Mar 6

Mar 6 Cross the River to the Jersey Side

In Philadelphia last week, a friend and I decided to “get weird” for the day which took the following shape: phones off; a diet of tequila, eggs, and hot dogs; and Jersey girls only. Hot dogs and Jersey girls have something in common I’ve come to understand. They’re both delightful and yet, we’re ashamed to admit it. And by “we’re,” I mean folks from the northeast who seem to generally take issue with New Jersey and refer to it as the “armpit of America.” As far as the Tri-state area is concerned, I believe Jersey girls are unfairly considered the prime time television equivalent of the historic show Friends. Most felt Friends was good yet not as good as Seinfeld—a sort of Manhattan and…Hoboken kind of thing? I’m not sure which city Jerseyites are most proud of but I know it’s not Camden. I reckon it might be Hoboken but I also suspect Hobokians (entirely unsure of the demonym here), like Manhattanites, are from other parts of the world.

We discovered on our Journey of Weird, that Philadelphians don’t like to be asked if they’re from New Jersey. So, just how do you spot a Jersey girl? Had I grown up fully in New Jersey (we moved when I was nine so I’m only a half-baked Jersey cookie), I may have known that they say things like Nork instead of Newark, cawfee instead of coffee, and doring instead of during. And that’s just adorable. Now back to Friends.

Decades ago already, in the evenings I used to sheepishly watch Friends while temporarily living with my parents in upstate New York (well, downstate as the upstaters would call it) near Storm King Art Center. In those days, I was in a funk. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and it weighed heavily on me.

We had a computer in the “computer room” with dial-up internet connection where I would sit and click aimlessly, occasionally searching for useless information on Yahoo (Google was just starting up that year and wasn’t quite known except for its hideous serifed logo with a drop shadow and exclamation point). I would even check my Hotmail regularly, full only of spam. If I knew then, twenty-three years ago, that I was already getting a taste of my future career and routines, I don’t think I would have believed it. My days were internet, my evening Friends.

But while I was wasting away my evenings on Ross and Rachel’s romance, what I secretly desired was to play guitar like Django Reinhardt, the Romani jazz virtuoso. I was introduced to Django that same year through the movie Sweet and Lowdown by Woody Allen. Emmet Ray, played by Sean Penn, is a jazz guitarist, albeit a drunk and unreliable one, in the 1930’s who claims to be the best guitarist in the world…”except for this gypsy in France.” And that was Django. The film eludes only to Django’s genius without fully getting into details.

Django lived only to 43 years of age from the years 1910-1953. He was born in Liberchies, Belgium and was of Romani (an Indo-Aryan ethnic group) descent. Romanis, or Manouche, are often referred to, pejoratively, as gypsies. As Emmet Ray is depicted in Sweet and Lowdown, Django too was known for his carousing and erratic behavior. However, what he was most famous for—as the result of a caravan fire that burned over half of his body and fused his ring and pinky fingers together on his left hand—was playing only with his two usable fingers and a thumb on the fretboard. With his middle and forefinger, Django created an entirely new approach to the guitar.

Django Reinhardt and his Quintette du Hot Club de France

That fact is more of a novelty though and has really nothing to do with his genius. Django was known for playing extended, augmented, and diminished chords, so much so that musicians thought he was classically trained, however, he was self-taught and couldn’t read music. He was also one of the first jazz guitar soloists. Previously, the guitar had been relegated to a rhythm instrument in bebop and jazz. The silver-plated, copper guitar strings along with the unique sound hole on Selmer Maccaferri guitars—originally d-shaped and later oval-shaped—that Django played, projected sound as though it were amplified and allowed him to “compete” with the other instruments in a jazz band.

Ian Criuckshank, British guitarist and musical educator, wrote the following of Django’s style…”his hugely innovative technique included, on a grand scale, such unheard of devices as melodies played in octaves, tremolo chords with shifting notes that sounded like whole horn sections, a complete array of natural and artificial harmonics, highly charged dissonances, super-fast chromatic runs from the open bass strings to the highest notes on the 1st string, an unbelievably flexible and driving right-hand, two and three octave arpeggios, advanced and unconventional chords and a use of the flattened fifth that predated bebop by a decade.”

Back then, I didn’t know much about tremolo chords, chromatic runs, or arpeggios but I sure as shit knew it sounded good and that I didn’t know how to play anything like it. In town, there was a pub that I would go to with my parents called Painter’s Tavern. Occasionally, there was a jazz band that would play in the background, not too loud, just some ambient sounds to enhance the atmosphere while we ate. The band was mostly ignored but I was enthralled. I imagined myself at 50, a comb over, black orthopedic shoes, an unappreciated and mostly underwhelming lead jazz guitarist playing softly in the background of a band, dominated by some asshole drummer with the personality of Ginger Rogers. But I could call myself a guitarist. And I was happy. (I’m just seven years away from that dream.)

I already knew then that I wanted to be a jazz guitarist, however, I was unwilling to put in the hard work. I was focused on the outcome (even if that outcome, strangely, was of a balding unknown in the background) that felt unreachable. The issue, or so I thought, was that I lacked both talent and the Selmer Maccaferri guitar played by Reinhardt and other gypsy jazz guitarists. But I realized eventually that neither talent nor the price or style of the guitar had anything to do with my abilities. Instead of practicing, I was staring at screens wishing I were capable of doing something else. I was solidifying my belief that intelligence and talent were innate and therefore unable able to be altered—the fixed mindset as opposed to the growth mindset.

Back in Philadelphia, after maybe six eggs, two hot dogs and who knows how much tequila, I met a couple from New Jersey at a dive bar. The fellow, George, was a jazz aficionado. We covered the likes of Herb Ellis, Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell and of course Django. While I didn’t meet any Jersey girls that evening, George introduced me to Tal Farlow. Tal, because of his enormous dexterous hands, was known as “the octopus.” He was another self-taught jazz guitarist who was active for only about a decade before he partially retired from music to paint signs in, none other than, New Jersey. So I’ve got a new hero.

Depending on your mindset, it’s dangerous to attempt to imitate a preeminent master like Django. You’ll most likely end up frustrated and disappointed. Despite the frustrations, I’ve continued to noodle away each day on the guitar, playing dominant and diminished chords, attempting gypsy jazz solos, and occasionally daydreaming of crossing the river to the Jersey side to find myself a girl who I can share a hot dog or even a pork roll with. Dare to dream.