Jam

Things were rolling along wonderfully at Chris Robinson's Theatre of Living Arts show Tuesday night. With a versatile quartet dubbed New Earth Mud (also the title of Robinson's recently released solo debut) behind him, the former Black Crowes singer was turning limp love songs like his new single "Safe in the Arms of Love" into the kind of throbbing haymakers his former band specialized in, while also debuting ace new songs such as the pile-driver shuffle "Mother of Stone. " Playing rudimentary yet solid rhythm guitar, Robinson augmented the originals with tastefully rendered covers, including a fiery reading of Bob Dylan's "Tough Mama" and a delicious country-rock shake-up of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home.

Even in a holiday season, or maybe especially then, you can have too much of a good thing. Five guys named "moe. " proved this Tuesday night to a capacity crowd of folks in their 20s at the Electric Factory. Measured in minutes, the band played 66, rested 41, played 99, rested 2, and played 20 more. And that after opener Antigone Rising filled 50 minutes with hard-rock cliches. No live recording ever really captures the incarnate moe. For $20, you could have bought Tuesday's show, well-rendered on three compact discs, on your way out the door.

Note to area construction companies: When you get a six-figure contract from Delaware County, don't become a stranger. In April, J.A.M. Construction Co. of Glenolden received a $130,000 contract from the county for general contracting work at Ogden House, located on the grounds of the Fair Acres complex. The county never heard from J.A.M. again. Now, Dennis J. Carey, chief engineer for the county, has asked the county to rescind the award and put the contract out to rebid, a process he said would take about 60 days.

Rock and roll "coming of age" comedies don't come along often, but when they do - "American Graffiti," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or "Rock and Roll High School" - the films usually strike a responsive chord with the rebellious spirit in us all. I can't pretend to be much of a Kiss fan, but I can appreciate the trials by fire that Hawk, Jam, Lex and Trip go through to take in a show by their most beloved of Glam...

Do you recognize this sound? Click-click-clicka. Click-clack-clicka. Click. Clack. Clicka-JAM! No? Well, here's a hint. A lot of people used to play a game that sounded something like that. They played in barrooms and video arcades about a decade ago. Click-click-clicka. Click-clack-clicka. Click. Clack. Clicka-JAM! OK. It's air hockey. One player hits the puck (click-click-clicka), the other player hits it (click-clack-clicka), and somebody scores a goal (clicka- JAM!

Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the oil, and for most American Jews, that means latkes - potato pancakes fried in oil. But there are many other ways to commemorate the miracle during the eight-day Festival of Lights, which begins at sundown Dec. 20. Indeed, there are as many ways to celebrate the holiday as there are communities of Jews. In Italy, small pieces of lemony-garlic chicken are coated with flour and egg and fried for Hanukkah festivities. Jews of German and Austrian descent eat deep-fried breaded veal called schnitzel.

The competitors are getting ready: Vegetables are being uprooted, pumpkins polished. And jelly is actively being . . . jelled. But this competition isn't bitter - it is sweet. For more than 30 years, the Middletown Grange Fair has attracted hundreds of farmers and city dwellers to Wrightstown in mid-August. The three-day celebration - Aug. 17 to 19 this year - is an old-fashioned agricultural fair in what is rapidly turning into a developed suburban county. "People bring vegetables, fruits, pumpkins - everyone wants to see who has the biggest pumpkin - 4-H exhibits, canned goods, jams, jellies," grange coordinator Marguerite Andre said.

The 13th annual Mellon Jazz Festival will have an international flavor, with jazz artists coming to Philadelphia from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean from June 12 to 21. The 10 days of music at venues across the region will include nearly two dozen concerts, plus a film series at International House looking at crime movies with jazz scores. This year's show will honor one of Philadelphia's contributions to the world of jazz: bassist and bandleader Stanley Clarke, 46, who grew up at Broad and Allegheny.

It's something out of the past. It's what Jill Taylor, a park naturalist at the Gloucester County Parks and Recreation center calls a "lost art of sorts. " And it certainly is not common in this age of convenience and prepared foods. It's jam making - peach jam making, to be exact - and local residents will have the opportunity to learn about it at a workshop Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Scotland Run Park Nature Center, Clayton-Williamstown Road, Clayton. Taylor, who has practiced jam making since her childhood, will run the free workshop.

In the nouveau hippie music scene, quantity means as much as quality. So it was par for the course when jam-band stalwarts Widespread Panic churned out three hours' worth of Birkenstock rock Tuesday night at the Electric Factory. Extrapolating verse-chorus structure to its breaking point, lead vocalist and guitarist John Bell - who sang with a sweet, bluesy rasp - laid down bottleneck slide salvos and cherry Garcia leads, initiating a call-and-response with guitarist Michael Houser, who has apparently studied his Santana albums very closely.