Jam – 2011-01-17 – Carroll’s

20 Jan 2011 2 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , ,

Another Monday night jam for Deadstein meant no traffic in or out of the city, but it did mean a long week to endure after an exhausting night of Deadstein.  The night  was made even more difficult by the beautiful, large-flake snowfall on the drive home.  I beat any issues with the snow on the ground by about an hour and therefore the snow was a nice groovy experience to enjoy on the way home; thinking about what just happened at Deadstein.

Trister was in for the first half of the jam this week so we got a good set in with him before he left leaving the Grateful Dead duties to the five of us.  It was fun with Trister and it was fun without him.  The key to it all is it is fun.

I had been playing and practicing a bit with my iTunes at home, focusing on primarily 1977 music, but it also steered me into playing the Here Comes Sunshine openers as well as the Easy Wind.  I had the mojo of the Here Comes Sunshine in my bones, but the Easy Wind I couldn’t catch on to.  The Passenger, Looks Like Rain and Scarlet were all fresh in me an I finally learned the Jerry parts of the Scarlet and this version felt pretty good.

To listen to any of the music from the night go to the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-17-11/

 

Jam – 2011-01-10 – Carroll’s

12 Jan 2011 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

This was a fun week of Deadstein as we played Monday night in an attempt to preempt the snow that was coming on Wednesday.  It turned out to be a good idea.  There was little traffic outside and parking was ample.  We did have a complaint about our feedback, not our fault, so we tried to go mellow for a while until those freak left the building.  We started with the Friend of the Devil and that seemed to take the legs out from under us.

The only guest we had for the night was Scott Bayer and Carol on the cell phone.  I think she was there to hear our little crazy tune Rich called Gindspace and Winklertronics which was the debut of my iPad and an app called Rebirth taking up some crazy, wacky drum duties.  Kevin said it sounded like Devo rhythms.  This driving drum beat follwed some loco space played by Alan.  Interesting stuff at times.

We played the out-of-space Dark Star drum-less  and gained our momentum once again going into the Uncle Johns.  It’s funny how you can use a Dark Star to get your bearings.  Who would figure such a cool juxtaposition in the cosmic realm of the Grateful Dead?  We had the few fun Beatles attempts once again.  This is really fresh in Scott’s psyche so it’s good to play these things.  I also recall the Black Peter being especially nice.  That’s why you go to every show and try every song.  If you want to check any of it out, see the links below.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-10-11/

Jam – 2011-01-05 – Carroll’s

08 Jan 2011 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

Setting us up for the jam at Carrroll's

First jam of the year had Larry Brent joining us for a reunion type of jam playing most of the Jerry leads, though I stepped in for a few. It’s fun to get back to playing Bob guitar every now and then, I feel so much more comfortable and confident with it than trying to hold things together playing Jerry leads.  I think for the most part we played really well as a band. Scott was in real pain playing drums, but that seemed to focus him into some real tight nice grooves. For instance, we were able to play the It’s All Over Now at a quick, consistent pace. We had a few nice surprises like that. Additionally, we sounded pretty good as a band playing and churning through lots of songs with confidence. Before Larry showed up we played a While My Guitar Gently Weeps as a quartet and then did the NFA –> Going Down the Road –> NFA to begin the Dead segment for the night. Too bad Rich didn’t capture this stuff because that first Beatles song was pretty good, at least from my perspective. I do recall Kevin having no concept of how to play and groove the NFA at the time, but he quickly brushed that cob-web off and had a pretty good night, all the way though the end of the night.

Speaking of the end of the night, Scott’s neck and back finally wore out by 11:45 so I stepped in to play the closing Box of Rain on drums which is always fun for me.  We can only pray for Scott that the pain in the neck goes away somehow, sometime soon.  As far as guest we had our long-time buddy Michael show up to listen to the end of the night and he came with his bud, Doug and some of his other entourage.  Fortunately, this week everything was under control and there was no collateral damage as far as we can tell.

To listen to some of the music from the jam go to the links below (thanks to Rich for taking care of the recordings):

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-05-11/

Jam – 2010-29-12 – Carroll’s

31 Dec 2010 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

This was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and there is a lot going on.  The Fab Faux are playing a 4 night stand at the City Winery and Alan went Monday, his first time seeing them, I went Tuesday and Scott was going this Wednesday; the night of the jam. We we lucky enough to be able to enlist the drumming skills and styles of Bayside Russ.  This was great to be able to get our final jam in for the year and it was a difficult one to pull off.  The region was hit by a blizzard that dumped 20-24″ of snow on the city and Manhattan was still reeling from the hit and the streets, parking spots and sidewalks were all covered with snow and slush to varying extents.  In addition, Terminal 5 was holding a show and this meant the area around Carroll’s was about as crowded as I have ever seen it.  One wrong turn trying to find a spot and you could be stuck in a 30 minute traffic jam.  I avoided it for the most part and so did Kevin.  Russ was so fortunate as it took him like and hour to circle around looking for a spot.

