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DownerMan Revival
MegaJam

by Alek Grabinski - alek@best.com

Bands come and bands go. Sometimes they last a long time, but eventually disintegrate and leave no hope of ever recombining - like the Grateful Dead. Sometimes they jettison an errant member and continue unwhole, as KVH[W]. Sometimes they'll last a long time, the brainchild of one particular individual like Robert Fripp or Frank Zappa, with a revolving door of members but with that one colonel at the kernel (ouch).

When they come together, these bands of musicians create the framework which becomes The Song - the chord progression, the rhythm, the instrumentation and textures of the various voices, the words and the melodies and the riffs. While all of these elements exist in every song, though, it's not as daunting as it might seem to identify a song by only a few of these elements. "Sweet Home Alabama", for instance, has a characteristic riff that is instantly recognizable, which can be played on any melody instrument capable of more than an octave; "Midnight Hour" has a chord progression which leads in a familar way into a simple but unmistakable 1-3-5 bassline.

However, it would seem that for today's musicians, all the good riffs are taken - the Rolling Stone Record Guide used to claim that the last original riff was written by the Ramones in the late 70's. And all the good-sounding chord progressions are taken too; despite the enormous number of available chords, the fact is that a limited number of permutations sound good. Artists are forced to other devices to create distinctive music. There's always marketing, which explains how Ricky Martin went from Menudo to purveyor of la vida loca and why I couldn't get an operator at TicketBastard on the day that N'Sync went on sale. Then there's novelty, which explains why meritless noise from Atari Teenage Riot manages to get the attention of critics (I read one review which essentially said, "It sounds awful, the lyrics are moronic, and their politics are dumb, but that's what they said about Dylan and I'll be damned if my condemnation today gets thrown back in my face twenty years from now!" Was Frank right about rock'n'roll journalists or what?). A band could push the limits of social acceptability to creepy new lows - Marilyn Manson repackaging Iggy Pop's antics.

Or a band could seek definition in the music they create. Granted, the riffs wouldn't be of the simple-but-powerful Ramones variety, because les freres Ramones already said all that could be said in three chords. And a band wouldn't have much luck with novel chord progressions, since the number of permutations of decent-sounding collections of three or four chords is pretty limited. But a band could create a song in structure, in composition, in complexity, and in orchestration - in other words, they would write "21st Century Schizoid Man" or "You Enjoy Myself" or "Terrapin Station." The beauty of the music then begins to leave the realm of straight rock'n'roll and it shifts into classical, with its emphasis on themes and clean execution. As I've written before, it's this structure that makes a great jamband.

And this brings me back to the band, that assemblage of musicians who have created music out of nothing. Through practice and playing, over time and through improvisation and revision, the songs materialize into the forms we recognize. This is particularly true of jambands; while a jamband defines itself by its willingness to rewrite large portions of every song, there is still that underlying structure which makes the song instantly recognizable. For me, the thrill of the live show is launching into a familiar beginning, going on an adventure in the jam interlude, and somehow coming back to familiar ground. Knowing that finishing terrain is the band's job; building the bridge out of the swamp of dissonance is the purpose of the show. The more beautiful the bridge, the better the show.

And so it is from this architect's vantage point that I shudder, ever so slightly, at an increasingly popular ticket: the SuperStar JamBand jam. While it's obviously been going on for as long as people realized that there could be more than one band in the land, the idea of the MegaMusicMerger has been a more recent development, which I think has accelerated with the recent profusion of Phil & Friends shows. Now, don't get me wrong; I adore Phil Lesh. If it weren't for the July shows at the Warfield, I would never have understood what the Phil Zone was all about (I spent the 80's focusing on Jerry; so sue me). As an aspiring bassist, I am awed by Phil's grace and power on his six-string. But I also believe that there is a degree of coasting going on at these shows, which uses nostalgia to paint over the fact that there isn't a lot of originality coming from the band on stage. While I have not yet heard tapes of those July Warfield shows (sorry, been busy exploring new music), my recollection is that the actual performances were modest in comparison to what the individual artists have demonstrated themselves capable of.

Is it even fair of me to castigate Phil for pulling together the giants of the scene and serving it up on stage? Yes - because it wasn't great enough. The hard work was done decades ago, when Jerry and Bobby and Phil and Mickey and Pigpen and Brent and Robert wrote and arranged those fucking brilliant songs that comprise the Grateful Dead catalog. When I get together with friends to play, we usually gravitate back to Dead tunes, because they're memorable, they're familiar, and they're unbelievably well crafted. When Phil pulls together his top-drawer pick-up bands, they'll consult for ten minutes to ensure they're agreed on the keys, and they're off. Everybody knows the chords to Bertha; everyone can throw off the riff to Fire on the Mountain. But that's not the Grateful Dead on stage; one of the guys was an important member, a key player in a great band that once was. The jams aren't vintage Dead - and because the current players (whoever they might be) lack the bonds that formed over years of practice and performance, the jams aren't even all that interesting, because they can't build that bridge without knowing how far it can go before something breaks.

And so that brings me to my point: the MegaJam defeats itself out of the blocks. It combines two sure-fire elements - talented musicians and brilliant songs - but neglects to factor in The Mystery Factor: band cohesiveness. The Dead had it because they perfected their craft over decades. Zappa's bands had it because he forced it into them during rehearsals. Any number of other bands have it because they've been working at it, night after night and show after show, developing the links to the universal proto-song (the "Golden Hose"). But these allstar bands - they ain't got it, and they're not going to, not unless they declare themselves to be a new band, and they start from scratch. You can't build that bridge out of dissonance using borrowed songs.

And that goes for SuperStar Guest Syndrome too. Ever wonder why nobody can really ever keep up with Phish? It's partly because they write songs that are structured six ways to Sunday, and are difficult to remember and play; but mostly it's because these guys work at coming together and becoming one music-playing organism, and this organism resists efforts to be infiltrated. When a guest artist shows up, they'll do a familiar cover - While My Guitar Gently Weeps comes to mind - but stay away from Stash and YEM. Why? Because YEM with a guest guitarist is not Phish. While guest appearances make for collecting novelties, they usually fall far short of expectations. Band + Guest haven't put in the time with the songs, haven't made them part of their collective consciousness, and don't carry them off nearly as well as hoped.

So I've got my fingers crossed for Summer Session mail order tickets, and if the gods smile, I will be at the Greek Theatre in August. I will revel in moe.'s unmistakably American jams and in Galactic's funky swampy swampfunk, and I might even get String Cheese this time around. And when Phil gets on stage with his new crew, a shiver will run through me as I bask in the cheers of the crowd and Phil's toothy grin. And I hope to hell that all I've written here will be wrong, but if it turns out to be right, I'll have had a great time anyway.

DM

DownerMan would like you to know that the lemmings were herded over that cliff.