For my second Cafe Society thread of the evening, are there any Dopers who are really into the whole collegiate jam-band scene (bands like Phish, String Cheese Incident, Disco Biscuits, etc.)?
I’m curious. I personally can’t stand most of what I’ve heard from these bands. Too noodly, too unfocused, too LONG. I get seriously bored after about the 15th minute of jazzy guitar solo. I have an intern, however (22-year-old hippie college kid) who loves the stuff. He’s thus far been unable to convey exactly what he sees in them.
So I ak you, jam-band fans, why are you into 'em. I’m not confronting anyone (for the Offenderati,) I’m genuinely curious.
And PLEASE, if you’re just going to post "I dunno. Why do you like the bands you like?,) don’t bother. I’m looking for a bit of thoughtfulness here.
No sweat, Orge man, just pop on some String Cheese and mellow out.
OK…Former college hippie dude in his thirties here checking in.
I think there is a something to be said for seeing a jam band perform live. It’s typical of a fan to go to a non-jam-band concert and watch a band play songs the way they are expected to be played. A good jam band throws curve balls at you. You hear things that you didn’t expect. A lot of times, listening to the CD is just prep for the show…it’s not an end itself. A Disco Biscuts fan would be honest telling you that their recorded versions don’t really do the songs justice. That’s because the songs take on their own life live…and sometimes they are indeed boring or too long, but other times they are incredible. It was tough to get someone ‘into’ a band like Phish without taking them to a show to experience what you were talking about.
Another part of it is seeing truly different shows night in & night out. I saw Rush on the same tour 3 times once, and by the third show I knew exactly what was going to happen from song to song. It was like seeing a movie 3 times. Now if you saw 3 moe. shows in a row, you wouldn’t know what to expect from night to night. There is something very exciting about that kind of unknown quality.
I remember trying to explain to a friend why I had tickets to see Phish for four consectutive area shows. I tried to explain that the band would not repeat any songs over 4 shows…that seeing all 4 nights was kind of like seeing one huge show. She just didn’t understand the appeal.
Of course, the answer might just be “You don’t smoke enough weed, man.”
AndyPolley-(drug free) veteran of over a hundred jam band concerts. (and a few where I got a little high–but mostly drug free)
When I was in high school, I loved Phish, but I only knew them from their studio-recorded CDs. I thought they were amazing musicians, probably some of the most talented in rock music – I just didn’t care for their lyrics at all, but the majority were written by an unofficial fifth member who wasn’t in the band. When I finally got to see Phish live, my freshman year of college (fall 1996), I was incredibly disappointed and bored. EVERYONE was on drugs, most people had the worst personal hygiene I’d seen outside of comic book conventions, and I found the band to be not only unentertaining, but ungracious – they never spoke a word to the audience, not introducing themselves or any songs, or even saying “thank you.” I found that to be very elitist, as if it was all an “inside joke” between them and their devoted Phish-Heads, to the detriment of everyone else.
I’m a jazz musician myself, so I understand wanting to open up songs to improvise over the usual changes, but to me that Phish performance was just so much musical masturbation without form or substance. It was BORING, although maybe it was the most beautiful thing in the world to those wacked-out Trustafarians. I was stone-cold sober, so it held no appeal to me. I never liked Phish again after that, even though I still think Trey Anastasio is a fantastic guitarist.
As for Dave Matthews Band, I liked their first two mainstream albums back in high school and college (same time, mid-late '90s), but I couldn’t stand them by the end of college, after every preppie frat boy and sorority girl worshipped “Dave,” and every bad acoustic guitar act in every bar in every college town had to play their own renditions of “Ants Marching.” They were overplayed – they were everywhere! There was no escaping them. I assume anyone in college (particularly living in Southern college towns between 1996 and 2000) had similar experiences, whether you liked DMB or not.
I’m a casual fan of the genre, but I absolutely LOVE Umphrey’s McGee! Rolling Stone tagged them as “the number one contender to Phish’s jam-smeared crown.”, which is somewhat odd, because they sound nothing like Phish. These guys are much harder, with a distinctly progressive bent.
I saw them recently live and they were super superb!
