Jammin

For the past few months, David and I have been getting together every couple of weeks and playing. We don't really have a plan, we just get together and randomly stumble through songs; either based on something that caught our interest in the last week or so, or from one of the songs in the piles of print-outs that David has. We play a fair amount of Blues, Beatles, Dylan and Tom Waits as those are artists/styles we both like.

Last night my friend Brian joined us. He plays bass, and has played in several bands over the years, and while he's not exactly a professional, he is a lot more proficient than we are (particularly at just picking up a song...it was kind of dangerous as I’d strum a couple of chords and he’d go “what’s that you’re playing? It sounds like….”)

So it was a fun, interesting, and rather eye-opening experience, since when David and I play, we tend to get stuck on particular songs and spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the chords are and how it's played. Brian was more interested in songs with a few chords that we could just do.

“Who’s singing?” he asks, and David and I stare at each other blankly.

And we’re off, stumbling through a variety of material. I end up singing some, and Dave does some, but Brian begs off as he has a cold. He does, however impart us with words of wisdom, such as ‘The chicks dig ‘Laid’ by James, and ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. Neil Diamond songs are great too. Some people at Berkley accused us of selling out, but I’d go to their shows and there’d be like five guys, sitting listening, and we’d get a crowd all dancing. You get a couple of girls making out in front of the stage, that’s what it’s all about…”

This is the kind of stuff they don’t teach at Berkley I think.

Today Brian’s on IM and he’s telling me we’re not too bad; we just need to get our confidence up and then we’ll be playing out…