Jam -2011-05-18 – Carroll’s

19 May 2011 5 Comments

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

It’s has been raining all week and the heavy rains were ending as I was driving into Deadastein on this Wednesday night. While New Jersey was wet, it was without traffic.  Manhattan was the opposite, it was dry and crowded.  It took me about 30 minutes to get from 42nd Street to Carroll’s on 55th.  Some of the worst traffic I have experienced on the West Side since playing at Carroll’s.  At least parking was close.

All these issues may have been a precursor for what was coming.  Scott left his water at home and he was worrying all night that he would need a jump-start because his starter was acting up.  Fortunately for Scott his car stared at the end of the night.  Unfortunately for me, on the way home I got through the Lincoln Tunnel and on the helix I hit a whopper of a pothole, it flattened my passenger tire instantly.  I rolled off the helix and found a street light to park the car under and changed the tire.  No big deal, it wasn’t raining too badly and I was off in 20 minutes.  Nevertheless, the jolt was major and got me home pretty late.

Back to the fun.  While I got there a little late we got going and had a very good long jam.  Some interesting  stuff and pretty good sounding.  Rich was getting over a cold, so he was a head-case but the rest of us seem to feel OK.  I’m mean Scott was hurting but that was normal.  He was more pissed that his iPad couldn’t connect to Carroll’s wifi, while mine worked fine.

We opened with a Dupress and it got us off in a good fashion, it shaped the evening ahead of us as being relaxed and capable. We sustained our energy nicely through the end of the night.

Speaking of which, it was weird that we finished the Throwing Stones at 11:56 at the end of the night and I launched us into an Other One, which I knew we didn’t have time for, and rocked it with a loud feedback fade out into We Bid You Goodnight. That was interesting for being after 12:00.

The second set opened nicely with a Wheel –> Here Comes Sunshine with a nice natural transition.  This transitioned  into Viola Lee where Alan moved us into a Cumberalnd between the 2nd and 3rd verse and we all followed.  Knowing we had a little Viola Lee to finish, I brought us back into the Viola Lee during the 2nd lead Cumberland and then brought us back into the Cumberland, where we left it, to finish out this song melange.  Pretty cool.

After that Scott Bayer, the only guest of the night, came in and paid his $10to play 4 songs with us on his bongo.  It was for this reason I decided to play 4 quick Beatles songs which were fun to do.  I like the harmonica on Love Me Do.  Can’t wait to hear the MP3s which are avaialable at the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/05-18-11/

Jam – 2011-05-12 – Carroll’s

13 May 2011 5 Comments

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

With Scott at the Warren Haynes show with my brother Jay at the Beacon, we were able to wrestle Coffee-Boy to come back and play a week with us.  He was feeling good as he had recently setup his kit in his house and has been playing a bit.  Not as much ferrous oxide on those sticks as the last time and it showed.

We had a few glitches to start the night.  While parking was good, when we got to the lobby of Carroll’s the elevator was shit out of order.  That means six long hard flights up to Carroll’s hauling my guitar crap all the way up.  After a couple of weeks of non-stop bike commuting, my thighs were burning hauling that crap up the stairs.  I guess I was doing better than Alan because I caught him resting somewhere around the 4th floor before getting psyched for the final climb to six.

When we got there things were good, after getting them to fix the one bad channel in the PA, it all seemed to work and sound good.  I thought were were playing pretty well all of us.  More relaxed than I would have expected, and tat was a good thing.  Hopefully Coffee-Boy gets his juices flowing from all the good stuff that happens.

We had Coffee select most of the songs for the night and I like the selection.  Fifteen songs seems weak in comparison to the previous several weeks where we used the setlists and achieved great numbers, so there is something to be said for that. I’ll be excited to hear this weak, hopefully our recording issue is resolved, I’ll know as soon as I click on one of the MP3s.

To hear the MP3s, take a stab at the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/05-12-11/

Jam – 2011-05-03 – Carroll’s

04 May 2011 8 Comments

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

Jerry 5-3-87

We seemed to get to Carroll’s early on this jam night as there was no traffic and no show at Terminal-5 so we got good spots and were set for a jam.  Being May 3 we decided to try another anniversary show, and this week’s tribute was to 1977 and the long Palladium show that happened 34 years ago.

We had an epic setlist to get through in 4 hours and we rushed through it a bit to achieve its completeness, but some how we finished the Uncle John’s Band encore as the clock turned 12.  It was quite an accomplishment for us.  It took a few songs to tune in the PA system but once we got it we sounded pretty good.

Scott was alert and consistent and it helped us stay steady and easy through out the night.  Lazy Lightning took a few leaps forward on this night.  Speaking of Lazy Lightning, this show we were playing was filled with many giant songs so it really was quite a big evening of music.  We moved Rich’s MP3 recorder to see if we could get  a sound out of it that wasn’t so over-loaded, so when the MP3s come out we shall see or hear.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/05-03-11/

In the end the MP3s sound good.

In the world, this is the week the U.S. hunted down and killed Osama Bin Laden, almost 10 years after  the 9-11 attacks.

Jam – 2011-04-27 – Carroll’s

30 Apr 2011 2 Comments

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

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the great 4-27-71 Fillmore East Dead show with the Beach Boys, we decided to try to replicate the Grateful Dead portion of the show.  It is a great long setlist and took a lot of persistence to get through, and through we got as we finished the show’s song list with room to spare, enabling us to play to additional song.  Unfortunately, Rich’s MP3 recorder was set  to high or the preamps we overwhlemed, but the MP3s came out filled with distortion.  To bad because we had some good moments.

As far as guests we had Marty Goodman playing keyboard, B3 sounds for the last two-thirds of the night.  His sounds we limited since his zip disk was on the fritz, I think Pigpen used a zip disk to get his sounds on the keys way back when, so you know it’s time for Marty to invest in a new storage medium.  Nevertheless, I jest and it was good to have Marty there that night, he has played with us at our two Short Hills gigs.

Though they are tough to listen to due to the overloaded distortion, the songs are available at the following locations.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/04-27-11/

Jam – 2011-04-21 – Carroll’s

26 Apr 2011 1 Comment

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

For the first week in several weeks we didn’t have a setlist to play when we arrived and picked one out of the air as we played. It was good to be back in Carroll’s with the five of us. That’s right we also had Scott Bayer with his beaded gourd and desire to have a 10-minute telephone consultation with Scott on the fine art of drumming. If that conversation ever took place, I would be interested in how it went. We also had Rob and Miriam show up and one of their friends also hung out for a while. He seemed interested in buying Carroll’s. Let’s hope that never happens because Carroll’s is where it is at.

There was a little hamper on our night as a crowd of like 200 girls played in the studio next door and we could play too loud and upset them. Then after we all thought they were gone and we were free to let our proverbial hair done, at 11:15 came another bus-load. How did they get them all in the elevator?

Anyway, I am posting this on the Tuesday night, the night before we have our next jam just to make sure I get this thing posted. You never want to get behind on this stuff because you find yourself never ahead again.

I had an agenda coming into the jam to play the Help-Slip Franklins that I had been practicing for a week anticipation for the 4/12 Binghampton show that never materialized the week before. I also wanted to try the Lazy Lightning again which we are getting closer to doing well. Both were fair at best, but there were moments in the night, I’ll have to see if I can get to the MP3s before the next jam.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/04-21-11/

Jam – 2011-04-14 – UltraSound

16 Apr 2011 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , ,

Deadstein got a jam in this week when it looked like we were going to have to miss a week.  Since Carnegie Hall had Carroll’s reserved for the week and unavailable for us we had to find another place to play.  Additionally, it was difficult coordinating our schedules to find a day that was good for everyone and as such, Alan fell victim this week and was the odd man out.  This week would be Core-4 at Ultrasound on 30th Street between 9-12, only three hours.  Everything as a bid different this week and we made the best of it.

Early plans for this week were to play on Tuesday the 12th.  This would have been the 28th anniversary of the 4-12-1983 Binghamton show, a great show and Kevin’s first and my fifth. Since we ended up switching the jam to Thursday, which was the 14 and the 29th anniversary of the 4-14-82 Glenns Falls show, it over-ruled the Binghamton show and we had to play the Glenn’s Falls show.  This was my second show and arguable a better show than Binghamton even though the Binghamton show has a bigger and better setlist.  This worked well for us since we were restricted to only 3 hours in the study, and 3 tight, strict hours, not a minute more.  In some respects this switch was too bad because I had practiced the Binghamton during the wek especially trying to get the Help on the Way and Slipknot down from a Jerry perspective.  I spent a lot of time approaching getting the Slipknot under my belt and didn’t spend anytime on Lazy Lightning from 4-14 which needed some attention.  Not to fret, the Help on the Way work will pay dividends in te future and the Lazy Lighning we did had some ggood moments and felt better than it could have.

Being in UltraSound sound a lot of different things for us.  It meant a 9:00 start time and no time to hang out before hand.  I met Scott and Rich at Mustang Harry’s on 7th for dinner at 7:30 but we still finished early and hung out in the street with the other musician trash waiting for our time to come.  When we finally checked into Ultrasound, we had to wait for the band occupying our Studio 11 to finish, they were nerdier than we were, and we were forced to wait in the stairwell for a few minutes.  That wasn’t the worst thing as it gave us time to unwind because once we got going it felt like we were on a harried pace in an attempt to finish the entire 4-14-82 show in the 3-hour time slot.  When came within 1 minutes but got cut-off in the end.

The Studio itself was pretty nice.  The PA was strong and clean.  My amp was a Marshall and had a nice clean channel with a nice reverb that came pretty close to the Fender Twin Reverb I typically use.  I thought Kevin’s amp sounded good and Rich was using an electronic keyboard playing organ and electric piano sounds.  These were all nice changes.  The room was intimate, sterile yet facilitated our jam nicely.  One good point is it cost one-half of what Carroll’s costs us.  I even found a spot right in front.

To hear what we did in distorted MP3 format, go to the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/04-14-11/

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