Will there continue to be jam bands? If people look backward, there won’t. If people start writing new music using the language of improvisation, sure. But if you’re just celebrating something that happened in 1970, it’s got to die. [...]
I had dinner with a young band. I’m not going to say their name. We had this big dinner, and I said, “Who’s your favorite band?” They were naming these ’70s bands. This nostalgia thing going on in the whole music scene, it’s killing me. Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar and people like that are moving forward. I also like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard a lot. They’re not a jam band, but they love the act of creation, and you can feel it. But, God, of all the people to be talking about nostalgia: Trey from the hippie band. Maybe that’s why I’m grappling with this. I’m feeling the needle pointing a little bit backward. [...]
Nostalgia can be valid and good. I think it’s a baby-boomer thing. A lot of the tours that are out now — I mean, I like Queen. I didn’t get to see the original Queen. I like Adam Lambert. Lambert has taken over Freddie Mercury’s lead-singer spot in the current incarnation of Queen. He’s a great guy, a great singer. But I have this twinge of, Hey, man, make another album.
I’m not picking on anyone. I love those guys, but you know, Phish came up in ’83, ’84, ’85. I think about all this good music that happened then — Minutemen, Bad Brains — which was a reaction against that baby-boomer thing. Even Bowie was writing “All the Young Dudes”: “And my brother’s back at home/With his Beatles and his Stones.” It’s a fascination with, like, a window of time, 1966 to 1973. It’s got to give at some point. If you took the musicians that were great in 1970 and said “We want you to play music from 50 years ago,” they’d be playing John Philip Sousa or something. It’s crazy.
Bookmarks