Buddy System

Old Rockers back together as friends

Geoffrey Greif — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:27:24 +0000

We are getting back together after 37 years to play a rock concert at Ohio Wesleyan in three days. Old friends, we have separated a bit, and come back again. It is not always easy. Old stuff comes up that was between us then and now is being filtered through what we have each encountered in the intervening years. If I have become a social worker since the days of the band, does that affect what I know about mediating and triangulation? To what extent does my own research on men's friendships affect what I bring to the table? (The full story of the band, published today in the Columbus Dispatch, is below).

Think about your own long-term friendships - can you make them work again if you have a gig (or anything else that is a metaphor) on the line and you want to sound good? To what extent do we all, as we age, accommodate to the common good to make a group project or a friendship work? We are all trying to agree on what songs to play and how long we should be on stage. But it is not easy and the old stuff sometimes rears its unattractive head. Luckily, we all have successes in our other lives and will be able, I believe, to repress the individual needs for the good of the group and the music.

So here are three questions for your own old friendships:

1. To what extent have they changed with time?

2. To what extent do your other accomplishments affect how invested you are in your old friendships? and

3. To what extent to you try and maintain an old friendship if you believe it jeopardizes what you have become over time?

Music

Decades after college, rock trio to jam anew

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 3:08 AM

By Kevin Joy

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Still on a roll: Jasey Schnaars, Bob Thompson and Geoff Greif

With graduate degrees, careers and families in the picture, the men of the Kansas City Jammers trio thought their college heyday in rock 'n' roll -- more than 30 years behind them -- had faded forever.

A few years ago, however, something strange happened: Former bass player Jasey Schnaars discovered that a copy of their 1972 album, Got Good (If You Get It), had just sold on eBay.

For $105 -- from a seller in Austria to a buyer in Japan.

That wasn't the only oddity.

Soon after, a record collector who had unearthed another Got Good at a Dallas yard sale called Schnaars to buy an additional 25 copies.

Then, a manager from a small record label in New Jersey phoned: Might the Jammers want to reissue their music to him for a few thousand dollars?

"We thought, 'Rather than fight the weirdness, let's embrace it,' " said Schnaars, a recently retired high-school teacher in Delaware who once worked as a songwriter for country singer Eddie Rabbitt.

"It's simply taken on a life of its own."

The move was seemingly a smart one: Their music has become available on iTunes and Amazon.com.

Last month, they were featured on National Public Radio.

The men, who all attended Ohio Wesleyan University, will relive their youth (and the limelight) with a Saturday show on the Delaware campus.

Joining the original three will be several guest musicians, including pianist Mary Thompson, wife of drummer Bob.

"There's no pressure," said Bob Thompson, a 60-year-old West Virginia internist. "This concert is probably going to come out the best we've ever done."

The Kansas City Jammers were formed in 1969 as a venture between fraternity brothers Thompson and Geoff Greif, who played guitar. Schnaars, with a proficiency on bass (a rarity among campus musicians, he said), was recruited later.

As their gritty style of psychedelic rock developed, the Jammers toured on weekends throughout the Midwest -- squeezing in gigs between classes.

They found an inexpensive Fremont studio in 1972 to record music after graduation.

The album caught the attention of major labels, but none pursued it. In fact, a Warner Bros. representative dubbed it "the worst-produced effort" he had heard.

"We were thrown out of every office you could imagine," said Schnaars, 59.

Meanwhile, real life was calling.

Greif was accepted by a master's program at the University of Pennsylvania. Thompson was headed to medical school at Temple University in Philadelphia. Schnaars had a teaching job.

Yet they did make time for another album, this time at Musicol Recording on Oakland Park Avenue in Columbus.

The effort, Tracks, was never released. Still, a single -- Sing Me That Rock and Roll -- impressed a Musicol staff member enough that he took the song to WNCI (97.9 FM).

Sing Me peaked at No. 20 on the WNCI "Hot Half-Hundred" chart in 1972.

The group disbanded in 1973, although the men have since stayed close.

After the Wesleyan performance, the Jammers in the spring will auction a concert for charity on eBay. Proceeds will benefit Wesleyan.

Could an extended tour follow? Unlikely.

But they're stoked to be playing -- wrinkles, gray hair and all.

(And they recently wrote a new song: On the Cover of AARP, a nod to their unexpected re-entry into the musical zeitgeist.)

Greif, a professor of social work at the University of Maryland, deemed the reunion with his two old friends a fitting and fortunate break.