I saw Phish about a dozen times, along with a smattering of other jam bands. My fave right now is the Dandy Warhols. Grateful Dead however, I’ve never really been into.
A friend of mine introduced me to Phish, starting with Picture of Nectar. At the time, we were all making the transition from barely having graduated college to trying to find careers, while in the meantime drinking and smoking heavily and getting all the craziness out of our systems. When I heard them sing “Your head and feet are mangoes. You’re gonna be a genius anyway,” it just somehow seemed to fit us to a T.
I’ve been involved with jazz myself, and after giving a closer listen to their music, discovered it was much more than acid-inspired lyrics. There’s complex layers of modulation, timing, and key changes. Try to play along with it yourself and it will bend your mind. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. That’s especially true of their album Rift.
Eventually, Phish, like most other hippe bands, started getting more Dead-like in their music, covering old folk tunes and singing about New York taxicabs and stuff. My interest in them dropped after that. But it was lots of fun while it lasted.
I live and went to college in Phish mecca. Which might play a part in why I’ve never been a huge fan.
I like some of their stuff, and they’re very talented, but most of the time the genre lacks the form and power that I really like. Extended solos rarely do it for me.
Also, the ‘local’ scene is over-saturated with jam-bands (I imagine many college towns are like this). I’d just love to hear more real amature rock and roll as opposed to stoned-hippie-college-kids who can riff pentatonic over a damned repetative groove on the drums and a I-IV progression.
Yeah, see, in my experience, this attitude is prevalent among jam band fans. Without trying to be an asshole, most of the fans I’ve met tend to be falsely uber-Leftist (my intern: “Bush is Hitler!”,) largely brainless hippie kids who simply can’t seem to tell me why the genre holds such fascination.
Present company excepted, I’d like to believe. I’m just speaking from my experience.
Also, I don’t want you to think I’ve never been to any jam-band shows. I’ve seen String Cheese, Widespread Panic, and moe. I’ve been to the Further Festival and sat in the grass with a kid up wind of me burning a vast handfull of sage (actually, that one incident may have put me off the whole genre for life. I was flying on various chemicals of dubious legality, and the sweet, hellish scent of that handfull of sage haunts my sleep to this day. I got so freaking sick.)
So, I can sort of understand the experiential aspect of it. I’m a musician myself, and I can appreciate good musicianship, but in every setting I’ve experienced the genre in, I’ve been either bored off my ass or sick.
Now, I’m not really the type of person who is into mass appreciation of events like this. I’d much rather sit in an empty bar and listen to somebody wail than stand in a massive crowd and soak up some sort of “colony mind” experience, which is how I’ve heard it described.
Well, I like jam bands a little bit, I guess. A lot of Grateful Dead and Allman Bros albums (live and studio) do live at my house, but no Phish or Dave Matthews (and it’s going to stay that way). Wait, is Leftover Salmon a jam band? Cause I got one o’ theirs.
Anyway, I think there’s two answers: one is that you have to like the general sound, you know the relaxed groove jam. And I think there’s not a good answer why someone likes that as opposed to the death metal sound. Plus, there’s the social aspect – you listen to bands your friends listen to.
But the more objective reason to like them is that these bands do experiment and take chances, particularly live. So some of the time, a Jerry Garcia solo just ends up being boring, self-indulgent, musical, um, chicken-choking. But some of the time something great that you’ve never heard before happens. And if you’re really into the music for music’s sake (as opposed to just being background noise for your life), isn’t that what it’s really about? As has been said, if you want it to sound exactly like the album, why not either sit at home or in front of a bar jukebox?
(Admittedly, it’s often easier to wait out the boring parts when there’s some chemical assistance. Or better yet, make a CD with just the good parts. Man I like the Dead so much better with a CD burner and .WAV editor!)
And, I’ll note both the Dead and the Allmans spent at least part of their shows tearing off short, concentrated and tightly played rock ‘n’ roll (/blues/bluegrass) songs.
Finally, don’t forget that Sturgeon’s Law applies: 90% of jam bands are crap, but so are 90% of the bands in whatever genre you listen to.
