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After church, sax and folder in hand, we caught a bus and made our way to the The Bad Apple, a restaurant and bar that serves mostly expatriates. We walked up the four flights of stairs and through the glass door. Unlike most restaurants/bars, this one is really pleasant. It is very spacious, one level, and three of its four walls are virtually windows, one of them leading out to a roof-top patio. Simple yet elegant tables surrounded by couches for dining patrons and a nice bar with round-backed chairs for drinking ones. A pool table comfortably fills one corner and newly purchased music equipment in another. The walls are lined with bright modern paintings of jazz musicians. Celeste and I sat at the bar and ordered a Caesar salad. We had a great talk with Se and Mark, (the MOST delightful Quebecois, also here teaching English) about the evils of video games, and the beauties of the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. After an hour or so, we left the bar where we'd been eating and talking and wandered over to the equipment and began to jam. At first it was great. Celeste sang Nothing Compares to You by Sinead O'Connor, and Mark and Vadim (who had just woken up from an all-night booze binge at "The Zoo" [a propos] and crawled over to the Bad Apple) easily picked out the chords on bass and acoustic guitar. Another round with Celeste singing I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2. By then, Celeste was certain that the half Caesar salad she had eaten wouldn't be enough to sustain her life functions, and she left seeking greater sustenance. We planned to meet later so that I could stay and jam. We began to jam. Se picked up the bass and plucked out Chameleon, to which I accompanied, with Mark singing scat and Vadim playing the 2-4-beat--I-don't-know-how-to-play-drums-but-have-always-had-an-uncanny-talent-for-making-noise rhythm on the drums, normally Se's gig. We continued to jam but it got worse from there. Unfortunately, it was another session of playing "nothing jams." "Nothing jams" consist of one chord, and one scale (E pentatonic). A "nothing jam" will usually start with the drummer who has been playing uncontrollably and loudly, long before any of the other members have even tuned their instruments. Note: he never stops to allow the other members to tune. If someone happens to scream at him to shut up long enough for them to tune, the said drummer will usually play louder so as to drown out any annoying interruption to his furious battery. The drummer's mantra is usually "the faster the better." In reality, tempo doesn't matter as long as he gets to experiment with new levels of decibel creation and guessing what will erupt first, the heads on his drums or the drums in our heads (eardrums). The guitar player, tired of screaming at the drummer to shut up, will then turn up his guitar amp to match the drums, mostly out of spite for not allowing him to tune, and begin his best rendition of Jimi Hendrix. Because the guitar player in "nothing jams" knows no real music, he doesn't actually play any of the same notes that Jimi played, and could probably only name one or two of the songs he's ever written. Instead, said guitar player plays the famous E pentatonic scale (if you're not familiar with this, listen to any Pearl Jam song, or better yet, walk down the street until you hear a garage band practicing and you can bet that it's this same jam in E pentatonic scale). The bass player in "nothing jams" is usually a second string "nothing" guitar player who was even worse at the E pentatonic scale than the reigning "nothing" guitar player, and who has been demoted to position of bass. It's like playing left field for the garage band. Feeling equally angry at the drummer, and probably still harboring resentments for the guitar player for banishing him to the bass, the bass player will start in, turn up his amp, and begin playing loudly, a-rhythmically, and often in the wrong key--after all, he did somehow lose the the guitar duel to the "nothing" one-scale guitar player. "Nothing jams" have no sensitivity, no changes, no real artistry, no regard for the other musicians (or neighbors within a 2-mile radius), no beginning nor end, no structure, no dynamics--NOTHING. THEY HAVE NOTHING! And yet here I was: I found myself caught in the middle of a "nothing jam." I've always found that such pointless jams drain my energy, and most often my desire to ever play music again. These jams leave me completely exhausted and full of angst. If I could have raised my voice above the chaos, I would have screamed, "Look! Go home to my house and go into my garage. On the wall you will see hung up my garage band chops--PERMANENTLY! THEY ARE NAILED TO THE WALL AND SECURELY CEMENTED TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE GARAGE! I'M THROUGH WITH GARAGE MUSIC. I'M THROUGH WITH "NOTHING"!! Eventually, I just packed up my horn and left. I don't know if the other members even noticed I was gone. Maybe they felt relieved that the overall harmonics of the "nothing" tune was back to just E pentatonic instead of my "experimental" tones such as major and minor chords, sevenths, ninths, sixes, thirteenths, and changes. I will say this: the highlight of my whole day was watching Mark really get into this "nothing jam" with his vocals. He has this powerfully rich voice, somewhat reminiscent of Jim Morrison, that cuts through the squalor of even "nothing jams." He has an amazing ability to create fantastic lyrics on the spot. He blueses everything wonderfully. At one point he even broke into a French rap--after all, he is Quebecois. He began to tap his foot. This turned into downright stomping. Then dancing. Before long he was hopping up and down and it didn't stop. He was in heaven! He screamed, sang, screamed, sang. At one point, he was on his knees belting into the mic. Mark and I do have a chemistry. He, unlike the others, IS musically sensitive (like his personality), and often we find ourselves spontaneously trading licks, lines, and ideas. I love Mark anyway, but I must say that it was absolutely delightful to see him enjoy himself so much. Mark was definitely the exception to tonight's "nothing jam." I would love to find a regular group to play with while I'm here in Korea. I've played with a couple expatriate garage bands and as of yet, I lament: I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Another "Nothing Jam"--Scottro [2003-01-26]
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