Jam Report #16: 7/15/01
Jul. 15th, 2001 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/3/05.
The return of Mimi, and the building of the first Drum Fort, and Mimi has all her drums; impromptu duels of Wiener Dog Bodhran Tippers. (Off topic, I testify to recent conversions of fans to Great Big Sea fandom, and yak some about the band Rua as well; query put out to greatbigsea.com readers about the Kitchen tapes.) Songs: "Mari-Mac", "General Taylor", "Jolly Butcher".
The themes of this past Murkworks Jam were as follows:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka (Mimi) paints wonderful things, people, you should hassle me in email so I can give you the URL of photos of things she has painted), the drum section rejoined us and whoo boy did it help us a lot. :)
We had determined in earlier sessions that Mimi's drum was awfully loud, and so this time around we built her a little drum fort -- putting her in a little nook beside two of our chairs and stacking pillows on top of them, and from back there she was still quite audible but not overwhelming the rest of us.
("I want a drum fort!" protestedssha (Cyn), during these proceedings. I told her that if she learned how to play the bodhran, she too could have a drum fort.)
Furthermore, Mimi had not one, not two, but three drums with her. In addition to her djembe and her doumbek, she also brought along her brand-spanking new bodhran, the very same one she'd acquired at Dusty Strings when we traded in the one we'd all bought her for her birthday. Everyone who contributed to the Buy Mimi a Bodhran Fund was gifted with their very own balloon wiener dog, on which she had written our names and 'Thank you!' in black marker. We were all very charmed, even if to Monica they looked rather more like wiener rabbits due to their large vertical ears. Mimi maintained that she was invoking artistic license, to which Monica pointed out that artists have no license; me, I voted for the wiener dogs simply being startled.
It was Fred, however, who first discovered that one can in fact use a balloon wiener dog as an extremely light tipper, when he broke out his bodhran. Okay, well, so wiener dogs more make a bodhran go 'swish' than 'boom', but nevertheless Mimi naturally had to challenge Fred to a wiener-dog-played-bodhran duel. We're not exactly sure who won, but Mimi's tipper's hindquarters spontaneously disassembled, therefore requiring an emergency reconstruction. Because after all, there's nothing more pitiful than a two-legged balloon wiener dog!
We were all very enthused about this notion of having multiple bodhrans, though. In fact, the theory was proposed that we are in fact cooler than Great Big Sea, on the grounds that we have 1) more bodhrans, 2) more instruments that we can play simultaneously, and 3) more girls. Furthermore, although we must acknowledge that the B'ys do still have us beat on the grounds that they 1) can actually play "Billy Peddle" and "Dancing With Mrs. White", 2) have way cooler accents, 3) have a much larger repetoire than we do, 4) have actual CDs, a fan base, and a tour bus, we also arguably beat them out on sartorial splendor, because we have Fred and his utilikilt.
(A pause here, whilst the Jam Reporter is distracted by the notion of Alan Doyle in a utililkilt. Ahem. Er. Now where was I...)
Aaaaanyway, we had a significant portion of the group present for this session, lacking only 2/3rds of the guitar section asspazzkat (Paul) had made other arrangements for the afternoon and we had no idea where daspatrick (Patrick) was (he has since reported in that he had gone to Idaho). We did definitely miss the added muscle on the guitars but on the whole we had a pretty fine session, featuring:
In deference to my state of ooginess, we called a halt after a few takes of "Jolly Butcher" and dug into the pie (again, this time, strawberry rhubarb from the Snohomish Pie Company, provided by Fred).
Unfortunately, we are about to lose Fred again as he is due to ship out to sea, and we shall all miss him immensely, but we hope to have him back in time to get something in for the Kitchen Tapes. We're even to the point that we're considering *GASP* JAM SESSIONS ON A WEEKNIGHT, if we need to have one. ;)
I must conclude this jam report with, first, an accounting of a Twilight Zone event which befell me on AetherMUSH, one of the online games I play on. I saw a player connected there with a message by her name in the list of who was connected, which read, "Celtic fan? www.angelfire.com/band/rua". So naturally, I had to go check this out. Much to my amazement, I discovered that the URL was in fact for a Celtic-flavored band in Lexington, Kentucky -- i.e., the place my partner and I lived in before we came to Seattle. So naturally, I had to page this person and start chatting. Much to my FURTHER amazement, I discovered that:
I then informed her that if she swooned over Great Big Sea and Russell Crowe, I would be convinced that she was my long-lost twin separated from birth. To this, she replied that she did in fact believe Mr. Crowe was, quote, "hot", unquote, and that she'd listened to a bit of Great Big Sea and indeed liked what she heard. ;)
Secondly, in further connection to Great Big Sea and Mr. Crowe, I note with pleasure that a fellow poster to a board for Crowe's fans has been recruited by yours truly to GBS fandom and saw her first live show just this past weekend, and is so absolutely in love that she did in fact go join the Street Team.
