The half-baked half-life of jam bands
Hearken back, if you will, to a time in the late ’90s when jam bands ruled the earth. These dinosaurs bestrode the world, raining down the fire of the jam on masses swarming below. This eternally stoned and incense-reeking movement was spearheaded by the holy trinity of Phish, Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident, but let’s not forget bands like Yonder Mountain String Band, Umphrey’s McGee, RatDog, Galactic, Dave Matthews Band, Gov’t Mule and some of those never-say-die old farts like the Dead and the 70th incarnation of the Allman Brothers Band.
Perhaps it was just a regional thing (I grew up in the South), but it was a prerequisite of high school life to like such bands if you weren’t a part of the classic rock and country set. They were everywhere-everyone’s older sibling liked them and passed them on to us (much like the illicit substances they enjoyed), their stickers adorned the bumpers of hot-boxed Volvo station wagons, and their live shows-my God, the mountains of shows!-circulated on crappy Maxell tapes handed down by the bearded old hippie at the head shop. Yes, jam bands certainly dictated our young musical lives.
Cue the harsh, record-scratching interruption. Cut to some five years later, and these former colossi of improvisational rock are all either dead and gone or just dead weight. Phish broke up, with little attention from this campus as far as I can tell, and the oval “WP” stickers have all but disappeared from windshields. Even that bastion of hippiedom, Bonnaroo, which continues to do so well year after year, has lately featured headliners like David Byrne, Wilco, Patti Smith, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth and Ween. A new Woodstock, or just a trippier Coachella?
But nowhere is the obsolescence of hippie rock more apparent than right here on our college campus. The jammy values I absorbed during high school just didn’t make it out alive. In college, the prevailing trend is “indie,” that loose confederation of modest mice and postal deliverymen and long-dead Austrian arch-dukes. A search for “widespread panic” on the Facebook produces 13 results; for “postal service,” nearly 200. The only vestiges of jam bands still visible are what I’d consider not quite “jam,” more “peanut butter and jelly on white bread”-those innocuous, poppy groups that don’t extend the same note for 20 minutes but probably still smoke a bowl before the show, groups like Guster, Dispatch, O.A.R., Jack Johnson, Ben Harper and a slew of others.
So what’s the point? There are several, the simplest of which is that with maturity comes better musical taste, and it’s safe to say that while dancing is fun, jam bands are typically weak tunesmiths, strong on the chops but pathetic when it comes to writing a solid song. When the weekend rolls around, people want spice and variety at the parties, and unless you’re sitting around scarfing Cheetos and taking huge bong rips, that sweet segue of “Mike’s Song -> I am Hydrogen -> Weekapaug Groove” is gonna seem pretty damn unspicy.
The second point is a little less obvious, but much more important, I think. You’ll have to excuse the cringe-worthy, clich‚d terms “pre- and post-9/11,” but in a strange way they apply to the rise and fall of jam bands. Think about it: what better era for loose, carefree music than the prosperous ’90s, when people could afford to take time off from their day job for that month-long Phish sabbatical? In the starkly different ’00s, however, there are bigger things to worry about than scoring tickets to that double-header Panic/Cheese show. With a new government also came a new era of political protest, and jam bands are essentially worthless at expressing any kind of coherent opinion about anything. The times they are a-changin’, and jam bands are sinking like stones.
So light some Nagchampa, roll a fat one, dig out that killer set from 5/7/94 and let Phish blow your mind one last time. ‘Cause the jam is dead. Long live the jam.
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