Jam – 2012-03-28 – Carroll’s

31 Mar 2012 2 Comments

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

Deadstein jammed on Wednesday, March 28, 2012. Our intent of the evening was to replicate the set list played by the Grateful Dead 31 years to-the-day ago inGermany.  March 28, 1981 is a pretty famous show in Dead lore in that it is the night Pete Townsend joined Jerry and the boys for jamming after drums.  Not that he did too much musically, but you can tell he had quite an impact on the night.  Having the video coverage of the entire show posted on YouTube for years has made this show pretty familiar to many people.  For these reasons we decided to tackle this show for the night and we called it “Essen of Gruga Dead.”

It is a long, meaty setlist from 1981 and early on, there was some feel as if we would not be able to complete the show.  What helped us get going was the opening power trio of Getaway, Greatest Story into Sugaree.  This put three healthy songs behind us early on and signified that we were serious in doing this show.  There were several excuses we could have made for not doing the entire setlist.  We did a few of these songs last week, including the Alabama Getaway opener and a post drums Not Fade Away.  The setlist had many songs in it that I would sing in a row, including Jerry songs, like Getaway and Althea that would leave large gaps in the set where you wouldn’t hear Rich sing.  Nevertheless, we persevered and stuck to the plan and felt the ghosts of 3-28-81 in our presence.  This all pulled together for a serious night of playing lots of music.  I find the pre-defined setlist a great energizer for all of us and we all landed on our feet.

As far as people, this was our third week in a row where Lee Staggered into the percussive hot seat and provided Deadstein with our now normal 2-drummer backline.  I am really enjoying this new ear with the possibilities it provides. It has to be mentioned that he really enjoys the maple drum kit.

The rest of the normal Deadstein-5 joined with Lee to form the ensemble.  Guests included the two pairs of Stevie and Lindsey and Meg Ryan.  We almost had a full house as Scott Bayer eventually made his way in there with a few other people.  It was getting crispy and freaky in the room as we got into our second set.

It turned out to be a nice night of music.  The mix of the band is pretty good and the tape sounds good.  I like the stereo separation between drum kits and guitars.  Piano and vocals could of course be more pronounced and it was tough to get the full piano mix especially since they did not have the PZM to use to mic the piano.  If you want to hear what we did, go to the MP3s below.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/03-28-12/

Sunset from my car window on the Westside Highway going into Deadstein. Taken with iPhone4s

Jam – 2012-03-21 – Carroll’s

22 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

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

Another crazy night of Deadstein is what we encountered on this March 21, 2012.  For the second week in a row, Stagger Lee joined us and Scott to give us a two-man rhythm section.  This redundancy proved to be quite fortuitous later on in the evening.  For the first set we also had Andy Trister playing lead guitar which always bring the level of music up a notch or two.  A lucky man, he walked away with the final available version of the Jerry Garcia Song Book, version 8, with the bonus supplement.

In addition Lee and Andy, we had Howie Weiner in the studio to hangout. Howie and I were discussing 1987 Grateful Dead which he is planning on making the theme of his next book.  There are so many great memories from that time period.  Stevie and Lindsey, who made it through almost the entire jam with us, are becoming regulars to our scene much like Steve and Edie on the Andy Williams show.  Finally, we had the headache man himself in the room, Scott Bayer with his bongos.  While annoying, by the time he was playing them later in the evening, I didn’t care.

The music was marginal I think for the first set and for some part, I am going to blame it on the Rand-O-Matic.  While it concurred with Andy’s request to open with a Getatway, the selection of a Bucket as the second songs sent us down a pathway of difficult massive mushiness which became difficult to wade through.  Nevertheless, we made not even close to the best of it, and marched on.  A song like a Bucket is a great challenge, especially early on and right out of a Getaway. It requires precision, which Deadstein possesses like Trister’s nearly 50-year old eyes.  If nothing else, there probably were not too many other people sloshing their way through a Hell in a Bucket on March 21, 2012 like we were. In that, you have to derive some comfort.

We had some sound issues through the night.  The PA never had the bang it needed and hearing vocals and Rich’s piano was difficult.  Kevin’s bass, guitar amp split combo was failing him on the guitar amp portion as that was buzzing and distorting throughout the entire night.  All the guitars and drums seemed normal though.

