The stories and poems that make up Jam Session are far from traditionally structured. The writing in this project treats inspiration as a partner rather than jumping off point because Jam Session would not exist without the source material. I could have forced three acts wherever they fit and syllabic tricks into the poetry but instead recorded the stories exactly as they occurred to me during listening, and maintained the original diction of the lyrics out of respect for the poetry that songs already are.
Jam Session was forged through an intensely personal process, the quality of the reading experience correlates with understanding of the context in which the writing was created. I already recommend listening to the musical inspiration for each piece before reading but additional exposition, even in the form of the few sentences that I have planned, provides Jam Session with another dimension of accessibility.
An example of the concept, proof that lyrics from different decades and genres are pieces of the same puzzle. When I reread Intro I feel reverberations of inspiration, for me this is a monument to the process.
Short, sweet, and seemingly without a point; the newly formed rebel pirate crew starts their journey off by listening to their previous captain’s parrot. Classical music always makes me think about the human discipline condition, gets me worrying about how we insist things change yet only do what we’ve done before.
Weird story, weirder song. Exploration of how we constantly anthropomorphize/belittle/trivialize wildlife and environments with human creations that we consider solutions; I think, given the opportunity to speak, those ‘lower’ forms of life would have a number of choice words for us.
I love this song for its shameless repetition, INXS were fisherman that used hooks for all that they caught. Their redundancy got me thinking about the recurring issues in my own life; this story is an examination of the consequences of indecision.
Together these lyrics work as an observation of our willingness to abandon parts of ourselves to be what the company we keep deems right, A.K.A the price we pay to think of ourselves as okay. This poem also works as a transition within the project, a switch from a phase of idealistic interpretations to something a bit more personal, and therefore realistic.
REMINDER: The next story in Jam Session, Slow and Low, is scheduled for release January 29th; it, and the other bits left, will all be contextualized in a post similar to this after the project is entirely available (after February 12th.)
Thanks for reading.
Vincent Santino Smarra 