Tamira and Co - 12.02.2011 - Sink or swim, Westpoort

Tamira and her band had a gig to prepare for, but at the last minute they were guitar-less, so I foolishly agreed to learn their songs on top of my already stressful workload.

The gig was at Sink or Swim which is a studio rented by one of Lorenzo's mates. It's out past Sloterdijk Station, so it was quite an adventure to get there. Lorenzo, Deen, Tamira and I cycled out there in about 20 minutes...

When we got there it was all very "anti-kraak". We went through a garage door and left our bikes in a warehouse and then climbed through a little door to get to ante-room off a small stage. When you play in the same venue weekly, it's great to have the feeling of working out how you are going to sound in a new venue. The opening band were already soundchecking, so we weaved through them to get to a kind of lounge area.

The gig was a cross between a show and a hosue party. Very loungey and relaxed. There was a small bar selling cheap beer and we all kind of mingled and prepared for our gig until it was time for us to go on.

I don't know much about the first band. Good effort - great drummer and bassist supported by two girls singing and one girl on keyboard. I missed the guitar, but it also meant that I felt quite good about not being outclassed and the little audience that was collecting would be chuffed to here some Kerchunk-a-wang...

We went on and played through our set. Amazingly it went by without any noticeable hitch, which for me was surprising considering I had never played all the songs in one go correctly before.

We came off stage just about 10 minutes before the last tram left, so I didn't get to ride the post-gig euphoria very much. I don't have any photos, but Lisa's friend Sebastian took some, so hopefully I'll get a hold of them later.

First Jam of the year

Last night was the first Jam of the year at CC Muziek Café. Devin has been holding down the fort while I was in Scotland for Christmas. From now on I expect every Thursday to be filled with the trials, tribulations and joys of hosting a Jam Session.

Devin, Deen and I had a practice the previous day before opening to run through a few things. I’m hoping these Wednesday sessions give us a chance to build a semblance of a house band, but I was a bit disappointed that it was just the three of us running through my Open Mike chords, maybe I tried to do too much on my first week back at work. The mood lifted when Marcel Gorski came in and I ran through a few old classics with him. Sadly he couldn’t be there last night.

Anyway… I was there nice and early to get things set up, and was glad when Fergus came in. I met him through Fraser at a drinking session few months back and remembered that he said he played the bass. It was good to see a new face. My on-going fear of the Jam Sessions is that it’s just me stumbling through songs, and I don’t yet have a core group of people who’s talents I know; I miss Javier, Fraser and Sandra.

Before we even had things set up, we had a band of Devin, Deen, Höskuldur, Fergus and Me. It was enough to run through a few songs and blow off the cob webs. Fergus made a great difference to our Bass-less practicing the previous night. I think we probably did Angie and Dancing in the moonlight. Pretty soon a quiet guy named James joined in with some wonderfully improvised acoustic guitar over the top of everything. We continued like this through another several songs, before I eventually was able to take a break and leave the band to a few jams.

It was sounding pretty good from off the stage. The bar was still pretty quiet but it was good to hear a jam still continuing while I wasn’t playing. Ted and Mathew were there to talk to René about making a promotional video(watch this space).

After a while I returned to the stage and we ran through some more Jammy songs now that I had a feeling for our Ad-Hoc band of the night. If memory serves me correctly we ran through Knockin on Heaven’s door, All along the watch tower and Battle of Evermore with Marco now adding some acoustic guitar. By the time I finished that lot, we also had Dave Harmonica Hulks, Geert and Robert waiting to play. The combination suggested blues was the order of the Jam, and I left them to shuffle away for a good 20 minutes.

Tamira had been chilling in the smoking area down the stairs waiting for the band to go on. I was quite jealous of the coziness down in the smoking area, while I was upstairs being paranoid that everything wasn’t running smoothly. Eventually her Bass player(Lorenzo arrived) and we put together a band to do Tubthumping, Boots and MGMT… before we returned to some blues Jams  until the end of the Jam.

All in all it was a pretty good jam. It started slowly, but eventually there was lots of happy musicians playing away who seemed to be really enjoying themselves. We still don’t have enough audience members braving the tough January weather and Winter Depressie to come out and see us, but hopefully with the number of musicians we have that will slowly come.

Below is a list of some of the songs that cropped up during the night:

day 3 - Recording with Tamira.

we had a pretty good session - going over lots of the songs, and adding various extra bits and pieces.

Two recording sessions in one day

Yesterday I managed to have 2 recording sessions.

Tamira(the drummer from Wednesday's Jam Session) is something of a multitasker and she came round to play me some of her songs. They were so good that I recorded them. She also brought the most interesting guitar I think I've ever seen; a Bacolite and Alluminium number from the early 60's. It's quite a challenge to record a 40 yr old plastic guitar with a rattle, but it was certainly fun. 

 

If dogs are like their owners... are guitars???? 

I had hoped that Sandra would come round and I could coerce the two girls and Karolina into forming an all female power pop trio, but alas the timing was slightly off. 

As Tamira left, Sandra arrived, and she was on very good form. She managed to put down some guitar parts and overdub some vocal parts. I now need to overdub some other stuff oer the top when I'm feeling a little more creative. 

5SOF review by Karolina Thomoglou

For those who were not able to make it to last 5 shades of funk gig, you missed quite a show. The night started off slowly with the shades doing a funked impression of "Little Green Bag" with the audience building up to over 200 before they knew it!

The band played for over two hours with some highlights being Stevie Wonder's "Superstition". The classic old school funk song "Jungle Boogie" as well as the sexy "Heard It Through The Grapevine". The crowd also rocked to some of the 5 Shades original grooves with Hot Rox spitting out the raps, Fraser and Vass keeping a mean beat and Neil firing out incendiary licks, Marie's soulful singing on "Santa Baby" kept everyone entranced and put us in the Christmas spirit, while Marcel's artful voice acrobatics kept us on our toes.

The room was pumping the mood was fantastic, and just when you thought you could sit down and rest, DJ Roy came in and kept everyone on their toes while the Shades took a much needed break. Before long they were back on to continue their second set, making sure the music never stopped. With drinks flowing and moods soaring the night slowly wound down with DJ Ray on the decks till closing time. All together an amazing night that won’t be forgotten any time soon. Make sure you don't miss the next big night-Keep yourselves updated by checking in regularly right at www.5shadesoffunk.com.

Photos available here