I started paying attention to the “jam band” phenomenon when I realized that those neo-hippie types tend to include vintage Funkadelic songs in their repertoires. And I’m all for that. (“Maggot Brain” in particular is a jam-band standard.)Widespread Panic is a badder band than most. They’ve jammed with Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana and Taj Mahal. (Click them links and see for yourself on YouTube.)
Plus they’ve been gigging for more than 20 years and putting out albums since 1988.
Widespread Panic has released a new studio single called “Up All Night.” It’s available as a FREE MP3 download; simply follow this link to the band’s website.
To stream “Up All Night” on my Vox blog, click here. It’s a Southern-rock groove with Memphis-soul horns on top.
I’m also streaming a bootleg live version of “Maggot Brain” which I copped seven years ago via Napster. The track is incomplete... but the 6½ minutes I have are pretty tasty. Click here to listen.
Oooooh! Thanks for this David. I'm a huge jam band fan and one of the best shows I ever saw was Widespread at the Roxy in '93 or '94. Three and a half hours of non-stop shredding and then Trey Anastasio (from the vacuum cleaner sporting jam band Phish) crawled on stage for a 20 minute version of the Low Spark of High Heeled boys.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen them since Mikey (the guitarist) died, but I think they'll always be a great band to see live.
Thanks, Susie. I missed the glory days of that movement totally. I regret that.
ReplyDeleteDeep Banana Blackout and String Cheese Incident I would've also liked to see.