Previous Relevant History
There is more of my life history that will be referenced later but these are accounts that become relevant immediately in the origin of JAM.
As a kid I loved music, I envied DJs on the radio, Casey Kasem and Wolfman Jack were heroes to me. I practiced my radio announcing voice by reading shampoo bottles and cereal boxes out loud. When I was 6, I found a $5 bill walking to school and used it to buy my first 45 record “Hooked On A Feeling” by Blue Suede. I collected many records and spent a lot of time recording my voice and my favorite songs on cassettes.
I was a very shy, introverted, and depressed teenager. I had very few friends I ever hung out with. The only things in high school that kept me sane were, the one girlfriend, that I had befriended before anyone could get to her and tell her she needed to pick on me to be accepted by the majority; my best friend Scott Hinshaw, who was a year older than me and lived in my hometown of Kellogg; the job I had at Hardee’s; delivering newspapers for the Des Moines Register since I was 10; and the small collection of music I owned.
I was a nerd in high school. Math classes, library in my free time, and computers. I was picked on and tormented in school on a regular basis. People called me names daily; set the inside of my locker on fire; stole my jackets, books, and band instrument; called my girlfriend names; vandalized my car by slashing tires, painting it with graffiti, throwing feces on it and in it, dumping soda and milkshakes all over it on multiple occasions, just to note a few things. Teachers and coaches mocked me and treated me horribly. When I was a sophomore my basketball coach didn’t tell me (on purpose) when the team picture was being taken so I wouldn’t be in the yearbook picture. When I was a junior in high school, I was told I should quit the basketball team by the head coach because he said he would never have me play in a game and he would “Drive you into the ground working your ass off to train my starters.” He initially gave me the numbered jersey of ‘00’ because he said “it reflected my personality perfectly; a double nothing, a zero, and complete loser”.
But I persisted and stayed on the team. The coach made me run stairs and lift weights to punish me after the rest of the team went home. Because of the workouts I had done on my legs; the paper route on a bicycle, and the stairs, by the time I was a sophomore in high school I could slam dunk a basketball without even taking a step. So, I applied for a personal license plate with the words ‘JAM IT’ and it was accepted by the DOT. So, my license plates originally had nothing to do with music but were a basketball reference. I recently applied to have the plates changed to Iowa black and found they would not be re-issuable because they were deemed ‘offensive.’ I kept them how they are because they cannot be canceled having already been issued and I still have them today.
I would carry a case of cassette tapes and a boom box with me on the bus to basketball games just to try and ‘fit in’ with the rest of the guys on the team by playing music for them, since I wasn’t going to play for the game itself. This would have been my first experience as a DJ. They were happy for the music but it didn’t make me any less of a loner. I never went and was never invited to a single party in high school. I never drank once, smoked anything, or did drugs. I spent most of my time in the library, programming my Apple IIc computer, or fawning over my girlfriend.
When I graduated from high school, I decided to choose the cheapest, closest college to my hometown so that I could be as close to my girlfriend as possible and my plan was to get married after she graduated. After research I found Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls was the least expensive and closest college to Newton I could afford. I started the fall of 1986 on a degree majoring in business data processing and computer programming with the goal after graduating to work for some major company in Iowa as a programmer.
Fateful Friday
On Friday, February 13th 1987 (yeah, Friday the 13th. It didn’t even occur to me until later) I drove to Newton from Iowa Falls. I was returning ‘home’ from my second semester at Ellsworth Community College, room 310 of the first Thompson Hall men’s only dorm. I was driving directly to the home of my high school girlfriend. Upon arriving at her parents’ home (a few blocks from the McDonalds parking lot that I would later spend most of the evening at). I pulled into the driveway and knocked on her door.
A short man who I’d never seen before answered her door and told me, “You need to leave. She doesn’t want to see you anymore”, and then promptly shut the door.
I knocked again and the man opened the door. I said, “What’s going on? Where is she?”
“I’m not telling you again. She no longer wants to see you. Go away.” he said, shutting the door again.
I was devastated and lost. Extremely depressed and crying went to a friend’s house and asked what I should do. He said, “You know if it were me, what I would do is get drunk.”
I said that’s not even possible because I was only 18 and I could not buy alcohol. He informed me that it was Friday and that I could get alcohol from a secret high school party source in Newton. Being out of the party scene I was unaware of it. Apparently on weekends if you went to the local McDonalds drive thru, ordered food, and asked for ‘An orange drink for my dog’ when there was a specific kid working the drive thru that he would take the McDonalds cup, fill it with ice, go to the back break room, pull out a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 Orange Jubilee, fill the cup, bring it back to the window, and sell it to you for $10 with the rest of the food pretending it was just the orange soda that McDonalds usually served. He would pocket the $10 and charge the rest of the food normally. A 16oz cup filled with ice may have allowed that $3-25oz Mad Dog bottle to stretch 2 to 4 McDonalds cups making him quite the profit. I went through that drive thru at least 4 or 5 times that I remember possibly drinking a full bottle.
