Journeys

2 journeys to speak of tonight, firstly the journey to the jam session, and then the journey that the jam session went on.

But first a mourn, when my grandma passed away a few years ago i wrote / improvised a piece of music for her, called "Sadie's Gone", it's about ten minutes long and i intend to put it up here as an mp3. I played two keyboards during that improvisation, one pretending to be a piano, and the other in "random note mode", a keyboard called a ROLAND SH1000, altering the filters and such like, a beautiful analogue beast that i gave back to it's owner this very evening. So as i listened to this piece of music before i headed out there tonight i was mourning the imminent loss of this keyboard, listening to a tune that had been part of my mourning my last remaining grandparent. Also odd that this parting should come now, just as i'm forming my computer studio again,...

So in addition to my normal gig keyboard, which i carry on my back, along with my keyboard stand, i was carrying this precious, small but heavy SH1000 as i made my way to the jam session tonight, on public transport. Now i always suffer a bit carrying my keyboard, although it gets easier with each gig, obscure muscles have developed in my back and shoulders that i'm sure only get used when i'm going to gigs with my stuff, but i really suffered tonight with this extra weight. Also, if i'm ever scruffy, and trust me i am almost always scruffy, i have no notion of just how mad i must have looked tonight, struggling under this weight, i get so many odd looks as i travel in this way.

Well it got easier as the journey progressed, from my house to finsbury park was sheer hell, changing lines at holborn was hard but much easier, then the journey from liverpool street to the studio was hell again, but light years better than the first leg. As with all tube journeys i read whilst on the train. An obscure pleasure, putting down all this heavy stuff, reaching into my keyboard case and getting out my book (still "the chateau" by william maxwell). i really felt some kind of transformation in myself as i traveled, i found myself growing into the task. I'm not sure what else i want to say about this journey, just that it happened, and it was a mad thing, and it's always a mad thing, lugging my keyboard on public transport.... a) what was my point? b) why do i think anyone will be interested in this?... who knows?

so very quickly just to say about the journey of the jam, i'm sure i'll want to go over this again but just to get it down now. Ten musicians, bass, guitar with laptop, cello, rhodes (me), theramin with clarinet, voice with sax, percussion, drum machine, mixing desk with sampler. synthesiser. i can only describe my experience of it and the other 9 will each have their own story. we got into it before we started recording, groovy bass player bouncing along with my chords and the drum machine, seemed like a nice vibe already, we all played a little to check out the mix,.. cool. Ramjac (drum machine) says a few words before we start about space and then we're in, voice and rhodes, recording. i suddenly had that red light syndrome, no matter how many gigs i've done, recording is a different deal, self consciousness, particularly when improvising. felt visible, uncomfortable, wrong. It took a while for the other musicians to come in and i felt a little stranded,... somewhat painful beginning (although this was subjective, listening back it sounded great).

1st tune lasted half an hour. 2nd tune about the same, was more relaxed now, able to feel the music flowing beneath my fingers abit. some interaction between players becoming clearer, somehow easier. Late on in the second piece i come out completely, walk away from my keyboard, just as i come back it finishes. After the second tune we break. i chat with the musicians, particularly the ones i hadn't already met, some lovely people.

Then after the break, we start really cooking. things really seem to be really working now, there is a certain love in the room, (speaking of love my cat balthazara has just come into this room)the third and fourth tracks for me work the best (although again subjective, the mixing desk sampler guy, who has editorial control with ramjac, didn't think they would get much from the stuff after the break...). The whole thing, the different moods, the different emotions, reminded me of a good party, with many different chapters to it, also to be honest it reminded me of magic mushrooms, the alive, changing aspects to it, the plateaus, safeties, risks, oasis,.... again, as the journey progressed we underwent a transformation, those ten people, and regardless of what the archivers get from it, that experience will live inside of all of us and in some way has changed all of us, for ever.

"we are not permitted to linger, even with what is most
intimate. From images that are full, the spirit
plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled;
there are no lakes till eternity. Here,
falling is best. To fall from the mastered emotion
into the guessed-at, and onward."

(from "To Holderlin", by Rainer Maria Rilke, in a translation by stephen mitchell)