"Years later, you think that a phase of your life is over," the 60-year-old said. "To replay those songs and get together again is an amazingly lucky place to be."

kjoy@dispatch.com

The Kansas City Jammers will perform at 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Gray Chapel of University Hall, 61 S. Sandusky St., at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware. Admission is free. Call 740-203-6908 or visit events.owu.edu.

Steve Williams - Tiger's man friend?

Geoffrey Greif — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:01:12 +0000

Steve Williams, Tiger's caddy, portrayed many characteristics of a male friendship when he stood by his employer and "friend." Williams talked about the good Tiger has done for the game, how nice he was to everyone, and how he should be forgiven for an indiscretion. Finally, he stated he knew nothing about the indiscretions with which Tiger Woods is charged. He has Tiger's back.

But Wiliams is in a very complicated position. As I wrote in BUDDY SYSTEM: UNDERSTANDING MALE FRIENDSHIPS, Aristotle believed that to be a true friend, you had to be a peer. A peer is not someone you can gain materially from as that would be a friendship fraught with imbalance. WIlliams and Woods do not have a peer relationship. Williams' income suffers when Woods does not play. Is that a peer relationship?

Yet their relationship may manifest itself in other ways that are similar to what I heard from men that were interviewed about friendships between men. Friendships are characterized as having loyalty, dependability, and trust. Some men want their friends to have their back, even when they have erred. Woods erred and Williams has his back. Other friends want their men friends to tell it to them "straight." They don't want friends who hold back. They get a certain macho pride from saying they can hear anything from their friends and the friendship will survive.

Woods and Williams have a relationship that is akin to a friendship (as many relationships are) but is not a true friendship. If Woods fired Williams, I would guess that would end their "friendship." To me, Aristotle was on target with this definition.

Think about your own friendships in light of the "friendship" of Woods and Williams. And as the holildays approach, reach out to people who are your friends - research clearly demonstrates that people with friendships live longer and healthier lives. We all want to know that we can depend and trust those around us.

Kansas City Jammers and old rock and roll friends

Geoffrey Greif — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:41:47 +0000

Dick Gordon's The Story ran the interview with my 1972 rock band, the Kansas City Jammers, today. You can hear it on thestory.org.

Bob makes the point in the interview that people need to seek dreams (in this case rock stardom) and are better off not reaching them. Jasey cites Keats as making this point in "Ode to a Grecian Urn." Histories of bands, just like histories of societies, are created by social construction. Histories of friendships are constructed the same way. The interview was about looking back as well as forward. Looking back on our own men's friendships, we each use different prisms. We all tacitly agreed to focus on the good times (yes!) and gloss over the bad times. We chose to remember the strengths of the friendships (yes!) rather than the perceived injustices. And as the dust settles over our memories, we permit ourselves to form new and stronger friendships born of new music we are creating.

Anyone reading this blog has the opportunity to frame most (though not all) of past friendships in ways that are positive and loving. If given the option of choosing how to frame them, "err on the side of love." Move on to a better place with your old friends and they will grow into better "new" friends. From my research, I found it may be easier for men to do this - men were better able to move on and let go of the past than women. Men were also less invested in many of their male friendships and protected themselves from getting hurt which made it easier for them to move on.

Bandmates who remain friends will always have a concrete reminder of their friendships - recordings of their music. Few other friendship groups (sports teams, scouts, fraternities) have this kind of documentation. Forty years after we met and first performed together, we still have the music that characterized the bond. We can continue to make beautfiul music together if we choose to.

Men's Friends and Old Rock and Roll Bands

Geoffrey Greif — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:28:26 +0000

In my other life, I was a rock musician with the Kansas City Jammers. In 1972 we self-recorded an album, Got Good (if you get it), that sold a few hundred copies. Strangely enough, 25 years later it began showing up as a prized find on ebay where it was pulling down $100 a copy. Ten years later, Void Records offered us $1000 to reproduce the original vinyl (cover and all) and a cd version of it. Go figure - but we were shocked and thrilled with the news. The relation to friendships? It's coming up.

Six months ago we decided to sell ourselves on ebay as joke. We weren't even a one hit wonder band - we were a no hit, no wonder band. Who would buy us? But we figured if we did it for a good cause/charity, we might make a broader contribution. So we contacted our alma mater where we all met, Ohio Wesleyan University, and they agreed to put on a concert for us to help alums reconnect with us and the school and to provide on-campus entertainment to students who love 60s and 70s music. They also agreed to video us to help promote the auction. Then we contacted Dick Gordon of The Story, the American Public Media National Radio Show that runs on many local NPR stations. We did the interview with Dick which will air Friday.

So now we have a concert to put on in January. Thus, the band reforms after not playing together for 35 years...yikes.

