Jun 09 2009
Tales From The Jam - Prog Night
I know, it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here. Life has been rather hectic as of late. In fact, until last night I hadn’t picked up a bass in several weeks. I’ve written before about the local Thursday night jam session in my town. I haven’t attended in a long time. Besides being somewhat bored by the standard blues rock fare, I’ve been really busy on Thursday nights. First it was the Opeth show which completely rocked my world. Then I was recovering from some minor surgery. Then we were having a really tough day with the kid and I just couldn’t deal with other people after we finally got her to bed. Plus thre’s something like 3 other bassists who have been going and from what I hear they’ve all been playing at once. Four would just be ridiculous!
So that led me to organizing my own night at the studio. I took out an ad on craigslist looking for people who are into playing hard prog rock and got three solid responses. One guy played sax, drums and theramin, one played guitar, and the other played keys, guitar, bass and drums. All of us were really into King Crimson, and we busted it out last night. After some aimless noodling, we gave Red a try and it really came together after a while. It’s a tough song with a lot of parts, and I got most of the parts down but definitely need work on the opening riff and figuring out where each one starts. We also did a sick 21st Century SchitzoidMan jam, One More Red Nightmare, and a half assed attempt at Thela Hun Gingeet. We did Shine on You Crazy Diamond. We did Tom Sawyer that went into a pretty sick jam, and some freeform stuff that the sax player referred to as being rather quaalude-y.
For the most part, I played the electric upright. At one point I picked up my Fender and the guitarist said I should keep playing the upright since it creates such a different sound. I got a really killer tone from it last night too. At the other jams, I’d been going for more of a standard thumping low sustain upright bass tone, but last night I cranked up the gain, sustain and the lows and it was nice and fuzzy. The more I play that thing, the less I want to play my Fender, and I love that Fender!
I was so pumped from playing I could barely sleep when I got home. I kept tossing and turning with those riffs going through my head. I can’t wait to do it again next week.
