Jam Report #53: 10/20/02
Oct. 20th, 2002 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 2/6/06.
In which we get together again for the first official time since Monica's wedding; in which we play a couple of old things, but also some new things; and in which we get another idea for our first album. Songs: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Jolly Butcher", "The Christians and the Pagans", "Lukey", "Bumblebee Tuna", "Whiskey You're the Devil", "General Taylor".
This has been our first official Jam in some time -- mostly, we're suspecting, because a lot of us needed some decompression time after our first official act of Playing in Public. On the other hand,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daspatrick's (Patrick's) being in Japan for a few weeks and Monica having gotten married and ssha (Cyn) recently becoming active in a local church and several of us having come down with assorted plagues (it's been a nasty season for that in the Pacific Northwest) has certainly contributed to our recent lameness as well.
Today, though, we got everybody back together, and it was very fine. Fred showed up with pie and so did Monica, though Monica's pie was the remnants of a pie and not really a whole pie. Monica also had cookies, though. Ghost cookies! With orange frosting!
Since we hadn't played together in some time a considerable amount of tuning was needed. Monica had not in fact touched her guitar since before the wedding, and lamented that poor Michaela's case had even garnered some dust. However, it didn't take us too terribly long to get back into the swing of things, which was very reassuring.
First up, to warm up, was "You Woke Up My Neighborhood". This turned out to be one of the most coherent takes we've had of this in some time, probably due to all of the instruments being used to following Monica. She wasn't used to the new version of the intro, though, and came in softly at the beginning; since we weren't miking our singers this time, she got pretty drowned out by the rhythm section. So that kept it from being a public take, though it was nice to know we don't have to give up on this song. ;)
Next, since we've all been making noises about wanting to play some new stuff, feeling as though we'd hit a good milestone with playing in public, we wanted to practice something new. Patrick's latest composition, "Neutral Carrier Hotel", was brought up -- but Patrick vetoed it on the grounds that he's sort of tired of it at the moment, and since he's the author of the song he gets veto power. Accordingly, and although she is in fact going away for another couple of months to go paint on the East Coast,mamishka (Mimi) proposed taking a stab at Dar Williams' "The Christians and the Pagans", which seemed to her very appropriate for us since we have a mixture of religions amongst us and also since the holiday season is coming up.
Finding the lyrics and the tabs for this song was trivial. Printing them out, on the other hand, was not so trivial! It turned out that since I'd had to install XP on my laptop I hadn't properly configured the thing to print to my usual printer -- so I was pointed at the printer for one of my housemates' computers. Once I actually pointed at the right printer, then I discovered that the damned thing was out of ink or something, since the printout wasn't legible. So then I had to have Mimi print the tabs to another printer and that printer only printed out a partial page for some reason.
While we were futzing with this, the others decided to take a refresher run through "Jolly Butcher". I jumped in partway through the song and forgot what verse we were on, so almost went into the bridge too early; fortunately, though, I caughtsolarbird's (Dara's) look my way and managed to recover.
Then we went to go play with "The Christians and the Pagans" in earnest, and it really does seem to suit us both in general style of song as well as religious inclinations.
For purposes of ease of chords we decided to play the chords listed on the tabs without capos, which meant kicking the song from G#/Ab down into G. We had a bit of discussion as to whether the shift into G was actually much lower than the half-step that this seemed to warrant, but we're fairly sure that this is because Dar Williams is possibly playing barre chords higher up on her guitar neck. Monica and Patrick tend to stick further down the neck, so this could have been throwing us off. We also had much discussion as to where the pauses in the verses fall and where the guitars are hitting E minor instead of G, though we seemed to pick it up pretty quickly.
I had some waffling as to what to play since there is in fact a mandolin in the recording, but at least initially the song seemed to want my piccolo. There are nice twiddle bits in the recording, but I'm not quite comfortable with picking those out at random on that instruments. I may, if I get a better feel for my twiddles, try to do them on the mandolin. We'll have to see -- especially if Dara goes with singing on this song instead of flute playing. Which may in fact happen, given that Dara has discovered as of late that she has a voice again, thanks to the work she's been doing withkathrynt (Kathryn). With whom, it must also be added, she is now taking official singing lessons.
