adventures in rock and roll
Went to an open jam. Here are the problems with them. The host band stays on stage and plays a dozen or so songs, a good hour and a half to 2 hours worth. Then they finally let people get up starting with the regulars, their buddies, or whomever whines the loudest about having to get up early for work, and ending with the infrequent jammers...regardless of whether or not you've been in a band with these guys and they know damn well you can kick ass. Then some band gets up there and wants to play 5 or 6 of their songs and, even if they don't suck, their music might be torture to you. Then there are the amateurs. They just aren't good. They should stay home and practice every night for a year and then come back. There are the people who believe that they are good singers. There are the people who are not bad singers but do not actually know the words or the structure to any of the songs they want to sing. There are the players who believe that they can play the instrument because they can follow a blues progression but do not know a single actual song...not one. For them you have to do blues in A or E, or maybe slow blues in A. There are the hosts who don't know that they shouldn't spend 2 hours on stage to begin with and should actually step in and get the drunks off of the fucking stage before they drive everyone out of the bar. Then there is the guy who has a gig on Saturday and is not desperate for stage time and can only take so much bad music that he will leave before the end of the night when everyone else has had their turn and already gone home and the hosts want to shut it down but, oops, they forgot that you were there to play so "make it quick, we have time for you to play maybe two songs to this empty room". That guy just laughs at the whole debacle and leaves without opening his guitar case...then maybe has his car break down half way home in the middle of the night. That guy probably feels that he shouldn't have bothered and should have just stayed home and rested up for the gig in 2 days...I'm guessing.