Pressure Zone

When I was in high school, people started ska bands. That was the garage rock of choice. Now, it seems as if people are starting jambands. They're all over the place -- it seems that there's one in every town, if not more, with more and more clubs springing up to cater to the audience. Pretty exciting while it lasts. Showing up early at the Wetlands Preserve in New York, for example, one might encounter a very specific kind of band: a group of guys, probably between their late teens and mid-20s, running through some kind of funkified bluegrass groove.

In front of them will be a small group of people dancing hard, the band's hardcore fans -- probably friends and friends of friends, shipped in from the band's hometown by chartered bus. These bands - the kind without a memorable name or sound - will likely never play to an audience of more than 100 people in their careers. That's perfectly okay, if one is willing to accept a certain set of tenets. Hell, it's positively noble, in a way. If the band can provide a meaningful experience for those 100 people then they've done their jobs.

Walking off the street and into the heart of their set they might not appear to be good, at least by an objective set of standards. In fact, using any criteria at all, they probably suck. Why the fuck do we need another bunch of suburban kids singing not-very-discretely about the unadulterated joys of smoking dope and getting it on? Going in with that attitude, of course they're gonna suck. But the problem isn't with the attitude at all so much as it's the "going in" part. That's not how one gets into, or even appreciates, such a band.

These bands are clearly trying to do something with their music. In most cases, it's clearly not an attempt at high art, nor is it an attempt to overtly appeal to a wide audience. The goal is to get people to dance. And if people can dance unironically to utter shit from the '80s, why can't they dance happily to this? If one views their set like, well, a performance, then he's going to be holding them up to an artistic model. If one just wants to dance, then it's really irrelevant who the band is and he probably didn't go to check them out to begin with. In that situation, it is all about the music, as a social force, before any petty kind of localized celebrity.

With the prospect of rock stardom removed from the equation, the role of the musicians becomes something far more functional. It becomes a matter of reevaluating the place of bands and musicians in society. Bands are expected to be an economic venture -- achieving a certain level of popularity in order to consider themselves "successful" as professional musicians. Dreams of rock stardom are great, but they're often untenable. With the overabundance of jambands, the place of each individual musician is returning more and more to the artisan -- another stably functioning member of society.

Using a Phish show/community as a microcosm (cheesy, huh?): different people provide different functions. Some people prepare food and sell it in the lot, others make clothing -- and, yes, some do distribute drugs. The band has a function too: they make the music. Because of the band's popularity, it's a lop-sided equation that only comes together when Phish tours. However, I think what these smaller bands are doing is creating a more workable kind of society where concerts don't only come for six or eight weeks out of the year. They're regular, simply because it's a job to provide them -- something less than transcendence, but significantly more than entertainment.

It's a kind of utilitarianism that has long since disappeared in American music. When it reappears, it often does so in overly sentimental forms, where there is something almost quaint in its delivery -- though it could be argued that many of these bands are attempting to recreate the vibe of a vintage Phish or Dead show. By the same token, Grateful Dead cover bands are probably the purest exemplars of this dancing aestethic -- a kind of populism American music hasn't seen in a long time, maybe since the invention of commercial rock and roll (though a case could be made for early rap and hip-hop performances, or maybe even punk).

Artistically, Dead cover bands are perfectly acceptable. Many have made the point that working one's way through the Dead's songbook is akin to playing jazz standards (so far as this subculture goes). Frankly speaking, though, the odds of widespread commercial success for a Dead cover band is pretty slim unless they integrate original material into their set. While there is a market for touring Dead cover bands (see the Dark Star Orchestra's recent success), nobody save for the Dead themselves can possibly make a career out of producing albums of strictly Dead material.

Where does art fit into this equation? Somewhere, surely. "It's the beat that makes a rock and roll record a hit," David Gans wrote in his preface to "Talking Heads: the Band and Their Music". "You never see anybody on American Bandstand saying, 'It's got a good ideology and I can visualize to it -- I'll give it an eighty-five.' What they say is, 'It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.'" (Gans 7). Now, granted, the music being made at the Wetlands isn't quite cut out for American Bandstand - though I'd sure like to see how Dick Clark would react to spastic noodle dancing - but the principle is the same.

The battle between art versus commerce is old, but what if the battle was between art and something else entirely? In this scene, the groove is currency, and if a band can't groove, then they're fucked. It might well be the frame of this particular art. Even Phish's most knottedly twisting compositions are danceable. Where does that leave art? At most shows, winding spaces of non-rhythmic music are looked at as abnormalities. In fact, they almost provide a point of tension. When a band launches into some sort of feedback, for example, one expects it to resolve into a song.

Does the jump between groove and art exist at a precise moment? Is there a difference beyond the elite aestethics of it (e.g. "this sucks, so it's gotta be just a groove"/"this is amazing, so it must be art")? When bands get to a certain level, when they move from bars to small theaters, it seems as if there's a responsibility for them to create music proper - art - if they can. Or is it possible for a band to make large scale social music?

When a band that began with the idea of having fun, upholding a groove, reaches a certain point in popularity, who are they responsible to? If the music was designed to make people dance, and there are thousands of kids out there dancing every night, what is most important? Ultimately, it's probably the art of it all -- or, at any rate, something outside the groove. If people just want to dance, they can get it from a local band. That's why there's not going to be a next Phish, why there's not going to be a next Dead. There's no need for a mass purveyor of this stuff right now.

Or all these distinctions absolutely bunk? I think it's interesting to consider why one goes to see music. Is it to dance? Is to experience art? Is it to be social? I suppose the best bands can provide all three. In the case of art, though, it's like a dawning consciousness, a kind of maturity, that a band will hopefully start to see once they have been playing together for some time. Once one knows how to make a groove, he can only amuse himself with that for so long. The moment is when one realizes that he needs to do something else.

Gans, David. Talking Heads: the Band and Their Music. New York: Avon Books, 1985.

Jesse Jarnow in fertile tears, he could sleep inside her bones a hundred years.