So we'll hopefully have another voice regularly contributing to the singing. Yay!
We'll probably continue to play with this song, at any rate, while Mimi is gone, and Cyn will probably sing lead. We also bandied about the idea of learning other Christmas/holiday songs, preferably odd ones. Fred mentioned a song called "The Bells of Dublin". Weird Al's "The Night Santa Went Crazy" and the Strange Brew edition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were also brought up, though we collectively shot down "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". Me, about all I know how to play right now is Elvis' version of "Blue Christmas".
We even discussed the possibility of busking, since now we've proven to ourselves that we can play in public and not completely fall apart. The challenge would be trying to find a good place to busk in Seattle's winter that wouldn't be detrimental to the instruments.
Moving on then to "Lukey", which was one of the ditties we did at the wedding but which also is still new enough to us as a group that we can still have fun with it. Monica especially had not been introduced to the way we're doing it right now, i.e., in the key of A and with the chord line from the Road Rage edition of the song, so we ran through it a couple of times. Mimi's drumming, happily, continues to make for a very jaunty addition to our rendition of this song -- though it'll be a shame to not have that during her upcoming absence.
Next we got into yakking some more about new stuff we could try as well as old stuff we have visited but not done much with -- like, for example, "Bumblebee Tuna". Dara, much to her delight, broke into harmony when we played around with this. Doing a slow chorus on top of Patrick strumming the downbeat on each measure made for a bunch of giggles, and so did the proposition of yelling "PICK IT UP PICK IT UP PICK IT UP" right after and busting into a fast tempo. Many more giggles resulted from the idea of everybody taking a verse and making it about their favorite foods:
"Yum yum ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! I love ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! Yum yum ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! Love a sandwich made with ham and cheese!"
"Yum yum chocolate, chocolate ice cream! I love chocolate, chocolate ice cream! Yum yum chocolate, chocolate ice cream, love the ice cream made with chocolate!"
Monica lamented, however, that she couldn't get a verse about strawberries assembled, and Dar couldn't get a suitable one together about sushi. However, in honor of our recent discovery of the "The Everyday Happenings of Weebl" website, I added that towards the end of the song we should obviously have all the instruments drop out and all of us singing:
"Pie pie, pie pie pie, pie pie pie pie pie! Pie pie, pie pie pie, pie pie pie pie pie--"
Well, you get the idea. ;)
This, pretty much inevitably, led to the assertion that obviously our first album should be called Pie, with a pie as cover art and the CD printed to look like an empty pie tin. With guitar picks in it.
At any rate, after that round of silliness was over, we started talking about taking on "Whiskey You're the Devil", which had been mentioned before as a concept. Both of my trad songbooks have this song in it, though the raving Great Big Sea fans amongst us are only familiar with the chorus that the B'ys sing at the tail end of "Jakey's Gin", so we're coming in clueless on the majority of the song. Which as it turns out is not only about whiskey, it's also about war -- so it covers two out of the three areas of Celtic music. The lack of sex was remarked upon, and Monica pointed out that we could always add in a verse if we felt all three areas needed to be covered.
Right about then, however, was when my sister-in-law in Kentucky called up. So I sort of had to drop out of Jam at that point, since although it was an interruption she was calling me long distance from Kentucky... so I wound up spending the rest of the Jam session talking with her, my brother, and two of their children. In the midst of the conversation I could hear singing wafting up the stairs, which turned out to be Dara taking a crack at singing lead on "General Taylor". This particular GBS ditty is the first one whose lyrics Dara has made an effort to begin to learn, and she wanted to see how well she could pull it off. The answer to this is, sort of threadily, and the key Mimi has been singing it in is sort of high for her. However, she's all about the excitement over being able to play with it!
The others decided to pretty much skip any further work on "Whiskey You're the Devil" -- so by the time I came down again we had moved on to Pie and cookies. Both the pies were apple, and quite tasty.
