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annathepiperIn which this Jam Report is only a little late, which is pretty awesome for someone on medical leave; in which everybody but me gets to drive our song choices by my request; and in which I am pretty much a mess but hey, I did at least get in some guitar. Songs: "Mononoke Neko", "Chemical Worker's Song (Process Man)", "Captain Kidd", "Elf Glade", "Goin' Up/Pirate Bill Snippet", "Zombie Taylor", "Least of My Kind", "Stars", "Pirate Bill and Squidly".
I must admit to a bit of concern about how well-attended the Jam for 9/28 was going to be, given an RSVP in the negative and a couple in the maybe. However, enough folks did straggle in that we wound up having a decent session after all, even given my being shaky on the guitar. All in all we had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird, mamishka, technoshaman, cflute, pocketnaomi, and kendaer.
First up we decided to revisit "Mononoke Neko", one of Dara's flute pieces, to give Callie a chance to show off the nifty overhaul work she's had done on her flute. The instrument sounds quite nice and has much less noticeable key-clacky noise, now.
For me it was fun just to hear Dara and Callie playing with it, and to see what JT and Meems and Glenn could do with a percussion line. Since there's no real room for guitar in this piece, I just sat back and conserved energy and listened... but I did have one contribution that Dara liked, which was that the song's title reminded me of the little shaky-headed spirits in Princess Mononoke, the Kodama. In the movie they make this neat little sound when their heads rotate and then snap back into position, and I thought that having a similar sound in Dara's piece would be neat.
How we will do this, though, remains to be seen.
"Chemical Worker's Song" was requested next, and we ran through that a couple of times with Meems driving both the vocals and the drums. Always fun, though since I was in recovery mode I didn't have much diaphragm for singing. So I was way too high and thready for this song. Maybe next time. I am re-inspired by GBS having performed it at the concert I attended last night! <3
Over then to "Captain Kidd", and to give my voice a break and my Percocet-fuzzed brain only one thing to focus on at a time, I decided to specifically focus on guitar while everybody else sang. We realized the first time through that we'd forgotten to brief Mimi on our alteration to the last verse--and so we opted for a second take. In which we skipped an entire verse that time! Oops. *^_^*;;
Callie suggested we do "Elf Glade" as another thing that I could do only guitar on, and I had about one take of that in me. I was sloppy enough that I managed to get out of sync with Callie and JT's singing the lyrics, on the last verse.
After we put that behind us (with relief on my part!), Dara was noodling around on the mandolin, so she wound up telling everybody how she'd discovered that "Goin' Up" and "Pirate Bill and Squidly" mesh amazingly well together. She's started playing "Goin' Up" with ornamentations out of "Pirate Bill", and it really does rather work. Everyone was quite amused.
"Zombie Taylor" was called up then. More hopeful noises were made about us doing this at the next Conflikt. I don't know if that's going to get solidified yet, but we'll see. I need to get through medical recovery first! And if we do wind up doing this, we have at least one possible idea for how to up its Funny. About which I shall not elaborate, in case it actually does work.
Naomi came up with an amusing concept for Halloween caroling, in reaction to this song; this got us all thinking about appropriate songs to use if we decided to pursue that. Callie, Naomi, Glenn, and JT all then busted into "Least of My Kind", which I'd remembered from a previous Jam. This time however I thought to actually ask about that song's provenance. It's an Echo's Children song, though it happens to be on the one CD that I don't have.
On the other hand, it does appear on a CD by Three Weird Sisters, which may bear further investigation on my part. I hadn't previously been aware of these ladies, nor that one of them is the wife of Bill Sutton, a name I recognize from Midwest filk.
"Stars" was next, and I pretty much sat this one out too since my energy was flagging and I didn't have it in me to try to keep up with Dara's chords on the guitar. As I lamented to the others, too much awesome for me! Callie's starting to get a handle on this song, though; she came out with some very nice fast runs in the latter stretches of the song, after we did a couple of takes. The drums were also coming together with some simple but solid counterrhythms.
Some teasing noise was made at me about doing "Mari-Mac", but it's probably for the best that we didn't tackle that one. Instead we did "Pirate Bill" a couple of times, and I was in general a mess with it. We had tempo issues as well with the instruments getting out of sync with the voices. This will require more practice.
The pie: French Silk this time. The original plan was actually for pumpkin, and Glenn had volunteered to bring it, but he wound up missing his bus and so had to get the French Silk as emergency backup pie. But that was quite okay. We have plenty of autumn before us for pumpkin pie opportunities!
The next Jam is tentatively scheduled for the 12th. Hope to see folks then!
I must admit to a bit of concern about how well-attended the Jam for 9/28 was going to be, given an RSVP in the negative and a couple in the maybe. However, enough folks did straggle in that we wound up having a decent session after all, even given my being shaky on the guitar. All in all we had
solarbird, mamishka, technoshaman, cflute, pocketnaomi, and kendaer.First up we decided to revisit "Mononoke Neko", one of Dara's flute pieces, to give Callie a chance to show off the nifty overhaul work she's had done on her flute. The instrument sounds quite nice and has much less noticeable key-clacky noise, now.
