The Allman Brothers Band: After the Crash, DVD

I covered the DVD documentary Song of the South: Duane Allman and the Rise of the Allman Brothers Band on these pages some time ago (type title into search box for that review). Now we have the sequel, The Allman Brothers Band: After the Crash (Sexy Intellectual DVD 585), which covers the band and its ups and downs after the tragic death of Duane.

Around 1971-2 many musicians I knew who were into an electric improvisational thing revered the Miles Davis electric bands then leading the way along with Mwandishi and a few select others firmly in the "jazz" camp. But many also revered the Dead, the Mothers and the Allman Brothers Band as parallel innovators in the rock world. Time passed and ultimately on the rock side the Dead and the Allmans managed to survive and resurge as part of what later became known as "jamband." But it was not at all clear then that they would last. On a good night either band could further the music and draw a large concert following, but it wasn't always that way, especially in the Allman's case.

This documentary DVD gives us a very decent, enlightened chronology of what happened to the band over those years. The almost miraculous recovery of the band with Dickie Best and Greg Allman presiding with strong songs and vibrant solo work is documented on the DVD with live footage, interviews and narrative.

There was a gradual decline in the band on an artistic level and waning popularity as Greg became estranged from his bandmates via a long relationship with Cher, a pronounced addiction problem and a controversial legal situation that involved Greg providing evidence against his personal assistant in return for immunity. Plus by the eighties, as the documentary makes clear, the guitar solo-oriented rock-jam sound hit an absolute nadir. Nobody wanted a "jamband" to fill their ears, blues had gone out of style, fusion and electricity were passe, etc.

The DVD does a fine job documenting those low points. They then cover in some depth the resurgence of the band, the discovery of young Maestro Trucks as guitarist following in Duane's footsteps and their subsequent rediscovery by a new generation.

Perhaps even more time could have been devoted to their latest period but there is enough the complete the narrative, surely. And their place in the jamband resurgence might have been made more detailed.

Nonetheless in all we have a fine two-hour documentary that will be manna for Allman fans and also enlightening for rock history buffs of a more general sort. It certainly kept my attention and gave me the big picture of developments that I never had the full scope on until seeing this. Well done!

ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra), Sounds Like This

The key to a successful jamband is the quality of jams, of course, but also the vibrancy of the rhythm section and the quality of the songs. You get all that with ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra) and their recent Sounds Like This (Brushfire).

The vocals are strong and the songs stick in the mind. Lebo plays some very nice guitar (but perhaps even more would be even better. That's what live gigs are for I suppose) and the rhythm team gets a head on things.

The Dead and Phish are lurking in the background somewhere, but they only lurk. It's a strong sort of offering and will definitely find adherents and followers in addition to the ones they have already garnered. Nicely done.

Phil Lesh and Friends, Live at Warfield Theater, 1999

With the death of Jerry Garcia the Dead disbanded for a time but of course have since reformed in various guises. At the same time the individual band members formed units to tour and record. Today we look at a live show Phil Lesh and Friends did at the Warfield Theater, San Francisco, on April 16, 1999. Phil of course was and is the bassist for the Dead.

The show is available for free download (authorized) at http://archive.org/details/1999-04-16.paf.sbd.ejade.6413.sbeok.flacf.

It was a nice night of jamming and familiar songs. Donna Jean Godchaux joins the band as guest on vocals. Otherwise it's Phil (bass and vocals) with an august company of Steve Kimock (guitar), Trey Anastasio (guitar, vocals), Page McConnell (grand piano & organ, vocals) and John Molo (drums). The combination of Phish members, Kimock, and Phil is a very good one and they get off to some nice long versions and quite decent jamming. . . three CDs worth. The sound is good and it does not disappoint.

Moe, "What Happened to LA LAs?", 2012, Jamband Gets Distilled in Concentrated Song Form

Any jamband the caliber of Moe rests much of its reputation on the extended live set. They are revered by their followers for the inspired appearances and where they take the audience. In the studio the audience and night-of-music expansiveness isn't a factor so much. It's a different challenge and not all jambands have been able to capture the spark in such environs and translate it into a more compact form.

