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At some blurry point in their evolutionary unfolding, the Grateful Dead became like a tree: rooted in the earth yet ever lumbering upward and outward in all directions, at once terrestrial and celestial, visceral and spiritual, wooden and sappy, with myriad branches serving a single trunk, a body comprised of concentric rings, the inseparable fusion of past, present and future, sustaining growth with unwavering patience, in no hurry to go anywhere in particular. Now, in its fullness, that tree is bearing fruit in the form of the increasingly popular and diverse jambands -- or "Gobi" bands, as they are called in some circles -- currently proliferating in the clubs and festivals that comprise the American grassroots underground.

Like the music of the Grateful Dead, Gobi music is music that flies below the radar, or perhaps more accurately, "too high" above the radar. As critic Richard Gehr puts it, this is music that is "flourishing outside pop culture's surveillance mechanisms." And yet, despite the lack of mainstream media coverage, the popularity of these post-Dead jambands is, according to Gehr, "fueling what may be America's hottest underground rock scene." There is much about the Gobi scene that bears resemblance to the Grateful Dead Scene, but there are also stark divergences.

To continue the tree metaphor, one wonders how many, if any, of these bands will take root and thrive as organically, self-sufficiently, and completely as the Grateful Dead. Will the Dead phenomenon be duplicated in some mutated form? Or will the fruit remain just that, merely offspring, never growing to full maturity, never equalling the stature of the parent? Which of this fruit will be picked off the branch, perhaps prematurely, and be swallowed up by the music industry's voracious corporate appetite for product? Which of this fruit will fall to the ground and rot from from long years of touring and playing to a tiny audience of diehard acolytes but struggling terminally amid the indifference of the mainstream pop music audience?

The Gobi scene has its origins in the unique flowering of family fandom that was the essence of the relationship the Deadheads had (or imagined they had) with their favorite band, the Grateful Dead. Typified by a willingness to follow the group anywhere, lured by the constant promise that the next show would produce nothing less than the shining forth of the very Divine spirit, comforted by a treasured bond with fellow outcasts, freaks, and diligently nontraditional citizens of the "other America," Deadheads developed a coherent subculture, replete with a private shared vocabulary, part code/part slang, a symbolic and resonant iconography, a tacit set of social customs for interaction both outside the venue, where the congregants gathered for prophecy and storytelling, and inside, at "The Show," where the ark of the covenant was opened and God spoke: the music as Eucharist.

Sociologists have studied and continue to study the various aspects of this alternative society that coalesced around its nomadic devotion to the band. The music became scripture, and Jerry Garcia, against his own wishes and tendencies, was endowed with -- depending on the individual adherent -- the role of either Guru or, in more extreme cases, Deity.

Nothing so extreme nor fully realized has occurred in the Gobi scene, but an energy and an impulse reminiscent of Deaddom is omnipresent in the clusters of fans that follow the Dead's descendents around the country; however, something is missing, something essential, to complete the picture, an intangible lack, something that doesn't quite shine all the way through, so that none of the post-Dead jambands has yet achieved the "utterness," the total picture provided by the 30-year saga of the Grateful Dead.

This is not to say that the Gobi scene isn't brilliant in its own particular way. I was an early fan of the genre and one of the first people to start playing these bands regularly on the radio. Therefore, my questions and criticisms come from a place of tremendous faith in and devotion to the form. Obviously, the Gobi scene is fulfilling a profound need in a growing number of music fans. But what exactly is this "scene?" Why the term "Gobi?" First, the term "Gobi" (thought to have originated among the devotees of veteran jam freaks the Ominous Seapods) refers to the essentially nomadic, relatively unwashed and spare lifestyles of the genre's most avid and active followers, as if they were wanderers in the vast desert -- hence the "Gobi" reference -- of a mainstream American culture seen by these disaffected and marginalized pilgrims as soulless, devoid of any potential for spiritual transformation and ultimate ascendence into some exalted realm of being.

