The best music jams are never heard. I witnessed one of the all time great jams the other night and when I turned around to see who was watching, or better yet, listening, there was three of us, and one guy was the soundman. The rest of the party had gone inside, or left altogether. The jam was a party killer.
Try to imagine four ugly guys, one not so ugly guy and one guy who was handsome, but well into his fifties jamming on Europa by Santana. Granted I had had a significant amount of booze by this time, but it didn’t matter, great musicianship is great musicianship despite the state of the intoxicated.
There were three guitar players, bass, drums and a harmonica and I didn’t hear one bad note from anybody. The complexity of the solos made musicians on late night talk shows look and feel sub par. The bass and drums didn’t miss a beat. The harmonica player played maracas when he wasn’t blowing. It was beautiful. It was the confluence of nature being transmitted through the hearts and minds and fingers of six men who never played together before. But none of that mattered. The language of music is the simplest of all forms of communication. A nod here, a look in the eyes there, a lifting of the hand, and it all comes together. Of course these musicians were seasoned. They had put in years and years of practice. They weren’t playing for money. They weren’t even playing for an audience. They were playing for the love of music, and the love of life.