With all of this said, we got a very late start, after 9:09.  Speaking of which, I was still recovering from a cold I had over Christmas but that gave me the opportunity to chart out some new Beatle songs for us to plow through.  Some showed potential, actually, I think they all showed potential and are quick and easy.  We learned Rich and Alan used to play the One After None-O-Nine so they were well rehearsed in it.  Below are the first five songs we played of the night that were recorded for your listening, so called pleasure.  Set 2 had a corrupted file issue on Rich’s recorder so I list what I remember we played, but I am sure I left a few out.Carroll’s was virtually abandoned as we were the only ones playing this week.  They even unplugged the soda machine during this hiatus.  We had no guests in the room as it was just Alan, me, Kevin Rich and Russell to hold down the fort.  I thought we did an okay ob of it also as the music got better and better as the night moved on. I also have to thank Alan for risking his life checking the electrical shock potential using his screw driver detector for me.  I started the night with a shock from the mic on my nose, but Alan  resolved that and worked for me as a human guinea pig.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/12-29-10/

Let us not forget as we were mutilating Beatles songs uptown, Scott was capturing the Fab Faux playing them nicely downtown and below is a link to one of his great videos of the Fab Faux playing Rain.

[Youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDuwzS4pASg%5D

Jam – 2010-20-12 – Carroll’s

27 Dec 2010 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , ,

In order to get this last jam in before the Christmas holiday, Deadstein was forced to do the Monday jam.  It didn’t matter we were able to field the full bad including Jeff Blues who showed up after we started the first song or two.  I don’t thing we have a poster, photograph or anything to remember the night and I am writing this post exactly one week after the jam so there is not much memory of the jam to help me out.  Hopefully Rich got the recordings and we will be able to relive the moments through the music.  Or maybe a vague memory of it all leaves a better taste in your mouth and your mind than the sound of the  Sailor/Saint which we did butcher.  Now as I recall, we were doing a round robin all night with each person selecting a song to play, and the Sailor / Saints was Kevin’s selection.  Our guests for the night were Rob and Miriam as well as Scott Bayer.

It looks like with the Fab Faux in town at the City Winery and we will not be able to get everyone together for the final jam of the year.  Alan’s seeing them Monday, me on Tuesday and Scott on Wednesday.  Scott decided he would bow out for the week, enjoy the show, and we got Bayside Russ to fill in for Scott.  So it will be Russell and Deadstein closing out 2010 in some type of fashion, what type of fashion, you ask; that’s why you have to go to every show.

To hear the songs from this week go to:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/12-20-10/

Zappa Plays Zappa – 2010-12-17 – Beacon Theater, NY

17 Dec 2010 Leave a comment

by lgindoff in Concert Tags:

On this gridlock alert day I ventured into the city on Friday night to catch a Zappa Plays Zappa concert at the Beacon.  The traffic wasn’t too bad and I found a spot at 55th and 10th, right by Kevin’s favorite cheese-steak deli, parked the car and hoofed it up to the Beacon.  It was a exhilarating walk which prepped me for the exhilarating show ahead.

[Youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hRQw-DmzfY%5D

I was never a big Frank Zappa fan, but I did have several of his albums and was able to digest, appreciate and eventually come to like some of his music.  I was especially fond of Apostrophe and Joe’s Garage but also had Sheik Yerbouti and Live at the Roxy.  Additionally, I do recall being at a Bobby and the Midnights show in the 80s at the Capitol Theater in Passaic sitting right behind the soundboard.  During intermission they were playing music that had a sick lead in it and I turned around to look and saw it was a Zappa bootleg in the cassette player rolling.  I awoke me to his great guitar prowess.  As such, in the post Grateful Dead, MP3, Internet era I have listened and searched out quite a bit of Frank Zappa music in comparison to some other of my nostalgic music from my past.  Much of the Zappa music is still tough to absorb but I have been getting some of it.

[Youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R0Glt1efMU]

When my brother Jay provided me the opportunity to see Zappa Plays Zappa at the Beacon several months ago, I pounced on the opportunity.  Great googley-moogley!    They were doing Apostrophe.  We had nice seats in the right orchestra around 10 rows back and it was a pretty intimate feeling at the Beacon with the Band.  They opened with a jam highlighting the horns and then started right into doing Apostrophe.  It was really well done and the band was tight and great sounding.  It was very complex music and they plowed through it with confidence and grace.  Dweezil handled the guitar parts all with tremendous proficiency, coming out of his rig like it was built in his DNA.   A very talented shredding guitarist.  After the Apostrophe album they play for about another hour of assorted songs with a nice 30 minute encore.  A very interesting night of ultra-tight music  which is in great contrast to the type of music I am accustomed to in our jamband environment.  The show was really good but I’m not sure I would pounce again at the opportunity to see it when they roll around next year.  Nevertheless, it was an experience that was quite worthwhile.

[Youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKAW5OayKn4]

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