It certainly was my favorite RIC-fest yet, and one of the greatest weekends - if not the greatest - of my life.One aspect that hasn't been mentioned was the quality of the jams we had down in the RIC vault. So often at these confluences, there are time constraints to deal with that makes things a little rushed, not to mention that a hotel conference room isn't the most comfortable place to kick back and jam. But in the comfort of the Rick vault and with time to kill, we were afforded the oppotunity to bypass the usual cliched 60's/Beatles fare and jam on some original music!
Darren in particular had a song that had been kicking around in his head for a few days, so we jammed on that several times throughout the weekend and watched it evolve, with different people playing along on bass/rhythm guitar and usually me behind the kit! Darren was almost always on his new '59 335 Capri through a Vox AC-30 turned to 11 - it positively screamed!
I also do remember one instance where Graham played a cool original lick on the 12-string neck of Dave's 362/12, Darren immediately jumped in and added his own guitar part to it, and it turned into a killer Byrds-meet-Who jam! It was also a blast fumbling along on bass while John Simmons and Graham played through all the Byrds' hits (during that jam, we had...let's see...Graham on a doubleneck, John on a 360/12, and me on the 8-string potatohead, which makes for a total of...38 strings!) I also enjoyed a brief Floyd jam where I got to channel David Gilmour through John Koelling's gorgeous Davis-modded purpleburst 350 (which is an absolute tone monster and a joy to play, BTW) and an AC-30.
And, of course, the jam to remember was Pat DiNizio w/ Dave and his band (and later Joey) playing through Smithereens hits in the RIC vault! Pat making the offhand comment "Sheesh, i've never seen so many Rickenbackers in my life!" was priceless! Dave just needs to watch his tuning next time. Just kidding - i'll go pack up Pat's guitar now.