For all you folks out there who wonder what it is like to get together with old friends TO ACHIEVE SOMETHING THAT IS IMPORTANT (different from a reunion where you usually just hang out and can blow off whatever you don't like), old stuff comes up. To understand this though, it is important to note that all three of us have careers outside of music - I am a university professor and author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships, Bob is a medical doctor at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia and an active musician, and Jasey is a retired school teacher and an active musician.

We had our first rehearsal last month. With a trio, triangulation is rife with shifting alliances - my family therapy training is helpful here :-).

Issues arise: we do not have enough time to play all our original music so we have to decide what to discard - not easy to do if it brings up 35 year old issues and strong emotional connections to our songs; what is our vision for the concert? Is it one set or two? How much do we rely on the now necessary seven backup musicians that will be coming on and off stage to help us with our performance? Musician-wives are involved for two of the three of us. How does that affect the song selection and the shifting alliances as the date for the concert nears?

We are all different than we were in 1972 - we have matured, had families, and successful careers. We have been blessed with good health. To what extent we fall back immediately into old patterns or forge new ones will become more apparent as the date of the concert nears, as we debate further concert-related issues, and as our identities become more wrapped up in putting on a good concert. I refer to "rust," "must," and "trust" friends in my book. Here we have a combination of the valued and close friends we knew from our youth.

For me, the variable is that we all want to put on a good show and it will be video-taped - so this has importance to us all. We cannot simply accommodate to each other and say it is not important. We have to work things out. Stay tuned, if you'll pardon the pun.

Men's friendships are different from women's

Geoffrey Greif — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:45:02 +0000

I am constantly asked, "How are men's friendships different from women's?"

Men "tend" (because I am not speaking of all men or all women) to have shoulder-to-shoulder friendships and women face-to-face friendships. Paul Wright used these terms in a 1982 article in Sex Roles and they refer to men feeling more comfortable interacting with men around activities - we get together and do things together, like sports. Women tend to feel more comfortable facing each other over coffee and conversing directly with fewer distractions. Men are socialized to compete through structured activities, like sports and pay checks; women compete in less structured ways - appearance, demeanor, warmth. (This is changing, most markedly for women who now slightly outnumber men in the workplace, despite their earning less than men.) So men approach friendships differently - through activities - 80% of the men interviewed for my book said they participate in sports with their friends; no women gave that answer though a few said they exercise with friends. Shopping is a more common activity for women - only one man out of 386 said he shopped with his friends.

Women put a much greater value on frequent contact with friends than do men; women reach out more to friends to maintain that contact than do men; women were much less apt to be concerned about appearing homosexual by showing too much affection than were men; women were more apt to be supportive with friends by listening - men were more apt to be supportive by giving advice. AND, women tend to be more emotionally and physically expressive with their friends than men (perhaps linked to some men's fears of appearing gay, but maybe more due to other socialization/biological factors).

These are a few areas where there are differences - but, these are all matters of degree and may not apply to any one individual.

Responses to Clark and Gerrido and Men Friends

Geoffrey Greif — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:34:28 +0000

Re: men's friendships ---- let us remember that friends are human, too, with their loyalties and their doubts. Friends often see flaws but are still accepting. The two guys on tv in Ray Clark's corner are just that - normal guys who, for the moment, were sticking by their friend until they have reason to believe they should not. For all we know, they have reached that point by now and have dropped him as a friend; it is hard to say.

The point of the original blog was to look at the difference in these two high profile cases and the friends that have stepped forward (warts and all for Clark) and the friends that have not appeared (as in the case of Gerrido). Clark's friends were blind-sided by the charges against him, according to what they said. If Gerrido had friends who knew about his alleged years-long criminal activity and did nothing, they would be complicit in criminal behavior. Did Gerrido have friends who hung out in his backyard and knew what was going on? Nothing indicates this from the stories I have read. He had no male friends. Clark did/does.

Why consider others' behavior? Learning about the lives of these two men provides an opportunity to think about male friendships. In my book, I interviewed a 70-year-old who said he wanted his friend to stand up for him in front of others, even when he was wrong. He was referring to casual, non-criminal behavior - like a judgement call on the back line of the court while playing tennis; if he thinks it was out, his tennis partner (his friend) should support him. Men want backup and many men provide that to others because they want it for themselves.

On a different level, this raises the philosophical question about friendships: What do any of us do when someone we know, love, trust, and call a friend, does something that is heinous? When do we drop a friend?

