All things considered, I enjoy doing a music blog. It’s a way for me to channel an immature impulse—searching for music online—into something somewhat constructive. But there is one "recurring feature" here that seems to be more punishing than the rest, one that I always dread; a feature that, before I start writing it, can feel like the process of taking a cold shower: I have to psych myself up to jump in, and only after I am done do I sense any sort of relief. I’m talking about Jam Band Chronicles.
Formed in 1995, The Disco Biscuits have been the most popular jam band in Philadelphia for a long time. I associate them with the "harder edged" side of the East Coast neo-hippie community, a scene filled with nitrous-dealing criminal syndicates, fitted baseball caps, and dalliances with rave culture. No doubt, The Disco Biscuits were one of the first jam bands to start incorporating elements of rave and electronic music into their sound. In the process, they created a style that they refer to as trance fusion, but more people might know as jamtronica. It’s the sonic equivalent of a glowstick in front of a black-light poster. We’re really in the weeds here.
All jam bands, even the second- or third-tier ones, have massive amounts of lore. For many years since the late ‘90s, The Disco Biscuits have thrown a weekend-long festival called Camp Bisco, which has booked LCD Soundsystem, Infected Mushroom, and every American dubstep DJ of note. The band has served as a pipeline between the jam world and the crunchier side of electronic music. They have also written multiple rock operas.
“M.E.M.P.H.I.S.” (Live at Cat’s Cradle 12/5/01)
By this point in my jam band journey, I’ve become fairly acquainted with the musical and stylistic boundaries that every one of these bands rubs against, without fail, no matter what corner of the scene they inhabit. To grade any jam band generously, you must adhere to the solipsistic logic of the contemporary jam band game; to compare a jam band to Miles Davis or Can or The Minutemen is to watch that logic break down.
The first nine minutes of "M.E.M.P.H.I.S." seem to be informed by Phish’s "cow funk" period. It’s a rhythmic, cosmic, tepid kind of jamming, one that crawls along and then opens up into some unremarkable shred. The fact that I am able to break down different eras of Phish is upsetting. Where the fuck am I going? Look at me, doing my precious little jam band research! Can’t grow up, no... I have to "figure out" the whole "jam band thing."
Around the nine-minute mark, the band starts to play in a more hybridized mode. The drums suggest, at least in a vague sense, the breakbeat splay of jungle; the keyboards, at least for a moment, use a nice pad setting, which, when paired with those drums, almost remind me of the aquatic drum and bass of LTJ Bukem. As for the song itself and not the jam… I’m sure that "M.E.M.P.H.I.S." was inspired by Phish, but I can’t help but catch a faint whiff of Sebadoh in the songwriting. If it were recorded on a 4-track with no keyboards, it would be a go for a different kind of Philadelphia independent music head.
“Cyclone” (Live at San Diego House of Blues 7/11/2007)
After original drummer Sammy Altman left the band in 2005, The Disco Biscuits held a two-night "drum off" in Atlantic City to decide his replacement. Of course they did. These jam bands are always doing wacky shit like that. In the end, Bisco associate Allen Aucoin was chosen. The new skinsman brought a more stripped-down, robotic playing style into the mix, which further helped the band separate themselves from the pack of more traditional jam units.
This 9-minute jam is the trance fusion concept realized. There’s moments where the instrumental sounds like nu-rave band The Klaxons, of all things. At around the six-minute mark, a dubby piano hits on the upbeat. It’s the most dialed-in, techno-aware gesture I have heard from the band, and it’s fleeting.
"Cyclone" is part of a longer block of music; it segues both into and then out of a song called "Spacebirdmatingcall." The whole run is like a DJ set and is over 30 minutes long. It’s worth noting that one of keyboardist Aron Magner’s main synths is the Roland JP-8000, which was made famous by the Finnish producer Darude on his trance anthem "Sandstorm."
“Wormhole->Evolve” (Live at The Clubhouse 8/10/23)
According to the online jam community, The Disco Biscuits have been on a hot streak lately. I love that these fans treat their favorite bands like sports teams. It’s an energy made possible, again, by a closed-circuit musical universe. It’s not a coincidence that one popular Phish YouTuber writes the band’s setlists out on a whiteboard, John Madden style (RIP).
Stepping outside of the game: For the first 15 minutes of this extended block, the guitar playing reminded me of !!!, a funky post-punk big band that has performed at Camp Bisco. That doesn’t last, though; if there is one thing that has tied together every band I have covered here, it is a lust for wailing, "Freebird"-style guitar climaxes. Within the context of The Disco Biscuits, the generous read would be to say that these peaks are the rock equivalent of the anthemic trance music that the band has partly modeled their sound after. Why am I so generous, though? Sometimes I listen to this music and get angry.
Live at Wetlands Preserve (5/1/1999)
The Wetlands seemed like an interesting club. In the ‘90s, the Tribeca venue was a hub for a strange mix of styles: not just jam bands, but also ska, hardcore, and neo-soul. Maybe I’ll watch that documentary about it again. Anyway, this set is an early high point for the band. Though they’ve been "playing well lately," most will agree that the Biscuits hit heights between 1999 and 2002 and then again from 2006 to 2009. Here, they construct a "musical palindrome" out of a four-song set. That’s some classic convoluted jam band shit right there.
As I watched the Wetlands gig, I thought about the wave of American post-rock that was happening around the same time. Were The Disco Biscuits just a more accessible version of Tortoise? I paused the video. I put on some Tortoise. The answer: no.
“Nughuffer” (Live at Bonnaroo 6/13/2008)
It would be hard for me to think of a better jam band song title than "Nughuffer." Live, it often comes with an extended spoken word story. That night at Bonnaroo, bass player Marc "Brownie" Brownstein spun a long yarn about getting pulled over by the cops while riding in the band’s tour bus. It’s a timeless bit of stoner comedy.... That shit will always work. In Brownie’s description of the band’s interaction with the cops and of the quality and quantity of the "Sour Motherfucking Diesel" that the police confiscate, the story takes on an almost pornographic texture.
Rightly or wrongly, and probably only because of a Village Voice expose I once read, I associate The Disco Biscuits with the Nitrous Mafia, a loose crew of violent laughing gas peddlers who run up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Extensive message board research has anecdotally confirmed that the band has some of the most "sketchy" fans in the scene. It only makes sense: they are the ultimate convergence of neo-hippie and rave; inside that venn diagram, things are going to get a little… Twisted. The band’s name is taken from a slang term for Quaaludes.
But there are plenty of ways to party. I have to give a shout out to The Digital Buddhas, a subset of Bisco fans who "love to get down and dirty, without the use of any mind-altering substances." You can find them at any gig by looking for the yellow balloons.