You may recall there were two tapes — “Coffeehouse Jam #1” and “Jam” — that left gunk all over the heads and sounded like crap on the first play-through. I’d originally thought they were two copies of the same stuff, but they weren’t.
Well, today I tackled “Jam.” I wasn’t expecting much, given how very crappy the sound quality still was on “Coffeehouse Jam #1,” and how horrible this one sounded on first play-through.
I received a very pleasant surprise; the sound quality is mostly pretty good, much better than CJ #1. I didn’t need to filter anything. On the very last track I did run noise suppression and then amplify it, because it’s a very quiet little piece — the drummer and horn player had left, and the bassist and guitarist turned down their amps — but other than that, I didn’t need to mess with the sound at all.
I initially had an hour and seventeen minutes recorded; by the time I’d edited out dead air between numbers and other wasted space I had it down to an hour and thirteen minutes. Ten tracks — two actual songs (“Soul Kitchen” and “Spoonful”), a couple of minutes of the guitar player pretending he was Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, and seven jams, one of which seemed several times as if it might turn into the Dead’s “St. Stephen” but never quite did.
Drums, bass, trumpet, and guitar — and I have no record of who they were. It’s possible that they were a local band called Pork Pie Hat, as I had scribbled “P.P.H.” at the top of the enclosed song list, then crossed it out.
That song list, by the way, is a mess; four of the seven jams are just listed as counter numbers with no titles, the Hendrix wannabe stuff is called “bits of guitar,” one jam is inaccurately described as “acoustic guitar, no drums,” when it’s actually electric guitar and bass (but I got the “no drums” right), etc. The two song titles are correct.
Whoever it is, they were pretty good — bluesy and jazzy. Jam #4 (I numbered the first five, gave the others names) is a twenty-minute tour-de-force, though there are a few awkward seconds in the last five minutes — I think they were looking for a way to end it neatly, and it took awhile to coordinate it.
For that matter, they gave “Soul Kitchen” seven minutes and “Spoonful” got ten — they didn’t rush through anything.
Anyway, it’s good music. It’s playing right now, and I’m typing in time with it. Nice.
That leaves eighteen tapes I haven’t played, and maybe half a dozen I may try again now that I’ve gotten better at keeping the heads clean and demagnetized.