jackson@curium.DEC (Seth Jackson) (04/08/85)
> The band members are all superior musicians,... > ...But those jams! In a word, SLOPPY!!! There is nothing wrong with collective > improvisation, but too often they just mark time while waiting for someone > to have a decent idea that the jam can coalesce around... Have you been listening to them recently? I wish your statement were still true, but unfortunately, the Dead have headed in a more "commercial" direction the last few years, and have eliminated most of the true "exploratory" jamming. They'll do long versions of "Bird Song" or "Let It Grow" and they'll jam at the end of "Estimated Prophet" or "Playing in the Band", but the jams pretty much stay within the structure of the songs. That is, even though the jam is meandering and spacey, you can still hear that "Playing in the Band" theme throughout. The only completely free-form "space" is the 5 or 10 minutes after the drums, and even that's been sounding pretty tight these days! __ "We used to play for silver, now we play for life..." Seth Jackson