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A jam band is a musical group whose concerts and substantially feature improvisational "jam session". Typically, jam bands will play variations of pre-existing songs, extending them to improvise over chord patterns or rhythmic grooves. Jam bands are known for having a very fluid structure, playing long sets of music which often cross genre boundaries, varying their nightly setlists, and segueing from one song into another without a break.
The jam-band musical style, spawned from the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s, was a feature of nationally famed groups such as the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band, whose regular touring schedules continued into the 1990s. The style influenced a new wave of jam bands who toured the United States with jam band-style concerts in the late 1980s and early '90s, such as Phish, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, The String Cheese Incident, moe., and Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. The jam-band movement gained mainstream exposure in the US in the early 1990s with the rise of Phish and the Dave Matthews Band as major touring acts and the dissolution of the Grateful Dead following Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.
Jam-band artists often perform a wide variety of genres. While the Grateful Dead is categorized as psychedelic rock, by the 1990s the term "jam band" was applied to acts that incorporated genres such as blues, country music, contemporary folk music, funk, progressive rock, world music, jazz fusion, Southern rock, alternative rock, acid jazz, bluegrass music, folk rock and electronic music into their sound. Although the term has been used to describe cross-genre and improvisational artists, it retains an affinity to the fan cultures of the Grateful Dead or Phish. Relix, all issues.
A feature of the jam-band scene is fan recording of live concerts. While the mainstream music industry often views fan taping as "illegal bootlegging", jam bands often allow their fans to make tapes or recordings of their live shows. Fans trade recordings and collect recordings of different live shows, because improvisational jam bands play their songs differently at each performance.
Rolling Stone magazine asserted in a 2004 biography that Phish "was the living, breathing, noodling definition of the term" jam band, in that it became a "cultural phenomenon, followed across the country from summer shed to summer shed by thousands of new-generation hippies and hacky-sack enthusiasts, and spawning a new wave of bands oriented around group improvisation and super-extended grooves." Another term for "jam band music" used in the 1990s was "Bay Rock". It was coined by the founder of Relix magazine, Les Kippel, as a reference to the 1960s San Francisco Bay Area music scene, which included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape, among many others.
By the late 1990s, the types of jam bands had grown so that the term became quite broad, as exemplified by the definition written by Dean Budnick, which appeared in the program for the first annual Jammy Awards in 2000 (Budnick co-created the show with Wetlands PreserveAlex Bereson A Night Out With: Peter Shapiro; Death of a Deadhead Dive nytimes.com 5 August 2001, Retrieved 2 February 2009 owner Peter Shapiro).
Although in 2007 the term may have been used to describe nearly any cross-genre band, festival band, or improvisational band, the term retains an affinity to Grateful Dead-like bands such as Phish. Andy Gadiel, the initial webmaster of Jambands.com, states in Budnick's 2004 edition of Jambands that the music "...had a link that would not only unite bands themselves but also a very large community around them." Jambands, Dean Budnick, Backbeat Books, 2003, p. 243.
At this point, what you sing about, what instruments you play, how often you tour and how old you are has become virtually irrelevant. At this point, one thing is left and, ironically, after all these years, it's the single most important place one should focus on; the approach to the music. And the jamband or improvisational umbrella, essentially nothing more than a broad label for a diverse array of bands, is open wide enough to shelter several different types of bands, whether you are The Dave Matthews Band or RAQ. The Jamband Backlash: Where did Things Go Wrong? Dan Greenhaus, Jambands.com, Oct 2005
The Jammy Awards have had members of non-jamming bands which were founded in the 1970s and were unrelated to the Grateful Dead perform at their show such as new wave band The B-52's. Anastasio, Phish Win At Jammy Jam Jon Wiederhorn, MTV News, 4 October 2002 Retrieved 4 October 2007 The Jammys have also awarded musicians from prior decades such as Frank Zappa. My Morning Jacket Lead Jammys Charley Rogulewski, Rolling Stone, 24 February 2006 Retrieved 4 October 2007
Although Trucks suggests that this is only a difference of semantics, the term has a recent history for which it is used exclusively. An example of this discernment is the acceptance of Les Claypool as a jam band in the year 2000. Though known for his decade with Primus (a band that jams) and solo works, it was after he created the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade with members of Ratdog and released Live Frogs Set 1 that as Budnick wrote had "marked Claypool's entry into the world." Jambands, Dean Budnick, Backbeat Books, 2003, pp 248–9 Budnick has been both editor-in-chief of Jambands.com and executive editor of Relix magazine.Melinda Newman "Jam Bands Weather Economic Uncertainty With Ingenuity and Loyal Fans," Washington Post 9 August 2009, Blake Gernstetter "Relix Remix: Music Mag Relaunches Under New Ownership" Mediabistro.com, 4 May 2009
The Allman Brothers Band were also considered a jam band, particularly during the Duane Allman era. Songs such as "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and "Whipping Post", which were 5–7 minutes long on their studio albums, became 20-minute jams at concerts. The Allmans performed a 34-minute jam with the Grateful Dead in 1970. Their 1972 album Eat A Peach included "Mountain Jam", a 34-minute instrumental that was recorded live. The 1971 live album At Fillmore East featured a 24-minute version of "Whipping Post", and a 20-minute version of Willie Cobbs' "You Don't Love Me".
