Who here calls them jam boxes?

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Transistorized

Member (SA)
During an outside Apple butter stirring event at my church I brought one of my boxes for some tunes. I had a church member refer to one of my boomboxes as a jambox. Never heard of that slang before then.

I just remember somewhat feeling insulted because it was my Gold C100 but I quickly remembered that this was an older church crowd and didn't mean any harm :-)
 

Superduper

Moderator
Staff member
The fella in FL that always says “this sucker jam” probably would call them jamboxes. I think, not sure, that he’s a member but if not, you probably saw his Boombox listings on Ebay.
 

Reli

Boomus Fidelis
Superduper said:
The fella in FL that always says “this sucker jam” probably would call them jamboxes. I think, not sure, that he’s a member but if not, you probably saw his Boombox listings on Ebay.

Oh yeah, the guy who writes all caps like it's 1999


JVC Floyd said:
Honestly Jam box is a stupid f****** name plain and simple. I mean who the f*** jams either you rock or you Boogie but nobody f****** jams.

Newcleus would disagree


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpxaaM6wkZw
 

samovar

Member (SA)
The Urban Dictionary is decidedly not as reliable as the M-W, since its entries are not monitored by professional linguists. However sometimes it registers lesser known slang:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jam%20box

One gets the impression that "jam box" was either a local term or (see Transistorized's testimony) an early one that didn't catch and was eventually supplanted by boombox (in the modern acceptation) and ghettoblaster
 

floyd

Boomus Fidelis
I guess I f***** up big-time eh?.
Oh well least when I look like a moron its entertaining.
 

Fatdog

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Superduper said:
The fella in FL that always says “this sucker jam” probably would call them jamboxes. I think, not sure, that he’s a member but if not, you probably saw his Boombox listings on Ebay.
That would be the legendary SkilPhil. Here's an old picture of SkilPhil with Freddie behind him.

IMGP8165.jpg
 

mellymelsr

Member (SA)
I always got a kick out of SkilPhil's ebay sales ads...wonder what happened to him.

Where I grew up in the Bay we referred to them as "radio" or "box".
 

Lasonic TRC-920

Moderator
I suppose any name could be created to refer to a radio, be it positive or negative. I have heard the term jambox before, but either it's a regional thing or a passionate term used by a few (or even one). I simply use Boombox, seems the least offensive.
 

samovar

Member (SA)
To show that I am not always right & that knowledge is progressive :-) and to support the idea that JAMBOX is a regional word, or belongs to an idiolect, or that it is a term with ephemeral success -- so that at some point it disappeared from usage and wasn't registered by authoritative dictionaries --, it occurs to me to have once seen a Crown CSC 945 referred to as "il giamaicano", i.e., "the Jamaican".

It was a local ad and with that term the seller addressed the units we used to bring to the beach when reggae was all the rage. Such was the success of Peter Tosh, Bob Marley and especially The Police, that in the late 70s/early 80s Italian popstars started singing in like fashion. See the following 1979 hit, the first Italian reggae according to the interviewer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5MawD6KSIY​

Speculation: if a connection between "jambox" and the Italian "giamaicano" can be established (for instance, via a partial calque from the American term), then JAM- in jambox would stand for JAMAICAN rather than for JAM as in JAM-SESSION -- which was what I thought of at first, since a boombox invites people to "jam". In other words, the jambox would be the Jamaican box: "il giamaicano."

More speculation: if the above is correct (but remember: so far it's just folk-etymology), and if the term, no matter the incidence of its circuation, was in use in the late 70s when today's midsize boxes were known as Jumbos -- or even Super-Jumbos --, then after all Fun Factor H.O.T. may have a point when he maintains that, at least for him, "boombox" applies only to the big units of late 80s/early 90s:

Contec_SuperJumbo_8912.jpg
Contec 8912, late 70s and almost the same size as the Crown CSC 945. One of its aka, the Irradio 8912, is dubbed "Super Jumbo".​
Or shoud it read Super Jambox? :lol:

The plot thickens and so much is still obscure. For instance, whereas I remember the reggae fever, I have absolutely no memory of any "giamaicano". The ad where I read the term was from around Roma, if memory assists me. Why did the seller use the word? Was he American? Or was he an Italian who had been in contact with somebody (from the US?) who used the word? And so on.

More research is needed, since cultural history is complex. As with the case of an Italian synonimous of boombox I have never come across elsewhere. At least in Sicily, circa 1977-79, people occasionally used the term "satellite" ("satellite"), one may be tempted to say because a box on the shoulder "circles" around his owner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXdwvDjxOkM​

Yes and no: given that satellites circles around their planets, here the term must be eponymous. It probably derives from the Grundig Satellit series -- especially the Satellit 4000 Professional, a gorgeous unit and a proper boombox, since the previous models were just radios. Not a common sight in the States, but a familiar one in continental Europe and certainly in Italy, where Grundig was an extremely popular brand back in the day:

Grundig_Satellit_4000.png
Grundig Satellit 4000​
To be continued...? :-)

_____________________

To be continued!