Moe has. They have on their latest LP What Happened to the LA LAs (Sugar Hill 4080). It's a collection of very solid songs, played with the energy and excitement of their live act, but compressing the extended digressions and extensions that the live situation spawns. There's an abridgment, of necessity. When the jams hit, though they are a get-in-and-get-out-quickly affair, they DO hit the right spots before driving back to the songs.

It works because they are hitting it hard and there is a tight-looseness to the feel of the band that comes out of long togetherness and marathon touring.

Nice music, good tough-tensiled tracks, nice audio presence...this is Moe at their best.

Guitarist Steve Kimock and KVHW, An Evening of Live Jamband in A Free Legal Download, 1999

Eventually the question has to arise. Do jambands have the musical chops to compete one-on-one with a jazz-rock fusion outfit? It's a question of pitting category against category, which ultimately is a kind of abstraction from the day-to-day gigs and recordings of probably hundreds, even thousands of bands. Which ones do you pick as most representative? And at what point can you be satisfied that you have done justice to each genre? I don't think it's entirely profitable to pose the question in this way, certainly not in any glib, blithe, superficial manner. Have historic bands like the Dead, have scenes like those in San Francisco in the late-'60s had an impact on the jazz musicians working then and in years to come? Clearly. And have the jazz folks in turn exercised an influence in return? Yes, of course. In some ways it's like any number of musical genres that have socio-spatial proximity. Everything gets influenced by everything else, to a greater or lesser degree. That answer doesn't satisfy me completely, but it will have to do for now.

So today a jamband, one I believe is no longer touring, but an interesting one nonetheless. It's KVHW, a collaborative quartet of Steve Kimock, lead guitar, Bobby Vega, bass, Alan Hertz, drums, and ex-Mother Ray White on rhythm guitar and vocals. The Wikipedia article on them is sketchy and a bit of a mess, but apparently Ike Willis was replaced by Terry Haggerty during part of 1999, but the information apears to contradict itself about when that occurred--unless they are saying that there were two periods where he was not a part of the band. The article gives the band's active life as January 1998 through December of 1999. So those are the basic facts.

The recording I have playing as I write this is a free and legal download from archive.org (http://www.archive.org/details/kvhw1999-05-17). It's a full 3-CD set of the band holding forth at Cafe Tomo in Arcata, CA on the night of May 17, 1999. Judging from the lack of tell-tale Ike Willis vocals this must be a part of the Terry Haggerty stint.

KVHW had a Dead derived jamband feel, with Kimock playing his own variant lead style in lineage with Garcia. The rhythm section has a Dead-like looseness. And they jam at length on a number of originals and covers.

One thing that is a constant, that is the loose but insistent rock-funk underpinning to much of that goes on, at least at the start of each number. With a jamband on a good night, just as in "jazz," the best things are taking place after the stating of the song formalities. It is then that Kimock stretches out and the rhythm section expands their groove, going a hypnotic route or creating a more spacy cloud of pulsating sound. Sometimes the interplay between lead and rhythm guitar intensifies for periods of interlocking counterpoint. And it's the rhythm-lead (and bass) interactions and the function of the rhythm guitar in general that I feel are some of the more innovative aspects of jamband style. Some of it comes out of James Brown's funk, but there is further elaboration going on that is specifically jamband-centered, I think.

Ultimately with KVHW you feel like whatever comes, they have planted their feet in the ROCK jam context. And that usually means a pretty persistent sticking to the single-key center vamp.

For all that there are bright moments to be heard on this long gig-night. It's free, so you can listen and like what you like, and not what you don't. Go to it if you care to...

Hypnotic Clambake for the Shell-Shocked

Today, a look at another jamband and a free legal download from www.archive.org. I must admit I checked out Hypnotic Clambake because I liked the name. They have been together apparently since at least the mid-90s. The show I listen to was from an appearance at the Sunshine Daydream Festival in Terra Alta, West Virginia on July 21, 2000.

They are a curious mixture of country fiddle two-steps played with electricity, some klezmer influences, novelty tunes, and some more rock-oriented items. As for jams there aren’t all that many, with perhaps the fiddle spots the strongest. There are some arranged moments that have some finesse. Their stoner and novelty tunes left me a little flat. The group didn’t strike me as having strong enough material to carry them, although their musicianship is good. Hypnotic Clambake, or at least this particular show, didn't send me through the roof, I’m afraid.

Originally posted on March 31, 2009 at www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.html.

