Jam In The Dam 2012 Diary: Lost In Amsterdam

We’ve enlisted Joshua Bogen of JambandsEurope.com to detail his adventures in Amsterdam for the 2012 installment of the Jam In The Dam music festival.

Tuesday, March 14

I touched down at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and immediately ran into Mike Gordon / Max Creek guitarist Scott Murawski at the airport Starbucks. Certainly a good omen for the festival, and also an excellent chance to put in a request for some Creek tunes. Fingers crossed.

[Photos by Sisyfus]

After checking into our hotel, and having all day to do just about nothing, we did like any tourist, and wandered throughout the city… and promptly got quite lost. I was convinced that we were basically walking in circles, until someone was gracious enough to help us out. Before even really looking at our map, he patiently insisted several times that we were, in fact, “off the map.” Now, by this time, I had already taken this statement to its logical conclusion, and suggested that we might actually be in Belgium. Apparently it actually wasn’t that bad and our helpful local eventually relented, took a good look at our map, and found where we were, which was without a doubt “on the map,” a bit farther than expected, but not ridiculously so. However, despite having passed in front of it several times already, I was beginning to have doubts that we would find The Melkweg tomorrow.

Amsterdam is a distinctively laid out city, sliced up by a number of canals. And despite the relatively low number of cars, the traffic patterns are a bit disconcerting. Between several layers of cyclists and the tram lines running in both directions, crossing the street can be an ordeal. As a result, it’s a lot more relaxing to use a lot of the side streets or follow along the canals. Problem is, many of these side streets and canals look the same, and thus it’s pretty easy to get lost, although it’s not really that long a walk to anywhere in the city, provided you know where you’re going.

The evening’s event, a pre-Jam in the Dam party didn’t start until around 11 at night, and when we left the hotel again we still had plenty of time to get there. However, we somehow managed to arrive late, and missed most of guitarist Jeff Aug’s opening set. Our late arrival was of course attributable to getting lost once again. We had headed off in the wrong direction, went far past where we should have turned at one point, doubled back and got lost once again. When we finally found the correct street and walked until it basically came to an end, we were able to find someone who had heard of the club, Maloe Melo. We had gotten the street right, but we had walked to the wrong end. We were dutifully informed that we needed to turn around, follow the canal until it disappeared under a plaza, and then pick up the trail again on the other side. (This above the protests of one of our guide’s friends, who was sure we actually were looking for the coffee shop Mellow Yellow, which was just around the corner) Fortunately, following his instructions, we were able to find the club without further mishap.

At least half of moe. was there, as was Keller Williams. It was a pretty good vibe to have them enjoying the music along with everyone else, and hopefully indicative of the kind of festival we can look forward to. Not sure when Keller left, but the boys from moe. hung around to the very end. (admittedly they may not have been able to escape, as Al Schnier seemed to be cornered by one person or another for pretty much the entire night) moe. in particular is a band which has really embraced the whole new dimension of fan interaction which is really changing the way music is experienced, especially in the jam band scene.

[Photo by Jon Derow]

Cosmic Finger put on a great show, with a crowd eager to dance and get the festivities going. As it was a small club, half the time was basically a sing along, as they went through the Dead songbook, although I think the band really hit their stride on a long jam out of one of their original tunes. The guitar playing, while not without some of those trademark Jerry spirals, was often off in a completely different sound.

For a club band doing Dead covers, they are not at all afraid to offer their own take on the music, and they make it work. So there were some curious intros to songs, to keep you on your toes, and jams that went in directions not typically Deadish, although preserving that flow and energy that is what jambanding is all about. At one point I had to ask someone what song the jam had started from (apparently Saint Stephen, although it seemed ages ago), but by then it was already morphing into The Eleven, which ended up with an impromptu vocal from someone in the crowd who had commandeered the mike, singing in Arabic, I believe. This is one of the pitfalls of playing small venues with no real security – although it actually wasn’t that bad, shades of the Dead in Egypt.

[Photo by Jon Derow]

In short, a fun evening of familiar Dead tunes and dancing to get everyone energized for the main event, a lot of smiles and hugs as old friends met up, and conveniently a decent antidote for jetlag as the Americans try to adjust their clocks to European time. Needless to say, after the party we discovered that our hotel was just around the corner and only about three blocks away.