Live music, especially live music of the "jam band" genre, is often a hit or miss affair, quite different then those musicians' studio albums. For example, I find Miles Davis' studio albums to be the exemplary point of genus, but then find many of his recorded concerts to be exercises in too much noise and soloing. Why is this, given that much of his music as played live in the studio? Was it the audience, spurring the musicians to new heights of indulgence? (It sure seemed like this at the show mentioned below.) The fact that the songs are no longer new, so that a musician as restless as Miles would need to change things up in an effort to keep things fresh? Lack of producers, engineers, etc.? No matter what the reason, the curious disparity between the same musicians playing the same song in a live setting vs. a studio setting has always bewildered me.
This fact was driven home at a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones show I attended 4/22/06 in New York City in Irving Plaza. Bela Fleck is a virtuoso banjoist, which is notable in and of itself, but he's taken this skill a step further with his band the Flecktones, consisting of the brothers Wooten and Jeff Coffin on Sax. Together they've created an odd blend of bluegrass and jazz that really is unclassifiable - I certainly hadn't heard anything like it before. Their music is funky and rocking and smooth and happy all at the same time. It's a hell of a lot of fun to listen to, but I don't have the words to describe what it sounds like. (Pick up UFO Tofu or Three Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest if you want to know what I'm talking about.)
When the Flecktones took the stage that Saturday night, the enthusiastic general admission crowd had been stoked up by an hour or so of a bizarre japanese monster movie projected onto a screen behind which the roadies tuned up instruments (and which was presented in a strange mirrored format for the last 10 minutes, lending a dizzyingly trippy note to the warm up (welcomed by a few of our dope-smoking neighbors, I believe)). The band took the stage hopping -- they ripped through two songs in rapid succession with no intro or pause and were really feeding off of each other. Solos were relatively brief and intertwined in with the rest of the band.
But then the jamming started. Bela playfully rode his fret board up and down. Victor went slap happy on the bass. Coffin not only tossed up some crazy riffs but also at one point was playing two horns at once. (Between that and his crazy beard, it's a site to see, let me tell you.) There were some crazy moments, many involving Victor's command of the bass guitar. But after a few songs of this jamming, I found myself getting bored. Beyond the beginning and end of a song, there wasn't any real structure (or at least, i'll admit, not one that I recognized) beyond "Victor's solo" seguaying into "Bela's solo" transforming into "Futureman's solo", etc.
I'm of the opinion that this type of soloing -- which of course is not always solo, often it involves the other players laying down a base foundation over which the soloer jams -- takes over for more then a few bars, the song suffers. It may have more energy then the album; it may lead to some interesting ideas; it may even be exciting for a while. Unpredictable, definatly. It's just not something that does anything for me - i'd rather just sit home with my headphones and cue up "Sex in a Pan" again if I want to be moved by Bela's music.
(As an aside, there are, as with so may things, notable exceptions to my aversions to jam music. Off the top of my head I can think of The Who's Live at Leeds, and Miles' Kind of Blue, but then one could argue that those solos are in service to the songs and not simply displaying virtuosity for its own sake.)
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