Ray Clark, Phillip Garrido, and men friends

Geoffrey Greif — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:18:30 +0000

Two high profile men, one in his early 20s and the other in his late 50s, have made the news recently for their alleged criminal acts. Ray Clark is the suspect in the high profile murder of the Yale garduate student and Phillip Gerrido is charged with the 1991 kidnapping and sexual abuse of a then 11-year-old girl who he held captive for 18 years. Last week, two of Clark's men friends were interviewed on the Today Show. They were there, essentially, to stick up for their friend. They had grown up with Clark, had never seen the kind of behavior he was accused of, and were stunned that he was charged with the murder. They had their friend's back. The two guys were not blind to the charges against Clark and the criminal case that was being built against him. They said, when pressed, that he was innocent until proven guilty. My impression is that they were open to the fact that he might be found guilty but, short of being Clark's conviction, they were standing by their friend. These were two guys trying to do good in the best sense of the phrase.

In my book Buddy System: Understanding male friendships, other men have described a friend as someone who has your back and is there for you, someone who you could call at 2 a.m. and they would come to your aid, no questions asked. One man even joked during the one of the interviews with me that a friend would come and help you dispose of the body and not ask questions. People with friends do commit horrible crimes (and I am not including gang behavior here). Aristotle's beliefs aside (as described in an earlier blog), friendships and social contacts obviously do not inoculate you from criminal behavior, though they may protect you from such behavior sometimes if friends stop you from getting too socially isolated or discourage you from something you are about to do.

We contrast Clark's situation with Phillip Gerrido's. My understanding of his case is that he had no male friends. While most of these guys do tend to be isolates, some literature on pedophiles does indicate that men may get together with other men to pool their resources in entrapping children - I don't know that to be the case here. But Gerrido, despite his relationship with his wife Nancy, has not had men friends come to his defense. My guess is that he had none.

I was touched by Clark's two pals, willing to get on the hot seat in defense of their pal, even though they were clearly riven with doubt about him in ways they never had been before. Friends should never turn a blind eye on criminal or risky behaviors. Friends are there to stop us from getting into trouble (if they can) and to provide support so that trouble stays at bay. But sometimes, even that is not enough. For example, in this case, and if Ray Clark is guilty, he has friends who are acting like good friends - but they were not able to prevent a murder.

If we turn out to be the friend of someone who does evil, it forces us to look at our own life and our own ability to predict a friend's behavior. And, sometimes, no matter how well we know someone, that is impossible to do.

Jaycee Dugard in Perpsective

Geoffrey Greif — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:34:02 +0000

My op-ed piece, below, was published in yesterday's Baltimore Sun. What I did not discuss in the piece is my guess that Phillip Garrido did not have men friends in his life. I will blog about this in the near future.

The case of Jaycee Dugard and her two daughters is terrifying, but we need to keep things in perspective. What happened to Ms. Dugard is so shocking, in part, because it is so rare.

The case is certainly horrifying on multiple levels: that any child could be snatched off the street, be sexually abused and then become emotionally attached to someone like Phillip Garrido; that the victim would give birth to his children; that Mr. Garrido's wife would be complicit in some manner; that Ms. Dugard and her children did not escape; that children were raised with little contact with the social, educational and medical worlds; that authorities and neighbors missed earlier opportunities to blow the whistle; that a convicted sex offender was in the neighborhood; that Mr. Garrido's father said he was mentally unstable and did not intervene; and so on.

However, according to a 1999 National Incidence Study that looked at all categories of missing children, the odds are roughly one in a million that a child will experience what the authors of the study call a "stereotypical kidnapping" - a small subset of nonfamily abductions where he or she is kept in hiding for a lengthy period of time and possibly killed. There are estimated to be 115 per year of these in the U.S. By contrast, the vast majority of nonfamily abductions (estimated at 12,000 annually) are resolved within a short period of time.

Slightly more than 1 percent of all children are reported missing in any one year. Children are much more apt to run away, be thrown out of their homes, or become lost for a benign reason than they are to be abducted.

Let us remember, too, that family abduction is much more common - four to five times as likely - and also can cause significant harm to a child.

Research I recently completed for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children focused on parentally kidnapped children who were missing for a lengthy period of time and had reunited with their left-behind parent. All those I interviewed were adults at the time of our contact and had been missing for between 18 months and 14 years.

The heart of the interviews dealt with their first experiences seeing their left-behind families again, and then what their ongoing experiences were. The longer the time missing, the greater the shock on the part of both the child and left-behind family members in seeing the physical changes that had occurred in the other person. Family members struggled to recognize each other, even for the shorter-term abductions.

