Scott | my Steal Your Space book

Jam – 2010-02-04 – Carroll’s

05 Feb 2010 2 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Al D, Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

Thursday night at Carroll’s and we had to start at 9:00 because Carroll’s was booked with several acts that were filling the studio with lots of people. When we got there we faced a bunch of dressed up Fiddler on the Roof / Charles Dickens / Amish child actors who all seemed overly happy. If you ask me, I think they were Scientologists. In any case, they had enough pull to bump Deadstein to a 9:00 start. At the beginning of the night Scott was wondering if that meant we could play till 1:00 am. I’m sure we could have played till 1:00 if we wanted, but come 11:30, Scott was dead on his feet, all sorts of puns intended.

Hey, if Scott was dead on his feet at 11:30, I was Dead on my feet at 9:00, battling a cold that was just past its peak. January was a rough month for me. At least my foot felt good. Yeah, I came in with a bad cold, kept to myself all night, trying not to contaminate others, and the entire evening was foggier than usual. Usually it is foggy the day after, but I was in a fog during the whole night. Focusing and reading the book was nearly impossible and my brain was all over the place leading my fingers down paths with no escape. It was tough to play but I was trying to take it in stride, not letting it bother me too much and in the end I had a good time. Singing on the other hand was tough. The dry air mixed with the fluid in my lungs lead to many a choking moment. My sides are hurting this morning from so much hacking.

Al D. joined us as our guest for the night but he had to scoot out by 11:00 or so to catch a serious 11:30 massage; the tough life of Al D. Good to see him. The other Alan, Al W., was sporting his Strat, wammy and all. Rich was totally decked out for the night sporting an upright piano, instead of the traditional grand, and he also got a Korg B3 simulating keyboard, with drawbars and all. It was a nice soothing sound through the night. Scott had the nice maroon kit on the maroon Oriental rug and Kevin is still wearing ear plugs and a beard but the facial asymmetry is virtually gone.

For all the sounds we had going in the room, it seemed that we were all open to letting it happen without overpowering it and we had a surprisingly good mix throughout the night. I was able to hear both keys and the vocals out of the monitor to my left and sonically I was pretty comfortable throughout the night, considering my physical condition.

We meandered into a Dancing in the Streets as our first song and Scott sang us through the whole thing. It was a nice way to get our feet wet and warmed up. Somewhere in the middle we pulled out the If I Had the World to Give sheet that I updated earlier. It was an OK first effort at that write-up from a song structure perspective. I was fairly happy with it. Unfortunately, the spaghetti in my head at the time was a tremendous hindrance on my ability to lead us through it precisely. Nevertheless, I’m happy with what happened. Forever Young was the knockout blow at 11:40 that made the Scarlet that closed the night a song that was also dead on its feet, pun fully intended.

If you want to hear what we played, it’s available at the following:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/02-04-10/

Looking forward to some clear crisp night to close out the winter.

Jam – 2010-01-27 – Carroll’s

30 Jan 2010 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Jason, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

Elevator Music

This week we were fortunate enough to be able to organize a jam where we had Jason and Alan joining us for a full and fulfilling evening of Deadstein. Three guitars is often a recipe for disaster but it didn’t rear its ugly head on this night. We jammed well, found our space and made some great music.

I set Jason up with a guitar rig, pretty much my rig I’ve been playing over the past few weeks, with the ’79 hard-tail Strat and the new fangled Boss OD-20 distortion pedal. The good new is my set up sounded great, out of the fingers of Jason, so I know any excuses I can think of into the future are based on my own abilities and techniques, or lack thereof, as opposed to the equipment. I know I have a good sounding setup because Jason sounded great throughout the night. Starting with the first song, Jack Straw, it was apparent we were going to have a good night of music.

