Jam – 07-19-2012 – Carroll’s | my Steal Your Space book

After the July 12, 2012 Deadstein marathon, this week was expected to be a letdown since we could never live up to the energy we had last week for the Dead/Dylan Giant’s Stadium tribute. There was no plan or a theme for the night which sometimes results in a bunch of nothing being played. For this week, nothing could be further from the truth as this isn’t Deadstein from 15 years ago, but this is a re-”Jew”-vinated band that can’t be held back.

With little traffic to deal with all of us, with the exception of Alan, were at the jam at least 30 minutes early. We decided to get going, get warmed up and get a few songs under our belts before the 8 o’clock hour. This got us a 2-song appetizer, Mississippi Halfstep and the Cats Down Under the Stars, and set the tone for the night, which was we were taking no prisoners.

When Alan got there we started into our six-man assault, starting with a pretty good Shakedown Street which I moved right into a C.C. Rider. This prevented us from taking a break and taking time to reflect on what just happened. This is a good technique to keep us moving forward in a positive fashion.

Eventually, a few of our guests showed up including Steve and Willow and for the second set, Ryan and Maggie showed up. It was toward the end of the night when they were there but we still had a little fire in our bellies and give it to them big. As Scott’s fire was dissipating a bit at that hour, he handed the sticks over to Ryan for a song toward the end of the night. We ended pretty strong considering all the distractions and once again, ran through the 12 o’clock finish-line past the end the night with power yet fully exhausted when we finally left. Leaving everything on the strings realizing there is a week to replenish what was depleted. It is the way you want to pace yourself.

One cool thing about this week’s write up and blog posting is that I am using the new Office 365 Home Premium Preview which was just made available to test drive for free at Microsoft.com. I am testing it out on my consumer preview of Windows 8 and all I can say is this isn’t your grand-daddy’s operating system and office suite. On October 26, 2012, all this stuff should be released for real and Microsoft should be moving us into their vision of the future, which has lots of new cool stuff in it. Stuff is now fast and agile, such as downloading, installing and using a new office suite which just takes minutes.

Back to Deadstein, which hasn’t quite been pushing forward at the break-neck speeds of technology, but we still move forward, react and adapt. The firsts et continued with some nice normal firsts et material, pounding away at playing the songs, and they were good. I think the Birdsong turned into the highlight of the first set as we took it to all different far-off Birdsong lands. That was an interesting jam. We finished the 1^st set just after 10 with a repeat of the Bucket we have done a few time recently. It still needs a lot of work. With lots of songs under our belts we were able to relax with a halftime break. Not rushing through it like we have been doing.

We opened the 2^nd set easily with an Aiko and headed to an Estimated to start our journey. We didn’t do a drums space this week, but the second set had the feel of a second set with a first half, a second half and one last song to end the night.

It was another full filling Deadstein jam night with lots of good music and fun that made leaving a bummer and making you want for more. With more to come, it looks like this week will be a non-core-4 jam with Rich and Alan out of town. Nevertheless, I’m sure it will be something short of spectacular so stay tuned and freak out.