Bedouin Soundclash Part 2: Hippie Jam Bands are Stupid.

Sunday morning at the Regina Folk Fest had a workshop called Get a move on: Fat beats and funky rhythms with Socalled (host), Bedouin Soundclash, Pacifika. I had no idea what it was going to be, but it turned out to be a bunch of members from different bands jamming for an hour. There was a couple bass players, an accordion player, fiddle, trumpet, saxophone, a couple female singers, and of course, Jay, the singer/guitarist of Bedouin Soundclash.

They turn on a drum machine and everyone kinda jams around that. It was kinda cool for a bit, but after about 40 minutes I realized how incredibly dumb it is and was reminded why my band doesn't do any live jams. It is just way too dull and unstructured to be very entertaining for anyone but the people doing it.

And then there's Jay Malinowski again. Here's the thing about Jay: he doesn't really jam out or do any crazy guitar solos. Maybe it's because he's from a band that doesn't suck, or maybe because he's not that kind of guitar player, who knows. Throughout the first jam, which lasted about 40 minutes, he mostly threw in some cool rythym guitar parts every once in a while and a couple neat vocal skats. For a good portion of it he actually sat down and had a cigarette. After that jam was over, he took over the microphone and started singing Amazing Grace (it was Sunday morning after all). The band jammed over that for a bit, then that one kinda ended and again Jay started up a song. This time it was Can't Hurry Love, and it was fantastic. Again, the whole band jammed over it and it was very well received. The audience clearly had a much better reaction to the last couple songs than anything else they did. I wish they had done that kind of thing for the whole hour instead of spending the first 40 minutes masturbating in front of a crowd.

I'm finally getting to see them in concert on Tuesday. Last time I saw them I wasn't really familiar with their songs, and it was still awesome, so I'm really excited for this concert. Expect a review of that later. Check out part 1 here.