The Jam Session Last Night

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Beatles, fiddles, folk, Guitars, jam session, jazz, mandolin

Here’s a nod to the Rhythm portion of the title and of one of the things that makes me tick.

Went to a jam session a bit north of here last night – about an hour away but worth the time and distance for the opportunity to share music with some really nice people and wonderful musicians.

The instrument breakdown was about as follows – 6 guitars, 7 fiddles, 1 harmonica, 1 washboard and a mandolin.  That’s a guess as people were showing up late, leaving after a song or two or staying to the very end.

There were good versions of songs I didn’t recognize and and bad versions of songs that I didn’t want to recognize. The songs we played were pretty eclectic and in no particular order were among others:

” You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, Ashokan Farewell, What’s Goin’ On?, Memphis, Route 66, Centerfield, 16 Tons, Sarah Smile and Our Day Will Come.”  That’s about all that I can recall.  We played and sang for three hours straight.

Everyone gets a chance to pick a tune and we go around the circle taking leads on instrumental breaks when the time comes.  It’s the way to get better – taking chances when you can and playing with better players when you can too.  It’s playing with out a net but among friends and ” If you play it wrong, play it strong.”

Dylan to Motown to them jazzy chords and fiddle tunes and a couple of stops in between.

My musical genre has finally dawned on me after all these years of playing – I’m a Big Band Beatles Jazz Folkie.  More on that later I suppose.

Below is not from last night but a reasonable facsimile of the gig.  If you’re really interested it’s a 1963 Guild F-30.  The guitar, not me.  I’m the third owner.  Her name is Louise.  She’s not half bad.

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Six Guitars

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Beach Boys, Beatles, Django, Duke Ellington, Grapelli, Guitars, jazz

I own six guitars.  Six of the best friends I have.

John Denver was my inspiration for buying the first guitar.  John and a woman named Kate who sang and played a red Gibson Hummingbird.

I met Kate at a party where she played and sang.  It was obvious to me how important music was to her. She was a sweetie.  I already owned the album ” Poems, prayers and Promises” by John Denver.  I bought  a Yamaha 12 string guitar and the sheet music to ” Take me Home, Country Roads.”  I played the song over and over again and learned to play by putting my fingers on the frets where the dots on the music said that I should.  That was in 1972.  Here we are some 44 years later and I still play that song.

I can’t not pick up my guitar and smile.  Pardon the convoluted negatives.  My guitar takes me to place that’s mine alone. It has good days and bad days completely independent of my mood.  Sometimes even a good guitar mood can’t get me out of a funk but that’s pretty rare.

The more relaxed I am the better I play.  Steve Goodman wrote in song lyrics that ” The words always sound so much sweeter when you smile.”  It’s that way with playing too.  if I’m smiling on the inside and the outside the guitar responds and the music is the beneficiary.

Since my folkie days I’ve drifted through rock and roll and jazz.  When someone asks me about my musical preferences i always say that I like to be at the corner where Duke Ellington intersects with Bob Wills and Django and the brothers Gershwin and Allman along with Stephane Grappelli, Kenny Rankin, The Beatles and The Beach Boys and Benny Goodman and Steve Goodman along with his buddy John Prine.

You know the old joke?

How many guitars does a guitar player need?

Just one more.

The Really Big Shoe

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Beatles, Blow up your tv

I don’t know what I was expecting last night when The Beatles were saluted by the Grammys.  I think I was looking forward to an introspective, quiet and intelligent program.  That’s not what I got.

It was an exercise in seeing how many graphics, swooping camera shots and cuts we could possibly jam into every possible second of the show.  I’m watching to see Paul play, not people I don’t even know they are in the audience clap and dance and mouth the words.  The band is onstage.  We’re not here to see the lights or the pretty pictures or even listen to the out of work actors introduce yet another – ” Who are you?” playing a Beatles tune.

I thought the Letterman segments were well done and I would have liked to have seen more of that.  I work in a world of flash and trash, enough please.  Paul made a good point which I had never realized before when he said that John with any other guys or George or any of us with other players would have been a terrific band.  He modestly and honestly said – ” We were a good little band.”

I enjoyed the segments with the fans  and Sullivan’s production crew.  The music stands on it’s own and doesn’t need all those bells and whistles to work.  It worked 50 years ago.  It still works now.

Blow up your tv.

 

Fifty Years

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Beatles, fifty years

I can’t quite wrap my head around the passage of time.  I’m looking for a deeper meaning.  Fifty years have passed since that Sunday night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.  I don’t know how fifty years feels, looks or what it means.

I was 13 years old in 1964.  What is the substance of all those years?  I can’t see it or taste it.  It’s measured in who I was then and who I am now and who I was in between.

I think what is so telling about this anniversary is that I have something tangible that I can hang those 50 years on.  Their music still is at was.  Music freezes time and freezes you in time too.  The songs have locked me in a time and place that were the best and happiest days of my life.  As awful as high school and being a teen aged boy were there was always a ray of light in the music.  There were girls and drivers’ licenses on the horizon.  If I only knew.  We thought that we would and could live forever.

I want to take those fifty years and make them into something better than just saying I’m sorry that I didn’t do better or I didn’t always do the right thing and that I’m so sorry that I still did the wrong thing when I knew better.  Those decisions froze in time too.

Turns out that the only thing that does live on is the music.