[Noyan]

About eight or so months ago I really started taking an interest in jam bands. The first being perpetual groove. Their album "sweet oblivious antidote" is one of the best albums of all time in my opinion. Anyway, some of my buddies really enjoy phish, Greatful Dead, and moe., but I'm having a lot of trouble getting into them. Maybe because I'm listening to studio versions? I really enjoy the mellower side of jamming, and pgroove offers a lot of that. and i don't want to dismiss phish and GD so soon because they are so popular you know? There must be SOME thing to them if so many people love these bands. Anyone have suggestions? any albums I would certainly enjoy? I've heard their live stuff is better as well, true?

 

[falis]

You could certainly do worse than to get a copy of Live Dead from 1969 (the one that starts with Dark Star, St. Stephen and The Eleven).
 
- Ed

 

[deadhead12]

Yeah, these are bands that are at their best playing live. Some these bands will allow taping and if you go to archive.org you should be able to find some decent recordings of shows.  It's all free and the archive gets permission to post the shows from the bands.  Grateful Dead used to have a ton of soundboards up but they decided they didn't want to be giving away for free what they could selling, which is totally understandable, and it seems like other bands are following suit.  I don't think Phish ever had anything up there.  Theres a ton of other bands worth checking out but you might have to sift through some bad recordings to find a good one.  

 

[dziendobry]

The String Cheese Incident is my favorite jam band, I saw them live 7 years ago, they are amazing!

 

[R_burke]

If you like perpetual groove try Lotus, Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9), Particle and Signal Path