"Get Your JAM On!", the Song with FTC (Fine Tooth Comber): "Our genius can create so much fun!"
Sometimes We Need to Dance
A rough quote: ‘One of those ebullitions of the youthful mating period’—a commentary by Theodore Dreiser on an episode involving his ardent but troubled protagonist, Clyde Griffiths, around page 80, in Dreiser’s great. monumental but phenomenally slow-to-gel novel An American Tragedy—a commentary that made me laugh out loud when age 20 or so.
First, please , listen to the music. See if its groove moves you. See if it starts to rock you in your chair or wherever you are. See if you nod and maybe smile. See if you want to get up and dance or indeed do get up and dance! If so, “Get Your JAM On!” will work as we wished.
Track-a-Week #2, "Get Your JAM On!"
Don Paul & Rivers Answer Moons
with very special guest Erica Falls
“It’s a jammin’, jammin’ cut,” said D. Rootzmaster, D. J. over WWOZ in New Orleans when “Get Your JAM On!” débuted on his show.
Thanks to the Band! Thanks to the marvelous musicians who make up Rivers Answer Moons: Roger Lewis, Herlin Riley, Kirk Joseph, and Michael Torregano, Jr. Born and fed in New Orleans and shining out over decades on literally thousands of Stages around the world! I’m so lucky to work with Rivers Answer Moons! Please check out more about us on the Sticking Up For Children website.
Thanks also to Erica Falls for her voice and character. Erica is another one who melds strength and nuance. Like Mario Abney on trumpet with her on this Track and more! The whole mix here is of Saturday night and Sunday morning—Soul and Funk and colors like Stravinksky’s slashes and splashes for “The Firebird” and that panoply which Archie Shepp identified as happening in the Takes for John Coltrane’s album Ascension—the freedom for individual expression in the MIDST of a group’s structured music that you hear in the earliest of New Orleans’ ‘Jazz’ recordings is found again among players of ‘Free Jazz’ in 1965.
Please check out more about Erica here.
Here are the lyrics. May you, I hope, catch that opening chorus and ride along with following lines. May you want to “Get Your JAM On!” and “JAM On!” forthwith and thereafter … whenever the gifts in your are so moved!
A Get Your Jam On / Get Your Jam On
B
You over there have a flair for that
You right here have a flare for this
Nobody dances like you can walk
Nobody draws like you can see
C You're goin' strong / You're goin' long
God and Gods are in our blood
God and Gods made all skin-tones
Black White Yellow Red Brown
Olive Blue And In-Between (Erica: In-Between)
A Get Your Jam On / Get Your Jam On
D
Hey Now Hey Now Did-ee-Wop-a-Nay
Hey Now Hey Now Wash-a-Tub-und-Shake
Hey Now Hey Now James Joyce Yes Yes Yes
Hey Now Hey Now Spake the Light some know as Oliver Lake
C Goin' strong / Goin' Long
JAM on! JAM on! JAM On!
E
Our genius can create so much fun
God and Gods are in our blood
Worlds unbound those Hands and our minds have grown
God and Gods love the gifts in all skin-tones
Black White Yellow Red Brown
Olive Blue And In-Between
B
You over there have a flair for that
You right here have a flare for this
Nobody dances like you can walk
Nobody draws like you can see
A Get Your Jam On / Get Your Jam On
Get your Blam'ma Glam’ma Gram'ma Bop-This-Dip
Your Sky's-No-Limit-Triple-Back-Flip
Your 3:40-Mile-Double-Lovin'-Marathon
Your Cheops-Michaelangelo-Tu-Fu-'n-Li-Po
Your Bud’da-Bad’da-Me-No-Knish-and-Und-
Bad’da-Nee-No-Gnash-a-Gosh-A-Grosh-
Und-Margus-Mo-Mingus-GrashaALoshRawRar
Your JAM On! Your JAM On!
JAM On! JAM On! JAM On!
Somethin’ like that.
Here let me add Multiple THANKS.
Thanks to this ‘Stack’s subscribers and their growing number. You all and your responses are most welcome! Comments across writers’ posts on Substack are likewise like a community meeting and expanding itself. Feels like: We’re getting there in our resistance to a W.E.F’s. W.A.H. (World Economic Forum’s War Against Humanity) future.
