Does ANYONE on ILX like jam bands? I mean, really?

There are bands I like that the jam band kids like (MMW for sure, old Galactic, Charlie Hunter, I dunno, um, Skerik), but I don't consider them jam bands.

I saw QOTSA at a festival in 2001 and they jammed on "You Can't Quit Me Baby" for 15 mins. It was really good.

I saw The Mars Volta at a festival in Jan 2004 they opened with a Jam-ified version of "Roulette Dares". It was fucking shite-ass-gay. I pissed off and saw Aphex/Vibert, who were fab.

someone recently said that lcd sdsys's "yeah (pretentious mix)" sounds like phish, circa fall 97. that is a hilariously accurate description. my first thoughts about that track were actually "boy, this sounds a little like that band lake trout".

anyway, i mostly hate jam bands now. but i fucking love "china cat sunflower" and "st stephen", and i can listen to Billy Breathes without gagging too much.

Jordan otm.

I kind of want to tattoo this on my chest.

the dead stand apart, for better or worse, from all of the other jam bands because of their deep knowledge of/roots in all kinds of Americana - country, blues, bluegrass, folk, and beat lit/poetry

The rest can choke on their own psilocybillic vomit.

Allman Brothers, Little Feat, Phish, God Street Wine, Umphrey's McGee, Global Funk, Soulive, Reconstruction, Legion of Mary, Grateful Dead, Mofro, String Cheese Incident is okay (kind of like Phish w/ a "better" singer and less experimental craziness - in other words, more boring), Garaj Mahal.

Phish as "clunky musicians at best" is way off. Listen to "A Live One" sometime. If they ever sound off, it is gennerally due to bad audio/recording. Or, perhaps you just heard one of their 300+ songs that didn't impress you, which was most likely a 3 minute pop song that isn't the reason Phish fans like them, either.

But I had 20 minutes of a Phish documentary going on the TV when I was too lazy to change the channel, and I thought they had some appeal... (At least I could tell that they were precise.) ... Maybe that was because the documentary only played 20 seconds of their songs at a time. So if jam bands would jam for 20 seconds, I might dig it.

The Minutemen to thread!

I'm not real sure what you're getting at ... if it isn't sample-worthy, doesn't that just mean it doesn't have a hook? Are Varese and Stravinsky sampled? (Don't answer that ... I mean, if the answer is yes, then change the composers to someone who hasn't.)

so, whaddya mean?

someone made a whole album comprised of dark star samples.

Geezus, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Have you heard "Slave to The Traffic Light" and "Harry Hood"?

It's funny, I used to feel the same way. Years later, all I listen to are live shows. I guess I finally "got" the live stuff in a big way. I remember I used to think, "it just sounds worse, why not listen to a nice clean recording?" It only takes a few GREAT shows to understand why the live shows are better in a hard-to-describe way. I would suggest the 10 disc Big Cypress show from New Years 99 or the "Runaway Golfcart Marathon" show in which every song has some reference to the OJ high-speed chase. Then, any of the earlier shows from the late 80s and early 90s. LIVE PHISH #9 from '89 is totally kickass straight through.

someone made a whole album comprised of dark star samples.

----

It's a double disc Plunderphonics set called Grayfolded. It's pretty damn great. People who don't like the Dead can suck it.

Count me. Yes, I like jam bands. Some of them. jeez, can't people just treat "jam bands" as any other genre-definable band? The Grateful Dead & Phish were GREAT bands. However, bands like Widespread or SCI do very little for me. ILMers who would say the former and the latter are the same or can't tell the difference really make me question if they've listened to them or are merely parroting hivemind snark.

There are a number of other good bands: The New Deal, Lotus, Sound Tribe Sector 9, the bays, Brothers Past...are they jam bands? i don't know and i don't care. if i enjoy 3 12-15 minute songs/jams in a set or in a show isn't it the same as enjoying 4 or 5 songs out of 15 on an LP?

Also, if people knew enough about The Disco Biscuits to initiate and sustain a "why are they so bad and hated"-type-thread i would show my true colors and play the role of alex_in_nyc in relation to KJ.

I owned Red by God Street Wine for some unknown reason. Terrible!

