guitars, two drummers, bass and harmonica
My buddy invited Carl Newman, The Smugglers and Neko Case and whole bunch of others to a jam. The only people that showed up were me, my buddy, Neko and a nudist guy with a sitar. Neko wouldn’t sing. The nudist guy didn’t really know how to play the sitar well. This jam wasn’t memorable for the music.
Well, since we’re name-dropping —
Thomas Gobena, the bass player from Gogol Bordello, is a good friend of mine, and a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant as well. An odd thing about the Ethiopian music community: they are *stone* reggae freaks. Anyhow, Thomas is a serious rock star in the DC Ethiopian music community, and when he comes back into town after a tour, he’s constantly invited out to various local gigs — mostly reggae-oriented. The last local jam session Thomas joined in on, he asked me to jump on stage, which I did. I had a great time following along with various world music grooves, but the real highlight was when the band kicked into a nine-minute version of Bob Marley’s “Exodus.” It was *awesome* — Thomas was just *digging* into the song, pumping away, deep on the thunderbroom. I was completely taken over by the skank trance, eyes shut tight and flowin’ — and when the choruses rolled around, it felt like the stage was going to levitate through the roof. Everything just fell into place, perfectly. And no drugs were involved!
that’s quite beautiful Hrundi!
Thai stick. 1983? 1984? Saigon’s basement. Coltrane box. “She’s Not There.” Two chords. Nine minutes. Boyz2Men, or at least Boyz2YoungDudes. That night we felt like had a clue.
Hey, shawnkilroy — are you fucking *kidding* me?! Your jam story is a hell of a lot better than mine!
still sounds like a lot of fun.
I saw Tom Petty at the San Fran Fillmore once, where him and the Heartbreakers were jamming on a basic blues number. Their music was a little polite but nothing to be embarrassed about but then someone led their special guest on stage, John Lee Hooker. Looking a little frail, he sat down on a chair and plugged in his git-box. He struck a chord and my first reaction was that he to think he might really be playing a wildly electrified can opener. He took a chorus on meanest, ugliest and most dangerous sounding cacophony you would ever want to hear.
A minute or so later he was gone and the whole experience seemed so friggin’ real it couldn’t have been more shocking if JL had walked out on the stage and shot Tom Petty dead. I can’t really say much more about it without giving the impression of being overly hyperbolic.
Great story, db. Here’s a jam session I remember clearly and wish I had on tape: we opened for the Circle Jerks at City Gardens, while they were on tour for their “heavy rock”-style album. I’m blanking on the name of it, at the moment, but it’s a pretty good, funny album. While the singer, Keith Morris (?), did an interview with a college radio station, the musicians jammed heavily on what sounded like Starless and Bible Black-era King Crimson for Big Note Guitar. They played this kind of instrumental stuff for about 20 minutes. It was much better than anything they actually played during the set that night, when they were doing their snotty, Heavy Metal Weekend stuff.
First time I saw Wilco was in ’99, during the Jay Bennett days, when their live shows were all about The Power And The Glory. This was the period when “Casino Queen” would regularly turn into a long, hairy jam.
This particular show was at the Troc, and an after-show was scheduled upstairs at the Balcony, headlined by Los Straitjackets. I’m fairly sure everyone here has at least seen a picture of those dudes, right?
So, during the looonnng, Bennett-led “Casino Queen” jam, the Straitjackets’ drummer — dressed in his full Mexican-wrestler regalia — nonchalantly walks onstage, and requests some time on the drums from then-drummer Ken Coomer. Ken willingly proffers his sticks, stands up and picks up a tambourine. The Straitjacket dude plays a short drum solo, then finishes up the jam and song with the rest of Wilco. Then he gets up, takes his bow, and leaves. “Let’s hear it for the Masked Man,” Jeff Tweedy says, not really sure who this guy is in the first place.
Er…Rastafari think the late Emperor of Ethiopia was God’s Earthly Manifestation. You could expect a certain amount of musical crossover.
Groan. G48, are you serious?
Trust me on this one: there’s no substantive connection there. The fact is, old-school reggae was the musical language of righteous political rebellion throughout much of the African continent back in the day, and from political appeal sprang forth a desire for the reggae groove. Ras Tafari really has nothing to do with it, Emperor or no. At least according to my friends in that community. Although the daughter of a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines told me she used to have all her reggae mix tapes confiscated by the commie stooges who manned the customs desk back in the 70s, for fear they had rasta lyrical content in them.
A couple of friends of mine were in an instrumental psychedelic band that played their regular set starting at 8 pm, and turned their last song into an all-comers, literally-non-stop, free improv that lasted until 8 am, with people joining in, catching a nap and returning to the stage. At some points in the wee hours it got down to two people, but they kept going.
The night straddled the vernal equinox, so it was highly cosmic.
Mod and I did a musical “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” once in the cemetery next to my folks house. We thought we’d jam onto a boom box in the wee hours and ideally, when we played the tape back, ghostly participation would be on there. Sadly, everyone’s a critic, even in the nether world. It was a lackluster jam, and no spirits joined in.
Hey, Vox! What was that bauhaus haus in Gladwynne we all went to when the gig at Penn got rained out? Were any of you Nixon’s fellows there? Baby Flamehead, Wishniaks, who else? There was some decent jamming there. Do you still have the reel-to-reel? A beautiful house, by the guy who designed the PSFS building, one of the first “skyscrapers.” A kind of greenhouse room off the side was the stage. Very groovy vibe. We got canceled at our Penn gig just when we were going to start, and it was one of the only times where we got payed anyway according to the contract. So we were flush and restless. Fun!
I totally forgot about our graveyard jam. That seemed like a great idea at the time.
I’m not quite recalling the Gladwynne house jam, although it’s possible it’s just one more event from those years that I went through barely conscious.
I just remembered that my favorite Fluxus-inspired music and performance-art group (yes, I know of more than one) once gave a performance that consisted of a free improv, with the stipulation that each member could only play things they had brought with them in a cigar box.
They felt they’d been getting lazy and relying on the “avant-garde” crutch of volume.