The British space rock band Hawkwind were also progenitors of the jam band sound.
Phish formed in 1983 at the University of Vermont. They solidified their lineup in 1985 and began their career with a few Grateful Dead songs in their repertoire. The Grateful Dead released "Touch of Grey" which became a hit song on MTV in 1987. They eventually began playing football stadiums. Widespread Panic originated when Michael Houser and John Bell started playing together. In 1986, after Todd Nance and Dave Schools joined them, the band played their first show as "Widespread Panic". Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors - formed and fronted by school friends John Popper and Chris Barron, respectively - regularly performed at the jam band-friendly venue Wetlands Preserve in New York City. In 1991 Dave Matthews, together with jazz musicians Carter Beauford and LeRoi Moore, formed a trio which - after Stefan Lessard joined them - became the first iteration of the Dave Matthews Band.
Improvisations have taken a backseat to more polished material, which may be due to their crossover commercial successes, MTV videos, and mainstream radio airplay. In the mid nineties, Dave Matthews band achieved commercial success and won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance with the song "So Much To Say". By the end of the decade, Phish had signed a recording contract with Elektra Records, and transformed from a New England/Northeast-based band into a national touring band ( see: Colorado '88). With its fusion of southern rock, jazz, and blues, Widespread Panic has earned renown for appearing multiple times in Pollstar's "Concert Pulse" chart of the top fifty bands on the road, and they have performed more than 150 live dates a year." In the early 1990s, a new generation of bands was spurred by the Grateful Dead's touring and the increased exposure of The Black Crowes, Phish, and Widespread Panic. At the same time, the Internet gained popularity and provided a medium for fans to discuss these bands and their performances as well as to view emerging concepts.
Phish and the Grateful Dead were two of the first bands to have a Usenet newsgroup. Many new bands were formed, which were the first to actually be called "jam bands", including ekoostik hookah, Dispatch, Gov't Mule, Leftover Salmon, moe., Rusted Root and The String Cheese Incident.
During the summer of 1995 Garcia died. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead formed The Other Ones (appearing as "The Dead" for some tours). During the same period, Phish rose to prominence, and bands such as String Cheese Incident and Blues Traveler became successful. Many Deadheads migrated to the Phish scene, and Phish became recognized as more mainstream.
The jam-band scene gained more recognition during the late 1990s, with Dave Matthews Band and Phish being among the most influential bands of the genre, drawing large crowds to amphitheaters and arenas. Dave Matthews Band played at Woodstock '99 while Phish celebrated the new millennium with an enormous festival called "Big Cypress" in southern Florida, which concluded with an eight-hour set. Other jam bands followed the success of these festivals, notably the Disco Biscuits, who held their first Camp Bisco in 1999, and moe., which began its annual moe.down festivals in 2000.
There was no clear jam-band successor after Phish's 2004 breakup. Newer bands such as STS9, Disco Biscuits, and Umphrey's McGee grew their fanbase. No upcoming jam band has yet to reach the attendance levels of Phish, who themselves had never attained the peak attendance of the Grateful Dead. The long-term fragmentation of the jam-band scene has been a continuing process. Phish held a reunion concert in March 2009 at Hampton Coliseum, and again became one of the top US concert draws. The band were one of the highest-grossing touring musical artists of both 2016 and 2017, and their 13-night "Baker's Dozen" run at Madison Square Garden in 2017 grossed $15 million.
Many of today's jam bands have brought widely varied genres into the scene. A jam band festival may include bands with Electronic music, folk rock, blues rock, jazz fusion, psychedelic rock, southern rock, progressive rock, acid jazz, hip hop, hard rock, reggae, and Bluegrass music sounds. The electronic trend has been led by such bands as The Disco Biscuits, Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9), Lotus, EOTO, The New Deal, and Dopapod. Bands like moe., Umphrey's McGee, Lettuce, Assembly of Dust, The Heavy Pets and The Breakfast have carried on the classic rock sound mixed with exploratory jams. Members of the Grateful Dead have continued touring in many different configurations as The Dead, Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Friends, 7 Walkers, Furthur, and Dead & Company.
