Psychedelic shake-outs, countrified gospel-grunge, funkatronic jazzgrass - the jam band sound has splintered into many inventive styles since it took off over a decade ago. From New Potato Caboose to Gov't Mule, its participants have helped revitalize both the imagination and musicianship of modern rock. In honor of the annual Jammy Awards show taking place this week, we've asked Richard Gehr, author of The Phish Book, to come up with the genre's 10 key albums. Stretch out a bit, and enjoy.
Stand by your van. All the beauty and despair of 200 nights a year on
the road is distilled into this dusty jewel's bittersweet beat poetics.
These gritty upstate New York porn-funkers magically transform bleak
come-downs into soaring epiphanies.
It's the tranciest and most ecstatic album by the Pennsylvania quartet that pioneered the brilliant conceit of performing electronic dance music on rock instruments. The 14-minute "Mindless Dribble" delivers post-Pink Floyd head-game perfection.
DJ Logic's turntables goose an album that captures this keyboard-led
trio at its swinging zenith. An air of mystery permeates the
twisted history of styles - gospel, Latin, R&B, more - the band probes
with alien delicacy and jazzbo virtuosity.
Capturing the higher points of Phish's watershed 1994 tours, this
double live CD distills the band's melodic concision, extended
improvisations, turn-on-a-dime telepathy, and audience/band
gamesmanship into one of the best albums of its era.
The boys of Boulder play it hard and tough, shedding their
it's-all-good veneer to explore life's darker corners. After achieving
lift-off, they travel the psychedelic spaceways before sharply downshifting into the "Lonesome Road Blues."
Combining the Dead's oceanic verve with Frank Zappa's "eccentrifical
force," moe. write as well as they play, and they play like young gods.
Savor the studio essence of the weird new America on a
personal yet surreal version of road raging.
Guitars sputter and splay around urgent vocals while caffeinated drum 'n' bass riffs set off moody explosions. This
Baltimore quintet shows a tinge of Radiohead as it busts through the improv-rock envelope without an iota of hippie nostalgia.
Better than Grateful Dead's last three albums combined, the group's
other guitarist leads Hell's hippest lounge act through a deeply
swinging album that celebrates dubious women, heavy drinking and other
unwholesome late-night pursuits.
The Athens-based arena rockers hit their wide-screen stride on this
explosive double live CD. Songs based on the region's gloriously tawdry
gothic peculiarities expand like kudzu, blossoming into magnificent yet
vaguely creepy blues-rock foliage.
The slinky Allman Brothers guitarist mixes liberating electric
devotions with gritty down-home blues on an album that wisely eschews
classic-rock orthodoxy. Solomon Burke and Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
help Trucks imagine the possibilities.
