Jam nights - cliquey

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

they come back again getting better & better each time.

 

There was a chap who in three years went from a nervous acoustic covers to writing songs with a band.

[12stringbassist]

On 09/05/2018 at 10:03, shoulderpet said:

Jam nights - cliquey  - Anyone else found this? The concept is appealing and the chance to play some songs you have not played before is in theory a good way to learn and improve , the reality is that most of the jam nights I have been to you see the house bands first pick their favourites that they let play several songs then the remaining people wait half the night to go up and play maybe 3 songs, I generally enjoy jam nights but the cliqueyness is so off putting

We've run one for about 11 years now (9.5 years with our band line-up).
Anything but cliquey, as we will NOT allow that, but you do tend to get the same people turning up playing the same things badly.
We have never ever told anyone what to play. People have asked to play with us and we give them a set list to choose from in that case, but it's their night, not ours, which is why it's been going for so long.
But we do get some new blood doing different things, we match people up to play together, or back them and people get decent length spots.
I will be doing it up to the end of the year and it will no doubt carry on without me.

 

Edited Friday at 09:32 by 12stringbassist

[Dan Earp]

On 09/05/2018 at 14:34, magee said:

I have been to quite a lot of jam nights over the years. I think some can be cliquey, and some can appear so but actually the host is juggling competing priorities the punters don't know about, and they jump to the wrong conclusion. 

Certainly a long-running jam will grow to reflect the taste of the hosts as they will give longer time and more prominent slots to people they rate - that's natural and OK by me, as long as less able people at least get a chance to play at some point.

I love going to jams if my band's having a quiet month as it gets me out the house and playing in front of people with no hassle/gear/organising. 

I also love how it develops my playing and overall musical awareness. Playing with a group of randoms of at-times extremely mixed ability is a great test of how your decision-making as a bass player can hold a fraying song together. Helping the drummer find the 'one' in a bar; sticking to roots to help a guitarist understand the key or progression; controlling the dynamics to encourage a guitarist to stop hair-dryering the front row with a blistering solo for a sixth minute - it's a fun, low-pressure way to develop skills that have helped me become a better group player. 

You really understand how quietly influential the bass can be in shaping the tone and colour of a song. It stretches your listening and reacting muscles in a way that another run-through with your well-rehearsed band doesn't always do.

And occasionally there is some unexpected musical magic and you step down off the stage with the sense that you really made some affecting, spontaneous real music. That feels great. 

It's also the best way to meet/hear players who you might want to use in the future in a band, or who might want to use you, or to test out players you've found via ads without going through an excruciating formal audition. 

 

Here speaks a musician…….

[Dan Earp]

On 10/05/2018 at 15:46, markdavid said:

Went to one last night and it was "Interesting", ended up playing bass with a punk guy on guitar and vocals, first couple songs we played some blues numbers, went fine all good, then he decided to play some punk songs,  i've never felt so out of my depth! usually if I haven't heard a song before I can figure it out really quickly but there just seems to be no structure to punk music just a bunch of chords thrown together randomly, lessons learnt  a) Punk is not my thing b) I will mention next time that I really don't want to play punk music

*Apologies to anyone who loves punk music, no offence intended ,is just not my thing at all

I assist at an open mic, I bring bass and keys. I do collaborations with some of the regular players on the night, all I ask is they have some sort of chart or tab for me to follow. 
I also attend Norfolk Blues Society jams. Well run, they have a host who plays a few songs at the start and end, in between the jammers are called up to play two songs. Because of that, I have played with some of the best Norfolk musicians…..and some of the wannabe’s, but the former makes up for the latter. And over the years, have realised how important the better musicians are in allowing the less confident/able to shine and have their moment. 
there is no doubt that the quality of the night is mainly down to the person who decides the jamming group

[chris_b]

We put no pressure on anyone. They can do what they want to do and sometimes our band leader will make suggestions, which they are free to ignore. We see people starting as nervous wrecks and gaining confidence month by month. Then you see those same people coming back with others they've met, at the same stage of development, and playing as a band. Sometimes they are good sometimes they are not, but several youngsters have gone on to be professional musicians.

[knirirr]

12 hours ago, Geek99 said:

 

how does a solo acoustic player fit in with a jam night, where by definition more than one person would be playing at once. 
I do  agree that a given night could feature both setups, if the house band take a break, for an example but that’s an edge case 

 

We have sometimes had solo/duo performers turn up at our jam, and have tried to fit them in where we can. Unfortunately, their attempts to play with the band haven't been particularly successful.
There are three monthly events in the town of the open mic format and only one which is an actual jam with a full band playing, so we  try to discourage the solo/duo stuff and have a website explaining how we expect the session to go.

[MacDaddy]

16 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

 

And he'd rip all your frets out!

 

And cover your strings in chicken fat!

[Muzz]

I was in the house band for a jam night for about a year, literally 200 yards down the road from 12-String's place (funny town Tyldesley, it's full of live music), and I always took a cheap bass along to lend out, and my small combo through the house PA. The players ranged from pro (No.1 Album) musicians to some lads who were just starting out (the first time they played live was at the jam night), full bands, pairs and threes ('Can you play bass for us?') to solo acoustic singers. Everyone got 'up to three' songs, depending how much they had prepared (or not, in some cases), and while there were a lot of regulars (see 'Tyldesley's full of music'), there would often be a mix of regulars doing different stuff, even on different instruments*.

 

No hard rules**, no cliquey stuff, the audience was less than 50% musos, so the emphasis was on entertaining punters. Some nights I'd do the first two/three songs, and be sat down watching until we got up to do the last one of the night. I'd say that's pretty much how it should be.

 

* The chap that used to do my head in (in a good way) was a great left-handed guitarist who'd get up on my bass, flip it over and play it upside-down (very well)...

** Anyone taking the mick (and I'm thinking about cranking volume, 5-minute guitar solos, etc) just didn't get called the next week...

[Wombat]

I play in an originals band locally so we ‘punt our stuff’ at a few OMs, often in pubs we play in (mostly covers). Initially it was annoying as they all have a 3 song limit and our 3x3min pop originals was taking err, 9 mins (ish) and other bands were playing ’Freebird’ like songs AND putting extra verses in!

Our response (which seems to be accepted) is to simply look at the organiser and say ‘as our songs are really short can we play another’ and so far it’s been accepted.

No frowning on the 3x9min songs as yet but we’re working on it!

Can completely understand why organisers don’t want to p people off but surely there comes a point when you ‘ave a polite word?

Also, taking ages in the switch over can be annoying. The originals band use a helix & pedal boards but we have them under one arm (guitar under the other) before we’re called. At the OM where I’m in the house band one bassist took over 5 mins trying to find a power supply for his compressor to get ‘his sound’! Which he was hoping to achieve through my amp, which has a compressor on it!

[Muzz]

Yeah, that rings a bell: I used my Stomp in the jam night setup, but I'd just tell the punters 'That switch is the tuner, don't frig with anything else, ditto the amp settings because it's going through the house PA, too.' 99% of bassists just used the tone control on the bass and it never sounded anything less than good, but one night a pair of Jazzers turned up; they 'Didn't like' any of the drummers they'd heard (despite our drummer having played residencies in jazz clubs in London, in between his pro career on cruises and in hotels) because 'Nobody in here can swing' so decided to just do a bass and guitar 'set'. The bassist insisted I take the Stomp out of the loop (buggering up the gain/level stage) and proceeded to take five minutes farting around with the combo settings before playing. No hint of thanks after they'd bored everyone with what was 15 minutes of presumably one of Spinal Tap's Jazz Odysseys, and received the sort of applause where you can identify exactly which 3 people are clapping. They left straight after, and didn't come back. They weren't missed.

[zbd1960]

27 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Yeah, that rings a bell: I used my Stomp in the jam night setup, but I'd just tell the punters 'That switch is the tuner, don't frig with anything else, ditto the amp settings because it's going through the house PA, too.' 99% of bassists just used the tone control on the bass and it never sounded anything less than good, but one night a pair of Jazzers turned up; they 'Didn't like' any of the drummers they'd heard (despite our drummer having played residencies in jazz clubs in London, in between his pro career on cruises and in hotels) because 'Nobody in here can swing' so decided to just do a bass and guitar 'set'. The bassist insisted I take the Stomp out of the loop (buggering up the gain/level stage) and proceeded to take five minutes farting around with the combo settings before playing. No hint of thanks after they'd bored everyone with what was 15 minutes of presumably one of Spinal Tap's Jazz Odysseys, and received the sort of applause where you can identify exactly which 3 people are clapping. They left straight after, and didn't come back. They weren't missed.

As a sax play and someone who has an interest in jazz, one of the things that I get frustrated with going to listen to a jazz gig is the typical way that playing is approached. The typical method is: play the head, perhaps repeat head with some variation/decoration, everyone takes a solo for 16, 32, 64... bars (cue perhaps solo sax, trumpet, guitar, bass, keys, drums...). After 15 minutes of boring the audience to death, return to head and finish. Repeat process with next tune. 