More again soon (we hope! Tell us you've been reading these things, folks, and remind us to get back on schedule!),
Anna the Piper
In which we get together again for the first official time since Monica's wedding; in which we play a couple of old things, but also some new things; and in which we get another idea for our first album. Songs: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Jolly Butcher", "The Christians and the Pagans", "Lukey", "Bumblebee Tuna", "Whiskey You're the Devil", "General Taylor".
This has been our first official Jam in some time -- mostly, we're suspecting, because a lot of us needed some decompression time after our first official act of Playing in Public. On the other hand,
daspatrick's (Patrick's) being in Japan for a few weeks and Monica having gotten married and ssha (Cyn) recently becoming active in a local church and several of us having come down with assorted plagues (it's been a nasty season for that in the Pacific Northwest) has certainly contributed to our recent lameness as well.Today, though, we got everybody back together, and it was very fine. Fred showed up with pie and so did Monica, though Monica's pie was the remnants of a pie and not really a whole pie. Monica also had cookies, though. Ghost cookies! With orange frosting!
Since we hadn't played together in some time a considerable amount of tuning was needed. Monica had not in fact touched her guitar since before the wedding, and lamented that poor Michaela's case had even garnered some dust. However, it didn't take us too terribly long to get back into the swing of things, which was very reassuring.
First up, to warm up, was "You Woke Up My Neighborhood". This turned out to be one of the most coherent takes we've had of this in some time, probably due to all of the instruments being used to following Monica. She wasn't used to the new version of the intro, though, and came in softly at the beginning; since we weren't miking our singers this time, she got pretty drowned out by the rhythm section. So that kept it from being a public take, though it was nice to know we don't have to give up on this song. ;)
Next, since we've all been making noises about wanting to play some new stuff, feeling as though we'd hit a good milestone with playing in public, we wanted to practice something new. Patrick's latest composition, "Neutral Carrier Hotel", was brought up -- but Patrick vetoed it on the grounds that he's sort of tired of it at the moment, and since he's the author of the song he gets veto power. Accordingly, and although she is in fact going away for another couple of months to go paint on the East Coast,
mamishka (Mimi) proposed taking a stab at Dar Williams' "The Christians and the Pagans", which seemed to her very appropriate for us since we have a mixture of religions amongst us and also since the holiday season is coming up.Finding the lyrics and the tabs for this song was trivial. Printing them out, on the other hand, was not so trivial! It turned out that since I'd had to install XP on my laptop I hadn't properly configured the thing to print to my usual printer -- so I was pointed at the printer for one of my housemates' computers. Once I actually pointed at the right printer, then I discovered that the damned thing was out of ink or something, since the printout wasn't legible. So then I had to have Mimi print the tabs to another printer and that printer only printed out a partial page for some reason.
While we were futzing with this, the others decided to take a refresher run through "Jolly Butcher". I jumped in partway through the song and forgot what verse we were on, so almost went into the bridge too early; fortunately, though, I caught
solarbird's (Dara's) look my way and managed to recover.Then we went to go play with "The Christians and the Pagans" in earnest, and it really does seem to suit us both in general style of song as well as religious inclinations.
For purposes of ease of chords we decided to play the chords listed on the tabs without capos, which meant kicking the song from G#/Ab down into G. We had a bit of discussion as to whether the shift into G was actually much lower than the half-step that this seemed to warrant, but we're fairly sure that this is because Dar Williams is possibly playing barre chords higher up on her guitar neck. Monica and Patrick tend to stick further down the neck, so this could have been throwing us off. We also had much discussion as to where the pauses in the verses fall and where the guitars are hitting E minor instead of G, though we seemed to pick it up pretty quickly.
I had some waffling as to what to play since there is in fact a mandolin in the recording, but at least initially the song seemed to want my piccolo. There are nice twiddle bits in the recording, but I'm not quite comfortable with picking those out at random on that instruments. I may, if I get a better feel for my twiddles, try to do them on the mandolin. We'll have to see -- especially if Dara goes with singing on this song instead of flute playing. Which may in fact happen, given that Dara has discovered as of late that she has a voice again, thanks to the work she's been doing with
kathrynt (Kathryn). With whom, it must also be added, she is now taking official singing lessons.So we'll hopefully have another voice regularly contributing to the singing. Yay!