Rhode Island's Green Tea Jamband Captured Live

Some time ago I promised I would survey the Jambands out there, at least in the US. After a long pause, I look at another this morning. Green Tea is an outfit that hails from Rhode Island and apparently has garnered a loyal following there. I've been listening to a show from a band-approved download in the Live Holdings of www.archive.org. It's the band holding forth at the Woodriver Inn in Hope Valley, RI on February 2, 2008.

The music fills two full CDs. It gives you a pretty good idea of what they are about. They do a mix of covers and what seem like originals. Their vocals are rough-and-ready Dead style, meaning that they are spirited. Not always perfect, but spirited.

It's with the instrumental presentation that they thrive. The rhythm section has an appealing looseness. The lead guitarist has a Garcia influence, as is the case with many bands of this sort, but he can stray from it as well. The second guitarist plays a pivotal rhythm guitar role most of the time and it seems to me that jambands in the Dead tradition rely on such a role heavily much as a straight-ahead bop-jazz outfit will rely on the pianist feeding chord comps of the changes to the soloist.

Judging from the evidence of this recording, this is a band that can rock you and jam you of an evening. Enough said. Catch them if they are appearing around your area and it sounds like you'll have a great time. Stay tuned for more bands in future postings.

Grand Theft Bus Live at Salon Vert, 2005

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.

New Jersey's Own Jam-Bone Jamband

February 9, 2009—We return to the jamband scene today for a look at a local New Jersey group. As a Jersey boy myself I have a weakness for the local scene born of territorially rooted, animal-like instincts I suppose. SO when I stumbled on a local band on the Live Music site of www.archive.org, I gave a listen. The group is Jam-Bone, essentially a power trio with some fine guitar work by one Rich Plumpton. The set I downloaded was apparently from their first gig on 2-13-03. When I look back to the archive I find they have replaced it with three other, later dates, but my attention is devoted to the earlier date since that is what I have been listening to.

First impressions when playing this download is, “OK, we have a bar band here.” And of course they are playing in such an establishment, how could they not be? As they crank into the old standby “Mustang Sally” they sound average. But then Plumpton launches into a solo and he has a very nice sound and touch. It goes from there to a version of “Scarlet Begonias” that has an even hipper jam moment. In the end this sounds like a band anyone would be happy to catch in the local context. But then they do what sound like decent originals and Plumpton is a hot guitarist for this kind of thing, so they could develop into something major. You might check out their other shows on the archive and go see them. They also have their own site: www.jam-bone.org. Happy listening.

Jambands, the Radiators

February 4, 2009—Today starts a series of blogs on jambands. In the coming months I’ll be looking at a bunch of bands as represented in the "Live Music" section of the site www.archive.org. There are thousands of live shows reposited there by bands that give permission to tape and disseminate their performances (provided they are traded or given away free, but not sold commercially). You can check out the shows of a particular band by streaming or downloading what’s on the site, searching by band name, then date or other factors. I’ve spent hundreds of hours lately immersing myself in the various offerings there. I’ll be covering some of the more interesting or representative shows from time to time here on this blog. I must note that of course if you like a band you should support them by paying for their regular releases and/or catching them live.

First a little history, much of which may be quite familiar to readers, but not everybody. Starting in the late ‘60s there were a number of bands that regularly included jams as part of their live shows. Cream, Hendrix, and the guitar hero sorts of bands did that regularly. The San Francisco groups were especially appreciated at the time as artists who did much to promote and develop these sorts of practices—the Airplane, Quicksilver, and of course especially the Dead. And it was in part due to their longevity and in part by their preferences that the Dead built a huge following who appreciated the long jams and musical forms involved, centering mostly around Jerry Garcia and his formidable inventive abilities and what the band did as a whole during these segments.

Well, when Garcia passed there were many Dead-dedicated groups playing out there in the local bars and stages across the US and beyond, but I suppose it was Phish that gained the most recognition by building a repertoire and stage presence that continued in the Dead tradition of ever-changing set lists and plenty of jam space. Sometime around then as more bands and audiences began to take to the idea that this kind of music was something to be expanded and appreciated on its own terms, the name “jamband” began to be applied.

