Jam -2011-03-01 – Carroll’s

We jammed last Tuesday night and it isn’t until Saturday morning when I finally get around to write this post. If it was Tuesday night, immediately after the jam that I wrote this posting , it would have been a blur. If I waited until Wednesday to write the posting, it would have been a dizzy-blur. Being Saturday morning, almost 4 days after the jam, the memories of it are only memories as the blur of the jam has been wiped off the screen. Thank goodness for Rich’s work in recording the goings-on, or the jams would just vanish into nothing more than scheduled items in an old calendar.

By the way, the graphic was quickly created using Google SketchUp, 3D modeling for everyone. It’s free, fun and kind of easy and has a lot of cool potential. Check it out if you care, another great free product provided by our not-so-evil and creepy friends at Google. (http://sketchup.google.com/)

In one of the large studio we had a standard setup this week, the Dead and Alive-5, I don’t think that going have any legs. We only had one guest, Scott Bayer; and a Bayer is what you need after hearing his bongo playing. Some how we have to manage to pull the plug on that thing. Not that I should be one to talk. in that I had real troubles getting comfortable this week and don’t feel as if it was one of my better efforts. The good thing is that even having a bad effort is an effort and a good one at that. Sometimes your good efforts are effortless and not an effort at all, and what good is that? – Zenstein.

There was a full percussion section placed on the side so I took hold of a nice pair of maracas and that got us going into a long spacey Dark Star; one in which I did don my guitar for a good 10 minutes into it as I was enjoying banging on a wide variety of vibraXylophonic types of instruments. Alan was particularly interested in the work we did on the Cassidy finding that to be an extraordinary endeavorer in the human condition. One thing you can say about Deadstein is is at least an adventure. Sometimes you can take the highway and get there fast and easy or you can four-wheel it through the desert and you come to realize it wasn’t the destination but the journey that was the trip – Zenstein.

To hear what we did go to the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/03-01-11/

4 Comments (+add yours?)

deadstein
Mar 05, 2011 @ 10:43:10

Just heard the much discussed Cassidy and all I can say is that sometime you have wrestle up the pieces that fall on the floor and gather them up into a package and get on with it. In this case, getting on with it was the worst part of the song.
KEVIN
Mar 05, 2011 @ 11:55:59

That is so deep and obtuse that even with a sub – terranean protractor, I’d have trouble figuring that one out. Oddly enough though, I agree.
Alan W.
Mar 05, 2011 @ 12:08:56

That is precisely the point of what Larry is now calling Zenstein. The best part is sometimes the journey more than the destination you arrive at.

The full explanation of this lies in my pre-post email sent after I listened to the Dark Star and Cassady. While the former was completely spontaneous, no doubt inspired by the tempting array of percussion instruments Larry picked up after our break, the Cassady was chosen by intent as a structured song with a little bit of wiggle room for improvisation, but turned into much more than that, at least from my experience of it.

My pre-post treatise is below. Note that when I mention The Dead, this is a reference to the Grateful Dead, not the Post-Jerry collaboration of the surviving members. It also refers to Deadstein, when we “stop to decide where to go, we just ride”, when “the music plays the band”:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Alan Wikler
Date: Friday, March 4, 2011
Subject: [Band@Deadstein.com] Tuneage
To: Rich Brotman
Cc: Deadstein

These MP3s, particularly Cassady and Dark Star captures the essence of the Dead. It’s not about the words, melody or rhythm. It’s not about proficiency.
It is about ignorance and adventure.
Not knowing.
A thousand questions. Where is this going? Is it turning into a song? Are they going to go back into the song? Is it going to turn into a different song? Maybe it will just stop altogether. Or will it turn into a pretty melodic jam? Is this still music at this point or just noise? Do they know where they are going? Did they mean to do that?How did they find their way back to where they left off?
These are questions in the listener’s mind, on hearing a recording but more so when it is happening. But the kicker is that the band themselves don’t know! That is the shared journey with the audience that was unique to the Dead. You think they knew where they were going, but they didn’t. They intentionally turned off the GPS and took the coolest or strangest turns through the back roads as they saw them, and inevitably before you knew it, there they, and you, were, back on the Interstate.
Alan W.
Mar 07, 2011 @ 18:55:01

PS A really nice jam suddenly appears 9:45 min into Dark Star.