Inspired by Don's recent post about how happy he was to find the jam band scene, I was going to write a similar post. However as I thought about it, what really stuck out to me was how narrow minded I found that scene to be, and how that frustrated me. I probably brought down the tone of Don's post when I commented about it on his blog, but I'll explain it more here.

Back in `98 I tuned into an Atlanta radio show that specialized in the wave of bands who emerged in the wake of Phish and the H.O.R.D.E. tour. I never cared for Phish much, but the stuff these up-and-coming bands were doing blew my mind. I started learning who was who, going out to see bands all the time, and eventually started up my own `zine dedicated to the phenomenon.

It was frustrating, though, that the scene was obscure enough that it was impossible to discuss it with anyone outside of a concert hall. Particularly I remember that after Atlanta's Music Midtown festival I was enthusing to a 19-year-old co-worker that I had gotten to interview the bass player from String Cheese Incident on the band's tour bus. "Are they from Marietta?," he asked. Uh, no, they're from Boulder, Colorado. They're not a local band. "What song do they sing?" All the ones on their records. Sorry, I don't have a radio hit to point to. This conversation was a total buzz kill. I might as well have said I talked to my aunt over the weekend.

I would try turning the youngsters at work onto this scene. I remember playing Blueground Undergrass' "Oh, Death" to a guy who even claimed to be a big Grateful Dead fan. He wrote it off as country crap and said, "You know, when I get up in the morning, I want to hear something that's going to get me up like, you know, White Zombie." A girl of about 20 was also turned off by my Bela Fleck and Emma Gibbs Band CD's, but when I played them some horrid hardcore punk-industrial CD I got in the mail, they actually liked the tuneless shit.

Then I invited a band who was more of a blues band than jam band up to be on my radio show. I told the 19-year-old receptionist she really needed to hear this. She sat and listened on a speaker in the office and later said, "I thought they would be more like Matchbox 20." She just heard something 200 times better than Matchbox 20 and didn't even know it!

Another time I was visiting a professor at my old college and brought some of my `zines along to give him. A young college student was walking with us and I thought surely he would like this. "Here ya go, my interview with Leftover Salmon." He'd never heard of them. WHAT PLANET AM I ON?!

"Why does everybody else have to like something for you to like it?," you ask. Well I don't, but the social factor is 50% of the joy of music. When I worked at Worldcom and Jill Scott was a new name on the R&B scene this struck me. My co-workers were abuzz. "Have you got her album? Have you heard that new single? My cousin saw her in St. Louis and said she was the bomb. Are you going to her show? I'll buy tickets and you can pay me later." There was a common experience woven together with Jill Scott's music. But if I say moe. and you say White Zombie, we're dead in the water.

On the flip side, the jam band kids wanted you to think their musical awareness began with the Grateful Dead and ended with Disco Biscuits. I had just gotten Yes' Close to the Edge album and was raving about how awesome it was at a club. There was just an awkward silence all around. Yes didn't have any relationship to Jerry Garcia or Trey Anastasio, so no one was into it. Then maybe two months later there was a rumor Yes was going to be touring with the Dead and guess what? Suddenly there were longtime Yes fans all over the place.

For a short while I was helping promote an up-and-coming band that ripped and melted faces everywhere they went. Yet while they could fill a club easily, the jam band crowd never fully accepted them. I always thought it was because in a couple of interviews they said that fusion bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Dixie Dregs were more of a influence on them than the Dead. Uh-oh! I don't think those are David Grisman projects! Was Col. Bruce involved? Prepare to be excommunicated. I even heard some dickhead criticizing their bumper stickers because the font wasn't "real hippie."

That same blues band I mentioned before also played one of these hippie events and got a cooler-than-usual reception. A friend observed it was because they were "too blues." Only perky major keys for the jam band kids, please.

Another time I was watching a Grateful Dead cover band and they started playing "Dancing in the Streets." Buzzed, I found the host of the show and proudly said I was familiar with this song because Van Halen had covered it. "That's pretty sad, Art. I wouldn't tell too many people that." Huh? I guarantee you 95% of the people in that room first knew of that song from Van Halen, not Jerry Garcia, but they're too "cool" to admit it.

I loved seeing this regimented thinking get blown to pieces, however. I was watching a band called Homemade Jam, and the audience was aloof. All of a sudden...was it? Yes, it was!

Running,
on our way
Hiding,
you will be
dying,
a thousand deaths...

It was Metallica's "Seek and Destroy!" And don't you know ever tie-dyed and Birkenstocked guy there crowded the stage and was singing along? Hey, was this on Hampton Comes Alive? Please, guys, you're looking OPEN MINDED!

The jam band scene eventually fizzled, at least for me, and I reverted to listening to Van Halen, AC/DC and Def Leppard again. And it's nice, because I can say something as odd as "Oonta gleeben glowben globen," and one million people know exactly what I'm talking about, they have the visuals, everything. It might even get you up in the morning like, you know, White Zombie.