The Bucket’s jammed droned on in thick boring mode that was carried on in several songs in the first set.  We eventually played and Victim or the Crime into a Hard to Handle that had the same characteristics and even the Here Come Sunshine had the same feel.  This is why I blame the Rand-O-Matic a bit, but now that I think of it; the Rand-O-Matic only selected the Bucket. I was the buffoon that selected the Victim, Hard to Handle.  Someone else called for the Here Comes Sunshine.

As negative as I may seem, I bet the tape proves me wrong, because the music came forth for the most part and it was valid.  I guess that’s the best I can come up with, “valid,” which isn’t too good.  But as I said before, who else pulled a Victim –>Hard to Handle out of their asses on this night? No one!

We took the long obligatory set break chatted, had fun.  We lost Howie, Trister and Scott and gained Scott Bayer.  Who made this trade the Mets?  The second set we were going into with Lee solo on drums.  I let him call the songs and that certainly helps a lot and we had a good second set.  Brothers and Sisters we are pretty familiar with and the Halfstep is a challenge at that late hour but we did it justice.  Lee called for the Eyes at 11:20 and here’s where his youthful energy, though he is technically 1 year older than Scott, invigorated us through a long song like Eyes and the inevitable loss of momentum never really materialized.  The redundancy of the dual drummer has some great benefits for Deadstein and I look forward to it developing.  When I think of Lee drumming, I think of him playing clay bongos on a Not Fade Away. I went into the Not Fade from Eyes to close the night.  It turned out to be a big, fun, crazy wacky, topsie, turvie night of Deadstein.  I can’t wait to do it again.

For next week’s jam, I think I am going to get a set list prepared and send it out to everyone so anyone who cares to can prepare for the night’s music.   I think this will help.  It will at least help me.  Freak out people and get prepared for next week.

To hear what we did, go to the following links:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/03-21-12/

Jam – 2012-03-12 – Carroll’s

16 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

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

It was Monday night, but not like too many Monday nights we have had before.  It was a Monday drum-a-thon.  Let’s start with Howie Weiner’s Book, Tangled Up in Tunes.  I had just finished the book, was posting my reviews about it; and as I was in and out of Facebook one day, I saw Stagger Lee Ganbarg available via instant chat.  There was a quick “how do you do?” and I told him a about the book.  After that little chat about Howie’s book I asked him, if wanted to play and next thing I know, after 9 year of not seeing him, there he was behind drumkit #2 in Caroll’s Studio 2.

Speaking of books, Bill Sloan just the previous day asked me about my new Jerry Garcia Song Book, Version 8 and I squeaked out a few links to the book, just prior to leaving for the jam.  At the end of the message I told him we were playing at 8 o’clock and invited him to show up.  He said he probably would.

Other guests for the night include Stevie and Lindsey and Ryan of Meg Ryan, but meg wasn’t there.  Ryan played drums on a couple of songs with Scott.  Bill jammed a couple of songs with Lee.  For the most part Bill played some nice bongo, percussion, etc, which he put an SM-58 on and it sounded really good.  The combo of Lee, Scott and Bill was a great back drop to the rest of us.  I really liked the sound and the vibe in the room.

For the rest of the jam, Kevin played his old Ibanez bass with flat-wounds.  He didn’t use it for the whole night.  I was with my Strat, Alan was with his blue-light special and Rich was tinkling behind all that wood.  It was a special night of jamming and look forward to making it happen again in the near future.

When Rich gets back into town we will hopefully get to listen to the songs and see the set list.  Until then, this video of the Let it Grow, shot by Scott while Lee and Bill played drums will have to suffice.