I never liked the Grateful Dead that much, aside from American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, and Blues For Allah (the only Dead album I own).

I guess I like Phish the most out of that genre. They're pretty good overall. But their godlike status with some acquaintances of mine (who obsess over them about 20x as much as Alex obsesses over Killing Joke) is off-putting.

I always forget about it cause usually everyone is hating on them for being a jam-band and its not a jam-band song at all.

Oh no!

The thing that I appreciate about most jam bands is that they don't stereotype other types of music and rarely judge or -- as this thread does -- berate other music genres. They truly do this shit because they love to hear those notes floating through the air.

Because they figured out how to make money?

Have you ever heard: Wake of The Flood, What A Long Strange Trip 2 CD set, Skull and Roses, One From The Vault, Two From The Vault, Terrapin Station, Shakedown Street, Mars Hotel, Live Without A Net, Dick's Picks? If not, you've missed lots of great stuff and many different styles.
Take advantage of archive.org and download some of the best shows out there for free!

I even happen to like the albums most deadheads don't appreciate too much, like Go To Heaven and Blues For Allah.

Regardless of what you think of their music, Phish are/were some of the best musicians AND the best songwriters out there. Don't let their fans get in the way of your judgment of the band.

That said, I'm glad they broke up. Hopefully the members will do something new and interesting.

The handful of times I've seen Mule live have been some of my most satisfying musical experiences. And, on occasion, the fans have contributed to that. Any crowd on any given night can wrinkle yr opinion of what's onstage, but I've always found the fans at a Mule or Phish or whatever show to simply be more at ease and actually there for the show rather than there to be, you know, seen.

Some people seem to forget we pay to see and hear the bands, not them.

But, yeah, as it was told to me: "Warren Haynes is a for real cat."

Amen to that.

I also did forget to mention that I dled some Disco Biscuits at the suggestion of a couple ILMers and they're great too!

Despite the contrasting opinion expressed above, I really think jam bands are comparable to jazz... and blues. Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton are great jammers.

Sweet fancy moses! my compliments, you open-minded soul. if you ever want recommendations of shows or songs to check out, i will provide that service.

try those two and then maybe 12/31/04 to hear something like what they sound like now. new year's eve shows can sometimes be too gimmicky, especially for someone not familiar with the band, but if you want high-energy, the 2nd set is that in spades. that 1 cd hasn't left my changer in the 4 months since the show.

Oh, I also like Ween a lot of the time, who have some overlap in this scene.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0033,tracker_writer.inc,13594,.html

(didn't feel this required a whole new thread)

The following is a list of jam bands, or bands on the jam-band circuit.

0-9

7 Walkers

A

Acoustic Syndicate
Al and The Transamericans
Allman Brothers Band
Amfibian
Animal Liberation Orchestra
Apollo
Aquarium Rescue Unit
Aqueous
Assembly of Dust
Ataxia

B

Back Door Slam
Band of Gypsys
Banyan
Barefoot Manner
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Benevento/Russo Duo
Bernie Worrell & the WOO Warriors
Big Gigantic
Big Head Todd and the Monsters
Big Tasty
Biodiesel
The Big Wu
The Black Crowes

Blind Faith
Blues Project
Blues Traveler
Bob Weir & Ratdog
The Bomb Squad
BoomBox
The Brakes
The Breakfast
The Brew

The Bridge
Buckethead
Buckminster Fuller

C

The Cardinals
Centipede
Clutch
The Codetalkers
Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Pharaoh Gummit
Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains
Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade
Cope
Cornmeal (band)
Country Joe and the Fish
Cream (Band)

D

Dark Star Orchestra
Dave Matthews Band
David Nelson Band
Deep Banana Blackout
Derek Trucks Band
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
The Disco Biscuits
Dispatch
Donavon Frankenreiter
DJ Logic
Donna the Buffalo

Dr.Dan Matrazzo and The Looters

E

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians
The Egg
Ekoostik hookah
Electric Apricot
The Electric Co.
EOTO
Evergreen (evergreenjams.com)
The Expendables

F

Family Groove Company
Fat Freddy's Drop
Freddy Jones Band
Fungus Amungus
Furthur
Future Rock

