Blog
Summer 2009 Spanish Jam: The Music
Written by The Saturday Morning Canasta Club
Our Summer 2009 Spanish Jam was filled with sun, canasda, hi-los, wine, San Miguel, etc… and for a small group of us, tucked away in the dark and very air conditioned studio, it was about the Music. So let’s cover the highlights…
First, Roadside Comedy. Jimmy had the lyrics and melody pretty well finished but had no ideas, as usual, of tempo/chords/key, etc… Jimmy met with Andy at start of session and sang it to Andy and Andy developed the song structure live and by second singing we had nailed it, including the slide guitar. we then introduced it to band and every one started contributing immediately, with Rob’s amazing bass line, Ed’s trumpet lines and rythym guitar and the Louise-Andy-Ed chorus for middle 8 and last verse/chorus. Back in London, Andy added the strings but we pretty much nailed it in Spain, first session.
Second, we recorded I Love You Anyway, and everyone had a great time taking this one over the top. Ed had the feel from the outset, going for ‘That Thing You Do’ and we all ‘got it.’ And nothing was funnier than watching Andy sing with his little red shoes and all of us shouting at him to be more and more Busted . we piled every clap and shaker we could and think we have a great happy toe tapper. And we got in our 1-2, 1-2-3-4 count in which is great. Love Andy’s organ, which was a great riff delivered after a good romp in the pool. We have warned our young fiance that he has some explaining to do to his future sister in law — but he’s cocky and confident he’ll survive.
Third, my highlight as a lyricist who saidly thinks his craft has merit was King of the Biosphere. The band started a great jam (which is pretty much the tune) and Andy was on lead playin’ around with scat. While still playing he shouted at me to give lyrics. i had 6 different songs ready to introduce over the weekend so I started throwing them at him one by one. he’d sing a bit and throw the lyric sheet over his shoulder because it didn’t fit. i might as well have been giving him cans of diet coke or different size doritos. Sigh. Good news was King of the Biosphere was a perfect fit, including the ‘stop’ piece and the rest is history. we didn’t touch the song after the one live take and will put it on the 2009 CD even if just a demo. But, while i love the song, i will forever understand my place in this great band. Press buttons, order pizza and have forty sets of lyrics for the boys to race thru during a good riff- – maybe one set will fit.
We then had a whole set of jam sessions where the band just rocked around different themes. One was later called Misery Marmalade where the band played around every sad minor chord they could find. Louise started free versing and must have watched Bambi’s mother die earlier in day, because she developed a really beautifully, haunting and very sad set of melodies. The only problem was this song was about 22 minutes long and involved a lot of free versing like ‘We’re hanging out at Jimmy’s villa, we’re usin’ lots of sun protection, and we’re from the West Country.’ And still this all sounded so sad. We never really went back to the original tune here but it came to life again with An Immovable Thing, which was started in the 2009 Winter Jam. There’s something about Spain and sad song! Must be the sun, the pool, the wine, the canasta…
We also had another jam around a song that had various names from In the Morning to Never Going Back. Has potential, but its locked a bit between Bryan Adams’ Heaven and some Chrisian Rock Born Again revival song. A bit too much ‘bitter rain’ in the lyrics and big comin’ alive chords in the music. But we’ll dust it off, destroy any trace of earnestness and come up with something good — like ‘I tumbled in the tube – knocked over an old lady, but knicked her wallet. so today was a good day.’
But the biggest memory about the first Spanish Jam was at the end of the week we agreed to be a band. We actually decided this thing was cool, the two studio idea would work, you could bring partners and families together for a week and play canasta and music on the same day, that the kids would feel welcome (there were six of them running about) and the partners would feel comfortable… So that was when the Saturday Morning Canasta Club was born. That was when we decided to go for it and foolishly put together a CD for year end. And that’s when Kathy realised a second home was now irreversibly surrendered to mic cables and headphones.