I think I'm able to say that I'm fairly active in our little jambands scene (if this doesn't say it all right here - I type jambands in Microsoft Word, get the red, squiggly, "learn to spell!" line, and out of curiosity check to see what spelling Bill Gates would prefer - what do you know? - jam bands is in the Microsoft Word dictionary!). I guess some parents, in trying to keep them off the street, encourage their children to get involved in academics, athletics, drug dealing, Pokémon, and cross-dressing. Well, with a few bucks to my name and a head full of who knows what, my parents left me on the streets - of New York City, that is, and on a certain 11/29/97 I saw a little four-piece band called MOE., and it's all been history since then.

Let me pause for a second and fess up something on behalf of the rest of the jamband community - none of us, especially us online, discussion list heads, are any better than the hoarse, grimy characters that call in sports radio shows at four in the morning. Alright, alright - we do creditable stuff like "spreading the music" and "supporting the community" - but we have just as much fun making sly remarks about Jiggle The Handle (I mean, half of us might have never even heard of them - but the name?) and going off about how much we think this band sucks and that band is overrated and why, alright, maybe that band is a bit overrated, but "this band RULES, what the hell are you talking about?!?" Then, every once in awhile, someone actually comes up with some an valid, or at least honest, opinion, which is usually stands appreciated for a good two hours until someone reads the first and last line of the person's opinion and then decides to flame them. Yet, at least some of us can't help but to think about these thing, albeit too much.

Around this past September, I was become increasingly involved, both on and off the MOE-L and DISCUSSBISCU ITS discussion lists, in conversations about the newest phenomenon in the jambands scene, none other than the Disco Biscuits. Let me clear the air beforehand and say, regardless of what I have written in the article that follows, I love the Disco Biscuits. I'll get to praise them a lot more later, but, in short, I think they're the most creative, energetic, and inspiring band around at the moment, and that's saying a lot with the quality of music let alone in the jamband scene right now. Sure, I ended up in MOE.keepsie for the coming of 2000, but if there's anywhere else I could have been, it would be the TLA in Philadelphia.

I first saw the Biscuits on 5/21/98 and thought they were cool because they covered Run Like Hell. It took me a long, long time to fully "get" them, in fact in some ways I'm still getting them, but I think I eventually reached a conclusion that seemingly a hell of a lot of people are coming to lately with each show the band's been playing - these guys kick ass. The thing I began to notice, though, was that not everyone was coming to this same conclusion and, being the pseudo-football-armchair bums we all are, a few people were even loudly acknowledging the fact that they really didn't see what was so great about these guys. Normally I wouldn't make a big deal out of this, I mean, we're all entitled to our own taste in music - there wouldn't even be music, or art for that matter, if we all had the duplicate perceptions of the world. Still, I was enticed by the "Disco Biscuits controversy," mainly because there seemed to be certain similarities between those people who detested the Biscuits and those people who swore they were Gods walking this Earth. Moreover, looking at things from a bit broader perspective, the sudden rise of the Disco Biscuits seemed to say a hell of a lot about the trends of jambands and their fans, and even about the place of jamband music in the all encompassing realm of contemporary music. So, what started off as a few thoughts in a couple e-mails to friends grew into a post to the MOE-L entitled "Thoughts On The Disco Biscuits", which mysteriously was sent along to DISCUSSBISCUITS, which, to say the very least, ended up in a whole lot of controversy. Now I get to sit and turn this controversy into something publishable for JAMBANDS.COM, Dean Budnick's baby now supposedly being nursed by Jesse Jarnow's tender nipples. You, the reader, might not agree with a lot of what I say, I know a lot of the fans of the Disco Biscuits won't, and the Disco Biscuits themselves might not. Nevertheless, at least try to take what I'm saying into consideration. Like I told the folks on DISCUSSBISCUITS, if there's anything I wanted to accomplish from my original post, it was for us to open up our minds to the point where we don't have to be intimidated when expressing our opinions. With that, I begin.

THE DISCO BISCUITS:
Musical shape-shifters for the next Millennium.

Regardless of what this says about the collective egos of the band, there still remains a good deal of truth behind this statement. With their unbridled and unmatched energy, creativity, and spontaneity, they are on the cutting edge of jambands, and, for that matter, on the cutting edge of music in all its breadth.

Though people are certainly talking, the Disco Biscuits aren't hot because they're what people are talking about. The Biscuits are hot because they're HOT. Few bands have musically developed like the Biscuits have in the past year or so, and I give them a shitload of credit for this. I do criticize, however, a number of the fans who seem to jump ship in the jamband community every time a band is the next big thing. I saw it happen with MMW, I saw it happen with SCI, and now I'm seeing it happen with the Disco Biscuits. Phish, the biggest band in the genre, has the problem of having too many damn fans who couldn't give two shits about the music and are just there for the scene. It's this I fear I have, though on a much lesser scale, for the Disco Biscuits. In any case, I would consider the Disco Biscuits hot right now whether they're playing in front of a crowd of thirty at a small bar in St. Louis, a packed crowd at the Wetlands, or a group of friends in an apartment, and can't help but commend them for their talent as well as for their presence and vision.

