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

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