Thanks also to SUBSTACK itself or providing the platform and bandwidth!
And thanks most fundamentally to the product, JAMBAR, and the person, Jennifer Maxwell, for primary and thorough Inspiration of “Get Your JAM On!”
Without the new and great ‘Organic Artsian Energy Bar’, JAMBAR, in its four kinds of musical flavors—Chocolate Cha Cha, Jammin’ Jazzleberry, Malt Nut Melody, and Musical Mango—and the Bars’ Main Maker, the nutritionist and company-founder Jennifer, the “ … JAM …” would not have had its raison.
JAMBARs are indeed “so darn good” in their tastes and boosts to athletes’ and everyday people’s bodies that they’re already winning Award after Award. As Roger riffed in the Rivers Answer Moons session in Kirk’s decades-long family practice-space: “All natural ingrediesnts!”
Above. JAMBAR in Food Business News.
Plus, JAMBAR’s ‘Purpose’ inspired all of us.
JAMBAR funds19 Partners in Music (mostly Music-Education) and in Active Living. It walks its talk. Most personally, I thank JAMBAR for donating more than 3000 Bars to three Schools and one Orphanage in Haiti that are themselves partners with Sticking Up For Children, Maryse’s and my non-profit of the past 10 years.
Yes, as you may have guessed, I’d LOVE for you to check out SEVERAL of the great people with whom we work in Haiti. Their steadily expanding project of Lèkol Toupatou (School Everywhere in Haitian Kréyol) is bringing literacy to child AND adult students in Port-au-Prince and Cayes Jacmel.
Dance is a Part of each Day of Lessons in the Lèkol Toupatou curriculim of 148 Videos that comprise the 243 pages of Madame Marie-Marthe Balin Franck Paul’s textbook for first-year students in Haiti, Mon Livre Unique. Would that Corporations’ Rule become Dance as Part of each Day!
Please check out, too, the jingle for JAMBAR that Rivers Answer Moons improvised in the practice-space that’s served Kirk Joseph and family since the 1970s. Again, so much Soul and Funk and FUN (F U N being the first 3/4 of FUNK).
I close with encourageent that you visit another website, Ur1Light.com. There there’s a Page with more history of “Get Your JAM On!”—how its tune and many of its lyrics and changes came while I was showering on January day; how it evolved among the master musicians Herlin, KJirk, Michael and Roger; how it was recorded at Rick G. Nelson’s Marigny Studio in New Orleans; engineered by Adam Keil; mixed and mastered with David Farrell, my neighbor on the West Bank … How it was (I hope again) brightened and better fused through the second-by-second Fine Tooth Comber (FTC, trademark omitted and not even pending) procees.
The Ur1Light Page on this Track closes with Nine Parts of the Song, between 60 and 27 seconds long, that you, too, (Maryse and I like to mimic with nicely pursed lips the delicious “too” of film-historian Mark Cousins ((he of the worthy 5-DVD “The Story of Film”)) in his verbal addenda) might want to choose as Ring-Tones for your Phone.
Yes, shock those also standing in the Post Office! Startle, too, those waiting in a Supermarket check-out line … with Sudden Access to “Get Your JAM On!” through that exhortation jumping from your Phone. Let a public suddenly hear: “You, over there, got a flare for that!” Let many more know, too: “Our genius can create so much fun!” Won’t it be lively? Won’t it be fun?
Really and truly, I think that each of the Nine Parts lets us hear how good the music is and how much the players respond to what’s happening. This FTC was one of the most pleasurable for me. Here them HERE.
1. https://www.stickingupforchildren.com/rivers-answer-moons
2. https://www.ericafalls.com/
3. https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/23129-clean-label-bar-supports-music-nonprofits
4. https://jambar.com/pages/musical-partners
5. https://www.stickingupforchildren.com/jambar-and-sufc-2022
6. https://www.stickingupforchildren.com/
7. https://www.stickingupforchildren.com/graces-from-haiti-nola-ca
8. https://www.stickingupforchildren.com/l%C3%A8kol-toupatou-modules-jours
9.
10. https://www.ur1light.com/copy-of-bobee-what-a-spirit-fo