Thirdly, a local friend of mine, upon hearing me play "General Taylor" on my car stereo as I was driving him home, was thunderstruck. He asked me to play it again for him, and I was thoroughly delighted to see him even leaning in towards my speakers to absorb the full impact of that gorgeous harmony our B'ys do.
Between all of these things, does this mean I'm an honorary member of the Street Team yet? ;)
And last, but not least, the Murkjammers would like to toss out a question to everybody out there who's considering sending stuff in to the Kitchen Tapes:
Are any of you folks considering doing anything else with your songs, say, posting them to the Web? Or will you be sitting on your versions until the Tapes are assembled and sent about? Inquiring minds wanna know!
Until next time, all,
Anna the Piper
The return of Mimi, and the building of the first Drum Fort, and Mimi has all her drums; impromptu duels of Wiener Dog Bodhran Tippers. (Off topic, I testify to recent conversions of fans to Great Big Sea fandom, and yak some about the band Rua as well; query put out to greatbigsea.com readers about the Kitchen tapes.) Songs: "Mari-Mac", "General Taylor", "Jolly Butcher".
The themes of this past Murkworks Jam were as follows:
- Drum forts, and
- Wiener dogs!
mamishka (Mimi) paints wonderful things, people, you should hassle me in email so I can give you the URL of photos of things she has painted), the drum section rejoined us and whoo boy did it help us a lot. :)We had determined in earlier sessions that Mimi's drum was awfully loud, and so this time around we built her a little drum fort -- putting her in a little nook beside two of our chairs and stacking pillows on top of them, and from back there she was still quite audible but not overwhelming the rest of us.
("I want a drum fort!" protested
ssha (Cyn), during these proceedings. I told her that if she learned how to play the bodhran, she too could have a drum fort.)Furthermore, Mimi had not one, not two, but three drums with her. In addition to her djembe and her doumbek, she also brought along her brand-spanking new bodhran, the very same one she'd acquired at Dusty Strings when we traded in the one we'd all bought her for her birthday. Everyone who contributed to the Buy Mimi a Bodhran Fund was gifted with their very own balloon wiener dog, on which she had written our names and 'Thank you!' in black marker. We were all very charmed, even if to Monica they looked rather more like wiener rabbits due to their large vertical ears. Mimi maintained that she was invoking artistic license, to which Monica pointed out that artists have no license; me, I voted for the wiener dogs simply being startled.
It was Fred, however, who first discovered that one can in fact use a balloon wiener dog as an extremely light tipper, when he broke out his bodhran. Okay, well, so wiener dogs more make a bodhran go 'swish' than 'boom', but nevertheless Mimi naturally had to challenge Fred to a wiener-dog-played-bodhran duel. We're not exactly sure who won, but Mimi's tipper's hindquarters spontaneously disassembled, therefore requiring an emergency reconstruction. Because after all, there's nothing more pitiful than a two-legged balloon wiener dog!
We were all very enthused about this notion of having multiple bodhrans, though. In fact, the theory was proposed that we are in fact cooler than Great Big Sea, on the grounds that we have 1) more bodhrans, 2) more instruments that we can play simultaneously, and 3) more girls. Furthermore, although we must acknowledge that the B'ys do still have us beat on the grounds that they 1) can actually play "Billy Peddle" and "Dancing With Mrs. White", 2) have way cooler accents, 3) have a much larger repetoire than we do, 4) have actual CDs, a fan base, and a tour bus, we also arguably beat them out on sartorial splendor, because we have Fred and his utilikilt.
(A pause here, whilst the Jam Reporter is distracted by the notion of Alan Doyle in a utililkilt. Ahem. Er. Now where was I...)
