ORACLE JAM

Oracle "Jam" MP3

Skipping ahead to March 1987, probably my next experience jamming with other guys. This time with several chaps who I didn't normally hang out with. We all seemed to like aspects of the same music but our playing styles were pretty far off from each other.

Let's see, we played in this guy Dave M.'s basement. Even though we weren't bestest buds or anything, Dave M. was the guy I knew the best out of this session. I don't remember if we even had any classes together, we just both loved talking about playing the guitar. Which was certainly not uncommon at the time. He seemed to be a George Lynch acolyte whereas I still had yet to declare a style of my own.

So, to confuse things further, there was a third guy, named Matt, I don't remember his last name. But he was there with his drums. He played drums fairly well though none of us were virtuosos. Matt also played guitar decently. Dave, who primarily played guitar, could hold his own on the drums. I, who thought of myself as THE guitarist (I guess, who didn't think that at the time?), also enjoyed beating on some drums.

So posterity has left me two nearly identical looking cassettes, one with the date March 28, 1987. I don't think they're the same thing. Neither is labeled in any way apart from, obviously, the all-important Oracle logo. Oracle, the name was probably my idea. It has the same kind of suck and random dictionary pull feel as Ichor and Argus.

I'm almost positive that Jeff Sampson was in the basement, silently holding court with his bass for most of the day. And one or possibly both of the Oracle sessions (I think there were two) also featured Jeff's younger brother Jeremy, who was at the time a little like 10-year-old Randy Rhoads. I'm pretty sure he was the best guitarist in the room at the time.

I think Dave and I just plugged in our guitars and started wailing away, with Matt laying down whatever beat he felt like. Jeff might possibly join in on the bass if heavily provoked. The riffs we threw around sound very primal and almost like grunge or sludge or doomy, which is interesting. This recording reminds me of old Hellh@mmer demos or something. Odd considering that Dokken and Ratt were kind of like the only common ground we had.

In this first jam, I have no idea who does what. The annoying repetitive figure on the drums sounds like something I would've done, but then again the annoying two handed tapping figure on the guitar also sounds like something I would've done. So... who knows.