G

G. Love & Special Sauce
Gabe Dixon Band
Galactic
Galapagos
Garage A Trois
Garaj Mahal
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad
Gneiss
God Street Wine
Gov't Mule
Grateful Dead
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
The Grapes
Greensky Bluegrass

H

The Heavy Pets
Hot Buttered Rum
Hot Tuna
Hypnotic Clambake

I

Infamous Stringdusters
Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk

J

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
Jam Camp
Jazz Mandolin Project
Jefferson Airplane
Jerry Garcia Band
JGB
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimmy Swift Band
John Brown's Body
The John Butler Trio

K

Karl Denson's Tiny Universe
Keller Williams
Kudzu Kings
KVHW

L

Lake Trout (band)
Leaf Hound
Leftover Salmon
Legion of Mary (band)
Les Claypool
Les Claypool's Frog Brigade
Lettuce (band)
Little Barrie
Little Feat
Liquid Soul
Lotus

M

The Machine
Maktub
Man
The Mars Volta
The Marshall Tucker Band
Matisyahu
Max Creek
The McLovins
Medeski Martin & Wood
Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood
Michael Franti & Spearhead
moe.
Mofro
The Mother Hips
Motorpsycho
My Morning Jacket
Moon Taxi

N

New Deal
New Grass Revival
New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Monsoon
Nickel Creek
North Mississippi All-Stars
The New Mastersounds

O

Old and in the Way
Oteil Burbridge
The Other Ones
Oysterhead
Ozric Tentacles
O.A.R.

Octopus Nebula

P

Particle
Pat McGee Band
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Perpetual Groove
Phil Lesh & Friends
Phish
Pink Floyd
Pinot
Polyphonic Spree
Pnuma Trio
Primus
Pseudopod

Q

The Quark Alliance

R

The Radiators
Railroad Earth
RAQ
Ratdog
Red Levee Skyy
Raw Deluxe

Rhythm Devils
Robert Randolph and the Family Band
Rodrigo Y Gabriela
The Roots
Roster McCabe
Rubber Souldiers

Rusted Root
RX Bandits

S

Sabbatical
The Samples
SerialPod
Sister Hazel
Slightly Stoopid
The Slip
Soulfarm
Soulive
Soul Rebels Brass Band
Sound Tribe Sector 9
Spread
Spearhead
The Spin Doctors
Sprout
State Radio

Steve Kimock Band
Stockholm Syndrome
Strangefolk
The String Cheese Incident

T

Tea Leaf Green
Ten Ton Chicken
Toubab Krewe
Traffic
Trey Anastasio Band
Trigon
The Tubes

U

Umoja Orchestra
Umphrey's McGee

V

Vida Blue
Vinyl

W

The Waybacks
The Werks
Ween
Widespread Panic
The Word
Wilco

X

Xavier Rudd

Y

Yonder Mountain String Band

Z

Zero
Zilla
ZOX

PINK FLOYD RULES

no qms = no credibility

Sometimes, yeah.

Seeing Cream on that list reminded me of this: obviously hardly anyone thinks of the Who as a "jam band," but I was just listening to this the other day
http://youtu.be/qrBi4q_9Ji4
...and thinking how it just comprehensively demolishes Cream. And I like Cream, but man, the Who just flattened them.

i like pretty much every power trio that ripped off cream more than i like cream. and the who could kick almost anyone's ass in a jam band contest. if they felt like it. but they'd probably be too pissed off to feel like it and they'd just give you a dirty look. and then demolish you with music.

I think Gov't Mule is pretty good rock band. Warren Haynes is a rare modern sideman musician that was actually able to create an separate musical identity well over a decade into a career. If you like that late 60s/early 70s blues hard rock like Free or Allman Brothers or Cream etc., I'd figure you would find something to like in Gov't Mule's music.

I'd think if any of the corporate radio programmers would have mixed a band like them in on the radio next to the endless Bad Company and Led Zep or Stones tunes over the past couple of decades, they would have fit and probably would have a bit larger profile. They don't get the props but I think that is pretty canny of them to have pretty much every show they have done for years up for their fans to get from the band, usually pretty well recorded.