I did talk to my girlfriend later. She explained how since I’d left, she’d been the one being tormented at school in my absence, how my parents hated her anyway and would never accept us as a couple, and how the distance between us was just too much. I knew she was right.
After drinking again, I ended up leaving Saturday somehow, sleeping in my car, and then driving back to Iowa Falls.
Saturday Night’s Alright
Saturday February 14th on the way back to the college I contemplated suicide by car crash. In tears I passed telephone poles and decided I was going to end it all by driving full speed into one of them. My radio was blasting music as I always had it and two songs came on that made me snap out of the mood. “Fight For Your Right” by Beastie Boys and then “Nobody’s Fool” by Cinderella. They later became anthems to me that represented a reason to continue.
When I got back to the college, and after talking to a few friends there and remembering the advice of the Beastie Boys, I decided getting drunk again was the thing to do. I decided I should go to a party for the first time in my life.
An apartment on 609 ½ Polk Street, Iowa Falls was having a party. I ran into Chris Bennett at the party and we became friends and started talking about my situation. Drinking heavily, I sat across from him in tears. “What am I going to do?” I said.
“My whole life was set for her. My education. My future in business. Everything I’m doing has no purpose”.
“What’s keeping you going?” he said.
I told him about the songs on the drive back that pulled me out of a suicidal decision. “You should go request them with that DJ at this party,” he said.
I walked over and asked the DJ if he took requests to which he replied, “No.”
“Let me see what music you have,” I said.
He pointed at a single cassette in a boom box on the table. I watched him hit stop on a prerecorded tape, flip it over, and hit play on the other side. “That’s ALL your music?!” I exclaimed.
He shrugged. I stated, “I have over a hundred tapes and probably 200 records. You’re using ONE tape? This is sad. Give me your microphone so I can tell everyone how much you suck as a DJ.”
“Don’t have one”, he said.
“WHAT?” I said, “That’s crazy. I was charged $10 at the door to get in this party. Your stereo is junk. How much do you get paid to do this?”
“Two hundred dollars,” he smiled.
“Are you kidding me?! Where is the owner of this party?” I asked.
He pointed at a guy who rented the apartment we were in. I walked over to the guy and said, “Your DJ sucks. He has no mic, no music, and no decent equipment. I could DJ your party with MY stereo and all my music for ten dollars and maybe free drinks, and blow that guy out of the water.”
“Great,” he said “I have a party every week. You can do the next one.”
I walked back over to Chris and sat down. “I’m a DJ now.”
Sunday Plans
I woke up the next day in my dorm room with a purpose. I would be a party DJ and bring my collection of tapes and records to the students at Ellsworth and the underground party scene in Iowa Falls. I readied my 1978 Pioneer Centrex Stereo System with its 12-watt amp, 30-watt speakers, record player on top, cassette player in the front, and 1 microphone. I had 102 cassettes and around 200 records.
I decided I would come up with a name for my DJ company. I liked the idea of an acronym as the name and came up with R.O.C.C. first which stood for ‘Rock On College Campus’, a play on the word ‘rock.’ M.U.S.I.C. could be ‘My Ultimate Sound In College’. After a while I realized I would not be in college forever so those were not viable choices. As I went to my car to go get lunch, I looked down at my license plate. J – A – M I – T . It hit me, Jockey And Music In Transit. Well, I’m not always going to be ‘In Transit’ so, JAM. Yes, I thought. That’s it. Plus, I will eventually be huge, maybe even have multiple stereo systems playing more than one party a night. Not services, that sounds like an obligation to be there. Systems, plural, sounds professional.
I sat down and drew a logo in pencil and ink. Something that looked like thick metal, with light reflecting off it. Colorful, so it draws attention. I created the first logo on a piece of poster board which is not the airbrushed version I changed to eventually, but it was a good start. JAM dj systems was born.
Monday Life Flip
On Monday I went to the Ellsworth Main Office and asked if I could change or add courses. I would leave the business major in place but I would include the art for advertising, accounting for bookkeeping, psychology, and speech classes to deal with my introversion, acoustical physics, and basic electrical design to fix my own equipment and understand power. I read up on anything that had to do with public speaking, playing music, and stereo systems.
I ended up playing the party the next weekend and had the best time of my life. I left drunk for free, a girl I then slept with, and an extra $10 in my pocket. My entire demeanor flipped over like a pancake. I became confident, outgoing, and popular. Women wanted to be with me and men wanted to hang out with me. Wherever there was a party, I was the center of it, the coolest guy on campus. People asked where I was going next and I packed the parties I played. I hung out at the girl’s dorm and made friends with as many of them as I could, inviting them to come be with me at the parties. I built a crew of friends starting with Chris Bennett that helped me set shows up. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I would be doing house parties for the next 9 months. Drinking, making money, and sleeping with a different girl every show. When I played music, I saw it made people happy, or sad, or empowered. I was controlling emotions and bringing joy. It was the most fun I’d ever had and I knew DJing is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.