Some children had their guard up, ready to protect the abductor. Many were haunted by the pain they saw in the eyes of the left-behind parent, a mirror of their own pain. Children felt misunderstood, unknown, let down, and, in some cases, even more alone than before, when they realized the reunification was not going to be easy or heal all the wounds.

Their problems continue well into adulthood. Time helps but does not erase many of their wounds, even 10 and 20 years later. Difficulties continue with forming relationships, allowing their own children freedom, trusting authority figures, bonding with their left-behind parent, and dealing with guilt because they blame themselves for the abduction.

Whether Jaycee Dugard and her daughters will experience these symptoms cannot be predicted. When something so unspeakably unfair occurs to an 11-year-old and then ends in reunification 18 years later, we are transfixed. But the painful aftermath of the much more common abductions does not abate for others. Just ask those who have been abducted by a parent and eventually return home. Even years later, many are reminded of their own experience and are re-traumatized every time another child is taken.

It is natural to be interested in and concerned about high-profile, stereotypical kidnappings like Jaycee Dugard's. But interest in such cases should not lead us to forget about the victims of more common kinds of abductions, or lead us unnecessarily fear the wrong things.

Geoffrey Greif is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and the co-author with Rebecca Hegar of "When Parents

Kidnap: The families behind the headlines." His e-mail is ggreif@ssw.umaryland.edu.

This appeared in the September 7, 2009 Baltimore Sun as an op-ed piece.

Men in couples and their friendships

Geoffrey Greif — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:15:37 +0000

Are men different with their friends when they get into couples? New research I am conducting with Kathy Deal that continues earlier work published in Buddy System, indicates that they might be. Think about how you make friends with your own buddies and then think about what happens to those friendships when you are with your partner (we are assuming heterosexuality here). Are you on guard around your girlfriend/wife? Do you and your male friend censor yourself when you are with your significant others? Do you have the sense that your partners are censoring themselves? This is a broad area of friendship to consider.

Moving to a specific topic about these relationships: If you are about to go out with another couple, do you agree in advance that there are certain topics that will not be discussed or are those topics just undertstood to be off-limits?

One scenario - you are worried about being fired because of cutbacks. You are very upset about this. You tell your wife but are emotional when sharing your fears with her. Would you ask her to not share this with another couple you are about to go out with? Or would she just know that this is your story and yours to share, not hers? But what if it affects her, too? Does that change anything.

Who gets to share what with another couple? I wonder what you think?

Can buds Crowley and Gates have a beer together?

Geoffrey Greif — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:00:44 +0000

Friends have beers together. Can Officer Crowley and Professor Gates pretend to be buds? I wonder how the conversation at the White House will go down.

-----------

President Obama - Welcome, Officer. Welcome Professor. I am glad you both could make it to DC though I understand why you took different flights here.

Professor Gates - Thank you for having us, Mr. President. Yes, I figured I ran the risk of getting cuffed again if we flew together.

Officer Crowley - Thank you for the invitation, Mr. President. I did not wish to have a reference made to my mother so I opted for a different flight, too.

PO - What kind of beer do you want? We have light, dark, ales. Just about anything.

PG - I am watching my weight so I will take a light. It is hard to stay in shape when you are in your late 50s and walking with a cane...which I think would be pretty obvious to anyone who was not stupid.

OC - I will have an ale. That's what I was drinking when you called me, Mr. President, to apologize.

PO - I remember calling you but I would not characterize that conversation as an apology.

PG - Nor would I, from what I remember reading about the transcript...What were you doing in a bar anyway at lunch time?

-------------

Anyway, it is hard to imagine how these guys are going to be pals, though I suppose you can drink with someone and not be his friend. Is liquor a way for men to open up to each other? A way to break bread? Yes! A number of guys who were interviewed for Buddy System did reference getting closer to other men when alcohol was involved. A 30s guy who I highlighted specifically said he became closer to men when he and they had been drinking. Another guy in his 20s said he apologized to an old friend who he had not spoken to for a year. The guy told me he was drunk (he couldn't have apologized while sober, apparently) when he called the friend and they have been close again ever since.

It makes sense. Men feel looser when there is beer. It is a masculine and safe thing to do. Drinking beer is clubby, sports bar behavior. Supppose Obama had invited them to the White House for a glass of red wine? Not going to happen. Too effete; not masculine. A glass of scotch? Maybe, but it does not invoke the sports bar. A glass of carrot juice? A cop is not a granola type guy. Beer it is and that industry must be counting its newfound popularity. Men feel safe around beer and friendships have been built around pubs and bars for centuries. Why stop now?

----------------

Next scene - A beer commercial - President Obama looks into the camera and says:

"When I stir things up I like to calm the waters with a cool glass of (blank) beer."