Let's Make A Racket - V

Improvisation and interplay.

Here's a silly little bit of fun.
We're back down at the blues club.
To recap:
Sunday Blues nights were where, each Sunday a band was put together who had never (other than Stevie and a very few regulars such as myself) played together before, to raise money for research into motor neurone disease (which Stevie is dying from).
The Rules of Sunday Blues were:
1 - Check your egos at the door (no showing off; just play what's right for the song);
2 - Nothing must be rehearsed; everything must be improvised on the fly.

We had a third rule for the vocalists: At least one song per evening must be made up on the spot. Newbies were allowed to sketch a few lines down during the break, but Steve and Luke and the regular vocalists loved to start playing a song with nothing in their heads and see what came out.
This is one of those.

I've included it here to highlight the interplay between the musicians.
The line up on that night (24th. June, 2001 according to the label) was:
Stevie: Bass and vocals;
Dave Sparrow: Drums;
Some Spanish session guy from Barcelona, whose name I never knew: Organ (He was on tour with someone like Julio Inglesias and Steve invited him in for the night. He brought a full-sized Hammond B3 with him and a Leslie cabinet the size of a carthorse. He played splendidly, as you'll hear).
Laurie A'Court: Tenor and alto saxophones;
Old Dive: Guitar.

What I love about playing with musicians of this calibre is that everybody is constantly listening to what the others are playing and adjusting their own playing to complement it.
This track actually requires repeated plays to hear what's going on underneath the soloing.
- You'll notice that (unlike most pub bands who simply turn up the soloist and carry on thrashing about behind them) when for instance the first organ solo comes in, the rest of the band drop the volume so that the nuances of the solo can be heard.
- You'll hear spontaneous changes in dynamics and volume as players react to one another.
- You'll hear Old Dive trying out a completely different rhythm guitar part in every verse to try to find one that fits in case this song becomes a keeper and gets played again on other nights.
- You'll hear Dave Sparrow play an immaculately loose little drum break; not the usual tub-thumping drum solo but a delicate skittering around the rhythm that suits the feel perfectly.
- You'll hear the usual appalling ending where Steve turns to say "this time" and then forgets to sing the last line.
- You'll hear an unlistenable cacophony at the start, as this song was started by Steve picking a key and laying down a bass groove for us all to join in. Actually the start of this one is missing because whoever was recording forgot to change the tape until we had started playing so it kinda fades in.
- You'll hear Old Dive winding Steve up by playing modally at the start. Steve cannot think outside the pentatonic (he thinks anything not strictly in the blues pentatonic mode is a "bum note") and Michael and myself would constantly goad him by playing in dorian or mixolydian, prompting him to turn and yell "Stop all that jazz bullshit, you bastards!" at which we would grin like guilty schoolboys and revert to pentatonic.

Sorry to be boring, but there's something about this one that keeps me coming back to it.
Quite apart from the fact that it gets a groove on, it is the live interplay and improvisation that hooks me. Dynamics between musicians cannot be rehearsed and this mess of a song is one of my favourites from all of the hundreds of hours of blues club recordings precisely because of that.

The song is called "Too Many Monkeys In My Tree", reflecting the fact that Steve had a lot going on in his personal life back then.
It is a bunch of utter tosh but I like it.
It is also the song that inspired the name of yet another of my sanity bands: The Groovy Fuckers (a throwaway line by Dave Sparrow off mic as the song finished: "Shit, we're a bunch of groovy fuckers." … Drummers, eh? Erudition personified).

This was also the very night when that disgusting "ponytail and stupid pointy sideburns" photo was taken, so I'll post it again here as it is the only shot I ever got of Laurie and myself playing.
Plus it's a nice shot of my guitar and it makes my cock look big.