Get Off Your Ass and Jam

The irony of rage, showing vs. telling, and shit, goddamn

In my groupie days, in the mid to late 90’s, I was deeply embedded within a Venn Diagram of local bands.

Nearly all of them were students at the University of Michigan School of Music—current, former and honorably discharged—and played in various combinations and genres over a few heady years.

I dated one of two guitar players, created all band flyers and photos, merch and album cover art (cd’s and cassette, of course), hauled equipment, even sang with one of the many incestuous incarnations among what was a session group of sickly talented college kids.¹

I’ve been thinking a lot about this time in my life, because… well, age… but also because I’ve also got a pretty angry bee in my bonnet over how it is we’re interacting with each other lately.² Online, offline, and most disturbingly, not at fucking all.

It feels to me now, albeit perhaps the FaceTuned version, that one of the things so special about that time, and what sticks out as being now lost to the cultural history books, was how much actual, physical time we spent riffing with each other.

Yeah, I know. Kids be kids. But also, when we were together we were… together. We shared collaborative space, literally and figuratively, and when we had to, which was often, we had it out. How many times did any of those bands break up? They got back together just as many.

Sure, nostalgia is ‘the vice of the aged,’³ but it’s also a vehicle for reclamation through perspective.

We often rewrite these memories, and science has proven we do so more than we can comprehend. But again, that examination through the broader aperture of time collected allows us the opportunity for different assessments… different conclusions on what it was that happened, why, and what we now feel about it in our current bodies and minds.

I look at that time today as one of unparalleled community, of having found my people after secret longings for them through my childhood and teenage years. And by my measure, we had four crucial things among us:

• a common and unrelenting passion for music

• respect for each other’s gifts, talents and skills

• loyalty (and through all the both legit and bullshit drama you could imagine circulating around 20-somethings managing sex, drugs and rock & roll)

…and maybe most importantly…

• a nearly constant willingness to JAM

Bad blood, big egos, fisticuffs, infidelities, sucky jobs, zero sleep, hangovers, final exams, spittled rage over who kept leaving their molded-over cereal bowls in the sink… none of it got in the way of the collaboration, of jamming, in real life and with purpose.

You’ll see this dug into deeper in an upcoming essay (or likely, essays), but here’s the overture: I’m thinking about those years, of how things were then because of how things are now.

Now, collectively, we’re doing a heckuva lot of talking at each other, and not a lot of doing with each other.

We’re soloing. We’re not jamming.

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I attended my first local CreativeMornings meetup a few weeks back. A first for me personally and a first for our local chapter.

I had heard positive reports from friends in NYC, attended a couple of their virtual FieldTrips (why the beef with proper word spacing in their branding, IDK, but this typography nerd digresses), and was looking forward to checking out the Detroit Chapter if I could ever get out of kid drop-off duty on a Friday morning (aka, never).

So when Chuck and Brenda Marshall mentioned they were swinging by the inaugural Ann Arbor meetup, I was in.

At the risk of denigrating the entire ethos and operation of what seems to be a very cool organization—’the world’s largest face-to-face creative community’ by their description—this particular event was a pretty thunderous dud for me.

The format is a familiar one: local professionals (creatives in this case) gather at an event space, ‘network’ for roughly 30 minutes, then listen to a presentation given by a credibly ‘successful’ creative for the next 30 minutes. There’s a brief Q&A, pastries, solidly good coffee.

Networking aside, which I always find tedious and unhelpful, I went into this thing excited to see my friends, thinking I might run into some folks I haven’t crossed paths with in a minute, and open to what I might walk away with.

Maybe I’ve got a different hunger than most, but seems I have very little appetite for being talked at.

But this is a ‘talk,’ right? A presentation, you say. The whole gist is that you’re there to hear a person of some expertise, and from within a creative industry of some ilk, share their experiences in a way that stimulates thought, that inspires.

Best case, that transmits their words in a way that creates experience for the listener.

Thing was, this particular speaker, whose approach I really believe is emblematic of a subliminally common trend in how we communicate with each other, wasn’t doing any of these things.

He was breaking the golden rule of all storytelling—he was telling, not showing.

He told us how we only had so many hours left on the planet, so we’d better use them well (even demanding the room to open the calculators on our phones so we could access the exact number in that exact moment). He told us how he had pivoted from pre-med to graphic design, and why he uses a particular website building platform.

It was a helluva lot like watching a TikTok video, but in person. With other people. The information was to be accepted, not experienced.

That, my friends, is a supreme bummer to me. I think we’re so used to being talked at, to receiving information from other humans in a way that’s directive vs. transmissive, that many of us can no longer tell, feel, see the difference. That was certainly the case in that room, and I walked away sad for all of us.

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I read a great essay by fellow Substack writer

Dino Corvino

this week, a cut-to-the-quick, straight dope mission statement on the impotence of online outrage.

Dino writes, specifically related to what he sees in the often one-way pipelines that are Substack Notes (in every way similar to any short-form post via all Meta Products, X, BlueSky, blah blah…):

‘Your outrage about this or that crisis in the world, in my opinion, does not fix said problem. If you want to fix a problem, you have to cultivate a plan.’

Word. Crisis begets creativity. And yet…

‘The rant’ is a common tactic in these spaces, and also a preferred response by those weaponizing the source material for such rants. Extremists are everywhere, a term no longer relegated to those perpetrating mass physical violence. We can now, very legitimately, use the same word to describe some of our leaders, our community members, even family.

Extreme measures and views are even easier to perpetrate through language.

And so what do we do? How do we respond?? We mirror, as all humans are wont to do. Built to do, ironically… for survival. We scream back, and pledge to scream louder yet. But as Dino writes, definitively showing not telling BTW, there are ‘things to be done.’

I am inspired by touring musicians who can play shows five nights a week, for at least 6 weeks at a time, in more than one region of the country. The ability to do this does not come from luck, or screaming, it comes from work. It comes from tilling the metaphorical soil, and cultivating an audience, and a presence. It comes from sacrifice and compromise, and investing in your van and your gear.

I’d add only one complementary action, another capital allocation, let’s say, to our collective tour bus—a steadfast commitment to jamming, anywhere, anytime.

Music is a form of communication, as all art is. As all conversation is. When musicians gather, to play music in ways not yet written or maybe just outside the lines of what is, they’re speaking to each other—listening, responding, translating, interpolating, collaborating.

There is no reality in which a single musician would be allowed, let alone whole gangs, to dominate a jam session. Hell, not even a recording nor a performance.

The whole crucial and unassailable element common to all music, even outside the listener’s appreciation of it, is the balanced interplay between sounds… between expressions of ideas.

We were onto something way back when, and of course there are plenty of instances right now where collaboration is real and happening for the good of the many. We’re not in free fall exactly yet. The cliff’s edge is nigh, though, and I’m personally willing to die on these particular dunes.

I’m dedicated to bringing people together in ways that support commonality of passions, respect, loyalty, and, a constant willingness to jam. What happens next is MUSIC.

‘God, I’m trippin on that…’ are you?

1. The majority of them are professional musicians at this point, which I both envy and wouldn’t trade for any amount of blood, treasure or cash.

2. Also also because one of two trombone players {neither of whom I dated} recently met up with the aforementioned guitar player {whom I did} after a show he played in the Bay Area. It had been thirty years and they sent me a photo of the two of them… toothy and the same and weathered by the years. A trip of trips.

3. ‘Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome.’ Angela Carter, Wise Children (ed. Random House, 2012) - ISBN: 9781409022442