moe. Saves Memphis from Terrible Music
Concert Review
Joel Winkelman
Issue date: 11/30/01 Section: Features
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This past summer, I picked up a nasty addiction to live music. Unfortunately, my hometown of Tulsa fails to attract a great number of concerts. It may have something to do with Smashing Pumpkins front-man Billy Corgan having taken a water bottle in the face in the mid-90s, but one can never tell. The sordid history of Tulsa's violent live music is not the subject of this article; what is, in fact, the subject is how glad I am to be within driving distance of Memphis. Yet, is closer access to concerts what I really need? That is like a smoker looking to kick the habit moving to North Carolina.
After my first Widespread Panic concert in July, jam bands started to dominate the music to which I listened. So when I heard that moe. would be playing the New Daisy Theater in Memphis, there was no question that I would be among the crowd. At this point, if you are still reading, you might be wondering just who moe. is? Well friends and neighbors, since the "hiatus" of Phish, moe. and a host of other jam bands have been looking to inherit the title "kings of the jam bands," first held by the Grateful Dead. What separates moe. from a jam band like Phish or the String Cheese Incident is that, as Daniel Doyle '04 said, "[The others] are like conservatory trained musicians, and [moe.] is just like five guys jamming."
We arrived at the New Daisy about an hour before show time and milled about the ever-growing crowd. For those of you unfamiliar with the jam band "scene," it can be summed up as this: a bunch of rich, white kids dressed in expensive ragged clothes, yammering substance influenced babble about what awesome concerts they have seen in the past. Needless to say, I was not amused. To their credit, the jam band audience is among the nicest group of people you could meet. At how many other concerts will people apologize to you when you bump into them and spill their beer? But when the five decidedly normal gentlemen walked on stage and the house lights went down, that no longer mattered.
After my first Widespread Panic concert in July, jam bands started to dominate the music to which I listened. So when I heard that moe. would be playing the New Daisy Theater in Memphis, there was no question that I would be among the crowd. At this point, if you are still reading, you might be wondering just who moe. is? Well friends and neighbors, since the "hiatus" of Phish, moe. and a host of other jam bands have been looking to inherit the title "kings of the jam bands," first held by the Grateful Dead. What separates moe. from a jam band like Phish or the String Cheese Incident is that, as Daniel Doyle '04 said, "[The others] are like conservatory trained musicians, and [moe.] is just like five guys jamming."
We arrived at the New Daisy about an hour before show time and milled about the ever-growing crowd. For those of you unfamiliar with the jam band "scene," it can be summed up as this: a bunch of rich, white kids dressed in expensive ragged clothes, yammering substance influenced babble about what awesome concerts they have seen in the past. Needless to say, I was not amused. To their credit, the jam band audience is among the nicest group of people you could meet. At how many other concerts will people apologize to you when you bump into them and spill their beer? But when the five decidedly normal gentlemen walked on stage and the house lights went down, that no longer mattered.