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Ghosts of Jam Bands Past
Delay Loops and Long, Strange Trips
by Dan Alford
Edited by Sister Mary Carmen
Changes are an integral part of life. A person goes through massive physical changes while he/she is growing. Young adults move on the average of once every one and a half years while in their twenties. One of those great pieces of scientific trivia that you pick up along the way is that your body has replaced every cell every seven years. Emotion, fashion, art and music, change is a constant in our lives; probably the only constant.
Baring that in mind, consider the vitality of live music. One of the most powerful parts of a live music junkie's addiction is that the music is always changing. Those of us in the jam band scene have all had to explain to someone along the way why we are going to see MMW three nights in a row, or Phish seven times over the next six weeks. To many outside the scene the term set list is meaningless and the idea of not using one is foreign to many more.
Beyond different sets, of course, there is the variation in performances of individual songs, both from show to show and from year to year. Sure it's frustrating to go to four Phish shows and see three Ginseng Sullivans where there is almost no change, but what if it was three Tweezers? When those first notes hit you know that you are going on a trip and you have no idea to where.
Move on to a bigger scheme and consider the changes in Playin' from 71-72 to 73-74. The one on the Hundred Years Hall CD (4-26-72 ) is one of my favorites. It is only about ten minutes long but it is this insanely tight tube of music; it's like running through that green swirling tunnel at the beginning of Dr. Who. Now contrast that with the twenty plus minute odysseys from 74 (2-22-74, 6-22-74). Those Playin's are launching pads to other planets of deep musical craters and loose seas of chaos. Those changes occurred within two years!
It is that ability to change, in fact, that allowed the Grateful Dead to sustain its thirty year journey. It's cool to complain about the last four years of the Dead's existence, but you'll rarely here anyone admit that if you saw a weak show it was Jerry's fault; the rest of the band was thriving right up until the end. Albany in 95 was spectacular! For proof just look at the amazing post GD music that the boys have churned out: Ratdog ( a study in changes in its own right), The Other Ones, Phil and Friends, MMF, Planet Drum...)
But before we get too far away let's step back to 72. This was the time of the first major change in the Dead's sound. Pigpen was taking less of a lead, Keith an Donna showed up, and finally the Pig left for good. A huge shift occurred in the band: the head man changed, new tunes appeared and old ones disappeared, some for good. At the same time the attitude of the country was changing.
Now consider another powerhouse jam band of the time. When I was young and inundating myself with the history of the GD I kept reading articles saying that the Dead toured on Jefferson Airplane's coattails, or that the quintessential music of the time was produced by the Jefferson Airplane. I could not understand that the Dead was an opening act; Weren't they the best? Weren't they the psychedelic band? Weren't they the ones still playing?
Why is it, then, that the JA didn't persevere? I would argue that it is because the articles were right; JA was the quintessential music of the time. And like most chart topping media superstars, they failed to take success in stride and move on. When was the last time you heard Mmm Bop? or Dancing on the Ceiling? Of course Jefferson airplane was more talented than the three golden haired boys or, dare I say it, Lionel, but the point is that Somebody to Love and Volunteers spoke to the dichotomies of the time. They were perfect sound bites, long before the term existed, for what was going on. It is those short, catchy tunes that remain staples of the Lunch Time Flashback on your local classic rock station. I didn't even know that Grace and the guys could do anything like Bear Melt, which is a true psychedelic tour de force, until just a couple of years ago. That sort of stuff is unknown because JA's shorter tunes were cultural and political mirrors of the late sixties. For emphasis look at how Grace became Jefferson Starship in the eighties and returned to the airplane during the commercial hippie revival of the early nineties.
Of course what did survive the Airplane's crash was Hot Fuckin' Tuna. Jack and Jorma have been plugging away through the years with duos, larger bands, side projects, acoustic, electric, and heavy metal, all leading up to the great band that's on the road today. They have mastered the art of change, being malleable and open to influences (i.e. recording with Rusted Root) while ultimately retaining their core of hard picking dirty blues.
What got me thinking about this whole topic was that I was talking to a guy who said that he could do without Trey's delay loop. It hadn't occurred to me that people didn't like the stretched out element of space that it provides, that they saw it as a cop out. For me it's a flag saying, "Here we go!" This guy was saying "You and I were at the Palace (Albany 92) when it was hard rocking, tight jams." Yeah, that's true and it was fun, but I'm just as psyched about where we are now; I love Ghost; I love hour long Runaway Jims and four song second sets; I love delay loops. They have become a symbol of change and patterns, a reminder that change is healthy. The following comes from an interview with Trey in the April 30 edition of the Chicago Tribune: "The only way we're going to have a long career is if we keep improving as musicians and keep changing as people."
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