 

You do not need to have everyone taking a solo in every tune, but that's what a lot of jazz groups do. They then wonder why their audiences almost no one under 70 in them.

 

I don't go to a lot of jazz gigs, but I've been to enough, first one in my 20s, and they all operate this way. More imagination would go a long way. 

 

[Muzz]

It wasn't particularly the jazz itself (tho Lord knows it was the wrong crowd for that), it was the condescension and 'judge-y' attitude of the players that rankled...perhaps just a pair of up-themselves musos, but they were a thankfully rare exception. There was a bloke that came in with a fantastic rock voice who always cranked the volume to painful levels (he didn't last long after having had the volume turned down on him a few times), and another old Blues guitarist who got up with myself and the drummer, called a 12-bar that turned out to be (when he started playing) a 14-bar (in a different key) and stopped playing half way through the song to tell me I was 'crap' before walking off. Not needed, not the spirit of a jam. He didn't come back, either. Other than that, everyone got the vibe of the place and it rolled along a treat. The three/four lads who'd never played before were objectively awful (on a fairly regular basis), but had such a good time playing and were so thrilled to do it that everyone loved them. The landlord got a bit sniffy at one point about 'standards' being kept up, but all the regular musicians pointed out we'd all been there at some point, and he relented.

[Wombat]

At my House Band OM there is an older lady who comes and plays the most fantastic boogie woogie piano. Always fun to play with and easy even if I don’t know the song. She’s also ‘considerate’ about not playing in my space.

She’s went through a spell of bringing different musos who would play guitar and sing. Always Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly blah blah.

One time this guy was plugging in his Strat so I asked the lady ‘what are we playing’ and she said ’Stairway to Heaven’. I thought ‘an old blues tune I’d not heard of’ so I said ‘key pls, how does it go’. She said ‘The recorded key, you know, the Led Zeppelin song’!

Lucky I had the intro to get the chords up on my iPad. The guy nailed the singing and guitar. Amazing!

[Leonard Smalls]

3 hours ago, zbd1960 said:

I don't go to a lot of jazz gigs, but I've been to enough, first one in my 20s, and they all operate this way. More imagination would go a long way. 

Me neither! Not since I asked the bloke who runs our local jazz club if there were going to be any electric or fusion jazz gigs. He said "If you'd care to come along and give us the benefit of your no-doubt extensive knowledge then you can see what we're about"... I replied that with that sort of patronising response to a perfectly reasonable question, that I wouldn't feel at all welcome.

And his bookings have been exclusively acoustic straight-ahead jazz in always the same vein. I found a similar attitude among classical concert goers - not the majority of them, just those who sat at the front with the score on their lap desperately hoping for the performer to make a "mistake" they could tut about!

[knirirr]

5 hours ago, zbd1960 said:

 

 

You do not need to have everyone taking a solo in every tune, but that's what a lot of jazz groups do.

 

 

 

In my experience this usually happens at jams but not quite so much at gigs. I'd rather a bass or drum solo every 3-4 tunes instead of each one, but it seems impossible to escape frequent bass solos at jams.

Edited 3 hours ago by knirirr

[Si600]

4 hours ago, zbd1960 said:

I don't go to a lot of jazz gigs, but I've been to enough, first one in my 20s, and they all operate this way. More imagination would go a long way. 

 

The Kulturwekstatt have for many years had a blues themed Easter Monday lunchtime concert with the regular Georg Schroeter/Marc Breitfelder band.  Previously Georg and Marc have had brought guest artist with them but recently they've just had Kalle Reuter.  Every song has a piano solo, a harmonica solo and a guitar solo in it.  They're all amazing musicians but "They're Red Hot" doesn't have to last 15 minutes.  We're not going again unless they change something, it was so boring last year.

 

50 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I found a similar attitude among classical concert goers - not the majority of them, just those who sat at the front with the score on their lap desperately hoping for the performer to make a "mistake" they could tut about!

 

They'd better not see me play then!  Life's too short for such pettiness

[MacDaddy]

[Wombat]

Nniiiicccceeee

[12stringbassist]

4 hours ago, Muzz said:

..... and another old Blues guitarist who got up with myself and the drummer, called a 12-bar that turned out to be (when he started playing) a 14-bar (in a different key) and stopped playing half way through the song to tell me I was 'crap' before walking off. 

Oh, I think I know the one...