I just listened to a Moe. song a friend posted on fb. It wasn't terrible.

i love the dead (in addition to finally getting into a few shows, the americana albums are sorta obv great, and blues for allah is a gorgeous jazz fusion record anchored in songs and so feels to me very related to stuff like court and spark while also being totally different), love floyd and floyd bootlegs if those count. every time I've tried to get into phish, at least live, they seem like the worst possible evolution of fusion. their playing itself sounds so...self-involved, as much as you can ascribe that to a particular interplay. some of their songs are good though, I remember enjoying billy breathes

...not enough to take on the whole of ilm on the topic. :)

lol

lol

none of the newer hippie bands have songs. that's my main problem. maybe songs are beside the point. the dead had many many wonderful songs to choose from. they had an actual songbook! all the best old bands had memorable songs. allman brothers. quicksilver. new riders. little feat. also they could jam better...but they had good to great material to fall back on in if they were too stoned to play straight. i've never heard a great nu-jam band song. they might be giant songs sound like cole porter compared to phish songs.

i think it doesn't help that the bands now are completely unfunny to me. and it seems like humor is definitely a part of their thing. and its definitely zappa humor which is my least favorite kind.

it's a cult thing that i will never enjoy. and i like a lot of cult things. when people come in my store and ask if i have any phish i say no and they have no interest in anything else. they just leave. they don't look at a single record.

ALSO, i know a fanatical phish fan and i've told him that i've listened to album stuff and didn't like it and he'll say NO! you have to hear the live thing and i'll say i've listened to a lot of live stuff online...and he'll say NO! you have to go to a show!! and that right there is the heart of it. if i can't tell how good a band is by listening to any of their zillion albums or live shows online...i mean, that is some extra-musical cult-like activity.

also, yes, the dead could definitely make me cringe when they did "funky", but nothing like any of the newer bands doing "funky". kinda think there should a law against it. that and their takes on "reggae".

i also know that arguing with fans of these bands is pointless. like fighting with limp bizkit fans or something. just not worth it.

well... you have to take it for granted that jam band people will be fanatical about set and setting. i find the best way to listen to any band is to ignore anybody who listens to that band to the exclusion of all other music.

the alleged lack of tunes isn't really a weak side for me, but i listen to, you know, berlin school stuff, which isn't exactly known for its hummable melodies. compared to pink era tangerine dream, most jam bands sound like max fucking martin.

I spent close to four years sharing office space with Relix magazine. Jam band music is the worst music on Earth. If I had to rank major jam bands in order of least to most intolerable it would probably go:

The Allman Brothers Band
Medeski, Martin & Wood
Grateful Dead
Gov't Mule
Widespread Panic
Umphrey's McGee
Phish
The Disco Biscuits (aka The Worst Fucking Band On Earth)

it does make me feel a little jerky to slam the stuff because it really is music for normal white people who feel at home seeing uncool people who look like them onstage and there is something, uh, endearing about that, i guess. i always wanted to see totally cool people who were nothing like me onstage. Ghost were kind of my live ideal in the 90's as far as jam bands go.

It's never made any sense to me that Dave Matthews is gladly accepted into this category. I guess a live show makes the difference, but he seems like a fairly traditional artist/songwriter to me.

i would say that a group like govt mule actually does cross over with older rock fans and fans of older bands. duh, allman brothers fans. but i feel like widespread panic, disco biscuits, string cheese, etc have very little crossover. they are in that hermetically sealed cult world. the wider world has no knowledge of them. something they share with polka fans and probably circa 2016 drum 'n' bass fans. all kinds of people bought grateful dead albums. all kinds of people don't buy phish albums.

also this stuff only really exists here, right? as far as fandom goes? phish never even go to europe, i don't think. maybe its all for the best that phish stay home...

yeah i was just gonna compare jam band music to, like, lawrence welk. i never watched lawrence welk when it was on the air, but i don't have any great objection to it, and there's some polka music i like a lot. i mean i really dig "die knodel" for instance. so while i've never heard the disco biscuits and never have any desire to, i do definitely enjoy listening to, say, ween, or my morning jacket.

polka bands jam so hard. they are insane musicians. great songs too. and choice covers. more fun in general. the local polka radio shows here will play new stuff and it's like a ridiculous level of shredding.

i mean people like to talk shit about myron floren but that dude could shred.

i used to love phish & saw them like 20x but idk i grew out of it, havent listened to them in yrs

oddly they are playing in my area TONIGHT i think, i considered going tbh & id prob still like it but i could never see myself listening to them @ home & obv never as nearly exclusively as i did for awhile, again

When I was editor of Global Rhythm we ran a profile on Jimmy Sturr once. That dude has won 18 Grammys!