With Alan playing Bob and Jason playing Jerry I decided to break out the old ’96 Roland Ready Strat and the GR-33 midi box. I haven’t played this thing in probably 3 years so I broke it out at home 30 minutes before leaving for the jam to make sure it still worked, the cord can be temperamental, and it sounded good and off I went with it. When I got to Carroll’s I obtained a Roland Cube keyboard amp and I was set; guitar directed to the Fender Twin and midi sounds directed to the Roland Cube. From the first moment on it felt good and how to use the whole thing came back to me and I was happy with it for a night. It was able to fill in lots of nice sounding B3-esqu sounds that Deadstein lacks. It made for an enjoyable escapade through the world of pre-rendered sounds and the disciplined playing that the midi-guitar requires. It was fun for a night but over time playing like this and the tones played by the setup get monotonous. I have to say though, it was fun at times playing the sounds of the “Keyboardist-du-Formage.” I do look forward to getting back on the Jerry band-wagon and rocking out in a way that doesn’t wreak of a “Music-Quesadilla.”

We played 23 songs which is really quite and achievement and most of them were meaningful and engaging. It made for a night that didn’t drain on you too much but also a following day that was a chore to survive. Speaking of which, I unfortunately came home and my main desktop computer died, once again and I’m tired of reviving it so it’s time for me to rebuild my studio computer. I’m saying this cause I’m now stuck with laptop computers to do my work which isn’t fun, especially when it comes to dealing with images and photos. The research is probably gonna take me a week or two to figure out what to do, so don’t expect much graphically in the near future. That doesn’t mean I can’t get you an occasional terrible video that was recording and streamed up to our Ustream repository. We got as few moments from the other night so don’t forget to check that out at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/deadstein

In addition, the hear the MP3s Rich recorded from the night go to:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-27-10/

Plenty more to say and write about, but I don’t like the experience on this netbook but it still gets the job done. Speaking of which, today was the day Steve Jobs announced the new iPad which will come out in 2 months. Yeah, $500 entrance fee but the ability to have a Deadstein app to keep the books synchronized and and ever expanding is a physically shrinking footprint is exciting. Our requirement won’t be great of a iPad wanna be that reads PDFs well may be our $179 answer. Just expect to cleanup the wreckage as they tumble from the music stands.

Speaking of the book, remember the current versions of the book are available on the new Songs page on the blog at:

https://deadstein.wordpress.com/songs/

It’s available from the top banner of the blog. Till we get together again, Freak Out!

Jam – 2010-01-18 – Carroll’s

20 Jan 2010 4 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

Monday night jam and we continue forging into the new year with reckless abandon. While me and my right leg were feeling pretty good heading into the evening, after standing and jamming for four hours, I left as a wimp, a gimp with a limp. By the way, as an aside, GIMP is a free open-source software that is an excellent Photoshop replacement. I have been using it in part for the past 2 months and is a worthwhile download for those that do image editing and don’t have modern software to modify the images. Check it out at: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/. Back to the story, so I was hurting by the end of the night but feeling good about the jam. I felt we had good sounds and I personally felt tonally competent and dexterous for the first half of the night. We all lost a bit of energy by the end to the point that it was difficult to keep some stuff together.

The only guest we had this evening was Scott Bayer who wacked some bongos and that was it. While I didn’t ask him to video record any jam for posting to UStream (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/deadstein), I did record a few seconds of the room as well as a few moments of self-recollection on my way home. Nothing really worth watching, but a bit of historical reference nevertheless. So I was playing lead and Alan was playing rhythm this week. He was sporting a Strat, which we hadn’t seen from him. Kev was still drooping but with some hopeful movements to the north.

I’m writing this on Wednesday night as the jam was Monday so some of it is fuzzy. Some firsts we did included a successful rendition of a 1974 Eyes of the World into the China Doll. I charted out that jam after Alan taught it to me the previous week and we pulled it off and it was good. I did a little practice on the Helter Skelter earlier in the day, I was off for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, and gave it a go during the jam. It is in the new Deadstein Fakebook, supplement, so we all had the music to it, so it wasn’t too bad. Could be a lot better but a good effort. Based on Scott’s request we tried the Savoy Truffle which came off being fun, but I’m sure we messed up the timing on that.

We went to the Spin-o-rama toward the end of the night and it called up a That’s it for the Other One which I think we did well. We played the Cryptical last week and it was late, so that lacked a little something, the the That It For the Other One part was pretty solid. I got us to do the Comfortably Numb toward the end of the night. It had potential but I tripped on my guitar cord while going to hit an effects switch right at the start of the lead and killed my already painful leg. The lead barely survived and I was ;imping in pain for the rest of the night. I’m a tragedy waiting to happen. Teach me to elevate my effects board so I didn’t have t bend. Oh well. There is always next week.

