Jam Bands

I’ve been listening to Man alot lately, especially the expanded edition of the studio album Back Into The Future, which includes the full 1973 show at the Roundhouse, not to be confused with the 1972 show, included in the Greasy Truckers album (with Brinzley Schwartz and Hawkwind), or the 1975 show which was immortalized on Maximum Darkness with John Cippolina of Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Greasy Truckers set was fantastic, practically nonstop jamming – which led me to decide on this entry.


What is a “jam band”? To me, a jam is an extended improvisation involving the entire band. From this I have to disqualify various guitar-oriented bands which set aside a portion of the live set for the guitarist to go off on his own, alone on stage, e.g. Black Sabbath, AC/DC, or Blue Oyster Cult. Oddly, BOC could have been considered a jam band back when they were Stalk-Forrest Group, because “St. Cecilia” and “A Fact About Sneakers” have extended jams, whereas “Buck’s Boogie” and “Then Came The Last Days of May” simply feature Buck Dharma soloing on his own. Similar to Van Halen, their current live setup gives the drummer a drum solo and the bassist a bass solo – even Cliff Burton did that. Sorry, “jam” involves the whole band, not this “taking turns in the spotlight” deal. And “Freebird” does not make Lynyrd Skynyrd a jam band.


Grateful Dead. Probably the top jam band in reputation alone. Oddly, their top album American Beauty has no jamming on it. Having two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman, truly complicates things, but the overall effect is mesmerizing. Every set, on every tour, was a complete surprise, even if certain songs tended to follow one another. The vast volume of bootlegs, openly recorded and traded among fans, greatly expands the variety of songs in their repertoire, well beyond the studio albums. Moreover, the same song could be dramatically extended or played in various different “moods”. To the Dead themselves I’ll tack on the derivative bands Ratdog (Bobby Weir), Phil Lesh & Friends, and even Phish and Widespread Panic.


Allman Brothers. Sounding similar to the Dead but with a more rock attitude. Warren Haynes played with the Dead on the 2004 tour. To be honest, though, I’ve only heard At The Fillmore East, and can’t comment on their live performances without Duane Allman.


King Crimson. After listening to the studio albums to get the bare minimum basis, listen to the live material, and prepare to be amazed. The live stuff takes off to a completely different dimension, including lots of material, e.g. Holst’s “Mars” and “All That Glitters Is Not Gold”, which don’t appear on any studio albums. Even more so than the Dead, Crimson truly expand in the live context, like a caterpillar blossoming into a butterfly (“WHO-ARE-YOU??”). Hell, some of the live tracks are simply called “Improv”.


Pink Floyd. With Floyd, it’s less of a vast distance between the albums and the live material the way it is with the Dead and Crimson, but they do jam.


Hawkwind. They add a heavy dose of electronica and psychedelia into the mix. Stiff competition with the Dead for this type of noise, but Hawkwind are much heavier and have less of a country angle. A Hawkwind crowd has a nastier, biker type of element to it than the harmless hippie stock at a Dead show. Both bands cater to LSD and marijuana, but Hawkwind is more skewed towards the raging aggressive psychosis of LSD than the Dead, who are much more mellow and less intense. Hawkwind tends to pull you into the psychosis as a participant, whereas the Dead are content to leave you as a mere spectator.


Deep Purple. They qualify based on the 20 minute “Space Truckin’” on Made in Japan alone (which took up an entire side on the original vinyl), but I find that Purple don’t do very well at maintaining momentum throughout the jam the way many others of these bands do. Moreover, Purple do tend to stratify the jams into guitar (Blackmore), keyboards (Lord) and drums (Paice) rather than a true jam, a chemical “suspension” rather than a “solution”. I also noticed that the extended jams which you could expect from Marks II-IV no longer occur with the post-1984 lineups.


Man. Easily the most heavily guitar-oriented of the jam bands, without being heavy metal. True distortion and not the annoying bright distortion-less treble sound of Jerry Garcia’s guitar, but also without the “wayyyyyyyyy off into space” electronica of Hawkwind. The Greasy Truckers’ set was practically a nonstop guitar solo, yet it never got dull or lost its momentum. The more I hear, the more I like. Plus they have a refreshingly irreverent talent for odd song names (shared with Budgie, BOC, and Frank Zappa), my favorite being “Many Are Called, But Few Get Up”.


Particle. By far the newest of these, injecting a heavy dose of funk and techno into the equation. But the guitarist, wailing on a Les Paul with thick distortion, gives it the balls that the Dead often lack. This was another band I listened to nonstop – thanks Diane!

Frank Zappa.  Usually known for his humor, Zappa was all over the place musically.  On Hot Rats, he's well into jam band territory.