The Gobi scene, interestingly, overlaps with the latter years of the Grateful Dead and is often broken down into "Second-Generation" bands and "Third-Generation" bands. The Second-Generation tends to be thought of as bands that established their professional reputation while the Grateful Dead were themselves still touring. This would include, but is not limited to, bands such as Phish, The Blues Traveller, and Widespread Panic. The Third-Generation is most often thought of as bands that might have started playing while the Dead were still active but came into real prominence following the death of Jerry Garcia and the dissolution of the Grateful Dead in 1995. As there are hundreds of these bands, and as this is not intended to be an exhaustive study (but rather an overview) of the the Gobi scene, I will identify several bands that I consider especially influential: moe., the Ominous Seapods, the Disco Biscuits, and String Cheese Incident.

Another term we should look at is this term "jamband." What is a jamband? In its simplest terms a jamband is a purveyor of exploratory rock and roll. By this I mean a tendency toward a relationship with music that is geared toward transcendence; this most commonly includes an underlying improvisational aesthetic, a belief in the power of the always present moment, a faith in the spontaneous wisdom of Now. Not knowing in advance every note in an exact sequence is seen as crucial to the openness of mind that allows the music to expand and inflate, to crack open a new vista on eternity. This basic aesthetic -- music as transport -- requires that each show be different, a guarantee that one will never have the exact same experience twice. Furthermore, jambands tend to share the idea that the music is made as much by the audience as it is by the players, involving the participation of the entire room, so that everyone is complicit in the act, the magic happenstance. For this conjunction and subsequent synergy to occur, there must exist a natural tendency to engage the "kind vibe" and a willingness to embrace everything, including the freakish and the mutant. Also typical in jambands is an attraction to mystery and surprise, the accidental progeny of hybrid forms, misfit children in exile from the mainland.

The Gobi aesthetic is not new, of course. The tradition originates, at least in the rock and roll world, with the Grateful Dead and their emphasis on musical improvisation as well as generous borrowing and appropriation from a variety of musical genres synthesized into a modern sound. For the Grateful Dead these influences included bluegrass, country/western, folk, rock and roll, jazz, and classical music. For the contemporary jamband, influences also include zydeco, funk, punk, heavy metal, progressive rock, electronica, and hip-hop. The Grateful Dead, of course, developed an unusually devoted audience through their ability to use music as a vehicle for psychic/emotional/spirtual catharsis and as a portal to altered states of consciousness, artificially induced or otherwise. The young jambands (and their audiences) share this bent as well.

Critically, too, these bands share the same critical fate as the Grateful Dead: The psychedelic jam has long been and will presumably remain an underappreciated art form, usually dismissed as indulgent, irrelevant, inconsequential muzak for people on drugs. Bands that produce such epic stories in sound are not taken seriously as factors in the development of popular music, and are, when not totally ignored, often an object of derision or the butt of some silly joke. This will probably always be the case. Jam music requires an attention span that the majority of the American audience does not have and is not likely to develop. There's too much simple and instant gratification available in pop music for any significant number of people ever to prefer the Gobi scene's more complex and labor-intensive mindful pleasures. Another reason is that the extended format of jam music does not lend itself well to the time constraints of commercial media. That avenue of communication is sealed shut to most jambands.

The inbred anti-corporate attitude of the bands in the scene does not create an atmosphere that is conducive to success, at least not in the traditional capitalist sense of the word. For this reason, I believe Gobi music will remain underground, as a vibrant subculture, happening but hidden. The economic reality of the contemporary jamband is one of pretty bleak financial rewards. On the other hand, these hardships create, to a certain extent, a spirit of cooperation among the bands because they sense that none of them is likely to get a recording contract, hence no reason to compete. If we want to romanticize their plight, we could say that the jambands maintain a certain purity which ennobles the eternal outsider, moving through the harsh reality of shadows and phantoms, protected and blessed by what Bob Weir once referred to as "misfit power."

With this foreknowledge of probable relative oblivion, the ordeal of being a rock and roll band must include creative handling of the band's economic affairs. Taking their cue from the Dead, most young jambands remain completely independent of corporate culture, including the mightiest media outlets, and employ a "do-it-yourself" ethos that involves the recording and distribution of music, selling one's own tickets and merchandise during self-promoted and self-financed touring back and forth across the country, relatively free from the control of the industry giants, who like to shape their signed artists into a profit-earning commodity with little concern for vision or integrity.