I also used to love Phish but only saw them 4 times and the last time was in 1996. I stopped caring a long time ago but will still listen to a few of the studio records every three years or so.

But I'm friends with a guy who has kept up, seen them a couple times in the last few years, and has paid for and invited me over for a live PPV show and the final Dead show with Trey. We've joked that if they happen to come near us, when we're both in town, and at one particular venue, we'd see them. It's taken like seven years but all that has come to fruition and we're seeing them on Friday (or Saturday, our wives going one night, us the other).

Love the Dead and like a few Allman brothers records but don't include them in this category because they were "old". I sort of flirted with other bands but went to see moe live once and halfway though had a magical epiphany about how shitty it was and I just gave up.

let me put it this way: of the music i used to listen to twenty years ago, phish has held up better than dream theater.

Haha!

I saw Medeski Martin Wood a couple times and really enjoyed it. There's even a MMW tune I used to put on mixes for people from time to time (Hey Hee Hi Ho or whatever exactly it's called).

I sort of fell into a circle of people who were into these bands in college after having no prior idea that such bands existed. I was mostly appalled, especially by Phish. I got dragged to a String Cheese Incident show at Wetlands once freshman year and I found them intolerable. Given that I was unaware of jam bands up to that point, I was also unaware of any backlash or hipster sneering against them, so this was a pure, gut feeling I had.

I saw MMW at a city music fest in Birmingham, AL back in the 90s, and went and bought their album afterwards. I've lost track of them over the years, though, and was surprised to find out they migrated into the jam world.

yeah I also didn't originally perceive them as a "jam band" so much as a jazz crossover band, sort of like the Bad Plus today but maybe even more crossed over. Although by the time I saw them live they were definitely in that world.

john scofield

i love jam bands!

j/k

my thesis is that jam bands are for guys in college and the tasteful/"good" ones are for the music majors

I definitely thought of MMW more as a jazz or instrumental/electronic-leaning band than a jam band. A big hip hop nerd I knew thought the same and left a show we were at halfway through because he was horrified by and unable to comprehend or deal with all the rank twirling hippies packing an indoor venue.

xp my phish nerd friends - one used to a high school jazz and orchestra teacher, the other has a doctorate in music and is a tenured oboe professor

What is the definition of 'jam band' is it pachouli soaked hippy fusion with some nods to the Dead?
I'm not that familiar with it but I do love bands that improvise heavily.
Can, Conqueroo, Meat Puppets, Levitation (& Dark Star), Loop, Spacemen 3, Television, Mountain Bus, Santana/Mclaughlin, Lifetime, Gateway, Brian Auger, Pink Floyd Grateful Dead, Mad River, Jefferson Airplane, QMS, man, Arzachel, Soft Machine, Ash Ra Temple, Cymande, Osibisa, Gila, The New Age(Pat Kilroy), Hawkwind, Mighty Baby, Great Society, Hunger, Outlaws, Allman Bros, Yardbirds, Caspar Brotzmann Massaker, Swans, Velvets etc etc. Could go on. Not sure if there's any crossover.

of the bands you name, i'd say the dead, the airplane, qms, and the allmans have "jam band" elements.

the thing about "jam band" music is that, like many genres of music, it's defined culturally more importantly than by what it sounds like. so you have a guy like dave matthews who is a very important jam band figure, even though his music doesn't necessarily have a lot of overlap with, say, dumpstaphunk.

in a historical sense "jam band" music is an outgrowth of dead fan culture- they're just clearly and obviously patient zero here (and as such it's not very fair to lump them in with everything else defined as a "jam band", because they're not very influenced by the dead!)