For me it was fun just to hear Dara and Callie playing with it, and to see what JT and Meems and Glenn could do with a percussion line. Since there's no real room for guitar in this piece, I just sat back and conserved energy and listened... but I did have one contribution that Dara liked, which was that the song's title reminded me of the little shaky-headed spirits in Princess Mononoke, the Kodama. In the movie they make this neat little sound when their heads rotate and then snap back into position, and I thought that having a similar sound in Dara's piece would be neat.
How we will do this, though, remains to be seen.
"Chemical Worker's Song" was requested next, and we ran through that a couple of times with Meems driving both the vocals and the drums. Always fun, though since I was in recovery mode I didn't have much diaphragm for singing. So I was way too high and thready for this song. Maybe next time. I am re-inspired by GBS having performed it at the concert I attended last night! <3
Over then to "Captain Kidd", and to give my voice a break and my Percocet-fuzzed brain only one thing to focus on at a time, I decided to specifically focus on guitar while everybody else sang. We realized the first time through that we'd forgotten to brief Mimi on our alteration to the last verse--and so we opted for a second take. In which we skipped an entire verse that time! Oops. *^_^*;;
Callie suggested we do "Elf Glade" as another thing that I could do only guitar on, and I had about one take of that in me. I was sloppy enough that I managed to get out of sync with Callie and JT's singing the lyrics, on the last verse.
After we put that behind us (with relief on my part!), Dara was noodling around on the mandolin, so she wound up telling everybody how she'd discovered that "Goin' Up" and "Pirate Bill and Squidly" mesh amazingly well together. She's started playing "Goin' Up" with ornamentations out of "Pirate Bill", and it really does rather work. Everyone was quite amused.
"Zombie Taylor" was called up then. More hopeful noises were made about us doing this at the next Conflikt. I don't know if that's going to get solidified yet, but we'll see. I need to get through medical recovery first! And if we do wind up doing this, we have at least one possible idea for how to up its Funny. About which I shall not elaborate, in case it actually does work.
Naomi came up with an amusing concept for Halloween caroling, in reaction to this song; this got us all thinking about appropriate songs to use if we decided to pursue that. Callie, Naomi, Glenn, and JT all then busted into "Least of My Kind", which I'd remembered from a previous Jam. This time however I thought to actually ask about that song's provenance. It's an Echo's Children song, though it happens to be on the one CD that I don't have.
On the other hand, it does appear on a CD by Three Weird Sisters, which may bear further investigation on my part. I hadn't previously been aware of these ladies, nor that one of them is the wife of Bill Sutton, a name I recognize from Midwest filk.
"Stars" was next, and I pretty much sat this one out too since my energy was flagging and I didn't have it in me to try to keep up with Dara's chords on the guitar. As I lamented to the others, too much awesome for me! Callie's starting to get a handle on this song, though; she came out with some very nice fast runs in the latter stretches of the song, after we did a couple of takes. The drums were also coming together with some simple but solid counterrhythms.
Some teasing noise was made at me about doing "Mari-Mac", but it's probably for the best that we didn't tackle that one. Instead we did "Pirate Bill" a couple of times, and I was in general a mess with it. We had tempo issues as well with the instruments getting out of sync with the voices. This will require more practice.
The pie: French Silk this time. The original plan was actually for pumpkin, and Glenn had volunteered to bring it, but he wound up missing his bus and so had to get the French Silk as emergency backup pie. But that was quite okay. We have plenty of autumn before us for pumpkin pie opportunities!
The next Jam is tentatively scheduled for the 12th. Hope to see folks then!
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 09:33 pm (UTC)'sfunny, the concert felt a lot like a filk concert; a lot of folks sang along all the way through, and on the upbeat ones we were throwing it back at them like Browncoats at a Tony and Vixy gig...
"Sing along if you want..." "Try and stop us. :)"
I liked what Kris did with the percussion for "Process Man", but I also really like what we do with it, with the "rack" sound at the end of the next-to-last verse and such. We have a lot more "punctuation", if you will, which I think adds to the drama.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 02:05 am (UTC)But yes, GBS fans are extremely loyal and hordes of us singing the lyrics right back at the stage is all part of the fun. It's heavily encouraged by the B'ys themselves, and it's all part of why they themselves have always said that a GBS concert is not something you see, it's something you do.
I do admit I totally missed what Kris was doing with the percussion line in that song, though. I was too busy ogling Alan! *^_^*;; And I'm too used to paying attention to Séan's bodhran line on that song, anyway. I shall have to hope that I'll get another chance to see GBS in this configuration do this song--and make a note to pay more attention to Kris.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 02:11 am (UTC)Although frankly I like the overall effect of what we jammers do with the accompaniment dropouts and that little "rack" move Dara does after the third verse (pay with flesh and blood!) *better*... but I do like their thump-and-clank riff.