Allowing audience members to record and trade tapes of live performances is another widely practiced aspect of the scene derived from the Grateful Dead. Rather than viewing bootleg tapes as a threat to album sales, the Dead learned fairly early on that free taping and trading could spread the word about the band far more cheaply than traditional advertising and without the need to rely on radio airplay and press reviews (which were unlikely to come anyway). Add to this the use of telephone hotlines, newsletters, and, now, websites and internet listserves (which allow new bands to establish a presence on the scene with unprecedented swiftness), and one finds a vibrant, efficient, effective underground economic community. Contemporary jambands owe a debt to the Dead's trailblazing work in ennabling the independent artist to earn a living in today's often brutal music world.

As the Second-Generation jambands have been long established, I will not be lingering over their accomplishments. Phish, of course, until their "hiatus" began in November of 2000, were the reigning monarchs of the Gobi scene. Seventeen years of honing their sound resulted in a presentation that was familiar yet surprising, and though their music bears very little resemblance to the Grateful Dead beyond the penchant for extended improvisation, still the scene and vibe that surrounded a Phish show was probably the closest approximation we have to the source experience.

Less known but in many ways more interesting are the Third-Generation jambands. It is here that we see even greater divergence from the essential Dead sound, the apple falling "furthur" from the tree, as it were. Whereas most early jambands closely mirrored the Dead's sonic palette -- many of them actually began as Grateful Dead cover bands -- now diversity is the order of the day.

An increasing number of jam bands are emerging who play what is, essentially, instrumental jazz music, which makes sense, since jazz is the very embodiment of the improvisational aesthetic. It's difficult to predict whether a true hybrid form will be born of this union or whether these young bands will simply be absorbed into the modern jazz world.

Appalachian music plays an important role in the music of many jambands, especially bluegrass music, which, again, is not surprising, as Jerry Garcia began his music ventures as a banjo player and maintained that bluegrass tinge and color throughout his tenure with the Dead. Jazz and bluegrass, of course, are heavily associated with the Grateful Dead. It's the other genres that are creeping into jam music which pull the Third-Generation bands away from the mothership. New Orleans swamp-funk, '70s guitar-rock, progressive rock, zydeco, and now electronic dance music and hip-hop stylings are finding their way into Gobi shows.

Although there are hundreds of great jam bands zig-zagging across the country today, I shall mention the four that I consider the most significant in recent years. I choose them because I believe they are doing the most groundbreaking work in moving the genre forward and in appealing to a fairly broad audience, at least by Gobi standards.

First of all, moe., out of upstate New York, has developed a large and loyal audience through its balls-to-the-wall intensity, coupled with virtuoso playing and excellent songwriting. Combining '70s guitar-rock flavors with progressive-rock time changes and complexities, moe. is spacy and rocking, earthy, engaging, quirky, funny, creating a thrilling space in which to boogie and float. The guitar pyrotechnics of Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier drive the band in several directions at once, building to climaxes -- or "moe.gasms" -- while Rob Derhak's burly-buddha voice and a stable of interesting, artful, well-crafted songs complete the moe. presentation.

On the darker, punkier side of things are the Ominous Seapods from Albany, New York. A mixture of funk, psychedelic, and porno-soundtrack styles, the music of the Ominous Seapods bubbles up out of some primordial darkness, like a skanky ooze that is at once frightening, profound, archetypal, erotic, incendiary, purgatorial. They map out a territory not for the faint of heart or mind, a place of irrational longing and lostness. For most of their 12-year career (they started playing together in 1989), the Ominous Seapods were led by the ingenious and fearless guitar playing of Max Verna, whose dizzy explorations of the heavenly depths gave the Seapods their distinctive signature. With his departure at the end of 1998, the band was forced to call upon their inner resources, each attendant member stepping up to new levels of performance. Rhythm guitarist, singer and chief songwriter Dana Monteith churns like a holy funkmeister and writes some of the best songs in the genre. Tom Pirozzi's melodic basslines complement Ted Marotta's crystalline drumming accompaniment, while Todd Pasternack's sizzling and poetic lead guitar, and Brian "Dark Horse" Mangini's wizard-stew organ textures provide the mutant menace which is The Seapods' forte. Although the Ominous Seapods hung up their touring shoes with a series of shows this past summer (2001) and will no longer function as a band, their contribution to the latter-day Gobi scene will remain indelible.