anyway, the phenomenon really starts in the '80s and becomes more culturally broad in the '90s. they're bands who are inspired by the drugs and the improvisational approach of the dead, but who have more in the way of "chops"- my feeling is that the dead weren't good enough at their instruments to be able to make it as a jam band in this scene. your first wave of these bands would include groups like the spin doctors, blues traveler, etc., and this was the wave that did have some degree of mainstream crossover- i don't think you will ever hear string cheese incident on the radio.

jam bands also tend to de-emphasize vocals and lyrics- there is singing, but, and this is another holdover from the dead, i think, there's not really any sense that you have to sing _well_, either in the technical sense or in the more nebulously defined emotional sense. this is where you start dealing with the infamous jam band sense of humor, which i personally would trace back to phish. phish's sense of humor is pretty much zappa's, except without the hate and misanthropy. while in many ways this is a blessed relief, it also means that the lyrics to their songs are all stupid and have no motherfucking point.

A friend of mine nearly killed the Disco Biscuits' dog with pot brownies once.

The MMW crossover thing was funny. I went to see them play once with a large cadre of Phish fans. During peak points of their improvisations, some of my friends would yell, whistle and hoot, like you do at a rock show when the jams are cookin', and in response the sweater-wearing jazz fans would turn around and shush us.

I've reached a point where I can't even listen to the Dead anymore, outside of American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. Someone posted on the live dead thread last week about some show that was the absolute favorite Dead show, so I dl'd it and tried to give a listen on a car trip. I couldn't switch it off fast enough.

then there's the newer breed of jam/EDM crossover acts. there are all kinds of these that i've never heard of that sell out theaters here (and festivals, of course) on the regular. i wonder what the ratio of hippies to bros to hippiebros is at these shows.

some of the bigger names i can think of that afaik fall into this horrible intersection: Lotus, Beats Antique, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Dillon Francis, Pretty Lights, etc.

XP during my July 4th amurican music marathon, I tried yet again to get into some live Dead, but it just wasn't happening for me ... other than the two Americana albums, I haven't been able to embrace the Dead, in spite of family and friends playing that music around me since childhood

after switching off Europe '72, I put on the recently-released 1971 Allman Brothers set, Live at A&R Studios, and I was good for the rest of the evening

wait, dillon francis the moombahton king? he's a jam band guy now? say it ain't so!

Sound Tribe Sector 9 has been going on about 20 years, so it's not necessarily a newer breed.

Also, don't forget to add Bassnectar to that list.

i'm just going off vague impressions from festival fliers and music listings. i guess he's squarely on the edm producer/dj side, then moving across the continuum you have live band edm shit like 'Big Gigantic', to regular ol' jam bands who bought keyboards and sampler pads

i have a friend who goes to the alex grey chapel of the sacred mirrors events all the time. cyperhippie stuff. lots of acid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gHFYSA9nJU

it's all about moon frog, baby...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIe7czOOfBo

she goes to these too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X50Kk916Zp0

still going on today if you want to go. Flooting Grooves will be there.

http://www.fractaltribe.org/fractalfest2016/

fun crowd...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trdL24_PTqM

when i was growing up Max Creek were the Phish before Phish. but they were straight-up Dead worshippers. they still play too. i don't hate them! they even put out some decent records.

people i knew in the 80's would go see Max Creek when they needed a Dead fix and the Dead weren't touring.

the festival they have in town here every year looks like fun.

https://scontent.fbos1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13335993_10154814210172137_733663556762655819_n.jpg?oh=52666d2ab26d9c2121f7af8934cd2636&oe=57E905FD

i'm sure they wouldn't done great if they weren't apparently forbidden by their terms of parole from ever venturing more than 100 miles away from willimantic. :)

Someone posted on the live dead thread last week about some show that was the absolute favorite Dead show, so I dl'd it and tried to give a listen on a car trip. I couldn't switch it off fast enough.

lol sorry

that "playing in the band" tho

there should be a jam bands/albums poll

is anyone here a crusty enough ilxor to rescue the genre from disrespect???

Jam is so much more accepted now in indie circles it's crazy