Jambands: The Complete Guide to the Players, Music, and Scene

Rating:
Summary: Summarizing the history and style of each jamband
Review: A highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library American Music History reference collections, Jambands: The Complete Guide To The Players, Music & Scene by Dean Budnick (founder of Jambands.com and creator of the Jammy Awards) is an impressive catalogue of more than 170 musical groups, ranging from Phish and the Allman Brothers, to Ten Ton Chicken and Moon Boot Lover. Summarizing the history and style of each jamband in a single column, along with relevant websites and a one to five star rating, Jambands distills and reviews music groups with the cutting edge keenness and wry insight. An accompanying music CD offers a variety of sample songs, including some rare tracks.

Rating:
Summary: Summarizing the history and style of each jamband
Review: A highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library American Music History reference collections, Jambands: The Complete Guide To The Players, Music & Scene by Dean Budnick (founder of Jambands.com and creator of the Jammy Awards) is an impressive catalogue of more than 170 musical groups, ranging from Phish and the Allman Brothers, to Ten Ton Chicken and Moon Boot Lover. Summarizing the history and style of each jamband in a single column, along with relevant websites and a one to five star rating, Jambands distills and reviews music groups with the cutting edge keenness and wry insight. An accompanying music CD offers a variety of sample songs, including some rare tracks.

Rating:
Summary: A quantum leap beyond Dean's earlier book
Review: If you're familiar with the first incarnation of a book called *Jambands* by Dean Budnick, this is the very same guy but a completely different book. I was troubled by the first version's compilation of press photos with prose that read like official bios, with few details about actual album releases, and with an unswerving politeness throughout about all of the acts included.

Here, instead, are a nice seletion of live photos, with studied attention to select releases, and even a ratings system which comparatively evaluates those releases, combined with fair and balanced reflections in Dean's inimitable writing style.

You still won't find the level of forthrightness you might want from a music critic. (No one included "sucks" if you accept Dean's spin. Perhaps this is because he's weeded out the carp, but even many of those included wallow in mediocrity.) But the break from a glossy fluff package towards an in-depth and reflective study is a quantum leap above and beyond the earlier book. And the presentation, layout, and overall delivery is a far more engaging and enticing package.

Besides, Dean's not a music critic. He's an historian and a scholar of American culture, and that's what you'll get here: a thorough slice of jambands currency, an historic epoch in American culture.