Rock Town Hall, here’s your place to talk football! All I ask is that you keep it to the pro game. Any quarterbacks discussed, for instance, cannot throw a worse ball than Eli Manning – and players can’t wear midriff-showing jerseys and those lame pants that show thigh. Please make a cursory attempt to tie your thoughts on the four remaining playoff teams to music. Enjoy!
The two-chord jam, as perfected by Neil Young on his Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album! This version of one of that album’s primo jams is from a 1970 concert at the Fillmore East. Neil can’t wait to get jammin’! I’m sure you can’t wait yourself, so hey man, don’t let me hold you back.
Neil Young, “Cowgirl in the Sand”
A bit of flight of fancy here inspired my Mod’s invitation for all Rock Town Hall’ers to meet at a bar in Philadelphia over Xmas break.
I have only been here for a couple months, but really enjoyed participating in this little online community. Everyone is very knowledgeable and articulate and yet still inquisitive about music. As a bonus, my fiance enjoys that I don’t rant as much about the different ways the Kinks are superior to The Doors when I drink Scotch.
From what I can gather, most RTH’ers are musicians. (I consider myself a singer, but I picked up the bass a few years ago when a band needed that.)
So here’s the assignment: Imagine all the members of RTH are putting on a show at a bar. What will the set list be? Who will play what? You can nominate a song, but someone else has to second it. After that we have to list who plays what on each song. It’s first come first serve on the instruments.
So, first off I nominate “Medicine Jar” by Wings. I just want to sing on this one, but if pressed into service I would play bass, too.
So have at ‘er RTH’ers. The house manager says we get 12 songs plus an encore. Two encores if we get them drinking!
I’ve been bowling twice in the last month, which is a lot for me. I usually bowl once every couple of years, usually during a kid’s birthday party. The second time I was bowling I recalled a rock ‘n bowl club and alley that I’d heard of or walked by in some city years ago. Then I recalled an even funnier combo club, Sudsy Malone’s Rock ‘n Roll Laundry & Bar, in Cincinnati. Does anyone remember that place? We once played down the street from Sudsy Malone’s. I regret never playing there. I regret never seeing a show in either a bowling alley or a laundry. Have you? Have you attended or played shows in any other weird combo clubs? I’m thinking a rock ‘n barber shop would be cool. Any other combo clubs that need to be investigated?
One of the wisest things my compadre and bandmate, Townsman Andyr, said during a rehearsal, as we discussed an instrumental passage in a new song, was “I don’t mind jamming, as long as it’s planned out.” Andyr is a man who values concise structures in his music – and he’s not prone to digging long instrumental passages let alone rockin’ jams, but I like to think that if something in his brain ever clicked and he found a way to appreciate long, rockin’ jams, he’d dig the intensely structured, heavy jams of Glenn Branca and his guitar army.
Following is a really long, heavy jam, although not a hippie/blues/jazz-based jam. Some might question whether it’s really a “jam,” because Branca’s, like, a dictatorial composer/conductor, man, but I’ve seen him conduct this stuff in person. His suit’s rumpled, he’s got 3 days of scruff, he’s gesticulating like John Cale, and he’s got rockin’ bedhead. This may get filed under Classical, but it’s got a rock ‘n roll heart. Play loud!
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Stick with me: We’re familiar with movie cliches, like the hooker with a heart of gold or the teenager who opens the fridge and drinks milk straight from the carton! What are the rock equivalents of the following movie cliches? Feel free to add your own movie cliches with corresponding rock equivalents.
There’s a lot here to chew on and, I’m sure, many more cliches that you will want to cite and correspond to the world of rock. Proceed as you see fit!
At some point in the mid-70s, I believe, some stoned DJs and marketing types at a kickin’ FM ROCK station came up with the bright idea to run a month-long promotion called ROCKtober. FM ROCK stations across the country picked up on this promotion. The details of ROCKtobers of my youth are hazy, but I remember things like featured artists of the day, culminating in a special concert broadcast from that day’s stadium stalwart; maybe an A-Z Weekend for each of the month’s weekends; and more Rock Blocks than we’d get the other 11 months of the year. To this day, although I don’t listen to any stations that might still be running a ROCKtober promotion, not an October goes by without me making reference to ROCKtober!
Although we’re a third of the way into the month January, we got the bright idea that it’s high time Rock Town Hall takes the lead in promoting JAMuary, a monthlong celebration of rock ‘n roll jams! Each day we’ll feature a rock ‘n roll jam session that will try the patience of 3:30-and-out crowd. But that’s cool. We know most of you can roll with the changes.
We’ll need your help in selecting key jams! If you’ve got a jam to suggest, how ’bout writing me offlist, at the address that will follow the jump, at the end of this thread. We can make arrangements to load the track for you, because a classic rock jam will likely be too much digital information to load through standard Back Office means, if you know what I’m talkin’ about. If you’ve never started a thread on The Main Stage, we’ll talk about how it’s done and see that you sponsor your rock jam for all it’s worth!
Read on for more information and our first rock jam of JAMuary!
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