The big record conglomerates have covered this music when and if a group had what is considered potential “hit material.” But it is clear that as far as Jamband status is concerned, a band can create quite a cache for themselves without such support, especially with the medium of the internet as a factor.

In my informal survey of the Archive’s live music holdings, I found that, as with any music form where there a great number of people involved, there can be imperfections or negative musical factors at work with some of the bands. I’ve found that many bands are strictly Dead clones or so close to the Dead that they have no real identity of their own. This can be found either in the songs themselves and/or the jams, which may closely ape what Jerry and company’s jams sounded like at any particular stage of the Dead's existence. (This of course is not a bad thing if the band contains former Dead members, like with Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Friends, etc.) Other bands may play lackluster originals that detract from the show. Sometimes a facile kind of funk may become a crutch to what is going on in a set. Sometimes the jams are undirected—the lead guitarist may not really have many ideas and to go on at length can be a little snoozy. The rhythm sections can be stiff with some folks, really not up to the standards set by the Dead at their best, so that a groove never develops.

On the other hand I’ve experienced some truly interesting bands and shows on the Archive. And I’ll be noting what’s good out there as I address particular shows in the months to come.

Today’s show involves a band that’s as old as dirt, or nearly so. New Orleans’ Radiators formed in 1978 and still make the circuit today with the same original five members. That is a rarity out there. They may not have had much conventional music business success as far as the “hits” go, but their live shows are exciting, party and jam get togethers. I’ve been listening to a full, three-CD performance of the band recorded live at the Great American Music Hall on March 20, 1993. The sound quality is very good and they run through originals and interesting covers—everything from Blind Willie Johnson’s classic “Everybody Out to Treat a Stranger Right” to Creedence’s “Born on the Bayou.” Now these guys don’t get involved with 20-minute jam sequences but there’s a looseness and some nice guitar soloing throughout. The show catches them in their middle period more or less and by 1993 they had really found a nice groove on just about everything they did. So I’ll cover more of these shows from time-to-time. Stay tuned.

Djam Karet, NEARFest, 2001

February 2, 2009—Ever heard of Djam Karet? I hadn’t until I stumbled upon something about them on the net. I believe they formed sometime in the mid-‘80s and as far as I can tell are still together. I grabbed one of their CDs online, Live at NEARFest 2001 (NEARfest), and have been giving it a listen. Djam Karet (pronounced “Jam CaREY”) is an instrumental rock outfit with two guitars (the second doubling on keyboards), bass and drums. I guess you could call what they do progressive, if you need a label for it. The live set has some room for jamming, not an overwhelming abundance. The bulk of the music centers on tunes and their arrangements and if you want to look for a weakness, it’s there. The numbers seem mostly lackluster; there are only a few that stand on their own as entities that you might recognize and pleasantly anticipate as you listen more than a few times. “Feast of Ashes” is one of them; it has a nice sprawling thing going. More pieces like that and I would be more convinced of their importance. Perhaps this isn’t their best CD, but I can’t be sure, since of course I haven’t heard the rest of them.

The band had been together apparently around 15 years by the time they did this concert, and that shows in the tightness of the routines. But the music isn’t especially pyrotechnical, if you look for that. The main guitar soloist is decent by the standards of the style, and the second fellow can turn in some credible licks as well. Neither is a monster. Nonetheless this is not at all bad music. What’s most remarkable is the longevity of the band. May they continue.

Kate Gaffney Steps Forward with "The Coachman"

Originally posted on January 7, 2009

I don’t know a great deal about singer-songwriter Kate Gaffney, save what I know from listening to her last album The Coachman (Dig). She has a nice voice, a little reminiscent of Edie Brickell but only a touch. Most of the songs are quite good, in the style of a slightly country-influenced songwriter rock.

She is joined by a sympatheic supporting cast, notably guitarist Steve Kimock of jamband fame. The final, title cut goes for nearly 20 minutes and has a jam component. It’s good to hear people stretching out like that. I hope for her success. The album gives you a most decent listen.

Iron Kim Style for Edgy Electric Jamming

Electric jambands who come directly out of improvisational music practice are something special if they are good. And they are very much alive today. There’s for example Wadada Leo Smith and his work with Yo Miles and his own groups; there is the Indian Miles tribute band. And lots of others too. There is a resurgence of music that does not fear reprisals for plugging in and letting loose with challenging lines and shimmering envelopes of ensemble collectivity.

