About five months ago, a friend of mine turned me on to it when I asked him if he knew of anyone that was getting a copy of the Phish show at Radio City the night before. I dont have it yetbut if you ask tens of thousands of people, surely someone is bound to have it. He explained that by installing a free program called Napster I could indeed make that inquiry to tens of thousands of people with just a couple of keystrokes and then download the show instantly if I found someone who had it. He broke it down like this: Everyone who has the program open, is sharing all of their MP3s with each other, all at once. You can get Phish shows, you can get old Frank Sinatra cuts, you can get the latest Madonna album. Its going to change *everything*.

He wasnt kidding. Napster has been a veritable tornado in the music world this past year, blowing strong winds through the doors and windows of record companies and their headlining artists, affecting everyone from students at Yale University to 300,000 Metallica fans. For big name acts, whose lifelong income often relies primarily on the sale of one or two of their albums, Napster could potentially spell trouble. Not that trouble is bad, but it would call for some rearranging. It is precisely that sort of rearranging that may end up producing a fertile new landscape in the aftermath of the storm. If there even is a storm.

The success of Napster could mean any number of things. Potentially, it would shift the music industrys focus from the studio to the live setting something the jam band community has already done. A successful, and legally freed, Napster could possibly possibly - mean less album sales. Less album sales could possibly possibly- encourage artists to approach albums more like they do videos. That is, as advertisements to sell tickets to the live show and other hard merchandise. Without the returns of a multi-platinum album, studio work could become less involved and the art form could therefore suffer. Live music may benefit, but at an admitted cost.

A much more likely scenario is that Napster would empower the listener. It would give listeners a chance to taste-test, giving them a way to explore without commitment. It would allow someone not interested in buying a particular album to still use a track from it for a mix tape or dance party (which works in the artists favor as free publicity.) It would allow live shows to be traded instantly around the world, with the bands blessing. It would mean not having to listen to the radio for three hours to hear the latest single from U2 and it would allow people to hear album cuts from bands the radio wouldnt ever play. Empowering the listener might take some advantage away from the absolute control of the record labels, but even there the damage might not be as bad as the RIAA Who Cried Wolf would have you believe since Napsters arrival, CD sales have INCREASED by $500 million (Time; Vol. 156, No. 14, Pg. 66).

Napsters potential impact is a never-ending circular debate. Its supposed to hurt album sales, yet album sales have only increased. The legal issues involved are even more tail-chasing.

Like so many other things in the music world though, the jam band world seems relatively unaffected. Jam bands dont actually have album sales to begin with, right? How many jam bands are certified gold? Platinum? Youd be lying if you said you couldnt count. And with a community of rabid fans insistent on policing themselves, how many jam band fans are downloading whole albums from their favorite bands?

Beyond the technicalities and the legalities and the moralities and all of those Big Words with shoulder-deep insinuations, theres a different story behind Napster that seems to have been lost in the twister. Thats the story of Shawn Fanning, a kid who dropped out of college to chase after a dream and make it a reality. A kid who took a risk. A kid who tossed aside a set structure to improvise on a vision. In musical terms, wed call that jamming.

It is important to understand that Napster wasnt created at a board meeting where evil men brainstormed about ways to sabotage an industry it was created between pizza and soda breaks by some 18 year-old with a cool idea and a hell of a challenge. It has taken cyberspace on a manifest destiny quest and it has inspired a new mechanic in the internet landscape (peer-to-peer applications.) Thats about as close in attitude to the whole jam band thing as one can get. Isnt it all about pushing the envelope and testing new grounds and seeing where the jams take you? And, in a scene that repels music videos and traditional marketing, in a scene whose very creation was born from websites and listservs and public domain, in a scene that relies so heavily upon back-alley promotion, in a scene so freaking dedicated to making dead sure live tapes are traded for absolutely free, wouldnt a program like Napster be a part of the epiphany? A giant BUT OF COURSE!! billboard for the jam band ethic? An online totem pole of jam band philosophy? In the rush to make shows available hours after they occur to a demand tens of thousands strong, wouldnt Napster be the hook line and sinker that weve been heading towards and waiting for, since the very start of our scene?

I know where I stand on it Im a fan. But thats just it: Im a *fan*. I wanted to see what the people who were actually making this music had to say about it - I decided to ask jam band artists to give me the straight up. So I asked everyone from Bela Fleck to Les Claypool, from String Cheese Incident to Medeski Martin and Wood. Their answers, verbatim, in the installments that follow.