Perhaps the most adventurous of the Third-Generation Gobi bands are the Disco Biscuits, who have taken a bold step away from the earthier "hippy-rock" of the majority of jam groups and are mapping out a territory much closer to Goa-trance music from the electronic dance world. A Disco Biscuits show, without doubt, has the feeling of a Rave. When keyboardist Aaron Magner introduced a Roland synthesizer into the Bisco sound, many Gobi enthusiasts, used to raunchy, dominating rock guitar, were appalled, and though nobody actually shouted out, "Judas!," the reaction was similar to that of the folk purists (Jerry Garcia among them!) who revolted when Bob Dylan plugged in his electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. But with the addition of the synthesizer and Jon Gutwillig's trippy repetitive guitar lines, the Disco Biscuits are really pioneering a sub-genre that I have been calling "technodelia," though the Biscuits call their sound "trance-fusion," and detractors mockingly call it "hippy-hop." In my estimation, they are exploring deeper space than any jamband on the planet right now. I predict that in the coming couple of years we will see a slow merging of the Gobi and Rave scenes (for both "events" emphasize extended mind-altering experiences) and that the Disco Biscuits will sit at the nexus of that convergence. Other excellent bands, such as Sound Tribe Sector 9, the New Deal, and Lake Trout, are also engaged in this burgeoning "crossover culture," but the Disco Biscuits continue to create the most complete merging of the two aesthetics.

Finally, the band most likely to break through to an acceptance much closer in size to that of the Grateful Dead is a bluegrass-oriented outfit called String Cheese Incident. Their masterful musicianship and user-friendly lilting jams invite the audience to a big infectious "hippie hoedown." The popularity of String Cheese Incident is expanding exponentially with each tour they make across the country, and word is spreading that these guys offer a good time akin to the good times felt at a Dead show. They have an easy-going accessibility and lightness that is less intense than moe., less dark and disturbed than the Ominous Seapods, and less cutting-edge than the Disco Bisuits. Led by Michael Kang's mandolin and fiddle and Kyle Hollingsworth's piano and organ, String Cheese Incident sits poised to succeed Phish as the preeminent act to catch along the Gobi trail.

But will Phish or String Cheese Incident or moe. or the Ominous Seapods or the Disco Biscuits or the numerous other talented bands touring the jam circuit ever achieve the all-encompassing fully realized artistic journey that was the 30-year trek of the Grateful Dead? In my opinion, the answer is a resounding NO. Why? For one thing, all of these bands lack charismatic, multi-faceted artists like the members of the Grateful Dead, folks with truly wide-path minds. Second, although bands like moe. and the Ominous Seapods write excellent songs, none of the Gobi groups has produced a lyricist with the broad vision of a Robert Hunter, a true poet capable of expressing the full range of human emotions. The younger songsmiths, though talented and clever, tend to shy away from the more evocative and tender expressions one hears expressed in Grateful Dead tunes and resort to a kind of ironic distance, wherein humor replaces sentiment and enigmatic riddles substitute for meaningful statements, while their attempts at penning more sincerely thoughtful words are too often sophomoric or cliché or didactically heavy-handed, lacking the dance of the music they are supporting.

As my friend David Gans said to me once during a conversation we had about the contemporary Jam-Rock Scene, "These bands can make you dance, and they can make you laugh, and sometimes they can even make you think. But none of them can make you cry."

And for all of their Hippy-Trippy space-jams, the Grateful Dead offered, among other things, moments of passionately honest tragedy and heartache, the ineluctable truth of mortality, a constant acknowledgement that we're all going to die one day. Although contemporary jam music is thrilling, fascinating, and can provide thunderously powerful musical experiences, unless it is eventually blessed with a bard of elevated voice, I believe its lack of poetic brilliance and its resistance to a sense of basic human earthy sadness will result in the genre's ultimately falling short of the Grateful Dead's remarkably complete achievement, a miraculous flowering that will, in all probability, never be duplicated.

If you're a Dead-lovin' Southern Californian, you know Barry Smolin as the host of KPFK's The Music Never Stops, a Friday-evening radio nexus for all things psychedelic.

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