The Grammy Awards never had a tapers section like the one at New York's Irving Plaza Thursday for the first-time Jammys, a far-flung and exceedingly more chillin' cousin in celebration of the jamband scene. But then, awards were secondary to seeing who was going to play with whom in the night's wildly cross-pollinated performances -- a smartly timed preview of sorts to who's showing up at this weekend's Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Conn.

"The younger audience is into so much diversity, and that's the key," once-categorized jazz guitarist John Scofield said of a show which ranged from bluegrass to techno (actually more of the latter), from the blues (including Susan Tedeschi's belting of the standard "Feels So Bad" with Allman Brothers Band offshoot Frogwings) to, hey, a tribute to the Grateful Dead.

Actually, the Dead were only one of eight honorees inducted into the Jammys Hall of Fame, and there was some confusion over whom that pool included when it came to the night's tribute-oriented jams. Scofield spent as much time trading hot licks with organ trio Soulive on his own "Hottentot" as a snippet of Parliament-Funkadelic 's "Knee Deep." Les Claypool was slated to honor Miles Davis in a cameo with the Disco Biscuits, but instead steered a gonzo techno-funk jam through Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" and the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." The Primus bassist (who seemed to realize in mid-jam that within the Biscuits' sick groove, he could throttle flanged-out high notes) even wound around to the closing line "And she's buying a stairway to . . . "

No, Led Zeppelin weren't inducted either. But nobody seemed to care in a free-wheeling atmosphere where everybody just wanted to play. "Really, this is from the heart -- it's not a financial thing," said Merl Saunders , the night's elder statesman at age sixty-three, whose roots lead back to the San Francisco psychedelic era. Fittingly, Saunders lent hearty organ leads to Deep Banana Blackout's faithful big-band flare-up of Santana's "Everybody's Everything" (which segued into Frank Zappa's "I Am the Slime" to nail the tribute format) and the Dead's "Fire on the Mountain" with Vermont's savvy Strangefolk .

Amazingly, the whole show clocked in on time at four-and-a-half hours, framed by all-star jams involving Saunders, Scofield and members of the Slip, Deep Banana, moe., Soulive and Foxtrot Zulu along the way. The pacing was rusty early on (not surprisingly for the first-time undertaking by Jambands.com), and first performers the New Deal and the Slip were out of their league in paying tribute, respectively, to bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe and Bob Dylan. The Toronto-based New Deal wove a two-step Americana flavor around a zippy, DJ-inspired jam, while the Slip loosely wove Dylan into its jazz-funk instrumentals -- except for guitarist Brad Barr's vocalizing of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright."

But excitement rose during the guitar-fed fever of Scofield's showdown with Soulive's Eric Krasno, and a bold showing by the jazzy Allmans subset Frogwings, led by the searing twin leads of Derek Trucks and Jimmy Herring, who's filling Dickey Betts' chair in the Allmans. Allman's aide-de-camp Kirk West also paid respects to the late Dead archivist Dick Latvala.

For the record, there were several awards too, with voting categories split between an industry panel coordinated by Jambands.com and online fans (about 10,000 of whom reportedly participated, with one vote per e-mail address). "Release of the Year" went to the Dead's So Many Roads, "Live Release of the Year" to moe.'s L and "Studio Release of the Year" to Percy Hill's Color in Bloom. Phish landed "Live Set of the Year" for their seven-hour millennial morning set in the Everglades (big surprise there), though the Disco Biscuits beat out Phish and String Cheese Incident among others for "Jam of the Year" for their own New Year's celebration. In his acceptance speech, Biscuits guitarist Jon Gutwillig even thanked Mark Brownstein, the group's former bassist whose recent departure was not amicable.

But this was a night of good vibes all around, as about 1,000 fans packed Irving Plaza to drink and hang out with their buds in the shadow of the jams. And not only did musicians get to mix and match ("It's a new avenue for me to go down that reminds me of the old days," said Claypool, who recently got his feet wet in jamland with Trey Anastasio in Oysterhead), but the winners were each handed a big bowl. No, no, no, a big silver commemorative bowl -- empty.

PAUL ROBICHEAU
(June 24, 2000)