I don't mean MDMA per se, but however you get there, my friend... While driving home late after a show I began to thnk about how the jam scene came to be... what does it answer in our souls' need? I passed a pentecostal church and began thinking about psychedelic experiences that are mirrored in religion: echolalia or speaking in tongues, moved by the spirit (consciousness) and that voice that gets it and suits around waiting on your slow brain said "Aaaaaand?" aaaaand jam bands are pumping that same kind of juice! yeeesssss?... the voice said, tentatively,leading me, the witness (objection! cried logos...Overruled said spirit) jam music fills the estatics need in modern humans, allowing them to let go of Mother Culture (as Dan Quinn says) and write a new myth (as Terrance McKenna urges) and experience a unity with the oversoul in the guise of the tribe (heads/ community) or Spirit/sound. To be wild and free is a basic instinct connected to soul over flesh or culture. If our soul or self is free, no chains will truly bind us, and we are more likely to escape the chains in time, due to desire. So... why does The Dead work for some, SCI for others and U2 for others? Or reggae/metal/trance/whatever for yet others? Is it worth it to listen to ONLY music that stirs but not simmers the soul? is this a journey that has only one end? where is this leading? I was touring SCI in the late 90s (we did three stage sets with them), and I saw the beginnings of "phishiphication" with kids coming to a totally different scene on trying to create what they thought this scene should be. Selling IN a venue is not kosher, but these kids (up to age 35) would sneak their junk in and swing inside. inside is the SCI Gear zone. The lot is there.. just wait. We arrange viewing parties after shows. why can't that work for other people? We were lot rats, too, once upon a time. When Jerry stopped caring, the GD scene filtered over to Phish. That strangled them. Phish was not ready for the expolosion. Look at the WSP scene: lots of drunks and powders. Now look to the smaller scenes. Hooka's kids have their shit together from what I saw in Colorado. STS9's pack is vibrant. Kimock has a lot of old school heads and some spakly enlightened youngsters. Garaj Mahal has lots of light in the audience. Lots of seekers out there, Kang is one of them, big time. Kang CAN be a generator, a hell of a generator, and I eagerly await the time he remembers that. He handpicked the Cheese core to get a good seeker vibe going. BUT big biz gets in the way of one's best intentions. Phish on hiatus was a deathknell for the small scenes and the break-point scenes that needed a few more tours to get it right in the community. Now we have the Centers for Disease Control aiming at tour (wasn't the DEA enough?) because of Hep A. How does this mundane minutia relate to the vibe? Set and setting. shows are my "church" so to speak. I get renewed and rejuvenated in the music. Sure I have tastes, and if i could abide squwonky sax, I just might love Jessica Lurie. Or Ornette Coleman. Or John Zorn. Music is power. Metallica is one of the most powerful acts out there, but Hatfield is dark, dark, dark. Dark music amd dark people churn up a dark vibe. Panic does this very well, all that southern swamp voodoo, and the vibe works for their fans. I like some panic, and I have been swept away and gone to a show I didn't plan for back in 97. I need a touch of grey. I learned about music's power at a very young age. I was perhaps a year and a half when I told my mom that when music was playing, I could fly. I still do. I believe the lifer jam heads share a need to seek that power. I believe we have a responsibility to keep scenes going insofar as they nurture the energy the band creates. It's the "save the planet so we have a place to boogie" mentality. put the best music in a bad scene and the potential is never realized. Shows recorded for commercial projects have limits that don't foster the best evening possible. Think about your own headspace as you head to a show. What went wrong on the trip? traffic? cops? yuppies? other irritating plagues? car trouble? did you get right with it by showtime? What changed in your show? Can the community aroung a band help your headspace? If so, is this not like a community of spirit anywhere else?
You speake a lot of truth there When I am at a show, I let the music become a part of me, wherever it is at. However, I cannot deny that if eveyone else is feelin' the vibe, it is a lot beter experience. I hope that was sorta what you were asking?
^^ still not sure how to verbalize what I want to say...."Trying to describe something musical is like dancing to architecture" the religion metaphor is very apt though...
For me music is a transcendent place. Even Matisyahu, who is using his former stomping grounds to spread his religious vision (literally religious, he's a Chabadnik) referred to music opening up a place in his heart. (context is in the Matisyahu thread)
boothy: how do you see a the difference when a crowd doesn't "get it?" (yeah that sounds elitist. They can get back at me at math) A show where most of the crowd is new definitely feels different to me compared to a "family" show.
I'm talking LIVE-in the moment music, not recorded... My son's dad is a Hawkwind fan & he turned my son onto it a bit.
waooow you've got a weird cool dad...but uhm i remember my two big brothers when i was kid often close the light ...all was black in the room then they put the vinyl of Atom Hearth Mother (70) of Pink Floyd... some songs were really strange and i had fear... it was a bad bad experience... But if you're dad don't close the light with your kid when he listen to records i think it's ok , even with the company of those weird musicians that were hawkwind...they resurrected every time that we listen their good old records.
that would be an exhusband. SON's father. My stepdad turned me onto music outside the folkie scene. (at age...10? 11?)
I don't even need it to be live. Music strongly speaks to my imagination and draws me into its atmosphere wherever I am. For instance, there is this album called 'Fatherland', by the Belgian band Ancient rites. To make you understand what it sounds like, think fast, viscious metal with a lot of genuine-sounding symphonic medieval folk influences (from a synthesiser, alas). WhenEVER I play that record, it immediately draws me into a whole other world. It feels like... You stand alone at the edge of a high cliff. Sword in hand, your hair and cloak billowing in the late summer wind. Everywhere around you the shadows draw ever longer as the setting sun immolates the world in a golden blaze. You can smell the sea, the trees of the forests behind you, the rough wool of your tunic and the mead you spilled over it yesterday. Flocks of birds fly over, starting their migration to warmer places. Everywhere around you, nature is preparing for the coming of the cold season... That's how strong music can truly be.
ok, I finally thought of what I want to say here. I had to digest this one a long while. I like music, I like people, I like travel. I learned to dance (I would say "dance again, but I never danced much in my youth). I know that all sounds so simple but that's what it is to me. I've been making everything complicated for too long, and the music scene frees me from that. So I thought my answer here had to be complicated, but I realize it doesn't. Especially the dancing. When I was younger I was so self conscious, now I just have fun and don't care. still evolving though, so this isn't my final answer.
For two month this spring i had as you the reversed cross (when i walk everywhere) but i was dressed more as a dark hippie... i told you that it looks even stranger than most of metal looks with reversed cross... because metallers with reversed cross don't surprise a lot of people... but maybe you're an original metallist?... it exist...
The way I experiance music, is by going to shows, I feel like at shows I am at home with my people my tribe. When I go to shows I feel anything is possible for me that night or two nights or three if I go to a festival (just as drumminmamma put down in such fine words). And when I go to a show I feel everyone is family, yeah we all might have been raised differently some people were raised on the road going to shows all there life, some people are raised in million dollar mansions, but we all come to these gatherings for one reason, THE MUSIC BRINGS US ALL TOGETHER! I have met such a wide array of people on the road at shows, made friends, and made aquaintences with people I see at festivals alot. So in essence I feel that when we break off from our normal lives and attend these gatherings we all have a chance to become one with ourselves, the people around us and the music and the scene, we can all be happy at these moments, all my happiest and worst memories come from these shows. I will never stop going, and I will never ever stop dancing, and i'll never stop sharin the love with my festi junkies out there-