To hear the 20 songs we played go to the following:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-18-10/

Jam – 2010-01-12 – Carroll’s

13 Jan 2010 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

Well, it was the second jam of the year and for the most part we were in better shape this week than the previous week, so that was a positive trend. It was just us 5 with Alan on Bob and me on Jerry. The only guest we had was Scott Bayer who showed up for 3 or four songs toward the end of the evening, playing Bongos to the music when he could. For one song I asked him to use my iPhone to video us playing a Come Together. While the music was ok and the recording of the song was marginal, using the iPhone’s camera, it did mark a significant milestone in Deadstein history. For through the iPhone and a streaming service called Ustream were we able to record and broadcast the Deadstein jam live, as it happened. This means that we can alert friends of when we are about to start broadcasting so they can tune in and join I the fun.

Look for the streams at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/deadstein

or follow Deadstein on Twitter.

We kind of had this ability in the Pseudo days, but the Internet was much less mature and everything was much more complicated. With this we just point the iPhone and it captures what is happening is terrible sight and sound. Nevertheless, it does capture us. Tell your friends to follow Deadstein on Twitter to find out when a jam is being broadcast. An additional benefit of the live broadcast is that it provides a means to record and store these recordings on the USteam.tv network, all quickly and in real time. This way it is done once we hit stop. I don’t have to take video home download, convert and upload. What a wild world 2010 is! One final benefit is that I can also make recordings outside of the jam so look for my commentary spoken in the car after the jam to get the real deal with respect to how I felt about a specific jam.

All this new technology doesn’t do squat for making us better as we still play through 1965 reissue Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers. We opened with a Scott suggestion of the I’ll Take a Melody which I thought was pretty good. Other Garbands that we managed to sneak by during the night included a Love in the Afternoon and I Shall Be Released. We also did a couple of new songs for Deadstein out of the Fakebook including The Weight, which we all sang verses on, including Alan following the text exactly as it refers to “Scraps” my dog as opposed to “Jack” my dog. It was good to hear him sing that line. We also did a bassless Wild Horses with Scott singing during one of Kevin’s many breaks.

We played a China Cat where Alan played the Jerry China Cat riff with me doing the Bob riff while I did the Jerry parts for the rest of it. We had a substantial singular Playing in the Band and we delivered on a Truckin’ à Morning Dew where the Truckin’ was selected by the iPhone spin-o-rama. That iPhone is an amazing little gadget as I used it throughout the night to find answers to the several factual questions we discussed, such as who invented chewing gum.

Dark Hollow and Ripple were amongst the semi-acoustic styled songs that we did for the night. Ballad of a Thin Man was a first for Alan. The spin-o-rama called for a Queen Jane following the Thin Man but we rejected it based on the fact we just completed another long Dylan song. The weight came as a result of the spin-o-rama also. We didn’t use it too much, but it did come in handy.

Some of the classic Rich songs we performed were the You Win Again and Mister Charlie. Neither of which I was too comfortable during, but they weren’t bad either. I felt much more at ease this week than last and was feeling much better also. Kevin was still sporting a face that should be the cover of a Peter Gabriel solo album as well as ear plugs. His aural isolation gave us the opportunity to play softer than usual at some points, but me and my distortion rig broke through that sound barrier when I had the confidence to do so. This happened for the most part during the Morning Dew lead and maybe the Deal which closed out the night.

Plenty of good moments this week, lots of “pos” to enjoy and a feeling as if there are still many good times to come. That is why you need to make a commitment to show up to every jam. If now there, follow us on Twitter and UStream.tv, the Deadstein channel to get a glimpse of what is going on. Until we meet again, same freak time, same freak channel.

To hear what we did this week go to:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-12-10/

We saw silloettes of Jerry in here.

Jam – 2010-01-07 – Carroll’s

09 Jan 2010 4 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

What goes up must come down.

