LeftyBassist.com

ive been living in jacksonville for about 6 months now and have finely decided to get involved in the music scene and boy am i disappointed. 2 weeks ago i went to a open blues jam that was recommended as a good place to hear and play good original blues, i go in and sign up third on the list, take a seat and watch whats going on, the host of this jam is a dude about my age (early 20s)playing guitar and singing though its all cover songs he's doing he not that bad. after the first people played (a very good father and son team on guitars doing muddy waters songs plus the host and his rhythm section) i go out side to where the host and his rythem section are at and tell them i liked their stuff which the drummer and the bass player give a thank you and the host goes off on how he's a jazz student at unf and he's one of the best and hes better then just "pretty good", which is fine, guitar players have egos thats just a way of life but then we start discussing my set and how im only gonna do songs that I wrote and he gives me a lecture how people go there to hear real blues not what some kid writes and not for me to expect him to play it with me, and that since im doing originals and not covers ("people come here to hear stuff they know") he tells me im now third to last on a list of 12. Finally after 2 and half hours after i was originally supposed to go on he randomly tells me its my turn and hurries me on to the stage while the guitarist and piano player i asked to play with me are outside smoking, on stage im explaining to him the people im playing with are outside, to which he responds "either start playing or your turns up" so i tell him "12 bar A blues up tempo in a blues shuffle, ill start it off drums come in then you come in when ever" so i count it off and immedialty the drummer is on...dead on, grooving like mitch mitchells.....then the guitar player/host comes in not following the progession at all not playing in a shuffle and basically just playing like an ass, about 2 mintues in the drummer motions for me to solo, which i stat doing until the guitar player hits his tube screamer and begins playing over me...so i stop, then he stops....then i start soloing again...then so does he, finally i stop and just keep playing the changes while he strums random chords that arent in the progression and i just turn off and i tell the drummer to take a solo, which he begins to until the guitar player walks over to us and tells us to end it then kicks me off the stage with a "i told you nobody likes that original stuff" then i got 6 people telling me they liked it up until the guitar player started playing...and to be honest i think that night is a metaphor for this music scene, so far every night ive gone out and played with people through open mics and craigslist and every guitar player thinks no other guitar player has anything on them and aboslutley refuse to listen to the music going on around them and constantly try to pull everything to their direction and critique the most non important things as if there the only things that matter(i dont know how a psycodelic paint job on my jazz bass keeps me from being able to swing)....i love playing music but as long a i live in this city i might just pack it away.....i dont know just a random rant my apologies all

Sorry to hear it man, sounds like a real drag. Perhaps you should try to circumvent the guitarist problem by finding a great drummer to connect with (like the one you played with at the open mic) and get a killer rhythm team happening and then pick your guitarist. It sounds like there are good people around where you play, I'd try to put a group together and go with the strength in numbers approach.

Holy cr@p, I don't know how that "host" manages to survive (he sounds more like a parasite than a host). You'd think that attitude would drive away everyone.

Wouldn't let that keep you down tho. Keep plugging away until something decent happens.

thanks for the positive vibes guys, im gonna keep plugging away, surround myself with a good rhythm section and maybe theres a good guitar player around here with low self esteem i can snag up




funktastically yours,

Gur

IMHO open mics and open jam sessions are just euphemisms for "accident waiting to happen"! My advice if you want to do originals is just wait until you can put a band together. I speak from experience - I really don't like playing cover songs much. Seriously, when I want to do covers, I reach for a Rock Band or Guitar Hero controller.

I pretty much agree with this aside from the guitar hero part. Also, not to be a jerk, but I don quite understand the logistics of how a "12 bar blues in A" at an open mic being called out by the bass player could be considered an "original."

well to call a twelve bar blues in A or Bb or F# is to lay out the harmonic movement of the chords, just as every stevie ray Vaughn song is a 12 bar blues (for the most part) and every other blues guy post robert johnson (for the most part), so does that mean that they didnt write any songs? i came up with what to me is a cool sounding melody or riff what ever you wanna call it that is to my knowledge something that i wrote, and considerng one of my old bands and i recorded it and it has a name i will say i wrote it.

Ah, well if the main melodic theme is played on bass then you have a point, but then that sort of messes with the "plug and play" format of a blues jam and might understandably ruffle some feathers of the folks at the jam. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with putting the melody on the bass, but I can see how doing so at a blues jam might cause problems. I mean, how's the guitarist supposed to musically felate himself properly if the bass player isn't doing the "ba dum dum dum dum ba dum dum dum dum" that he's practiced playing blues box licks over for 42,000 hours?!

Wow - such venom against guitar players in this thread! We do play bass guitar you know LOL

Since we are talking about playing original music, doesn't any writer here write on guitar? That's what I do. Sometimes keyboard but 90% guitar.

I don't have any issue with guitar players, just blues jams and the gutarist that tend go to them.

I hate the blues, and jamming, and egotistical musicians(no matter what instrument they play) so I probably wouldn't have had a very good time either!

Is that from over saturation from living in Austin?

You know I've lived in NYC almost my whole life - so definitely no oversaturation on my end - and I also don't really like the blues. Once in a while someone like Jack White will come along who is so original that you've got to admire him, but I generally don't go near the stuff, let alone play it.

Sigh .... I guess i'm in the minority. As a young'un, I kinda liked the blues and for sure some blues artists like B.B. King, Albert Collins et. al.

But it wasn't until I moved to Chicago that I understood what it meant to play the blues.

I'm now a card-carrying blues-a-holic.

i dont play guitar so i cant really write on it, but i do write on an b-3 but for the most part when i write i usually just do a little recording for myself with just bass and overdubbed djembe,

as far blues goes, its a wonderful thing when the musicians playing it have a love for the music, but i guess that goes with any genre of music lol didnt mean to turn post this whole thing as a blast on guitar players...just the ones in jacksonville

No worries! We're blasting on the blues too...or it least poor quality blues jams.

When I think of Chicago, I think of either industrial, deep house or stoner indie-rock. I genuinely had no idea they still played the blues there aside from the usual tourist traps that every city has.

i always found it ironic that the most american forms of music (blues and jazz) are almost completely ignored or disliked in america....random thought anyone see that new phone commerical with eric clapton and his "fender phone" (sorry its on right now as i type this) for some reason it makes me dislike fender(and eric clapton) even more