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3 November 2005
3 Jammin' Gents
(Note: This post was begun on 18 October and concluded on 3 November)
On Saturday, the 15th of October Amanda, Pete, Jessica, June and I went to the 3 Jammin' Gents concert at Ramo. Even before the concert's commencement, there was some intrigue to it. Originally scheduled to be staged at the Beckman Auditorium the concert was subsequently shifted to the Ramo Auditorium -- a significantly smaller capacity hall. The official reason or perhaps mitigating alibi all ticket-holders were given was that Ramo provided the chance for the audience to be closer to the group. Some of us knew better. The other hiccup was of a more sorrowful turn. The 3 Jammin' Gents originally comprised John McEuen, David Amram and Vassar Clements. However, Vassar Clements the fiddle player passed away two months ago and handpicked Buddy Spicher to replace him on the program.The program opened with surprising informality as an elderly gent strutted out, weaved his way through the instruments already on the stage and looked upwards at the crowd assembled on the incline. He spoke highly of Vassar Clements, chipped in many interesting anecdotes and hilarious asides to which a good number of the crowd responded -- that was my first indication that having never heard of Vassar Clements much less grieved and prayed for his soul, I was the poseur in the room. His eulogy to Mr Clements was short however and he quickly went about the business of introducing the evening's performers who followed the cue and walked out briskly. I ought to have guessed that the white-haired members of the party were the 3 Jammin' Gents but the fact did not seep in until a little later. Mr McEuen took on the mantle of warming to the crowds and needless to mention referred rather self-deprecatingly to the venue-shunting. Mr McEuen resembled a much slimmer James Coburn with a mane of white hair in place of the short crop. Their first piece was titled A Pilgrim and A Stranger -- a New Orleans song that was a tribute to its musicians.
What followed after the song and in every subsequent interlude between renditions was sweet, amusing chaos betokening the spontaneous, uninhibited ambience that makes the best jazz music -- Mr Amram trundled from the microphone to piano to drums, tripped over loose wires but steadied himself, trembled as he picked up notes of the next piece to be played while all this while Mr McEuen continued to make merry chatter in a dulcet calming tenor about his upbringing in Los Angeles, his apprehensions of being a misfit in Nashville and if Alice, his sister-in-law was seated in the audience yet. The next song was a deliriously funny and self-deprecating riff on jazz and country music -- 'There Ain't No Such Thing as Hillbilly Jazz'. This was followed by a Chaucerian 'Acoustic Traveler', a sombre '99 Years for one dark day' which had as its narrator a convict serving life for murder and a return to mirth and good humour with 'Once you've been to Texas, you'll never be the same'. The three of them took turns playing their pieces and courteously calling out to the other to follow up with their piece -- while Mr Spicher in with his velvet-lined hat and disport of comity and avuncular grace was everways on the fiddle and Mr McEuen only shuffled between the stringed instruments -- guitar, mandolin, banjo -- Mr Amram had with him a din of whistles, Egyptian shehnais, reeds, pipes, lutes and drums. Presently he was engaged in a flute solo and I could discern that his tunes and monologues on the instruments were essentially simple, one-step variants to a common refrain made all the more spectacular with his antics. Nonetheless, every time he played for us he took us to a deep thicket where birds twittered and a creek gently gushed. I also began to wonder why with the notable exception of Jethro Tull, the flautist was never part of any rock ensemble. The flute's sharp, pointed notes add cadence and metre to the guitar's free-spirited strumming. Indeed, as if to underscore my thoughts Mr Amram proceeded to play two flutes simultaneously.
But nothing previously of Mr Amram's exploits prepared us for a thoroughly enthralling monologue he delivered of his life and times in the Fifties hanging out with the Beat generation. He spoke of the time he spent with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and others -- "the disillusioned, soured, embittered self-hating Beatniks". One after another, his anecdotes of his war years and the jazz scene in the country back then opened up the artist to a privileged audience -- even his colleagues on stage were awed into reverential silence.
The rest of the night continued with a coruscating 'freestyle' rendition by David Amram to a juggling of different beats, some folk music favourites like 'There's a circle, be unbroken', a performance with Egyptian bongo-like percussion instruments called dumbeks, aphorisms like "In music, when in doubt leave it out", an impromptu rendition of 'From Cairo to Curville, TX' -- the special Pasadena version that came without the lyric sheets, them 'a been forgotten and on which John McEuen remarked "That takes a lot of nerve!", a perfect summary of Mr Amram by Mr McEuen who related a faintly fictitious anecdote about how the latter as a child told his mother he wanted to be a musician when he grew up to which his mother replied he could not do both, two rapturous encore exits and re-entrances in the space of which Mr McEuen in jest told us the protocol they had to observe on encores -- head backstage to the dressing room, touch a wall and reappear.
They finished out the night in typically gallavanting panache to bring to close one of the most memorable concerts -- nay varieté shows -- I have ever been to.
