Once upon a time, I had a band. It was a great band. At least, I thought it was. We had a terrible habit of never recording or writing down any of our songs, which essentially forced us to memorize the tunes or lose them. And they weren’t just melodies over traditional changes or general keys – they were peculiarly intricate (What if the whole song was in 5 except for these 3 bars after the bridge which will be in 7, and we’ll play in a completely different key?) with stretches of controlled chaos and whimsy.
College kept us apart most of the year, so we mostly played in the summers, and every June we could look forward to the annual tradition of trying to remember the old tunes while adding a few more to our repertoire. And, every year, our tastes would change, so we’d throw one or two songs out of the mix as we brought in the new ones. For the better part of a decade we only had 15 songs, but by the end we were only playing 2 of the songs we had written during our first year together. Back when we were all 17 or 18. Man, time flies.
While a lot of these elements may have kept us from being as prolific as we should have been, it did do one thing – it made us really good at playing with each other. We knew one another so well we could changes songs on a dime, extend and twist sections beyond recognition and create a synergy that the crowd really fed off of. I think we had lots of fun playing with each other and that feeling was infectious – people came to watch us because we looked like we were having fun. The music hardly mattered.
We’re playing together again, for the first time in four years, this Sunday at the Someday Lounge. We managed to get everyone together for two rehearsals over the past couple weeks – also the first time in four years we’ve all been in the same room, let alone playing music together – and the energy’s still there. I think it’s a going to be special.
Do you live in Portland, OR?
Come down and see us on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 @ 7pm @ The Someday Lounge. There’s a $5 cover.
[...] McFerrin demonstrates pentatonic scales Posted Aug 19 2009 After having so much fun playing with my “jazz-funk ensemble of doom” last Sunday I was reminded of this video I found earlier in the month. It’s Bobby McFerrin demonstrating [...]