Jumppoint Jam

My friend John owns a company called Jumppoint. He was looking around for a way to treat his customers for what has turned out to be a good year for sales and revenues and he hatched an idea that I'm hoping will catch on with other companies. He decided to rent a downtown nightclub for an evening and booked a rock band for a jam session.

Several of John's customers are avid amateur musicians and the notion of jamming with a group of pros sounded like a wonderful idea. The whole thing rested on finding the right professional musicians for the evening. He needed a band that could entertain as well as a group of pros who could share their instruments with a bunch of musicians of unknown ability without visibly cringing.

Enter Kenny MacLean of Platinum Blonde fame. Kenny has assembled a talented group of musicians called RockTTA (Rock through the ages) targeted at corporate events and these guys are just terrific. Kenny is a fabulous musician and a terrific entertainer and the rest of the band is top notch. Most importantly, these are all very nice guys who lent out their instruments to the jammers, provided help with tuning and coached us through our session.

From my point of view, the evening was an outstanding success. I got a chance to play drums for the band and did three numbers with them. I used to play the drums for a rock band in university, so I don't think I sucked too badly. I also got a chance to do a favourite Ray Charles party piece at the mike and helped Kenny sing a Led Zep song with my patented high whiny tenor.

All in all, I had a very enjoyable evening with a good bunch of musicians and a sympathetic audience. What more can you ask for?

There is a bit of a photo linkage to this. I took my latest acquisition along to the party (Canon PowerShot S50) and took a few pix of the band. On the positive side, I actually had a camera with me because I always have my little camera with me. I got some decent shots of the band, which is hard to impossible if your camera is sitting at home. But, I did get frustrated with the speed of the little camera. By the time I'd composed the shot and pressed the trigger, often the musicians had moved - sometimes right out of the frame! The delay between pressing the trigger and actually setting off the flash and opening the shutter is really irritating. I would have much preferred to have my heavy artillery with me - a 5d with a 70-300 lens and a flash would have been the perfect camera to capture the action.

This brings me to the news of the day. Sigma has issued an announcement that the DP1 program is continuing and it sounds like the camera might be with us sometime in 2008. This should be the first serious compact camera with a large sensor (except for the egregiously expensive Leica of course). I hope the camera is affordable (i.e. south of $1,000) and lives up to expectations.

Here are some shots of the RockTTA band: