Did Covid and streaming kill the jamband scene*?

Return of the "Setbreak"> Set 2  will cure all...

I think there are plenty of bands new and old playing...so no, I don't think it's over.   

Covid is not over

on jerry's birthday after TXR in mill valley after show ( jgb focus wuth jordan f) a kind soul handed me a "the dead letter" a grateful dead zine

i wish i could share the zine with the scene here

the first post was about colorado sunrise the birth of electric americana 7/3/69

   https://archive.org/details/gd1969-07-03.132377.sbd.miller.flac16/gd69-0...

that soul's face had been beaming the entire jerry day shoe, every time i turned around - which is often for me when i go to shows... - now that i searched his name in the credits i know it is he

Charles S Brownstein

he compares the dead in the 20th century to moby dick in the 19th century

deadletterzine on instagram - i am to old to do that  lol

i started crying at the first paragraph ( before, the first sentence - I miss you) 

end of intro: here is a letter to say that this love we have can't fade away

off to a great cover band today for day three of jerryathon ( two players from the old ZOne, stu and a cubensis guy

may add links later  I am verklempt at this point

not fade away!

lltd

I think culturally young people have moved in a different direction from rock and roll so the jam band thing isn't relevant anymore. Like all music, it will have its market but as the song goes, Rock is better Dead and it's been on life support for a long time.

 Is the genre officially nostalgic? 
yes.

Is it over folks? Are we an anachronism?<<<<

Perhaps Shappy is positioning himself to be a "pleasure Barron" alluded to in Pete Townshend's Lifehouse?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifehouse_(rock_opera)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOUckKLeHu4

It was American Idol, with the auto-tuner, in the shitter.

i hate streaming

i old school

what else is there - love is not nostalgia

The Stoner Rock scene, which is pretty psychedelic, seems to be going strong.

What I would like to see is less of a focus on cover bands, and a return to a focus on original composition and lyrics.

Did you ever flip thru the channels and come across one of those telethons featuring groups of the 50s and they featured the 4 Tops or somebody and only one surviving cousin was actually in the 4 Tops? And the people in the audience were all old and  wore their sock hop gear and pretended to be young? 

I watched the Nugs webcast from Sunday at TXR amd it kind of looked like that LOL.........watching myself made me laugh........!

$150 a ticket to see a dippy deadhead cover band??? -   Yes , the scene is over - finito !

I still like Kimock doing Kimock stuff, Ghost Light, Lesh.  Revisiting Derek Trucks Band instrumental stuff.

Kind of on hiatus from Allman, Dead stuff in general though.

Coltrane, Shorter, Monk, Sun Ra.  Always Miles particularly the second quintet.

Also diving into Satie, Varisse, Zappa's late stage symphonic stuff. 

>>>>What I would like to see is less of a focus on cover bands, 

I was at Jerry's B-Day Bash at the Edgefield on Sunday and ran into an old friend.  I was asking about her kids and she mentioned that one of her adult children was there somewhere but he wasn't particularly psyched.   She said she asked him "Don't you like all these songs you grew up with?" and his response was "Same 30 songs for 30 years."

Put on WWOZ for a few days in a row and be reminded that there is ALL sorts of music out there, old and new that can rock your socks off in so many different ways....

*Varese*

You're missing an accent grave.

Yes there is plenty of fresh, melodic, trippy music out there. Levitation Festival in Austin - and similar ones elsewhere - is testament to a healthy psych-rock scene. Someone said with this music, it's a bit like 1966 again, with shows back in the clubs and ballrooms, with trippy lightshows, still kinda underground, before the media dispensed it to the masses, and arena rock and festivals became a thing.

As far as jambands go, it seems to me most of the newer popular ones are just another variation on early Phish that have high energy jams that feature lots of 'waka-waka' white funk grooves (an oxymoron, I know...). That scene will carry on in some fashion as long as mainstays like Phish, DeadCo, and WSP keep it in profile, and will probably even continue without them, to a lesser degree. Goose tour 2041.

Predicting trends in music is next to impossible. There hasn't been a proper cultural 'movement' in music since Nirvana and grunge. I worked at an annual rave festival for several years, and thought how if it were 1987, all these dancing ecstasy and acid munchers would've been Deadheads. If only the 'music' were better.

As long as chemists keep make L and someone to raddle out some noise it will always be to enjoy

>>> Goose tour 2041.

So psyched for this. 

^^^^  Best laugh of the day.

Garcia Peoples

>>>Is it over folks? Are we an anachronism?

>> I think there are plenty of bands new and old playing...so no, I don't think it's over.   

I agree, it's not over and there is plenty to see.  I think the jam band scene - like our society in general - has become so decentralized/atomized where there are so many semi-siloed music communities all over the place.  The initial wave of jam bands (moe. SCI, etc) attracted large followings and deadicated fan bases attend(ed) their respective festivals.  Today's popular, nationally-touring jam acts (i.e. Dopapod, Lotus, Turkuaz, Twiddle, etc) have smaller fan bases and are playing smaller club shows than those prior-generation jam bands filling larger sheds.  Their fans are still rabid for their said bands and many of the intrepid, communal aspects of the jam band scene exist.

>>>>WWOZ<<<<

One of my favorites. Along with KALX and WMOT Roots Radio.

Don't know how to make one on the tablet, HD. 

Every time i visit my "kid"  (the 27 y/o with a Stealie tattoo on his chest) in Portland, OR, he shows me the new bands he is following. Goose is the most recent. Billy Strings is totally the shit.

Must admit that - 5 years ago - I was afraid that MFRJ Ross James would be carrying the flag. But there seems to be a new crop who can really play and jam. Hard to find the room to bloom with Ratdog, the Q, JRAD and Further sucking up the air.  Not a fan of Dead & Co (the name of the band sums it up nicely .....) but bands like SCI, Phish and Dead Inc (& Co)  - they are providing a generational bridge to the next generation.

This new American genre of music - 1/3 jazz & 1/3 Americana & 1/3 planet Mars is a new stain, if you will .... a weed that is in the soil now and will continue to thrive IMHO

 And the people in the audience were all old and  wore their sock hop gear and pretended to be young? <<<<

By the same token, should 50+ year-olds start wearing dab cloaks and learn these hand gestures while "dancing"?

What's a "dab cloak?"

Correcting typo

This new American genre of music - 1/3 jazz & 1/3 Americana & 1/3 planet Mars is a new stRain, if you will .... a weed that is in the soil now and will continue to thrive IMHO

A garment used to hide the activity that makes them look like crack fiends

Ahhhhh.........

Let me now present to you, the one and only Billy Strings.

Video killed the radio star 

the answer is

no

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong

(mic drop)

>>>>>>>> 99% sure those are Bassnectar fans in that pic. Ravers are the old new Deadheads.

As far as I can tell, the "scene" as we remember it has been dying out by attrition. Just like we have. Getting old sucks. 

our version of the scene should die out, and be replaced with ever evolving scenes

the notion of a stagnant scene displeases me

and we have one so long as we are here and creating it

I know I'm guilty of bagging on the youngsters often.  They are such soft and easy targets. 

Today, however, a light went on and I decided that one thing I really like about the young kids is how open they are about experiencing new things.   Now this is through my admittedly narrow view as a record monger, but it's refreshing to see the kids coming in and buying piles of records from artists their parents rejected as being too square.  We saw it first with Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole a few years ago, records that had been passed over by the Baby Boomers and Gen X crowd by and large for decades.   Now Classical and Big Band records are selling regularly to kids again.  Today I sold some finster half a dozen Joan Baez records, and encouraged him to check out Judy Collins and Richard & Mimi Farina when he gets a chance.  They appreciate the recomendations, without any of the cynicism and jaded attitude of their elders, who generally come in and lurk for a long time, and either already own most of the records they're seeing, or are hung up that records they used to see all the time for 4-6 dollars now cost a lot more.

I believe in the youth, and I believe in Art, and am convinced that cream always rises, and the phoenix ascends from the ashes, and, to paraphrase Edgar Varese, the present day artist refuses to die.  Our future is in their hands, and we will get by.

I've heard it described this way. 

A real dog and pony show. The crowds keep coming. 

Alan, did you like Warren Haynes Band and Tedeschi Trucks Bands last new albums? 

and the phoenix ascends from the ashes<<<<

I hold out hope, but have a difficult time believing the stars will fully align once again in my lifetime

I haven't read though all this thread, but if the "jamband scene" dies that won't bother me much at all.

Because what I believe won't die are each generation's group of young musicians who are interested in delving into adventurous, improvisational, in-the-moment music and every younger generation's desire for in-the-moment adventure, which is what always has and continues to draw younger people to "jamband" music.

So as long as younger musicians continue to listen to and explore their muse for improvisation in an energetic setting there will always be a segment of people there to support it.

It may not continue to look like a late-era Grateful Dead tie-dye concert, or a hippie "family" campout, or a shitstain Shakedown parking lot scene. It may not look like anything we might now recognize, but because of that endless desire in musicians & others to seek out in-the-moment/ONLY in THIS moment exciting adventure, what the Grateful Dead created musically and what continues to this day in a variety of forms will almost certainly carry on long after we're all gone.

And that's far out.

Hey Dave, thanks for your new light on view. That was good. I don't know what "finster" means and when I looked it up I found a few definitions... could you say how you were using it, please? Thanks.

Finster is slang for a twenty-something.  A fin is a $20 bill.

I saw a girl at a King Crimson show once

Thanks, Dave.

Went to my last DSO show about 10 years ago.  The facsimile was downright embarassing all the way down to the "scene". 

A fin is $5 

"Offspring" drummer gets booted from the band for not getting vaccinated;   

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/offspring-drummer-says-he-s-be...

(wonder if EC needs a drummer???)

Babyface Finster 

Thinks he's ultra bad, but in reality, not so much.

>>>>Mike Clark’s Prescription Renewal feat. Charlie Hunter, Skerik, & Robert Walter

I have the CD of that show in my car.    Fred Wesley plays on a couple tracks.

I stand corrected.  Turns out the horse track slang for a $20 is a dub, for a double-sawbuck, or a Jackson, which may become a tub when the Harriet Tubman $20 gets introduced.

As far as the new music scene, I'd just like to see more kids picking up instruments and jamming whatever.  Garage Rock, Punk Rock, Metal, Grunge, R&B.  Getting loud and sweaty and playing real instruments instead of a bunch of programmed beats and samples.  Our local major university, the University of Washington, has no college music radio programming or concert promotion.  Get the kids involved in it and they will cultivate their peers creativity.

so then, what's a finster?

just a made up derogatory name, based on lexicon you don't understand; for the people you aren't judging?

haha

lightbulb perhaps a bit dim

Carry on

Fink + Hipster?
 

I suppose a finster is a youngster.  I didn't make it up.  I picked it up on the old Zone, if I recall right from Schnee.  I also wasn't being judgmental in my usage up above, judge.

Haha

Case closed.

Just brought up the fin being $5 because I am a degenerate gambler, and let's not forget my favorite the c note.

and I prefer to take my c to a g, in the form of a century to a grand 

where are we on the jamband curve?<<<<

perhaps we are at a point of "diminishing returns" on an asymptotic curve ... at least in some respects