“Jam” was a noun the first time I encountered it. We were a Welch’s grape jelly family but while shopping at Queeny’s (South Shore Self Service, our local Lindenhurst grocery store) Smucker’s Raspberry Jam pulled me in and I had to buy a jar instead. My mother wasn’t thrilled – Christopher, I told you to only get what was on the list! – but I remember asking myself What the hell’s the difference between jelly and jam?
It must be jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that.
Okay, helpful, blues metaphor! Jam is thicker, has hunks of fruit (“preserves,” as it says on the label), bit harder to spread, might tear the bread if it’s not toasted. Still, pairs well with Skippy.
After I took up guitar “jam” somehow became a verb. Do you wanna come over my house and jam? Was it that high school friend who owned a Univox Les Paul Jr. copy with painted over headstock and hastily-applied “Gibson” decal? No. It must’ve been Junior High and Billy with his genuine Gibson SG Deluxe. Did I ride my Schwinn over to his place, toting my Ibanez Les Paul copy? Or did I already own that orange Jawa moped? More likely, I cadged a ride from my mother or her boyfriend Justin, driving one of his white Pontiacs (a new one every two years). Billy and I jammed and kept doing so, eventually forming Cobra, our cover band. Guitar became my life’s nexus, washing away all other interests (building scale models, racing slot cars, blowing up GI Joe). When I wasn’t at Billy’s jamming or in Music Land on Wellwood Ave. drooling over guitars I could never afford or driving my mother crazy practicing at home I was buying every guitar magazine on the newsstand to figure out how they did it (“they” being my favorite guitarists: Jimmy Page, Steve Howe, Pete Townshend, Tony Iommi, Brian May, etc.). Did it occur to me to take guitar lessons beyond that one class in Junior High? Maybe I saw a flyer in Music Land, found out what it cost and rejected the notion as too expensive. I bumbled along, figuring it out for myself or with help from Billy. The chords were a cinch but putting together a convincing lead break eluded me.
This is a hammer on. This is a pull off. Here’s how you combine them.
Not long after Cobra ground to a halt the Nihilistics were launched. Embarrassed by the supposedly indulgent excesses of my previous favorite guitarists, I took up the gauntlet thrown down by punk rock thrashers and bashers like Johnny Ramone, Steve Jones, Joe Strummer, Greg Ginn and Brian James, banishing all but the most frantic, disjointed leads from my repertoire. Adopting a “good enough” approach, only now do I realize that any progression on guitar was halted in its tracks somewhere around 1984. After Nihilistics the same shoddy skill set served me well in Missing Foundation, Jungle Creeps and Wrench, my final attempt at being in a band. In the 25 years since I’ve occasionally jammed with friends and acquaintances, each time my conviction deepening that A) I’m a middling at best guitarist and B) I fucking hate hearing “jam” in any form except as it applies to preserves in a jar or that band Paul Weller led.
And yet here I am, about to head out and “jam.” I’m due over at a friend’s house today at 1 PM and have no idea what to expect. He used to be in bands, still plays, writes songs, suggested we get together. We’re around the same age and probably have the same reference points. But the last time I tried this – maybe 10 years ago – it was a depressing disaster. Down in someone’s asbestos-lined basement I winced my way through a few covers (Neil Young, Bob Dylan) and came home in a deep funk. I’ve successfully avoided “jamming” since (just this past Friday a complete rando enjoined me as I jockeyed karaoke at the Elks Lodge, drunkenly asking Do you play guitar? and adding We should get together and JAM!
No, we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t do that at all. I just fucking met you. Like the dude I sold a Peavey amp to on Marketplace, who lives not far from me and does “Experimental Music” and wanted to jam.
No, no, no, no, no.
I’m trying this today because I’ve known this guy a long time and like him and it’s too late to back out now. But for some time I’ve been on a precipice: am I still a guitar player or just a guy who owns guitars? Hoping to answer that question, I took a guitar lesson a few weeks ago, with someone I’ve also known a long time and who I ran into at the Hoboken Shop-Rite. We got together in the back of a local music store and he sent me home with a few exercises, praising my skills, saying You already know how to do this – it’s just about learning where the notes are. Today’s jamming will likely reveal I STILL don’t know where the notes are and I AM one of the guys I looked down on as a kid: someone who owns guitars but doesn’t play them.
As I write about myself before and after Nihilistics the nature of youthful obsession comes to the fore. Why do certain things possess us and – in some – become lifelong passions, even careers? Like my high school friend Ozzie Melendez, trumpet player, trombonist, who was in the Lindenhurst Blues Brothers and is now in the E-Street Band. Or Artie Ballas, another Lindenhurst Blues Brother and brass player who’s a professional musician. Or Adam Tese, saxophonist, who tours with Debbie Gibson and has played with everyone. Maybe I should’ve stuck with my original axe, trombone, and I’d be gainfully employed. But guitar got its hooks in me, literally, and – perish the thought – I might be the most prominent guitarist to emerge from Lindenhurst. I keep wishing I could fall back in love with guitar (it’s one of my 2025 goals) but the other night I sat down to learn Don’t Let Me Down via a YouTube video (young Chris would’ve shit himself to see how much LEARN HOW TO PLAY content is on YouTube) and within 10 minutes Marty the Tuxedo Cat was crying and pawing at the fretboard, as if to say You’re torturing me with this shit. I hung the guitar back on the wall and returned to Squid Game.
Sunday I was down in Hamilton Park, at the end of our block, watching perhaps the world’s worst cover band (let’s call them Triple Bypass) in the most gorgeous setting (Hamilton Park has sweeping views of the Hudson River and Manhattan, from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge up to the George Washington Bridge), thinking Much of life is knowing when to move on: these guys haven’t learned that. Triple Bypass started off by running a stake through the heart of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World, thoroughly misunderstanding his approach to building a lead (more Greg Ginn, less Chuck Berry). It was the same off-kilter murder your ears approach with every classic rock song they ruined, whether Comfortably Numb or Down On Main Street or It’s Only Rock & Roll. By the time the “lead singer” excoriated the crowd with You guys like The Clash? and then launched into Vince Taylor’s 1959 Brand New Cadillac I was glad Sweet T. was still up in Lake George, knowing I’d be driving her crazy with my bitching about Triple Bypass. To no one in particular I said This is a cover of a cover, for chrisssakes.
Toting my folding chair home, I can’t tell you if I was inspired – Hell, I’m better than those guys and they were playing in front of a crowd! – or determined to sell all but two (“Debbie” Gibson, my ‘68 Les Paul and the Bigsby copy my friend Jim built for me) of my six electric guitars and admit that, yes, I’m no longer a guitar player.
I’m a guy who owns guitars.