Monday, December 05, 2016

late 2016 jams

I've finally got round to editing some recordings that have been amassing since August.

There was a psychedelic jam session at Bramleys in Canterbury back in late August. They've been hosting jazz and blues jams on alternate Tuesdays for a while, so Jules pushed for this, but unfortunately the management didn't want it to continue.

Most of Lapis Lazuli acted as a sort of house band with various musicians coming and going from the stage, including me playing some saz. Unfortunately the levels were set too high, so there's some nasty distortion in places, but it's still worthy of preservation. I rarely get to rock out like this on the saz... more of these jams, please!

Listen Here

Then there's a variety of other bits and pieces. There was an intimate Sunday evening with Yiannis and Roberto (Magga Tiempo) in mid-October with their friends Konstantis, a Greek violinist, and Laura, his Irish-American wife who taught herself Greek and explained a lot of the political/cultural history of Greece and Asia Minor to me, putting the rebetika they were playing into perspective. Konstantis wanted to have a go on my saz, so I went and got it, then ended up playing "Kaike en Sholio" with them (the only rebetiko I know). I then realised I could join in with some of the other stuff they were doing. A beautiful occasion (ended with Roberto playing a couple of Cuban songs). There's a couple of songs ("Gallows Pole", the ancient ballad popularised by Led Zep, and "Whisky in the Jar", an old Irish rebel song popularised by Thin Lizzy) played with Conrad "Cloudshoes" Singh at the end of his secret woodland gig... he called me, Phil and Aidan (2/3 of the Papylonian Babooshkies, who supported him) up to join him in a very spontaneous closing jam. Similarly, there are a couple of songs from Leonie's new Collaborations Volume 1 which she asked me to join her on during a woodland album launch gig she did otherwise solo. To round things off, there are some improv jams with Phil Holmes (ex-member of Lapis Lazuli as of a couple of days ago, a peaceful separation, Jules having now learned his parts). These are from a couple of relaxed evening sessions which, as usual, involved at least as much chatting as jamming.

Listen Here

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home