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Jambands: The Complete Guide to the Players, Music & Scene. Dean Budnick. San Francisco: Backbeat, 2003.
Dean Budnick, the cultural historian, magazine editor, and radio DJ responsible for creating the Web site http://www.jambands.com and the Jammy Awards, knows whereof he writes when it comes to his favorite rock genre. He coined the terms "jam band"-and later, "jamband"-to describe an eclectic mix of artists united in their devotion to unscripted, improvisational passages.
The latter strategy, in the hands of the least-inspired musicians laying claim to this classification, has turned into a convention bordering on cliché. As a result, few groups willingly accept the label "jamband," as Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks points out in the book's introduction. Trucks declares, "What these bands share is: an ability to play and a seriousness about their music that maximizes musicianship and minimizes showmanship" (xii). Budnick, for his part, views "musical variegation" as the genre's core and defining value.
This encyclopedic volume-with more than 170 alphabetically arranged...