Those who have followed my two guitar blogs know that I have been covering jambands and Creative Commons downloads from time to time. I downloaded a show off of www.archive.org (they have a wealth of legal downloads) several years ago and finally now have made some time to listen to it. It's a Canadian outfit, Grand Theft Bus, in performance at Salon Vert in Montreal on October 8, 2005. I have grabbed several of the band's live shows on CD-ROM and I find them interesting.
They do their own quirky songs. They have an appealing rhythm section/rhythm guitar propulsion that gives them a certain drive without a metal heaviness. And they do collective interlocking instrumental interludes (improvisations?) that are mesmerizing in a quasi-minimalistic, sometimes trance inducing way.
The Salon Vert show has good sound and the band rolls right along in a series of grooves that hit it right. The show runs for only one set but they are FLAC files.
Of the countless bands I've checked out via these kinds of downloads Grand Theft Bus are one that stays in my mind. Their originals share with REM a quirky way with a melody, though they don't sound much like them.
Check out this show by going to www.archive.org, then go to the Live Music Archive, click on "Browse (By Band)," then find Grand Theft Auto in the alphabetical list. You can find the show by date and click away. If you are looking for some rock that's different, hey, this is a band that has something going on, and it's free. They might not do a lot of jamming exactly, but the collective music making has an immediacy that the best live bands all seem to conjure up. And the performances are loose enough that they sound jam-like regardless.
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