I’ve seen the Allman Brothers dozens of times, I’ve seen Gov’t Mule, Phil and Friends and the Derek Trucks Band, plus a few other related groups. I hate jambands. The groups I list above can improvise with the best of them, but they all (with the exception of Phil Lesh, and I only liked one particular lineup his band had) are song-oriented bands that improvise within the context of those songs. Any idiot can play a meaningless hour-long solo over three chords. In fact, it seems like most of them do.
As far as the crowds go… ‘vapid’ would be a good word, I think. Aside from the obvious ones liked stoned. My experience there tells me that a lot of Frank Zappa’s criticisms of hippies were spot-on.
‘vapid’ would be a good word. It’s basically music you play out the window of a frat house while you drink beers and get baked while sitting in an old sofa on the front yard. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
What exactly is a “jam band” anyhow? Obviously The Dead and Phish are the Coke and Pepsi of jam bands. Are bands like Dave Mathews Band, Rusted Root, Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors considered jam bands or are they too commercial?
No, I’d consider them all jam bands, along with Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, moe, and even Medeski, Martin, and Wood. They all have the same target audience (hippies, college kids, stoners), they all tour incessantly, and they all emphasize musicianship, particularly long, extended improvisation sections (the actual “jamming”).
I was recruited to play in a jam band by huge Widespread Panic fans. I had never heard of WP at the time and listened to a bunch of their music during my 2 years with the band. Even with the drugs, I thought it was terrible. (sorry, guys)
However, I loved playing in the jam band! It really gives everyone a chance to experiment and do their thing. We played out often and even managed to find a few ‘fans’…well, mostly stoner friends of bandmates.
The only Phish song I really like is ‘Landlady’ which I learned the piano and organ parts for during a coversong project we were working on. Mostly what I like about it is that it’s about 3 minutes long…That can’t be said of most of their other crappy songs.
I have a small circle of friends that get together very irregularly to “jam”. We’re not a “band”, we don’t “rehearse”, rarely does anyone sing and we don’t play in public. (Well, once, and had a blast, but,different story). We all share some influences, but have a broad range of tastes. In this context, we’ve talked a lot about the nature of what makes music interesting. From this (and life in general) we’ve found one (rather obvious) concensus. Everybody likes different music for different reasons. Amazing, hunh? But, the one thing we all agree on is this; it’s never better than when you are playing something you know and take it somewhere it’s never been before. That’s where the magic lives. And the only way to get there is to “throw yourself off the cliff”. Obviously, sometimes you crash and burn. But when you FLY!!! all the pain and suffering of everyday life goes away for a while. You can become (a little bit) telepathic for a short while. Even witnessing this can be amazing, but in my experience most people have no idea what I mean by any of this.
That’s what I go to concerts hoping to see. It’s been the same (for me) since long before anyone started using the term “jamband”. For perspective, I saw my first concert in 1975.
Actually, yes. That’s enormously helpful. It gives me a look inside your brain. I happen to disagree about “where the magic lives” (I tend to think it lives more in the primal feeling of a fat backbeat and a tight, hooky song structure,) but I can understand your feelings.
We don’t disagree that much. There is a lot of “magic” in music. The first concert I saw (in 1975 ) was Jeff Beck. Not one spontaneous note (as far as I could tell), but Precision and Tone for days (or is it miles?) Absolutely incredible. I just like different things from different music. With bands like Gov’t Mule, Panic, Derek Trucks or Phish (of whom I’m not a big fan, BTW) I would go expecting spontaneity. But for Yes or Steely Dan or (hopefully someday) the Flower Kings, that music has to be right or it doesn’t work.
Oh,and sorry about the mess inside my brain. If i’d known you were coming I’d have picked up a little.
Ogre, You might be the only person on Earth who gets what I’ll say here; I really want to like jam bands, but it falls flat with me, because i heard the greatest jam bands with the now gone blues musicians RL Burnside and Jr Kimbrough…they just blew everything out of the water for me, excelllent and hard to surpass.
North Mississippi Allstars are my favorite jam band now, they get the whole drumming African beat behind any jam, and take it further with the white boy soul thang. Up for a Grammy, gots my fingers crossed!