One of the most interesting and promising of such lineups is a band called Iron Kim Style. Their self-titled new CD (MoonJune) features five or six musicians from the Seattle scene. Guitarist Dennis Rea and drummer Jay Jasket, both also in the Moraine group (see earlier postings at our www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.htm for a discussion of their CD), are joined by trumpeter Bill Jones and a group of intelligent and fluid instrumentalist for a heady workout.

This is freely conceived music that has spontaneity yet a solid group sense of where they want to go conceptually. Dennis Rea and Bill Jones are the most prominent soloists and they show their own take on where the music should be now. There is much in the way of group cohesion with plenty of room for individual expression. Thaddaeus Brophy’s 12-string works well with Rea’s six; bass clarinetist Izaak Mills (appearing on several numbers) has good interactions with Bill Jones’ trumpet. The rhythm section of Jasket’s drums and Ryan Berg on bass does not resort to the obvious sorts of riff devices so often used in these situations, and Jasket’s pulse is fluid in a way that does not follow the models for imitation often invoked in such a setting.

The music can get pretty dense harmonically, and when you least expect it (on "Pachinko Malice"), breaks out into free swing and some terrific guitar work from Dennis Rea with Bill Jones and the rest of the band contributing to the atmospheric texture.

Iron Kim Style are not attempting to coddle to mass tastes. Their music here is distinctly uncompromising. What results is an excellently conceived and executed journey into the outer realms of electric music. They shine with a brilliance at times. There isn’t a flubbed moment on the whole disk either.

This is music to stir the senses. It is challenging but very rewarding on many different levels. There is originality and there is a convincing directness. Bask in its dazzling excess of light, huddle in the depths of its darkness. An excellent effort this is! Give it a listen.

John Butler's "Sunrise Over Sea"

Originally posted on August 13, 2008

The John Butler Trio manages to combine acoustic-blues related instrumentals with contemporary rock vocals and songwriting with a social consciousness, personal reflections, solid jamband episodes, some nice arrangements and flowingly funky rhythms. Oh, and some really decent electric guitar leads.

All this is true of Butler’s 2004 release Sunrise Over Sea (Lava), which is getting a focused listen over here in my listening station. He grows on me, I find. That’s the best sort of experience musically, I have found.

O.A.R.? Dunno.

Originally posted on August 1, 2008

Here’s a new rock-pop conflagration that has crossed my desk. O.A.R. is their name [album: In Between Now and Then (Atlantic)] and they vary between a kind of bouncy Jason Mraz sound and almost a jamband without much in the way of the jams.

Electric guitar, acoustic-electric, bass, drums and tenor sax underpin the vocals. Some of the stuff is catchy. Instrumentally they are not incompetent. I suppose they could be big. Late teens and college age folks will decide that, I guess.

RumorHang, Milan's Avant Jamband in a Free Download

Originally posted on April 14, 2008

Guitar, bass, keys/electronics, drums, vocals . . . the Milan group RumurHang have a somewhat conventional lineup. But it’s a kind of avant-jamband sound they produce. Think of the Dead’s space interludes, only this band doesn’t play in any way that suggests they are Dead-influenced.

Under a Creative Commons license, you can download their 2007 eDogm label CD Gerardmer for free. Go to www.edogm.net and look for release number 17.

King Crimson Live, 1973-74

Originally posted on April 7, 2008

It might have been easy to take the music scene for granted in 1973-74. I think I did. All kinds of groups were touring regularly, the musicianship was solid out there for the most part, groups with edge, power, drive and a sense of risk were more or less popular, and audiences had come to accept the idea that jamming was not unusual for some electric bands.


Bring on King Crimson, who had regrouped more than once but centered around the leader and guitarist extraordinaire Robert Fripp. We are fortunate that the band was captured live in a series of good quality recordings from those days that are available on a CD series called The Great Deceiver. I’m listening to volume two, a two-CD set on DGM Live. There’s Fripp of course, legendary drummer Bill Bruford, John Wetton on bass and vocals, and David Cross on violin and keys.

What’s amazing to me is how freely and heavily they jammed and how the repertoire continually metamorphosed in the live setting. Any fan of Fripp’s should give this one a listen, and anyone who wants to understand the history of jam bands too.