So last night Kirstie and I went to Muse Cafe because every first thursday of the month they have what they are calling a:
Electro-Acoustic Workshop
Electronic and analog musicians alike come together on 1st thursdays to participate in a jam session unlike this city has ever beheld. Hosting band TBA. Plan on bringing your instruments and be ready for some live improvisation, jungle, idm, early fusion, junglebop, and avantrock
Last night the hosting band was a band from New Orleans called The Other Planets . They were really the best when the songs became unscripted, while the written riffs were quite good the dense sound they would build up during the middle was very good. The sax player and some guy on a sampler were the 2 that I like the most. After about a 40 minute set of theirs the floor was opened to the jam session. I walked up with my stuff along with another guitar player, a bass player, a drummer and another guy on a drum machine type thing that was quite intersting. Being that I think most of the ppl seemed to know eacher and the instrumentation collected the set (about 2 songs totaling 30 minutes or so maybe less) was a fairly straight ahead guitar jazz/funk set. I am not trained at all in this type of music (or any music really) so my brain was working overtime to figure out where the band was at all times and how I would fit myself in. I have never done anything like this before, but there I was and I had to do something. At times I tried picking notes and overtones that sounded right over the top of the guitar wankery that was going on. I really never felt like I fit in and then I started to get really frustrated becase this other guitar player was really just there to show off and so I started to take it upon my self to attempt to destroy the whole set. After a few minutes in this mode I turned up to see this girl, sitting off to the side, who I hadnt noticed before. She was trying to skat and was doing a pretty good job and this changed my mood immediatly. I started to again really listen and try to find a place but the music was still really fast and it was becoming more clear that the other guitarist had no interest in trying to start a dialog.
As I mentioned Kirstie was there as was a friend of mine from work, Steve Richards. He came and let me use his amp but didnt actually play, which is sad because I think he would have been much better at this then I was. Kirstie told me later that he really didnt come to play but just to see me. How nice. Kirstie was also way to kind (and crazy) and did all this crazy running around and stuff just to get the car done early so that we could get down to this thing. She is the greatest.
Overall, my brain has never been pushed to the limits it was last night. Through countless chemistry/math/physics tests in college that would take hours to complete, I would leave felling slightly euphoric (espically if I think I did well) but this was totally different. After the 2 peices finished my brain was still flying away at 100mph which made talking and ordering cake and saying the various thankyous incredibly difficult. Besides learning about playing in group and discovering those difficulties I also found out something about playing my guitar psyically in a live setting. And that is: it feeds back like a mother being that its semi-hollow and do to the small confines I had to either stand infront of the amp that I was playing or sit on the other amp to be able to both hear my guitar and hit my pedals. The whole experience was very much like the first time I used chopsticks. One of the first times I went out to lunch with my group at work we went to a sushi place and everyone was using chopsticks. I was forced to eat with a utensil that I had never used before but by the end of the meal was getting pretty good at it and actually started to enjoy it. I will attempt a few more of these nights in the coming months and see if a change in hosting band changes the jam session in some way.
