Jam band

A jam band is a musical group whose live albums and concerts relate to a fan culture that began in the 1960s with the Grateful Dead, and continued with The Allman Brothers Band, and Phish which had lengthy jams at concerts. The performances of these bands typically feature extended musical improvisation ("jams") over rhythmic grooves and chord patterns, and long sets of music that can often cross genre boundaries. The Grateful Dead continued to grow their fanbase in the second half of the 1980s. In the mid-1980s, the bands Phish, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Blues Traveler, Ozric Tentacles, Widespread Panic, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Spin Doctors, The String Cheese Incident, Col Bruce Hampton and Aquarium Rescue Unit began touring with jam band-style concerts. In the early 1990s and 2000s, a new generation of bands was spurred on by the Grateful Dead's touring and the increased exposure of The Black Crowes, My Morning Jacket, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic and Aquarium Rescue Unit. Many of today's jam bands have brought widely varied genres into the scene. A jam band festival may include bands with electronic, folk rock, blues rock, jazz fusion, psychedelic rock, Southern rock, progressive rock, acid jazz, hip hop, hard rock, and bluegrass sounds. The electronic trend has been led by such bands as The Disco Biscuits, Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9), Lotus, EOTO, The New Deal, and Dopapod. Bands like moe., Umphrey's McGee, Assembly of Dust, The Heavy Pets, Dispatch and The Breakfast have carried on the classic rock sound mixed with exploratory jams. Members of the Grateful Dead have continued touring in many different configurations as The Dead, Bob Weir & Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Friends, 7 Walkers, Furthur and Dead & Company. The contemporary jam scene has grown to encompass bands from a great diversity of musical genres. While the seminal group the Grateful Dead are categorized as psychedelic rock, by the 1990s the term "jam band" was being used for groups playing a variety of rock-related genres, including blues, country music, folk music, and funk. Today the term even includes some groups completely outside rock, such as those playing world music, electronic music, progressive bluegrass, and jazz fusion. By the late 1990s, the types of jam bands had so grown that the term became quite broad. Although today the term may be used to describe nearly any cross-genre band, festival band, or improvisational band, the term retains an affinity to the fan culture inspired by the Grateful Dead and carried on by the likes of Phish. Some artists such as The Derek Trucks Band are known for resisting the jam band label.A feature of the jam band scene is fan taping or digital recording of live concerts. While many other styles of music term fan taping as "illegal bootlegging", jam bands often allow their fans to make tapes or recordings of their live shows. Fans trade recordings and collect recordings of different live shows because improvisational jam bands play their songs differently at each performance. By the 2000s, as internet downloading of MP3 music files became common, downloading of jam band songs became an extension of the cassette taping trend. Bands are also distributing their shows online, sometimes within days or hours.