“You totally
would have loved Mr. Sunday,” Jennifer
said. She carefully placed her wine glass down on
the coffee table and then went on gushing.
“Relaxed, outside, food trucks, and then that kind of music you like,
you know, no words… …dance-ie… …flowing…” Her voice trailed off. My tongue contracted against the roof of my
mouth. My eyes felt bolted down in their
stare. My body was completely still
except for the subtle raise of my eyebrows.
“Jam bands?” I said this as if
offering my husband some dessert. A piece of pie, dear?
“That’s it! Yes, all kinds of jammie music. Seriously, you
should have come.” Jennifer took another
sip of her wine. I smiled, still not
moving, dead stare, and said nothing. Without
a conscious thought, I placed my bare feet on the living room rug. I pushed my weight onto my legs and off of
the couch, walked to my bedroom, and shut the door. I sat at my desk, staring straight ahead for
a moment. I swiveled my desk chair back
around to face the inside of my room.
Jam bands? Why is everyone under
the impression that I am an 18-year-old white dude from Long Island that smokes
pot in his parent’s basement while watching DVDs of Phil Lesh performing at
Terrapin Crossroads with Further? Did I do something to make you think I
have Phish and Grateful Dead tapestries hanging on my walls next my Jimi Hendrix
incense? Did watching my ex-boyfriend at
Arlene’s Grocery play “the most significant gig of his life” cause you to
believe that I like jam bands? Was it
all the Phish shows I was dragged to
by previous boyfriends where the only relief I could get from the
drug-drenched-eyes-glazed-over-head-bopping-numbed audience was to visit the
ice cream truck, because at least Vermont has good icecream? Was it seeing Dark Star Orchestra in Philly where I lied and told my boyfriend I
felt sick and had to go home so as to avoid standing for 4 hours swaying,
listening to ONE LONG OVERDONE SONG? Or maybe
it was the Disco Biscuits show where
I spent the majority of the time in the bathroom, watching girls snort things
up their noses because I found it far more interesting than the concert? Must
have been the biscuits. That must be why
you think I love jam bands.
A jam band in case you have not been
graced with hearing one play, is a kind of band that often goes off on long,
improvisational musical interludes, no lyrics, no beginning or and worst of
all, no end in sight. The songs of jam
bands have names, and then the rest, is
up for well, fucking off. Fucking off is
what entitled pseudo-hippie male (and sometimes desperate female) populations
of the northeast and California, refer to as “jamming.” This kind of music was particularly popular
in the ‘60s and ‘70s, which coincidentally coincided with the rise in the use
of psychedelic drugs. Only at that time,
there was a political message and stance behind the music so though I don’t
particularly care for a lot of it, I can understand and respect it. And at that time, Jerry Garcia sang about
liberating oneself, and actually liberated himself with his lifestyle. Since then, other bands, sometimes made up of
the original bands’ members that have not died from drug overdoses, have come
into popularity and play to packed open-air venues, to children of wealthy Long
Island corporate lawyers, furious in nothing except for their quest to get
tickets to the next big Phish
show. Yes, the act of attending a jam
band show has become a demonstration of one’s status and education level. It is a club, an exclusive club that I do not
and never wanted to be part of, but found myself in because of the men I dated.
Now I know what you’re thinking. I’m a stuck up prissy, never tried a drug in
my life, I need to “live more in the moment” and just let go (in that
California bullshit accent) and perhaps I would understand. Well let me tell you I have tried. Hard.
And a lot. First of all, the
songs have no beginning and no end. And
I know, I know that’s like “part of the philosophy man…the song continues long
after you are listening and it’s totally meta…”
…I get it. I studied British
Romantic poetry in college and took more than one class that had a title like
“Buddhism and the Concept of I.” I’m not
exactly a geologist with my head in the dirt with no appreciation for the
abstract or for philosophical ponderings. I can
certainly riff. What I can’t do is get
behind an art form that is, strangely very much like the boyfriends I dated. It denotes privilege and segregates those
that play instruments from those that do not, and worse leaves no room for those that merely wish to
know “what’s going on” as the song continues into it’s tenth or eleventh minute
without any sense of ending. And worst
of all, when I say this to a jam band fanatic, a lover of the musician’s music,
I am met with a pretentious sort of surprise.
“Well, you wouldn’t understand.
You don’t play an instrument.”
You may be wondering if I hate
anything more than I hate jam bands? I
do. I hate that it took me years to
spread the curtains to my own thought and voice, to peer out of myself, look someone
else in their stoned, reddened eyes, and say, “Ya know what? This music.
It’s not for me,” and not made to feel less intelligent or less cultured
or political, or dare I use a jammer’s word, “open” because of it.