Look at what Roy Shucker (a real shocker!) writes in the 4th edition of his Understanding Popular Music Culture. New York and London: Routledge, originally published in 1994 (the quotation is online and can be found via books.google):


Shuker.png

So there is more than just one Jamaican connection with the boombox... food for thought...
 

samovar

Member (SA)
Reli said:

Nice box. Shares the same chassis and controls as the Sound 4020, Sanwa 7065, and Panasonic RQ-4350.
Yes, the Contec/Irradio is a pretty rare (and I daresay Sanyo-look) variation on a box with 1.000 akas; one of them not mentioned by you is the Contec 8913, and God knows how many others there exist in the wild. I own the Aciko ACR 1000 version:


Aciko_ACR-1000S.jpg
 

PostEnder

Member (SA)
Reli said:
The fella in FL that always says “this sucker jam” probably would call them jamboxes. I think, not sure, that he’s a member but if not, you probably saw his Boombox listings on Ebay.

Oh yeah, the guy who writes all caps like it's 1999


JVC Floyd said:
Honestly Jam box is a stupid f****** name plain and simple. I mean who the f*** jams either you rock or you Boogie but nobody f****** jams.

Newcleus would disagree


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpxaaM6wkZw
I was actually half-blurting "Don't get hurt, fellas, don't get hurt" while watching those boys -- now men well into their forties -- doing those "front-flip onto your back" moves in the last several seconds of of this music video for Newcleus's "Jam On It" hit. Ah, those "windmill" moves earlier in the production. Ah, the breakdancing era...
 

PostEnder

Member (SA)
Reli said:
On the Brillant 8911 and IGU 4062, they moved the crash bars to the tweeter area

attachicon.gif
IGU 4062 ghettoblaster.jpg
That's what those dark, curved-edged, handle-like prominences bracketing the façade of such sound systems are called: "crash bars"? Good to know. (Uh, can they also be called "bumper bars" or "bumpers"? Over the years, I seem to have been inclined to called them something less jarring than "crash bars.")
 

PostEnder

Member (SA)
MyOhMy said:
I've been listening to music on all manner of devices since the 1950's and have never of the term 'jam boxes' so I think he lives in his own little world or a world that every day folk don't access.

'Jam box' my arse, it's a Boombox.
But ... I remember repeatedly using the terms "jambox" and "jamboxes" until relatively recently (notwithstanding the word processors' repeated spelling-error protests with the squiggly red underlining). But, hey, if you can't call an Aiwa CS-R10 or a Sanyo M-1770K a "jam box" or a "jambox" without being rude, then why act like you don't know better, right? :sadno:.

Hang on, there: before I forget, don't I remember seeing the term "jam box" on the Pocket Calculator Show website?

Yes, indeed: a quick check at that website, minutes ago, shows that term, the last phrase in sentence four of the italicized sub-entry The Boombox. Here we go:


The Boombox.
Precisely when the term was coined we’re not sure. Department stores such as Sears and K-Mart began used it in their marketing as early as 1983. Merriam-Webster pins it at 1981, and defines the boom box as “a large portable radio and often tape player with two attached speakers”. Initially, it became identified with a certain group of society, hence adopting epithetic nicknames, like ghetto blaster, and jam box. But as the masses began to embrace this assemblage of electronics gadgets as an indespensible form of portable entertainment, it became an icon of popular culture, and we’ve yet to let go. Your hosts of Pocket Calculator Show endeavor here to provide a retrospective, including as many photos, facts and accounts as we can provide, during your tour of the Vintage Boombox Museum.


I think that the paragraph above was posted by an editor or webmaster of that website (see sentence six), so I'm not sure one can dismiss the message-poster as some ignoramus who just stopped by and clacked out whatever on the keyboard. Hopefully it is not in haste that I suggest that the writer of that Vintage Boombox Museum entry was a reasonably seasoned collector, user (and maybe even repairer) of portable audio.
 

samovar

Member (SA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBybJGZoCU​

Digging the recent past shows how fast memory fades. Even ours -- and so many of us were there back in the day! Here is the link to the pocket calculator page containing the entry quoted above by PostEnder:

On the pocket calculator site, jam box is given as an epithetic definition along with ghettoblaster. If by "epithetic" the author means "disparaging or abusive" (Merriam-Webster online) in an ethnic sense, then jam box may well actually hint at Jamaica (i.e., Jam-[aican] would play the same linguistic role as ghetto- in ghettoblaster).

It goes without saying that, of course, jam may simply stand for jam as in jam-session, as we all thought at the beginning -- which would send us back to square one...

Again more research is needed. But one thing is for sure: the Jamaican sociological and musicological situation from the 60s throughout the 90s is astonishingly similar to the one where hip hop -- and the ghettoblaster -- culture developed, as the following contribution from an ethnomusicologist makes clear:


If you have no time to read it, just have a look at the following, enlightening passage (click to enlarge, unfortunately the source uses small print):

Jamaica.png
 
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