Jam – 2012-02-28 – Carroll’s | my Steal Your Space book

At Carroll’s, on a comfortable Tuesday night, we had the five of us around for a jam. We didn’t have a specific setlist for the night but an improved method for selecting songs. Previously we used the simple Select-o-matic technique to randomly generate a song to play. The simple Select-o-matic was nothing more than using the shuffle feature on my iPhone’s iPod app to select one song from a playlist of each Grateful Dead song. It worked but Alligator was as likely to come us as Bertha, and that wasn’t right. This week I created an improved Select-o-matic technique and I make it accessible to the world on the newly renovated http://Deadstein.com. Within the general songs page of Deadstein.com is now the Rand-O-Matic, which is a smart was to randomly select songs. It’s designed to squeeze into an iPhone screen but can be utilized from any browser.

We used the Rand-O-Matic to select the songs for the evening with veto rights for the band. The Rand-O-Matic showed one of its weaknesses right off the bat as it selected Aiko as our opener for the night which was the opener from the Feb 22, 2012 jam last week. I’ll probably never have a solution for this issue. Nevertheless, the Rand-O-Matic worked flawlessly for the rest of the night. It selected songs which for the most part were in line with what was appropriate for the parameters it was provided. It resulted in a pretty solid looking set list.

There is more improvement to be made to the algorithm, some easy, some more challenging. There is improvement still to be made to the interface, but so far, the Rand-O-Matic looks like a positive addition to the Deadstein experience.

The week’s guests included Ryan of Meg Ryan. He plays drums, which is something I didn’t know until he was there behind Scott’s kit playing drums on the Hurts Me Too and the Looks Like Rain. He brought a couple of his friends, Lindsey and Stevie, a boy/girl combo that wasn’t from Fleetwood Mac, but what are the odds?

Alan, still on the mend over a variety of issues, didn’t stick around for the ever deteriorating second sets of Deadstein. I took the deteriorating opportunity to get the Core-4 of us the flail our way through the Overture to Tommy, which is now included in the packets in the new book. This was our first try playing it, and it showed more promise than I expected on the first try. After that Whosie-what-nonsense, we Randomized our way into a Garband set. While the Rand-O-Matic selected Let It Rock to start, Rich exerted veto power and played Money Honey in lieu. I was surprised that Rich didn’t want to play a Let It Rock, but it propelled us forward. The Rand-O-Matic selected the rest and got us that extra burst of energy that comes from inevitability.

To hear some of the freakin’ random nonsense, listen tot he MP3s below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/02-28-12/