Melting into the Scene at the Melting Pot in Shanghai

Brad Spurgeon at the Melting Pot jam in Shanghai

The Melting Pot jam sessions in Shanghai have been among my favorite the last two times I came to this city. I first managed to discover it in 2010 when I was spending an unscheduled extra night in the city thanks to the panic of the Icelandic volcano ash that prevented me from taking my flight out of the city. This year, I had a scheduled stay in the city, but the ash cloud of the unrest in Bahrain sits over me and my colleagues as we wait to travel to that country for our next race. I could not think of a better when than to attend the Melting Pot jam and plug in and play and sing with the new house band.

In fact, the house band seems to have changed each year I have gone. It was in the Melting Pot two years ago that I saw Joe Chou do the weirdest thing with my Seagull guitar, turning it into a sitar… when he was the guy running the show. Then last year it was someone else. This year, it was a very hot bass player from the U.S. named Dnotes. Dnotes played some wicked six-string bass AND sang some classics, more jazz than I found at the House of Jazz & Blues, in fact. And on keyboards last night was the breathtaking playing of Robert Turner.

It also turned out that JJ Davis, my friend Jeff of Bee Dee’s, showed up to play and sing throughout the night. I managed to take a few videos, and I tried desperately today to get them all up, but I managed only to get one of them onto YouTube. I really wanted to put up the video of the Chinese dancers, for instance. But I finally got goosed by Chinese Internet policies, and no matter how hard I tried or what tricks I used, I could only find the wherewithal to get the one short video up.

I also have some photos of me playing there that were taken by one of my F1 journalist colleagues, Simon Arron, whom I thank profusely. I’d have wanted to put more of those up too – but goosed again.

By the way, I was amused to hear Dnotes introduce the dancers as Chinese “Lockers.” He was refering to the trailblazing group of American dancers from the 1970s, whom I had the pleasure of meeting and appearing on the same TV show with in 1976…! (Bang, Bang, You’re Alive!)

I learned today that Dnotes and Robert Turner have some pretty impressive CVs, which explains why I and my F1 colleagues were so impressed – with Simon pointing out that Turner sounded a lot like Billy Preston.

Oh, almost forgot! My two songs – What’s Up! and Mad World – went OK, and I can thank my other colleague, Mark Hughes, for figuring out how to turn on my Roland R-26 and record me playing with the band as part of my year’s effort to record me playing with musicians in each country I visit this year.