Aaaaanyway, we had a significant portion of the group present for this session, lacking only 2/3rds of the guitar section as
spazzkat (Paul) had made other arrangements for the afternoon and we had no idea where daspatrick (Patrick) was (he has since reported in that he had gone to Idaho). We did definitely miss the added muscle on the guitars but on the whole we had a pretty fine session, featuring:- "Mari Mac". Did this one first, since we had determined that kathrynt (Kathryn) really needs her energy to belt this one out. We had Mimi take over as Mistress of the Tempo from Monica, and this proved to be a spectacular decision as every problem we'd been having with the speed-ups partway into the song just vanished. Plus, Monica found herself much more relaxed as she played without having to worry about when to speed up. We have also started adding in Cyn on the fiddle here, now that Kathryn has written out a fiddle part for her. Between these and having as many of us as possible belt out "MY MOTHER'S MAKIN' ME MARRY MARI MAC" on the choruses, we're getting really excited about our handling of this song.
- "General Taylor" -- though we didn't actually do more on this one than have Kathryn try to work out some official harmony parts for all of us to learn. Mimi owns the melody on this one, Monica worked out what Alan sings on the studio version, and that left me and Cyn and Fred in need of parts to learn. Everybody got a bit of a harmony out of Kathryn, so now we just need to write down what she'd worked out and learn it.
- "Jolly Butcher". By now yours truly was feeling a little oogy (read: under the weather and a bit headachy), so I lost it a bit on the tempo for a couple of these takes. But here again, having Mimi on a drum helped a lot in adding energy and liveliness to this song. So does having Cyn on the bridge, if we play it fast enough for her to be able to bounce her bow on her strings. I note with satisfaction that although I did lose it a couple of times on the bridge, none of those times were in fact on the high G I have to hit on Shine. solarbird (Dara) and I both, however, seemed to have a few issues of remembering what to play on some of the lower runs; we think this might be because we did in fact practice "Dancing With Mrs. White" the night before and our finger memories were a little wonky.
In deference to my state of ooginess, we called a halt after a few takes of "Jolly Butcher" and dug into the pie (again, this time, strawberry rhubarb from the Snohomish Pie Company, provided by Fred).
Unfortunately, we are about to lose Fred again as he is due to ship out to sea, and we shall all miss him immensely, but we hope to have him back in time to get something in for the Kitchen Tapes. We're even to the point that we're considering *GASP* JAM SESSIONS ON A WEEKNIGHT, if we need to have one. ;)
I must conclude this jam report with, first, an accounting of a Twilight Zone event which befell me on AetherMUSH, one of the online games I play on. I saw a player connected there with a message by her name in the list of who was connected, which read, "Celtic fan? www.angelfire.com/band/rua". So naturally, I had to go check this out. Much to my amazement, I discovered that the URL was in fact for a Celtic-flavored band in Lexington, Kentucky -- i.e., the place my partner and I lived in before we came to Seattle. So naturally, I had to page this person and start chatting. Much to my FURTHER amazement, I discovered that:
- She was in fact the lead singer for the band, and her name was ANNA;
- Her middle name was KATHRYN;
- She and her group were not only centered out of Lexington, she was in fact originally from Louisville, my birthplace.
I then informed her that if she swooned over Great Big Sea and Russell Crowe, I would be convinced that she was my long-lost twin separated from birth. To this, she replied that she did in fact believe Mr. Crowe was, quote, "hot", unquote, and that she'd listened to a bit of Great Big Sea and indeed liked what she heard. ;)
Secondly, in further connection to Great Big Sea and Mr. Crowe, I note with pleasure that a fellow poster to a board for Crowe's fans has been recruited by yours truly to GBS fandom and saw her first live show just this past weekend, and is so absolutely in love that she did in fact go join the Street Team.
Thirdly, a local friend of mine, upon hearing me play "General Taylor" on my car stereo as I was driving him home, was thunderstruck. He asked me to play it again for him, and I was thoroughly delighted to see him even leaning in towards my speakers to absorb the full impact of that gorgeous harmony our B'ys do.
Between all of these things, does this mean I'm an honorary member of the Street Team yet? ;)
And last, but not least, the Murkjammers would like to toss out a question to everybody out there who's considering sending stuff in to the Kitchen Tapes:
Are any of you folks considering doing anything else with your songs, say, posting them to the Web? Or will you be sitting on your versions until the Tapes are assembled and sent about? Inquiring minds wanna know!
Until next time, all,
Anna the Piper