More than any of these things, however, I commend them for the energy and, whether direct or indirect, persistent respect for their fans that results. In some ways, I think it's fair to say that the Biscuits have redefined what it means to go all out for your those who support you. The Dead, of course, set the standard by fostering a festive, receptive base for their followers, which grew into the most flourishing community in the history of rock-and-roll. Phish carried on the conventions of this community to a newer, younger group of fans and, in the process, added new emphasis to the carnival-like experience both on and off the stage. More recently, a new crop of jambands have added even more in their relationships with their fans, with bands like MOE. introducing an air of courtesy and humility, the Ominous Seapods introducing mutations and a new but all so convincing concept for world peace, and String Cheese Incident introducing, well, hula-hoops. The Disco Biscuits, however, have taken this to a whole new level, surely with many acts to sooner or later emulate. How many other bands out there play to the signs of dawn on a regular basis, segue entire sets night after night, start a five-night run of small clubs in the midwest segueing out of a song only to culminate the run, only one- hundred-twenty hours and five hundred miles later, completing the rest of the tune in orgasmically apexing fashion? Finally, how many other bands undersell their NYE show to give their tightest fans the most accommodating, conducive experience possible? Not too many, I think it's safe to say.

And who exactly are these fans that, perhaps as a result, are by far the most devoted fans in the entire jamband community? Well, there certainly are the stereotypes: "You take the college-aged kid who grew up on Phish in high school and interestingly, if you inquire, never listened to the Dead, and merge him with the rave-addicts who spend the early morning hours of the weekend rolling on ecstasy and downing gallon water cartons that vibrate with the hard-beats of the sound system, and you have the present, future, and forever typical Bisco nerd." Of course stereotypes (I sense the entire SLIP listserv cringing) are far from always true, and being on DISCUSSBISCUITS you'll find a number of most diverse, knowledgeable music fans who have, in their own lives, listened to from everything from Beethoven to Frank Zappa, and will even admit to having listened to hair metal in elementary school. Still, a band is not so much defined by their most outspoken fans as their most prevalent, which is why my parents, who grew up listening to jazz and the Beatles, would never imagine a Dead-Head who, for example, toured over the summers while he got his PhD.

I'd like to emphasize again that I find it very interesting that many, many Biscuits fans have simply never listened to the Dead. Most fans of jambands to date have seen the Dead at one point or another, but what we are possibly seeing for the first time with the Biscuits is a fan base that, in general, is completely removed from the Dead, whether by musical taste or generational gap. Once again, this is interesting, not unfortunate. And, as much as I love the Dead, it may even be un-unfortunate, otherwise known as fortunate, that bands are finally crawling out of the burden of following in the Dead's footsteps and are instead paving their own paths. This is not to say that all of these bands we know and love are solely Dead influenced, in fact many of these bands have minimal Dead influence, but I bet that with ninety-five percent of these bands you can drawn one connection or another back to the Grateful Dead. Maybe the Disco Biscuits, in advancing at the head of a possible fourth generation of jambands, are putting an end to this. Maybe, looking back on things years from now, this might come to be the most distinguishing characteristic of their "musical shape-shifting."

There are other even more contemporary consequences of the Biscuits and their influence, too. Trying to be as vague as possible, I think at this point it is fair to say that the future of Phish is indefinite, at best. Over the past decade, and especially as of recently, many long-time, hardcore fans has been increasingly vocal about their displeasure with both the band's studio and live output. This is not to say the band has remained stagnant over the years. In fact, Phish deserves a lot of credit for the effort they've put into changing their sound and developing their approach to their music. Still, as I was telling Carol Wade the other night at the Wetlands, "there is only so much four guys can do with music." This especially rings true with jambands and other improvisational music, since improvisation is perhaps the most effective way to reveal the outer-limits of music. The Disco Biscuits, in the view that they have picked up where Phish has left off have, in doing so, outlined at least part of the edge of Phish's musical limitations. This does not just apply to Phish either, as evidenced by the fact that the Biscuits have picked up fans from a lot of other current jambands, as well. Just like I stood mid-show at the Spectrum on December 11 and, despite enjoying the show, really came to understand just how much farther the Disco Biscuits have gone, many other fans around the jamband scene have realized that there are few other acts around that are pushing their music to the extent that the Disco Biscuits are.

The Biscuits are right, I won't argue with them, they are the music of the future, but like any other trend, they will crash and recede with time as the next wave comes along. Perhaps the greatest shortcoming involving the Disco Biscuits, at least right now, is not so much their music at all, but the closed-minded and condescending attitudes of a lot of their most intimate followers, an attitude which may very well reflect the demeanors of some of the band members. I find the rare circumstance of actual hearing some anti-tDB sentiment oddly refreshing. I should note, too, that this is not solely a shortcoming of the Disco Biscuits scene, but rather something that seems to plague the jamband community as a whole. As the community has prospered, what was once only a handful of acts has grown into a multitude of different jambands, each with their own individual scene. With this, there has arisen an all too conspicuous sense of superiority not so much between the bands themselves but between the fans in each scene. What even worsens this, as I mentioned before, is the large number of fans in the general jamband community who repeatedly flock to whatever is supposedly the next big thing. It often makes me wonder whether we're really that much more dignified than, say, the teenage girls who hop up and down outside the MTV studios trying to get a glimpse of Brian from the Backstreet Boys.

As Jesse Jarnow and I recently discussed, there is an ongoing, largely unconscious search for the next big thing in our pop-culture dominated society, and fans of jambands, whether we like to acknowledge it or not, are not exempt from this behavior. Hand in hand with this unconscious search, ironically, is a conscious attempt to stay in one place. This is where the sense of superiority and, as a result, closed-mindedness comes in. "People get territorial," Jesse puts it. Its time we realized the hazardous danger in simply accepting art without careful, even if subconscious, analysis and criticism, which by no means has to be voiced. I question whether, to the recipient who carelessly and indifferently ingests the music, the music even remains a form of art or is degraded to some more menial pleasure, like masturbation (I'm being serious here, too).