CL jam sessions...

cydeweys · #1 01-12-2012, 09:02 AM

Slightly long post here, sorry:

Sometimes to entertain myself I go out to jam sessions I find on CL. My latest one had a lot of promise from the email exchange(full studio...with top notch gear...tons of orig material to work with....vast musical knowledge, you get the point). He (guitar player) also tells me he invited some drummer that has played in tons of bands over the years, but he has never actually met before. So I decide why not? The guitarist gives me his address and says "dont bring any gear, you're going to really dig what I have."

First off I always take my own gear when I play somewhere, so I load up and head out. Get to the guys house and we BS for a few mins then head down to the "studio". When I walk into the basement I see some nice guitar gear (older fender tube amp, and two nice strats). Then I notice a decent small drum kit...not bad I guess. Then the overkill PA system from the dark ages made by god knows who. And finally the bass rig...

This is where the bad feelings started to sink in. In my mind I had pictured a decent 4x10 setup (from his description), boy I was wrong... The "rig" was an unknown 15 watt-ish practice amp with the speaker leads going to a 15" full range sony home stereo system speaker cab from the 70s (maybe???). The bass itself was ripoff p-bass copy with rusted hardware and strings. Ok good thing I brought my own gear.

I bring in my gear (nothing fancy) and begin to setup. I warmup with a few little scale exercises and such. The guitar player sits and watches me as he sips on his cheap vodka. About that time the drummer shows up, he sists down warms up and we get a little mid tempo blues groove in E going. Thats when it goes down hill fast. From the email the guitarist informed me that his style is bluesy with some jazz thrown in there. So he fires up his fender and begins to jam along. My ears notice somethings a little off..."oh I tune half-step down" he says. Uh okk no big deal I switch to playing in Eb and we go along and finish up the "song" (7 minute long SRV guitar solos). SRV? I said, "Yeah sure man.." he replied.

I told him I really like SRV too and wanted to hear some of his original songs that he has. He then plays me just about every song off Texas Heat all mashed up into some single hybrid song thing with maybe a hendrix tune or two thrown in there for good measure. I stumble along with his changes and attempt to make something sound in tune. OK fine whatever I thought, I ask him what key he was mainly playing in there and he looked at me as if I had asked him to solve some giant math problem. The rest of the jam session was more of the same over and over and him making some odd attempt at singing.

I should have known to not get my hopes up over a CL post...

bassbully · #2 01-12-2012, 09:29 AM

Cl is the land of the weird...a musicians wasteland.

nortonrider · #3 01-12-2012, 09:41 AM

I hooked up with a great guitar player on CL.
Unfortunately, situations change, I moved away and we lost contact.

Sometimes CL does work.

jlane72t · #4 01-12-2012, 09:54 AM

been there, man.

"Don't bother bringing an amp, we're up a couple flights of stairs so I know it's a pain, we've got a good-sounding rig already set up here that you can use."

Good sounding rig: a 4-channel radio shack mini-mixer plugged into a torn up 70's Kustom cab with a buzzy grounding problem...shared with vocals

caeman · #5 01-12-2012, 10:44 AM

For the record, there is NO SUCH THING as an over-kill PA system.

cydeweys · #6 01-12-2012, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by caeman

For the record, there is NO SUCH THING as an over-kill PA system.

For his vocals, such thing does exist

Waffles and Scotch · #7 01-12-2012, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bassbully

Cl is the land of the weird...a musicians wasteland.

Indeed. I've found some great musicians on there, but they're few and far between.

keiththebassist · #8 01-12-2012, 01:46 PM

I onced jammed with a guy for the first time, I was playing piano and he was on guitar. I asked him what key he was playing in and his response was "I don't know, I'm not a musical genius like you". I really had no idea that knowing the keys constituted being a genius, woohoo I'm a GENIUS!

Edward G. · #9 01-12-2012, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bassbully

Cl is the land of the weird...a musicians wasteland.

