Turn On, Boot Up, Jack In: A Partial Defense of Jam-dom
by Dingo Johnson
Although extended cuts and live pyrotechnics had been the backbone of live rock music since the 1960s, the wake of Woodstock ‘94 and the lasting impact of the H.O.R.D.E group tours established the jam band as a seemingly-nascent, edgy, financially and socially viable mode of production. The business model of the Grateful Dead was followed to a T with larger groups like Phish: laissez-faire behemoths with a massive payroll, and a dedicated fanbase to ensure at least a profit margin in case the public really whigged out. While the actual music was not always sonically consistent across the milieu--barring the common emphasis on improvisation and varying setlist construction--followers and marketers generally agreed on a few defining characteristics: parking-lot scenes, hippy signaling, and long country or world-wide tours. In a trend that predicated the wider shift of rock music from radio and LP sales to live concerts as the predominant source of sustainability, the jam bands of the 1990s were able to reach a state of open-ended artistic freedom released from the bounds of labels and A&R hype. Despite near-ubiquitous cult popularity — “Weir everywhere”, as Deadheads say — jam band music eventually became a premier punchline and punching bag for music critics and enthusiasts. As derided as it has become, and as insular as its fan bases appear, I believe Jam as a “scene” deserves a re-evaluation and re-contextualizing. In acknowledging its occasional hubris and laziness, we can see the archetypal “jam band” that originated in the ‘90s as a vehicle for what could feel like the peak of the rock project.
The jam-band-listener is stereotyped, ridiculed, and diminished by higher-and-mightier listeners and critics from other spheres. Common attacks are based on grounds of drug use (see the famous joke of the Deadhead befuddled by the bullshit they hear when the drugs wear off), musical ineptitude (this often becomes misogynistic, when it passes to negating the tastes of women fans — even in the insular fan bases. Phishheads hate on gals who dig “Bouncing Around the Room”.), and general stupidity & thick-headedness. The kids were stoned, sure — but the obsessive fandom associated with these bands indicates a genuine appreciation of fine musical details glazed over by the common conflation of listeners with mindless sheep. Jamdom can even introduce people to music outside its bubble in a similar fashion to other music communities: i.e., Phish covering Pitchfork pedigree like Neutral Milk Hotel and Pavement, or groups like Medeski, Martin, and Wood that brought wookies over to avant-garde jazz.
It’s important to note that the way Heads and Phans discuss their music online isn’t too far off from the mannerisms of internet music forums and groups with higher-and-mightier tastes. On Reddit, 4chan’s /mu/ board, or the heyday of Last.fm, faceless keyboard warriors pit albums against each other and obsessively rank and rate tastes like the suited bros at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference. This happened to perhaps an even larger degree on ancient enthusiast collectives like Phantasy Tour, Ween.net, or numerous Usenet groups. Jam band fans, despite their drugged-out appearance, ruthlessly dissect and critique their favorite artists: was “David Bowie” better on 11/26/1994 at the Orpheum or 12/29 in Providence? The discourse turns sport-like and intensely nerdy: other communities into “hipper” music talk about it in the same way as these supposed doped-up fools. The interest in jam bands even led to pioneering moments in the intersection of music and the early Internet: Phish broadcast an entire concert to their online fans as early as 1997, and the aforementioned Web 1.0 forums provided for open discourse. The music inherited the internet more effectively than other paramount rock genres of the ‘90s, with indie rock still pretentiously stuck on LPs and chic singles, and grunge/alt transitioned to all-out VH1 poptimism.
Although, perhaps the mere fact that people talk about the music in a similar way isn’t enough to bring jam into the same wheelhouse as aforementioned critical darlings — we do need a re-evaluation after all. The scene at first appears impenetrable, harder and harder to understand with the less Sour Diesel and Lemon Haze sealed in your mason jars. I know for a fact when I first heard Phish they sounded like the less refined cousins of the Blue Man Group: silly sing-song melodies, bashing percussion, overstated ambiance. Dave Matthews was, and still sounds like a lifeless gasp of your local coffee shop performer — of course, with any genre, there are peaks and valleys. The suggestion comes to mind to recommend that listeners consider the historical and social implications of each group from the era: Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors can be easily dismissed as marginal one-hit-wonders, and what remains in my model of quality jam is the hard-working groups that persisted throughout and further on from the ‘90s: the groups that received the largest influxes in base after Jerry Garcia’s passing in 1995.
