Ready...set...levitate!

Midair is the lofty realm of the Third Grade Haters Andy Jones, and his high flying acts of stratospheric jumps.

Why do we love Andy Jones? For the same reasons we love Peter Pan. Because he can fly, because he is a kid and always will be. "I'm never going to grow up/Never going to grow up/Not me!"

Breathes there a human anywhere who can float longer than the 25-year-old, 5'10", 160-pound Jones? Someday an updraft will catch him in midglide, or Tinker Bell herself will sprinkle him with fairy dust, and he will waft on over the stage and up into the wires and lights of a venue arena like a raptor soaring into the clouds. And no one will be surprised.

"I've never had my vertical leap measured," says the child-pilot himself, "but sometimes I think about how high I get up." He, too, marvels at his gravity-defying feats, searching for an explanation. "I always spread my legs when I jump high, like on my Rock-a-baby, and it seems like I've opened a parachute, like, that slowly brings me back to the floor. “I was really up there in our last show. On my last jump I think I was close to eye level with the ceiling. Sometimes you just hit your head on the ceiling, but this time it was my elbows and everything. I almost over jumped the entire stage." "I always play on the crowd."

What about that tongue hanging out, that pink badge of foolhardiness glistening against his skin? Is there any adult anywhere who does that when he plays? "My father used to have his tongue out when he'd be working, doing mechanical stuff," says Jones, "and I just picked it up from him. It's not a conscious thing. I can't play with it in." He sighs and shakes his head, for he knows that playground kids—who imitate his every nuance and dress habit, who see in him, if not a person whose skills might be attainable, then at least a big buddy—have started hanging their tongues out on stage. "I'm afraid they'll bite them off," Jones says. He then warns: "For your tongues' sake, kids, don't do it."

For young boys everywhere, we can take a moment to describe Jones current, and less risky, music couture, the air jordans he wears. The new air jordans are laced only to the second eyelet from the top ("I've just always done it that way," Jones says). None of which would mean a blessed thing if Jones weren't the charismatic entertainer he is.
"He's got a lot of Pete Townsend in him, and a lot of Angus Young," says TGH singer/ guitarist Jimi Holiday. "Hendrix had that intensity and carriage. And nobody played the crowd like that."
In fact, these days Jones is in a class of one. With older bands now fading, hobbling and rooted to the earth, Jones has the realm of midair largely to himself.

With no real offers of serious competition to his air supremacy Jones is making the most of his new found heights. “It’s amazing how high I get up sometimes without even knowing it.” “The intensity that we play drives all three of us to do things we never thought possible.” What the three members of TGH call shows some are now calling the most electric thing to hit the stage in years. With an inside tip of the recent round of air jordans that were recently purchased, I don’t look for things to come down to ground level anytime soon.