Goodness, isn't that the truth!?!

dtripoli · #10 01-12-2012, 06:38 PM

Not too long ago answered a craigslist ad;
"Band Forming, Santana, Malo, War, Oldies & Funk"
Cool right up my alley, so I call the guy. He seems legit, says he has chops, we'll rehearse at a studio in my town and there will be a drummer and guitarist coming also. Timbales player, Vocalist and Horns will show the following week.
I get a list 20 songs to woodshed. I wanted to nail this audition so I spent hours practicing til I couldn't get it wrong.
Day comes and I show up 15mins early, walk in the studio and the guy is there noodling on his guitar.
....let me pause here and ask my fellow TB'ers, Ever had that gut feeling or instant assessment of a musician from just a first glance, be it good or bad?
Well I did and it wasn't good. The guy was around my age, playing one of those Indonesian PRS guitars that had Carlos Santana's signature on the headstock. It was black and the finish was smudged all over with finger prints, dust all through it, the G thru E strings were strung backwards. Now I'm not one to judge a man by his axe but if he treated his wife like he did his guitar, she would have left him long ago. So, I tell myself I'm being critical and to keep an open mind.
I plug into the back line and say, "let's jam on Evil woman or something to warm up until the rest of the players arrive,
Original key?" he gives me a funny look so I say, "you know, the key Santana did it in" still the funny look.
Ok, I say, What CHORD do you start it in? Chords? he says, I don't know the names of them, just how to play it.
Oh, boy......Just start and I'll follow. He barres a G and I come in and instantly discordant noise fills the room.
Whoa, whoa. We are not in tune. Funny look again. Says he forgot his tuner so could we just play on and maybe the other guitarist will bring one. No, I explain how you don't need a tuner to tune a guitar. Again the funny look.
To expedite matters I pull my tuner out and tune the guitar for him.
Rest of the players show up and one look tells me they are top notch. We start playing Evil Woman, the other guitar player, myself and the drummer quickly lock in on a really nice groove then the PRS guy comes in at twice our volume and no where near the same tempo. Rather than strumming I-IV-I-IV he just hangs on the I and playing some spastic, non-rhythmic, overly loud mess. The other guitarist after two songs got him to lower his volume and turn his amp away from us. We ran through the other 18 songs and basically ignored his playing. We had the studio for 2 hours so we made the best of it. I don't think he ever once got in synch with us. It was also obvious he did not know any of the songs all the way through and some he didn't know at all.
When we were packing up to go, PRS guy is all excited and wants to schedule the next practice. Other guitar player says not until you learn the songs and can play them competently. PRS guy says that's why he put the band together so we could teach him the songs and BTW, we need to chip in for our share of the studio costs.
If the guy hadn't been so nice, naive and truly clueless I would have been angry at the idea of us paying to teach him.
None of us came back and a month later I drafted the other guitar player into my band. So it was a small price to pay to acquire a highly skilled guitarist.
Every week I see PRS guy has reposted the craigslist ad.

Edward G. · #11 01-12-2012, 08:18 PM

^^
Good night! This is hilarious and totally possible again.

bassbully · #12 01-12-2012, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waffles and Scotch

Indeed. I've found some great musicians on there, but they're few and far between.

Agree, I have also found some good ones..play with them now but the weird and crazies outweigh the decent and normal by a ton.

SwansonEricJohn · #13 01-12-2012, 08:59 PM

Too funny. I saw the Malo/War/Santana ad and "almost" responded!

Strat Hater · #14 01-12-2012, 09:35 PM

In my neck of the woods we have Kijiji, on one uses CL for some reason.

Well, I answered an add for a drummer wanting to jam, well to make a log story short. We carry my amp and bass into his basement and setup. He tells me how he loves Streetheart and Trooper, sooo.... I start playing Under my Thumb He wondered what it was, not a big deal, I tried playing some more stuff that he liked. He attempted to folllow me in some off beat drum beat thing that was just him hitting the same drums with no time at all. So I tried something different, Shook Me if I remember, and he did the exact off time beat thing.

I tried to show him some simple 4\4 beats to try and play and he could not even fathom the idea and just started to play the same thing again. So I made an excuse that I had to be home to get my wife and I never looked back. As I was packing up he admitted to me that he was only playing for 2 months and he was hoping that playing with others would make him better.

Others that I hooked up with were great players, I thought we had something going with some classic rock stuff. Now I mentioned to them that I was only looking for weekend warrior stuff, and I could not afford a commitment. Well all they wanted to do was 80's hair metal like WASP and stuff like that. I saw their new a week later and it pretty much told me to go F#@k my self because I would not commit to doing their hair metal. Funny thing is I told them right from the start that I was not in to that music for playing, though I like listening to it.