I got the MP3s, and they are available at the following location. 21 Beefy songs is a full plate for an evening.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/03-12-12/

Jam – 2012-03-05 – Carroll’s

12 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

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


Another Monday night jam that I almost didn’t get the posting in for.  I hardly did as I am writing it 10 minutes before I leave to go to the 3/12/2012 jam with Lee Ganbarg.  The jam of Monday March 5 had no guests and was just the 5 of us playing a good set list.  The Rand-O-Matic served us well and delivered us a solid night of music to play increasing the odds of success.  I don’t have much more to say because I have to go out and play, so freak out and listen to the MP3s below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/03-05-12/

Jam – 2012-02-28 – Carroll’s

04 Mar 2012 2 Comments

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

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/

Jam-2012-02-22 – Carroll’s

23 Feb 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Deadstein Forums, Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

It was another very interesting night of Deadstein. There were several cool features of the night that made it one of the more memorable evenings of Deadstein. We had the whole band back together for the first time in a while. Then we also had the use of the new Jerry Garcia Song Book, version 8, for the first time as a normal part of the evening.

Lastly, I have to mention the presence of Howie Weiner. Howie is the person who wrote the new book Tangled Up In Tunes, which I just read and recommend highly to everyone, but in addition, he’s an old friend that I went to several Dead shows with. I know Howie because he was Doug Schmell’s friend growing up in his high school days while turning into a Jerry-head as explained in the book. I haven’t seen Howie probably since 1985 or so and due to the Facebook and the publicity associate with his book, we got to talking. He lives in the city what do you know? Ying-Yoink, next thing I know is Howie is at a Deadstein jam.

Alan came in with the notion of doing the Swing Auditorium Grateful Dead show from February 26, 1977 and it was funny how he suggested it and Howie kenw the Swing from the feb. 26 date. Nevertheless the jam’s date was actually February 22 and the Swing Auditorium show was February 26 and therefore, I had no real connection to doing that set list. This was probably to be disappointment of Alan and the detriment of the evening. Coming off of the jam that we just followed a set list, the February 17 show from last week, I wasn’t too anxious to do another set list for some reason. For the most part for the first set we let Howie pick the songs and he lead us through a typical normal sounding Grateful Dead set list that was cool, as if I was going selecting the songs myself, pretty funny I thought.

For the first set, we played well, we played hard, and we played with purpose getting us some good music. I thought our Cumberland Blues was one of our better efforts for that song.
Howie stayed for the first set and left after the Playing –> Let It Grow –> Playing, which ended the first set. It was great to see Howie and I’m sure we will see him soon.

We took a half time break at that point. It was a pretty long one which obviously was a mistake. It led to a second set that was played with a lot less zeal then the first. Scott was zoning and was in no mood to do anything too long and spacey which at that point would definitely knock him off his throne. Therefore we found our way into doing many a Beatles song. Scott requested the Abbey Road medley and somehow we did it. I mean we had a stumble or two but nothing that a nice Rich Brotman cut and paste couldn’t resolve. It was a good, fun effort on our part.

Besides the new book, which is exciting and you hear me blogging about it quite a bit at this point, I also was very excited to unveil the new Deadstein.com website to everyone at the jam. Deadstein.com has been down for probably two or three years now ever since I kind of crashed the server. I finally got it resolved not too long ago and over the weekend made the effort to get the website back up and running. In essence I resurrected it from its death and I’m looking forward to having a little fun with it at this point. I’m sure Kevin’s going to be liking it. I’m probably going to post its own blog post related to the resurgence of Deadstein.com so look for that somewhere later on but it’s a nice portal through all or Deadstein social networks for whatever that means to anyone, which probably isn’t much, but it’s gonna be fun anyway to look back on the past into using Deadsteam.com as a conduit back to the past as well to helping us play during our jams.

In closing on this jam, I have to mention the other guest, Scott Bayer with his bongos. He was about to start playing on doing the Abbey Road medley and I definitely had to call him on it and tell him to not play during it. The Don’t Let Me Down that we tried was pretty disastrous, amazing like that song has to be so difficult and much of the second set was not our best effort. As so often is the case.

You’ll be able to listen to the songs on MP3 once Rich posts them, so look forward to that. I’ll get them up there as soon as I can. Please take a look at the new website and start interacting on one of the multitude of social networks that I am giving us all access to. I especially have some hope with respect to using Google+ with its hangout features where we can actually potentially go over songs vis-à-vis video conference call and get some practice done at home what he think about guys?

Well, until next week, Freak out!

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/02-22-12/

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