Monday, February 13, 2006
Understanding
This weekend has been a musically-energising one.
The past few weeks have really been chock-full of performances, and while they were enjoyable (for the most part) they still left a part of me yearning for something more. So, I made my way down to Roomful of Blues for a Saturday night blues jam. I usually take it as a good time to recharge, to play some music while not really stretching out most of the time. For a bunch of guys who only get together on Saturday nights as and when to play whatever, it has its moments of brilliance but otherwise we coast along in a relaxed, laissez-faire manner. Following which we’d knock back a pint, maybe play some cards and consider it a Saturday night well spent.
It started off as it usually did, going through the various blues rhythms. On that night we didn’t have anyone to sing though, so we just took turns soloing. There was the rhythm section, 2 of us on guitar and one harmonica player. Of that bunch, 3 of us are/were bandmates in Blues Virus, namely the bassist and harmonica guy.
To digress a bit, I’ve been with Blues Virus for quite a while, thumping out the blues at venues of varying sizes and conditions. We’ve played dingy little bars, street sidewalks, big outdoor stages and almost everything else in between. Good and bad gigs all came our way, that was the way we paid our dues to play the blues. It’s been almost 4 yrs since our first gig, but recently we’ve been on a hiatus of sorts. Not that it was an agreed break, but it just happened that way. If anyone’s looking for a blues band that sounds deliberately crude and unpolished, that loves to have an irreverent good time on stage and runs on plenty of cold beer, drop me a line.
Anyway, back at Roomful, in walks our drummer whom we haven’t seen for almost a year. He was walking along with the Thaipusam procession and happened to pass by, so he decided to drop in (barefoot, no less) and see what was happening. Now, our drummer is a colourful character of sorts, adding to the band’s collective weirdo quotient. A cab-driver by day, he’s been through all the ups and downs that make up a stereotypical bluesman’s life, and his tempo always seems to teeter dangerously on the edge of disarray, not quite over the edge but just enough to keep things exciting. The beauty of his understated drumming is matched only by his unpredictability, his brilliance and erratic nature both equally spectacular. He’s not into fancy rolls and crashes and all that shmuck, but he keeps the groove going and knows all the ins and outs of the old-school blues. He’s been there, done that since long time ago and he’s still at it, hitting the skins and driving the band along.
It started off shakily enough, a mid-tempo swing to dust off the cobwebs and scrape off the rust. We took a few bars to literally get up to speed, though after exchanging some curious looks we eased into a comfortable groove. The audience didn’t seem all too interested in what we were doing, since it wasn’t really a blues-loving crowd, but that didn’t matter. Once that was done, we went into a slow blues to take things down and see what would happen.
And the magic returned, with a sort of telepathy brought us through a whole dynamic range. When he took it way down and barely tickled the skins, I responded with gentle, plaintitive bends at similarly low volumes, just loud enough so I could hear. The other guys went quiet too, at times hardly playing. When I signaled a build-up with one stinging note after another at gradually increasing volume and intensity, he went right along and brought it back up, culminating in a mad flurry of chords and cymbal crashes and probably leaving the audience quite confused, but again that didn’t matter. We were all just delighted to be speaking the same language again, one which we hadn’t spoken for a long while.
This was a totally different ball-game from what I’d been doing the past few weeks. This was unadulterated musical chaos that no amount of arrangement and practice could achieve. The kind where you play one thing and everyone else just knows what comes next. We’re not sure why and how, but it just happens.
Maybe it’s the same kind of understanding that winning sports teams, military special forces and long-time lovers share, something common to all human activity that involves more than one person. It’s the kind of understanding where one knows where the other is going without the need for verbal or written agreement, safe in the trust that the other party will make good on his part of it. For me, music is where I find this understanding with kindred souls, the understanding that binds one human to another, or perhaps a few others as well.
We started the song not knowing how it would end or exactly what was going to happen, but knowing how to follow on each other’s leads and make the most of it. That’s where the fun starts.
I hope we get a gig soon and start making the same noise again.
The past few weeks have really been chock-full of performances, and while they were enjoyable (for the most part) they still left a part of me yearning for something more. So, I made my way down to Roomful of Blues for a Saturday night blues jam. I usually take it as a good time to recharge, to play some music while not really stretching out most of the time. For a bunch of guys who only get together on Saturday nights as and when to play whatever, it has its moments of brilliance but otherwise we coast along in a relaxed, laissez-faire manner. Following which we’d knock back a pint, maybe play some cards and consider it a Saturday night well spent.
It started off as it usually did, going through the various blues rhythms. On that night we didn’t have anyone to sing though, so we just took turns soloing. There was the rhythm section, 2 of us on guitar and one harmonica player. Of that bunch, 3 of us are/were bandmates in Blues Virus, namely the bassist and harmonica guy.
To digress a bit, I’ve been with Blues Virus for quite a while, thumping out the blues at venues of varying sizes and conditions. We’ve played dingy little bars, street sidewalks, big outdoor stages and almost everything else in between. Good and bad gigs all came our way, that was the way we paid our dues to play the blues. It’s been almost 4 yrs since our first gig, but recently we’ve been on a hiatus of sorts. Not that it was an agreed break, but it just happened that way. If anyone’s looking for a blues band that sounds deliberately crude and unpolished, that loves to have an irreverent good time on stage and runs on plenty of cold beer, drop me a line.
Anyway, back at Roomful, in walks our drummer whom we haven’t seen for almost a year. He was walking along with the Thaipusam procession and happened to pass by, so he decided to drop in (barefoot, no less) and see what was happening. Now, our drummer is a colourful character of sorts, adding to the band’s collective weirdo quotient. A cab-driver by day, he’s been through all the ups and downs that make up a stereotypical bluesman’s life, and his tempo always seems to teeter dangerously on the edge of disarray, not quite over the edge but just enough to keep things exciting. The beauty of his understated drumming is matched only by his unpredictability, his brilliance and erratic nature both equally spectacular. He’s not into fancy rolls and crashes and all that shmuck, but he keeps the groove going and knows all the ins and outs of the old-school blues. He’s been there, done that since long time ago and he’s still at it, hitting the skins and driving the band along.
It started off shakily enough, a mid-tempo swing to dust off the cobwebs and scrape off the rust. We took a few bars to literally get up to speed, though after exchanging some curious looks we eased into a comfortable groove. The audience didn’t seem all too interested in what we were doing, since it wasn’t really a blues-loving crowd, but that didn’t matter. Once that was done, we went into a slow blues to take things down and see what would happen.
And the magic returned, with a sort of telepathy brought us through a whole dynamic range. When he took it way down and barely tickled the skins, I responded with gentle, plaintitive bends at similarly low volumes, just loud enough so I could hear. The other guys went quiet too, at times hardly playing. When I signaled a build-up with one stinging note after another at gradually increasing volume and intensity, he went right along and brought it back up, culminating in a mad flurry of chords and cymbal crashes and probably leaving the audience quite confused, but again that didn’t matter. We were all just delighted to be speaking the same language again, one which we hadn’t spoken for a long while.
This was a totally different ball-game from what I’d been doing the past few weeks. This was unadulterated musical chaos that no amount of arrangement and practice could achieve. The kind where you play one thing and everyone else just knows what comes next. We’re not sure why and how, but it just happens.
Maybe it’s the same kind of understanding that winning sports teams, military special forces and long-time lovers share, something common to all human activity that involves more than one person. It’s the kind of understanding where one knows where the other is going without the need for verbal or written agreement, safe in the trust that the other party will make good on his part of it. For me, music is where I find this understanding with kindred souls, the understanding that binds one human to another, or perhaps a few others as well.
We started the song not knowing how it would end or exactly what was going to happen, but knowing how to follow on each other’s leads and make the most of it. That’s where the fun starts.
I hope we get a gig soon and start making the same noise again.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 12:35 am 
