are "lots of jam band wankers" also big sonic youth fans?

but then....well...i just don't buy the dead.

funny. i was going to start a thread asking someone to please explain jethro tull to me. i finally got around to seeing the rock and roll circus last night and i just don't get tull. lee and thurston have tried their best to get me to like the dead, but really....no. what is it about hippy nonsense that makes it so bad (when for all intents and purposes i should like it)?

but what the hell do i know? the last jam band i voluntarily saw was phish in 1994.

Hippies don't do harsh ....

the dead just noodle around endlessly and the songs never go anywhere. as far as i can tell their entire catalog is just one long boring song.

that's why everyone favored hanging out in the parking lot during their shows. But, still, the smell!

with all of their layering and interwoven guitar lines, the dead are the wussiest-sounding band.

the jammy jams like things mellow...all bud & beer

whereas, the flipside of it--and i'm not speaking to sy because i haven't a clue there--but VU, Spacemen 3 etc. seemed to be doing very, very different drugs.

(*I may be remembering the quote a little wrong or Jerry may have been stoned, because the Dead played before the Who and Hendrix.)

Gary Young on the first Pavement/SY tour told Thurston that Sonic Youth sounded like Yes and intended it as a huge compliment.

I don't disbelieve that RB has met serious music fans with jammy leanings who dig on SY and Pavement. But there seems to be a big difference in the way these bands approach (*gulp*) "modernity".

The GD and their ilk seem to be escapists/hedonists where as SY seems more politically aware and I read the aggresiveness of their music as a reaction/response to the chaos of comtemporary life.

Sure, one can just react to the music outside of this bias...but I feel that acknowledging this difference is important. It's not so much that band needs an agenda (political or otherwise), but that all music is suffused with the attitude of those making it. SY has and attitude and the GD have an attitude and one can discern the difference from the work itself.

In my view this is partially what separates the good from the "rinky-dink".

But john zorn is also jazz. see what mean?

My general observation is that jamband fans are sort of the prog fans of the 90s-00s, i.e. they're the white music fans holding the torch for technique/musicianship. So when your filter for music is jambands, you tend to look first and foremost for this, which leads naturally into jazz and ILM and certain other beardy genres.

But they also look for two other characteristics of jambands: whimsy and authenticity. Thus Primus, and thus folk, which is sort of an offshoot of jambands anyway, and thus indie-folk. The non-jambands music jambands fans seem to like is generally what I would call "crappy indie"--Iron & Wine, the Decembrists, etc.--as well as better stuff that sounds like that, such as the Mountain Goats, as well as stuff that tends towards the whimsical like the Flaming Lips and Tenacious D. If there are any electronics used they are to be goa-trancey and not "dance" as we think of dance music.

So Sonic Youth actually hits all three of these qualifications: they're "serious musicians," they're authentic in a certain sense (old-skool NYC post-punks--I think it's no accident that SY has been embraced by the jambands community as they emerged into old age), and whimsicial, i.e. Kim.

It also helps that most modern jambands fans came of age with grunge.

The jambands scene is actually pretty interesting, even if I wouldn't want to listen to any of the music ever.

a) Sonic Youth have played jambands festivals, and

b) Lee is a big GD fan.

Seriously though, I just picked up a copy of Daydream Nation last week after not hearing in quite some time and was completely underwhelmed. The SY imitators of the 90's pretty much ruined this album for me.

SY shows range from fairly straight renditions of the studio versions, to faithful versions interspersed with long noise bits, to mainly noisy improv, to straight experimental shit. Depends on their mood.

And why are "dark, negative vibes" automatically superior to "loopy," happy vibes?

In all fairness, while SY's jamminess can sometimes annoy me, they are some of the best improvers of any genre. I'm just as bored with a lot of noise bands as I am with jambands.

this is silly to compare SY and the Dead. of course they're different. SY has psych/jam leaning but they also came up in the hardcore 80s milieu, while the Dead's psych/jam side is mixed with country/roots music. take out the common element and you're comparing a country band to a hardcore band.

Or, uh.. the opposite.

But what i always hated about the dead was that they sort of took the bite out of country music and the blues.

is this the only thousand leaves thread

lee and thurston, at least, are big grateful dead fans not sure about kim and steve. we're all really good friends, me and lee and thurston and kim and steve

!!! really did change America

only 200 people bought !!!'s albums but they all went on to start jam bands