Take Georgia’s Widespread Panic, a prime example of how the critical shroud around jam bands draws lines around groups otherwise popular in the real world, were perhaps the group that fit in with working-class, rural America the best out of all jam bands. Functioning originally as somewhat of a regional group, Panic associated mainly with the Southern U.S. flock of tripheads and heartland rockers. Widespread synthesized learned moves of Deep Purple arena-prog swagger with the shit-kicking homegrown nature of once-showmates Uncle Tupelo and the everpresent Allman Brothers — a somewhat conservative sound, sure, but still unique. I’ve seen Michael Houser (Panic’s gone-too-soon-man guitarist) stickers all over rural Virginia where I grew up: Panic connected with the Southern crowd in a way that gentrified alt-country couldn’t. As far as how they fit into the history of jam, Widespread Panic followed a condensed model of the common career arc of many of these groups: formed in 1986, network TV, world tours, and radio play by 1993.
Panic sang about drinking whiskey, strained relationships, and goodtime country fun. This perhaps is one reason why they did so well among middle-working class audiences: they were more material and less psychedelic than the fantasy worlds of Phish, or the stoned idiocy of .moe. A “good” Panic performance is judged by the amount of sweat on the floor by the last note: their improvisation was more about collective energy than the “transportation” that Mickey Hart would propose. If they had anything in common with the Dead, it was the iffy mid 1980s vintage that the Panic band members spent their adolescence following around: Brent Mydland’s tortured howls aren’t too far from John Bell’s screechy stylings, and the general bar-band ethos is much in common. “Pleas'' and “Space Wrangler” are well-written southern rock excursions: Houser’s guitar style was odd yet pleasant, relying on sustained notes rather than chicken-pickin’. The star of the band’s musical portfolio is perhaps bassist Dave Schools — a skilled, smart player. While Widespread “Motherfucking” Panic — to quote a hyperbolic epithet from their fans — carried on the burly bar-band muscle of the scene, their occasionally tepid music drags them down when received by 2021 ears. However, a slight dig into their catalogue shows a glimpse into the possible merits of this era in rock: creativity, a veneer of authenticity, and most importantly a game of winning over points in the endearment category. Personally, if I’m going to fully examine this oft-neglected stream of rock, I’m going to want the band that pushed its ideas the farthest: that band might be Phish.
Phish is home to perhaps the most obsessive of these fans if you forget Deadheads, and their music is one of the least-discussed outside their fan base bubble outside of the aforementioned Panic. They followed the hugeness of the Dead with extravagant New Years and Halloween shows, playing stadiums, and a new innovation: massive festival events that pre-dated and prototyped Bonnaroo and Coachella. Musically, Phish had the highest highs of any of these groups: their jamming was genuinely explorative, taking on multiple forms throughout their career — King Crimson-ian palindrome wackiness in the 80s and early 90s, incredibly goofy yet tight funk in the latter part of the decade, and finally an ambient, krautrock-influenced excess in what I would choose as their peak: 1999-2000. Phish is often confused by critics and naysayers as a sloppy, bad band, and as I mentioned earlier this was my old belief: this can be found as untrue by first examining who they played with, not even their actual music — no band with the music contemporaries of Bela Fleck, Santana, and Sun Ra’s Michael Ray is truly untight or faking it. Of course, they had off nights, off songs, and off albums: I doubt many outside of the devoted Phans could sit through the nadirs of “Farmhouse” — but the heights of Phish deserve a second look.
The best element in Phish is found in their uncanny ability to weave instrumental precision with wild experimentation. I tagged the 12/29/94 engagement with “David Bowie” above, and this cut is a perfect proof of their ability in what I’m describing. Eno-ssian (to pull an adjective from Genesis, an apt comparison for early Phish) minimalism gives way to wild guitar heroics, intricate math rock, and outright dissonance that’s not as far removed from Sonic Youth as one might think. The mode that Phish operated in was one of creating their own mythology and toying with it in every possible way, much like the Dead. Instead of timeless Americana like “Ramble on Rose” or “Friend of the Devil”, however, is utter goofiness, and I believe this is a clear reason outside of hip hegemony that Phish falters with average music fans. After all, they were buds with Matt Groening and frenemies with Ween: the silliness of Phish can be reconciled when placed in the general trend towards ironic, absurd comedy in the 90s. It’s funny how hip Phish appears when you remove the connotation of their name: they played art installations, jammed with Kurt Vonnegut, covered My Bloody Valentine. Out of all of the jam bands, Phish in their heyday were possibly the best at taking hold of the possibilities such a mode presents.
When emerging—dry-mouthed, spent—from the psychedelic haze proceeding the blaze of a proper jam sesh, a new clearheadedness is found: it might not be most consistent, easily defensible, or hip strain of rock music; but with some biases suspended, the jam bands of the 1990s had the wherewithal to take the boundless possibilities of their milieu by the horns and make a valiant attempt to carve out something new and fun in rock — a music genre that itself has had some huge struggles with originality. While for every exploratory Phish there is a traditional Widespread Panic, or for every stalwart performance there’s an off night — jam bands deserve a little more than the blind eye that is often turned to them by the outside music world.