First jam of the new year, the new decade and it had an ominous beginning. A few weeks ago we reported on a new book and for 2010 Kevin is sporting a new look. A bout with bell’s paulsey gave him an asymetric countenance that didn’t bother him as as much as it bothered us. In any case, like a trooper he was there to jam come hell or high water. The funny thing about the picture is that his bad side looks better than his good side.

Me on the other hand was bouting an onslaught of gout and my right ankle was swollen and asking for mercy which I wasn’t really giving it. Hobbling in on crutches from a block away, Levon Helm was at Terminal 5 next door, didn’t help the matter any bit. I was distracted with fallout from it all night, finding it difficult to loosen it’s grip on me. It took the Dark Star jam to do that. Unfortunately, I stood for that whole thing and I was jelly for the rest of the night. Well worth the agony as it’s Saturday as I write this posting and I am almost able to walk again and should be fine for the next jam, which I eagerly look forward to.

Alan was playing Bobby this week once again, stepping up through the decade’s gate, and also percerveering after fighting his own illness to get to the Deadstein jam which was beckoning. Fortunately Scott had excess energy and excitement to get the jam after missing several while relaxing in beautiful Hawaii. Rich also seemed fine, as did Scott Bayer, our only guest. So three up and three down I guess that averages it all out. The bongo playing by Scott was exceptional this week.

So you see the song list below and 17 songs or so is pretty good considering the circumstances. I recall the first 5 being a disaster for me personally, I was having significant stomach issues which I don’t want to get into to goory details, so I dread listening to them but I did give the middle of the set a listen and while there were some lost opportunities, minor details in the overall scope of it all, I have to be happy with what I heard. I look forward to playing when we are healthy. As long as we all recover, which will happen, the opportunities will blossum, the details will take care of themselves and this decade will open up a new beginning. So I say and hope.

The songs are down below, give them a listen, if you must.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-07-10/

One final thing, I really suggest the Adam Carolla podcast and all his other endevours, which are many and entertaining, for anyone interested in a good time. Check it out and Get It On! Subscribe in iTunes or give a listen at your desk. Funny Stuff!!!! I can’t recommend it enough. Mahalo.

Jam – 2009-12-03 – Carroll’s

03 Dec 2009 4 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, Wikler

A night of pranks and perception. I mean I played the Tangled Up in Blue 2 frets off in G accidentally and when I corrected it I went to far, all the way up to B. I did this on purpose by Kev followed like a lemming. After that little joke we pulled of the good Tangled Up and the good jam.

Once again this week we played with Alan Wikler on Bob and me on Jerry, from a guitar perspective. Carroll’s was nice to provide a Fender Super this week which I took advantage of. It sounded really good. I played my Epiphone Les Paul and brought in my ART SGX 2000 effects unit. For the most part I was pleased with my tone as I get more used to the Les Paul.

I almost forgot to mention. This night represented the release of the newest song book, V7. This is always a momentous moment that has long term implications. Scott and Alan now once again have books and all of us have consistent and updated versions to play from. Sleek and efficient the Jerry Garcia Song Book is.

While the books was distributed this night, it really didn’t have too many positive impacts except for the fact the Alan and Scott now had their own books to use. On the negative side, it takes some getting used to from the perspective of reading the charts. While they may look the same, every now and then there is an update which is just a little different, better, yet different. On a few occasions I think I sensed Kevin getting confused with the book because he may have used it in lieu of his traditional notebook. In any case it will be a benefit into the future.

Trying to think of some of the things I remember about the night which include a spacey Birdsong that I followed Alan’s lead into the Dark Star, eventually taking it back out to the Birdsong. I once again borrowed Alan’s MXR envelope filter so with that I enjoyed some Althea, Ramble on Rose and Feel Like a Stranger action. We used the spin-o-matic to find a Race is On which we would have otherwise not done. Alan had a list of songs he wanted to try and we got to most of them. They included the Tangled Up, Getaway and a few others. He also sang the Looks Like Rain of the night giving me the opportunity to lay a pasta line of noodles on top of the song. We ended with the Terrapin and we were out a few minutes early into the warm December evening. Warm enough that I was still wearing shorts.