The Music Box has an interview with Mark Karan of Ratdog, who expresses some sentiments I share:
Karan appears visibly frustrated as he tries to explain how devotion to the perceived jam band lifestyle has replaced an understanding of what it was that made The Grateful Dead such an essential outfit in the first place. “One of the things that the Dead really had as one of the originators of the whole ‘jam band’ concept,” he stated, “is that they had really deep roots in American music. What they were drawing on was a hell of a lot deeper than just listening to what their contemporaries were up to and aping it. Out of that, they wrote some interesting songs, and there is this great improvisational jam legacy. But, it’s built from songs of a caliber that we just don’t see much of anymore. That is what’s missing.”
“It’s also that, in our current times, people’s attention spans are really short,” Karan continued. “They don’t want to think about things. They don’t want to take the time to have something really seep into their consciousness — to read a poetic lyric; to search for its meanings and its multiplicity of meanings, and to explore the depth of a story and what its history might be. I’m fascinated by that shit. Frankly, I have talked to a lot of younger people and when I start to talk about this stuff, they kind of glaze over. The audience is more interested in arguing about who’s a nice person or who has better weed.”
Karan blames much of the ennui in the jam band scene on having to do with a lack of imagination on the part of the players themselves and on a failure on the audience’s part to demand musical innovation. The jam band genre, like any form of music, has been busy creating its own clichés. “It’s an enclosed world and frankly a lot of the music leaves me pretty cold,” he agreed. “I like the concept a lot of times more than the realization of it. Playing without any concept or discipline isn’t that valuable. If you just go ‘I’m free to do whatever I want’, that’s fine, but what are you doing? A melody is a good thing sometimes. If you’re Miles Davis or Bill Evans, you could probably play So What for 45 minutes and keep everybody entertained, but not everyone can do that. Truthfully, I run into it even here with this band. I’ll be the first one to say that I’m no Jerry Garcia. I’m Mark Karan. I do what I do, and it’s heavily influenced by my history around this music. In certain tunes, I’ll be inspired to go on and play with inspiration and feel comfortable. In other tunes, if Bobby is used to playing with Jerry and having him stretch out, he’ll go, ‘do more’, and I’ll say, ‘I’ve said what I have to say about this. Done!’”
well said.