The Last Hurrah

So I think I wrote something the other day about remarking on the final Jacoda gig... guess I ought to actually do that, since it marks a significant event.

Instead of giving you a synopsis of the gig, I'll just mention a couple particulars and leave you with my impressions. Mike, Don, Chris and I wrapped things up on great terms, and really enjoyed ourselves, as far as I could tell, during the last couple practices. It was almost sad, which is a good way to bow out. Much better than with bitter recriminations. I think we all felt that we sounded good, and had fun, and we're all still friends. We didn't debut any new tunes (there was one which Mike taught us, but we didn't play it), and poured everything into all the material we and our few fans were familiar with. It was a celebration of the culmination of two years of work and creativity, and the celebration of the journey those two years took us. It was the closing of one chapter in our lives and hopefully the beginning of a great new one, even if there is some disappointment that Jacoda, certainly a creative and talented band, is no more.

Don is going to keep plugging away at his solo material, which is very old-school rock oriented, and also he's been working on some jazz standards, particularly Duke & Monk tunes. He likes to assemble a collection of local musicians together for his gigs to play on different songs. I'm sure to be invited to play on the ones I'm familiar with sometime. Mike has started working with a drummer from a local heavy punk sorta band, and a slap bassist in what's sure to be a change of pace from Jacoda for sure. He may eventually take over a house-cleaning business from his uncle or grand-father, I forget which. Chris has no idea what he wants to do, musically or other-wise. He's at about the same point I was at around his age, (and actually at several other points in my life...) except he's kept a good, steady job. He wants to start composing some stuff, probably different from Jacoda, he's got a great girlfriend, although he's talked about moving south. Who knows. We're sure to go out drinking occasionally before he goes anywhere though. He and I always got along the best on a personal level as well as musical. I, of course, have school to focus on, and my musical pursuits are likely to be split between classical and jazz, with rock being put more or less on the back burner for awhile. I'm going to start jamming with a drummer from MCC, Bob Saviano, and maybe some guys from jazz band there. I'm envisioning more of an instrumental jazz thing, with acoustic standards at the coffee houses & electric jazz-groove at the bars... the hippies eat that shit up anyways.

Thus closes a chapter on my life that was two years in the writing, begun in May, 2001 when John Rybak introduced me to an affable, pot-headed guitarist named Mike Filer, with a great voice and creative streak a mile wide.