Guitarist Chris Lamy has had an interesting history in the punk rock scenes in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. A member of the Jabbers during the GG Allin period and a friend of Johnny Ramones during The Ramones’ heyday, Lamy collected many pieces of memorabilia. Having reached an age of maturity, Lamy has decided to sell these pieces through RRAuction’s online auction service in July.
“Call it maturity, call it responsibility. I’m not a curator, and a lot of this stuff deserves to be in the hands of people who are either going to display it or personally enjoy it,” he said.
Lamy recently had a self-realization that if anything had happened to him, these pieces of rock and roll history would be lost forever, as nobody around him these days knows what they could be worth.
“Man, if I died, I don’t want this stuff at a yard sale,” he said. “I don’t want someone seeing Johnny Ramones’ guitar and saying “’it’s a vintage Rick, but it’s been ruined with the addition of the Stratocaster pick up. So, they give you two hundred bucks, and it’s lost to history forever.” Lamy saw huge interest in his collection of items when he posted pictures of his memorabilia on online pages for GG Allin or The Ramones, garnering over 1,400 page views in a nine hour period.
His GG Allin collection, he said, has now reached a point in time when it is more important to history than to himself. “I have a policy,: he said. “I don’t like to even wear shirts with my pictures on them when The Jabbers play. I don’t need to be reminded of what I did and who I am. I know what I did, and I know who I am, and these things are just material things. All they’re doing is helping to perpetuate a memory.”
During the GG Allin And The Jabbers era, nobody knew that their Jabbers merchandise was going to be worth money. They gave away many singles that now sell on EBay for five hundred dollars a piece. “We would just give them away,” Lamy said. “I save things that I thought were funny because GG was real funny when I knew him. He wasn’t the man he turned into.”
One night at The Channel In Boston, Lamy watched Allin write out a set list on the back side of a resume Allin had typed up to get a job. “Talk about the epitome of punk rock,” Lamy said. That set list/resume will be available through the auction.
Lamy, who has included guitars in his Ramones memorabilia for the auction, has been collecting guitars since he was 12 years old. He has 50 guitars in a storage facility that’s heated but he’d rather see his Ramones guitar end up in a collector’s climate controlled exhibit room.
Lamy’s experience with The Jabbers began several months after Allin had put the band together in 1980. GG Allin had moved from Lancaster, New Hampshire to Manchester, New Hampshire in 1979, putting that band together in Manchester with bass player Alan Chapple, a Lancaster friend of Allin’s who had moved to Manchester a bit earlier. Chapple got Allin interested in Manchester by telling him that there was a club in the Queen city with a jukebox that had included a couple of songs by local Boston bands. GG Allin was also drawn to Manchester by some clubs that had featured original bands.
“I, being one of the only few punks in town, befriended them quickly and started playing with The Jabbers in 1980 but didn’t officially join until 1981,” Lamy said. At the time, Lamy had his own band called The Kedz, named after the sneakers. Allin, in charge of promo, would put Lamy’s opening band on the posters as The Kidz to make fun of them.
“He was making fun of us, I found out later, because he wanted to break the band up because he wanted me to be his guitar player because he thought we were getting too good,” Lamy said. “We were playing Channel shows, and people were getting into us and then leaving. A couple of our guys went to college, and that’s when GG officially said ‘I want you in The Jabbers.’ And Alan told me ‘he did that to break your band up. He wanted you to play with us.’”
After becoming The Jabbers permanent guitarist in 1981, Lamy was constantly traveling back and forth between New Hampshire and New York City because he was friends with Johnny Ramone at the same time. Lamy would go on to collect numerous memorabilia pieces directly from Johnny Ramone.
Lamy was close enough to Allin that Allin gave him one of only two test pressings of Jabbers’ single “You Hate Me And I Hate You,” which will also be available through the July auction.
“So that’s how I got The GG stuff, from being in the band, and being GG’s friend,” he said.
The Jabbers eventually parted company with GG Allin. According to Lamy, GG Allin had his own agenda.
“He took a left turn from where we wanted to go,” Lamy said. “We were a punk band. The band was The Jabbers and GG was our singer, and then it became, suddenly, because GG handled all our promotions, it became GG Allin And The Jabbers, which kind of pissed us off.” At times GG Allin had created posters with only his own name on it.
Allin’s taste had changed, and Lamy and Chapple didn’t want to be sidemen. In 1984, Lamy told GG Allin that they had to break up the band, and GG Allin agreed.
“He wanted to go in a different direction,” Lamy said, “so our last official Jabbers show with GG was in May of 84 at a club called The Casbar in Manchester, New Hampshire.” Lamy and Allin remained friends after an amicable band break up. Lamy said that Allin acted more like a real with him and his other friends and behaved more like a punk rock persona when he addressed his audience on stage or when he ran into fans at record stores.
“He’d put on the gruff voice and be a little more boisterous,” Lamy said. “A lot of it was an act, but as he evolved into the person he became, that act became more real, and he became more real as the person that most people know, who’s not the person I know.”
Lamy estimated that The Jabbers with GG Allin played less than 50 gigs between 1979 to 1984. The Jabbers, which reformed in 1999, still features Lamy and Chapple. They got back together after a Swedish record label was putting out a Jabbers tribute album and asked the surviving Jabbers to record a song for it.
“I don’t want to be a cover band,” Lamy said. “I want to record new stuff.” Reviewers have been writing that the band sounds like it did when it left off in 1984.
As a personal friend of Johnny Ramones, Lamy accumulated a great deal of Ramones memorabilia that will also be available at the online auction. Being the only kid in his 
school who liked punk rock, Lamy went to a poorly attended Ramones gig in Boston. The sparse crowd allowed Lamy an opportunity to talk to the band after the show. Lamy met with The Ramones shortly after that Boston show when the band appeared at a New Hampshire venue. Lamy felt privileged that he was one of the few friends that Johnny Ramone had ever had, estimating he was guest listed at about 200 Ramones shows.
“When John would tour, he would always bring me tour posters from all over the world,” Lamy said. “He would fold them nicely and put them in his luggage. When I’d see him, he would just give me stuff.”
Lamy attaches a lot of personal memories to the items he has kept since his days in The Jabbers and his time hanging out with Johnny Ramone. One item that’s going to be auctioned is a set list that GG Allin wrote on the back side of his resume when Allin had sought work as a maintenance man. That set list reminds Lamy of a special gig at The Channel in Boston. Trying to imitate Iggy Pop’s gimmick of spreading peanut butter over his body, Allin smeared Crisco cooking oil all over himself. The punk front man thought he would run, dive, and slide across the Channel stage. Instead of sliding, he bumped rough shod and took a lot of sliver cuts.
“I thought it was funny as hell, but that’s my memory of that show, and whenever I looked at that set list, I would always laugh about that.” Lamy said.
Another item to be auctioned will be one of two test pressings of GG Allin And The Jabber’s single “I Hate You And You Hate Me.” Allin wrote on the copy that Lamy ended up with. Another item is a show flier for a gig at Jumbo’s in Somerville, which was part of a mini tour of New Hampshire punk bands. Some fan zines that had mentioned GG Allin And The Jabbers will be available at the online auction as well as a backstage pass. The RR Music Auction will run from July 16 to July 23.
For more information about the upcoming auction, please visit:
