What did you listen to today?

Paste Magazine Top 50 Southern Rock Albums

28. Stevie Ray Vaughan: In Step (1989) - By 1989, Stevie Ray Vaughan had firmly established himself as the most electrifying blues guitarist of his generation with 1983’s Texas Flood and 1984’s Couldn’t Stand the Weather. But he was at something of a nadir as he approached his 1989 record In Step: Newly divorced and sober, having barely escaped the clutches of whiskey and cocaine, Vaughan set about recording In Step with clouds of doubt hanging over his career. Perhaps that’s why the album sounds so fresh. With new songwriting partner Doyle Bramhall at his side, Vaughan veered toward rock ‘n’ roll on rave-ups like “The House Is Rockin’” and “Scratch-N-Stiff,” putting more pianos and horns in his Texas gumbo and consequently earning more airplay on rock radio. He also faced his substance abuse head-on in crossover songs like “Tightrope” and “Crossfire,” the latter becoming his first and only No. 1 hit. With a new lease on life, Vaughan sounds energized and introspective on In Step, his inflammatory guitar still throwing sparks all over the place. He perished in a helicopter crash the following year.

Check out "That's Too Much Pork for Just One Fork."  Last time I saw them and they played "8 piece Box" they had a box of chicken and were flinging it out to the audience and the audience would take a bite a fling it back.

Grateful Dead of the Day - 9/16/1978 - Egypt

Me, too. SCOTS was set up and cancelled about 3 times here recently due to weather, then some issue, then the virus. Frustrating.  But I htink bands at that level will be the ones making music soon and into the next year or so.

The following is a rant about the playlist and not a reflection the poster:

Yeah...DMB is not a jam band, they're a 90s nostalgia act. And what, exactly, is the agenda with pushing MMJ as jam? I don't hate indie music, but it is indie music. And there's our old pal Wilco again!

When I was coming up, a lot of us heads were also into REM. Maybe we should just throw that on here too, since we're apparently just doing whatever any head has liked ever.

My name is worf and I approve this rant.

Paste Magazine Top 50 Southern Rock Albums

27. Alabama Shakes: Boys & Girls (2012) - Undeniably at the center of The Alabama Shakes’ debut record is Brittany Howard’s ascendant balladeering, which allows the Alabama Shakes to explore a sound made famous by the twin giants of Motown and Muscle Shoals. Her voice races from falsetto to growl to wail so quickly that she often changes direction mid-word, and that dynamism gives even the Shakes’ slowest songs a restless, animal energy that is impossible to ignore. Howard’s sound contains distinctive elements of Janis Joplin’s flint and spontaneity, Aretha Franklin’s depth and power and at times even the sweetness of Diana Ross. Despite the tendency of listeners to lump the band into the category of soul revivalists, Boys & Girls was best enjoyed not as an anachronism but as a fresh take on sounds from a bygone era. The Shakes looked to punk and hard rock as much as anything, and the melding of those influences with their rootsy, passionate appeal resulted in a style all their own, free of cynicism and brimming with vitality.

Random album listened to yesterday 

Grateful Dead of the Day - 9/17/1972 Baltimore MD

I've been on this issue forever but maybe in a different direction: all this so-called "jam" is simply jazz and that's that.   I think from there it's fair to label a band by its primary genre, but a jazz band plays blues and a blues band plays jazz and a rock band might jam by playing jazz, and then you get a song that isn't jam/jazz on the 3:24 studio version but becomes so in the live version.  And then there are the live "medleys" which is a familiar feature of the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, Little Feat, and others.  What JGB does with covers of non-jam songs is jazz.

Jam is as old as jazz. It didn't start with a San Francisco jug band in the early sixties.  It's simply improvisation.  If a version of a song is mostly improvisation, it's "jam"--like IMOElizabeth Reed. The less improv, the less the jam label fits, but it's a fuzzy line. Take for example a Glenn Miller "moonlight serenade" with a few spots of improv--not jam--and Benny Goodman's SingSingSing at the famous Carnegie Hall--pure jam.  Of all the traditional jazz styles, Dixieland is the oldest jam format IMO.

To Kuriti's point, the GD carries so many genres that one label doesn't fit.  The "cowboy songs", including the Haggard covers  and what's on AmBeauty and Workingman's, are not jams. Space/drums are not songs.   The complicated structures of TOO and 11 are jazz, to which they jam. The long versions of songs like Eyes are jams but you could cut a 3:24 studio of primarily the vocals and it's not; it's just rock.

I'd call DMB and Phish jam because they are mostly improv in their presentation of most of their songs--but not all. GD? Depends on which album you have.

YMMV

The surprise Tyler Childers record is great, today. Mostly instrumental but the last song is a protest song.

You are missing them. I hear a new one or two every night on "out of the box" and have been all year--and that's just in new rock, Americana and blues; I'm sure it's in the other kinds as well.

1973 studio album