We'll probably continue to play with this song, at any rate, while Mimi is gone, and Cyn will probably sing lead. We also bandied about the idea of learning other Christmas/holiday songs, preferably odd ones. Fred mentioned a song called "The Bells of Dublin". Weird Al's "The Night Santa Went Crazy" and the Strange Brew edition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were also brought up, though we collectively shot down "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". Me, about all I know how to play right now is Elvis' version of "Blue Christmas".
We even discussed the possibility of busking, since now we've proven to ourselves that we can play in public and not completely fall apart. The challenge would be trying to find a good place to busk in Seattle's winter that wouldn't be detrimental to the instruments.
Moving on then to "Lukey", which was one of the ditties we did at the wedding but which also is still new enough to us as a group that we can still have fun with it. Monica especially had not been introduced to the way we're doing it right now, i.e., in the key of A and with the chord line from the Road Rage edition of the song, so we ran through it a couple of times. Mimi's drumming, happily, continues to make for a very jaunty addition to our rendition of this song -- though it'll be a shame to not have that during her upcoming absence.
Next we got into yakking some more about new stuff we could try as well as old stuff we have visited but not done much with -- like, for example, "Bumblebee Tuna". Dara, much to her delight, broke into harmony when we played around with this. Doing a slow chorus on top of Patrick strumming the downbeat on each measure made for a bunch of giggles, and so did the proposition of yelling "PICK IT UP PICK IT UP PICK IT UP" right after and busting into a fast tempo. Many more giggles resulted from the idea of everybody taking a verse and making it about their favorite foods:
"Yum yum ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! I love ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! Yum yum ham and cheese, ham and cheese sandwich! Love a sandwich made with ham and cheese!"
"Yum yum chocolate, chocolate ice cream! I love chocolate, chocolate ice cream! Yum yum chocolate, chocolate ice cream, love the ice cream made with chocolate!"
Monica lamented, however, that she couldn't get a verse about strawberries assembled, and Dar couldn't get a suitable one together about sushi. However, in honor of our recent discovery of the "The Everyday Happenings of Weebl" website, I added that towards the end of the song we should obviously have all the instruments drop out and all of us singing:
"Pie pie, pie pie pie, pie pie pie pie pie! Pie pie, pie pie pie, pie pie pie pie pie--"
Well, you get the idea. ;)
This, pretty much inevitably, led to the assertion that obviously our first album should be called Pie, with a pie as cover art and the CD printed to look like an empty pie tin. With guitar picks in it.
At any rate, after that round of silliness was over, we started talking about taking on "Whiskey You're the Devil", which had been mentioned before as a concept. Both of my trad songbooks have this song in it, though the raving Great Big Sea fans amongst us are only familiar with the chorus that the B'ys sing at the tail end of "Jakey's Gin", so we're coming in clueless on the majority of the song. Which as it turns out is not only about whiskey, it's also about war -- so it covers two out of the three areas of Celtic music. The lack of sex was remarked upon, and Monica pointed out that we could always add in a verse if we felt all three areas needed to be covered.
Right about then, however, was when my sister-in-law in Kentucky called up. So I sort of had to drop out of Jam at that point, since although it was an interruption she was calling me long distance from Kentucky... so I wound up spending the rest of the Jam session talking with her, my brother, and two of their children. In the midst of the conversation I could hear singing wafting up the stairs, which turned out to be Dara taking a crack at singing lead on "General Taylor". This particular GBS ditty is the first one whose lyrics Dara has made an effort to begin to learn, and she wanted to see how well she could pull it off. The answer to this is, sort of threadily, and the key Mimi has been singing it in is sort of high for her. However, she's all about the excitement over being able to play with it!
The others decided to pretty much skip any further work on "Whiskey You're the Devil" -- so by the time I came down again we had moved on to Pie and cookies. Both the pies were apple, and quite tasty.
More again soon (we hope! Tell us you've been reading these things, folks, and remind us to get back on schedule!),
Anna the Piper