The British electronic music duo Autechre was characterized as "a sort of post-human jam band" in a Pitchfork review of their 4-hour long 2016 album set elseq 1-5. Blending jam-band elements with those of electronica is known as "jamtronica" or "livetronica" (a portmanteau of the terms "Concert" and "electronica"). Bands includes The Disco Biscuits, STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector 9), and The New Deal (although STS9 guitarist Hunter Brown has expressed basic reservations about the "livetronica" label, explaining that "it's a really vague term to describe a lot of bands", he did cite Tortoise as stylistic precursors). Entertainment Weekly also identified Prefuse 73, VHS or Beta, Lotus, Signal Path, MFA, and Midwest Product as notable livetronica groups.
Hundreds of jam-based festivals and concerts are held throughout the US. The Bonnaroo Music Festival, held each June in Tennessee, continues to provide a highly visible forum for jam acts, although this festival has attracted many different genres during its decade-plus history. As with other music scenes, devout fans of jam bands are known to travel from festival to festival, often developing a family-like community. These committed fan groups are often referred to by the derogatory terms "wookies" or "wooks".
Starting in 1984, the band recognized the fact that people were already "unofficially" taping their shows, so they started to sell taper tickets for a taper's section, segregating these people with their equipment into one area of the venue to keep them from interfering with other concertgoers.
Improvisational jam bands perform their songs differently at each performance and generally have no fixed setlist, to encourage fans to see them on multiple nights. Some fans collect versions of their favourite songs and actively debate which is the best version of any particular song, keeping lists of notable versions. This may extend to the song's relative rarity in setlists of differing eras. Some bands will play on this anticipation by adding little "teases" into their sets. For example, playing a few bars of a famous cover song or hinting at a popular jam and then either never getting around to actually playing the song, or coming back to it after an extended jam. The use of to blend strings of songs is another mark of a jam band, and one which makes for sought-after tapes.
Some jam bands distribute their latest shows online. Bands such as Phish, Widespread Panic, The String Cheese Incident, Gov't Mule, əkoostik hookah, Umphrey's McGee, Dopapod, Lotus, and The Disco Biscuits have offered digital downloads within days, or sometimes hours, of concerts. The Grateful Dead have begun to offer live releases from their archives for download.
Some concert venues offer kiosks where fans may purchase a digital recording of the concert and download it to a USB flash drive or another portable digital storage device. Some bands offer concert recordings made available for purchase on compact disc or flash drive shortly after the show ends. Most major music festivals also offer digital live recordings at the event. Several vendors such as Instant Live by Live Nation and Aderra offer this remote recording service for instant delivery. Although these shows are freely traded in digital format, "official" versions are collected by fans for the graphics, liner notes, and packaging.
One way to see many jam bands in one place is by going to a jam band-oriented music festival. Some popular festivals that include jam bands are: Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee; Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Rothbury Festival in Rothbury, Michigan (now known as Electric Forest Festival); High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, California; All Good Music Festival; The Peach Music Festival in Scranton, PA; Mountain Jam (festival) in Hunter Mt, New York; Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado; Lockn' Festival in Arrington, Virginia; The Werk Out Music Festival in Thornville, Ohio; and Summer Camp Music Festival in Chillicothe, Illinois.
Professor Tom R. Tyler considered the main law-enforcement strategies for copyright protection, finding that deterrence and process-based strategies could both be effective, but that the latter was more efficient.
Jam bands encourage fans to bring recording equipment to live performances and give away copies of what they record. This practice may increase the sizes of their audiences and the total revenue received from concerts and the sale of recorded music. The fans reciprocate the generosity of the jam bands by helping enforce the copyright rules that the bands write, consistent with Tyler's "process-based" law enforcement. Schultz said the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) seems to call most fans pirates intent on stealing their music.
Schultz said that the key concept here is reciprocity: Fans treated with generosity and respect by jam bands tend to be more loyal even to the point of helping enforce the copyrights the jam bands claim. Fans similarly reciprocate the hostility they perceive in the anti-piracy lawsuits filed by the mainstream recording industry. It is unclear which business model is most remunerative for music industry managers, but Schultz insisted that jam bands tend to have more loyal fans, and the mainstream music industry might benefit from following this model and treating their fans with more respect.
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