From The Editor
In this month's issue Widespread Panic bass player Dave Schools
states "We want to shake free of that name, jam band. The jam band thing
used to be The Grateful Dead bands. We shook free of that as hard as we
could back in 1989. Then Blues Traveler came on the scene. All together,
we created the HORDE tour, which focused a lot of attention on jam bands.
Then someone coined the term jam bands. I'd rather just be called retro.
When you pigeonhole something, you limit its ability to grow and change."
I certainly can understand this sentiment. In particular, as a
long time Phish fan, I recall how frustrating it was for many years in the
80's and early 90's when the media constantly compared that group to the
Grateful Dead. Typically this took place in a pejorative context, which
also allowed these reporters to save themselves the energy of actually
listening to the music of Phish and attempting to describe it. The phrase
jam band also was often used in a similar manner.
However, at least in my mind we are doing something very different
at jambands.com- we are trying to liberate and redefine that term. Our
mission (if I may call it a mission without
sounding like a zealot) is to use that phrase to reference a range of
hybrid bands that out there bridging genres while focussed on
songwriting, and committed to improvisation. As a result, at the site we
write about the diverse sounds of such groups such as Sector 9, Living
Daylights, The New Deal, String Cheese Incident, Soulive, Gov't Mule, Ulu,
moe., and Widespread Panic. So while I certainly understand how
uncomfortable it can be to be pigeonholed, I would say that at the very
least we're trying to make that hole a bit larger. Think of it as a
rabbit's hole, and please climb through to join us for some compelling,
varied sounds.
Jam bands: it's not just for ill-tempered, indolent journalists
anymore.
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