Djam Karet

Came here to comment this, according to Google, their longest jam is 'Runaway Jim' which clocks in at just under an hour

It wasn't rare that music resonated for 6 hours when the Airplane crew held an evening.

'Dark Star' 'the other one' and 'Playing in the band' were often stretched to ridiculous lengths!

In the UK, probably Man were the main purveyors of lengthy jams in the 70's often built around riffs from 'Spunk rock', 'C'mon, 'Jam up Jelly tight' and 'Many are called but few get up'.

The Ozric Tentacles (particularly in the early days) used to improv and jam for f***in' hours (man)

Mountain Jam by the Allmans.. good call 

The Ozric's might have had some good jams, but they all died down after John left ... and all of a sudden you had a bass player not as good, a keyboard player having issues with the electronics, and a bit later another new bass player, and another keyboard player, seemingly only playing the saved pieces until another year or two and the kid could do things on his own ... though I still think he is too manipulated and not quite allowed to define his own moments, as it might throw dad off! (Different generation!!!) ... but at least mom is back in ... though I still think that Ed needs to loosen up and let everyone else play a little to help develop better/different stuff. The latest album is good, but not great compared to the stuff of before way back when we got into it! I have not, exactly heard any "jams" by the Ozric's and with the family line up I am not sure we will hear any, though Brandi is playing better, but still too set on what pappa does, and not challenging him. She has the music training, but somehow, I am not sure it translated well to rock music, and jams, and improvisations are not a Berkley graduate forte at all ... 

The whole concert by Vangelis in Rome in the 80s (I don't remember the exact year) was a single jam touching themes from his actually most famous works. Then he did a bis with Hymne.

The first album of Amon Duul is nothing else than a jam

Is this for real?! (what's your source of information?) Or just a rumor?! 

Ok, thanks. Interesting. A shame we'll never hear what that sounded like. 

Cheating slightly, but Nektar 'Sounds Like This' Disk 2 of the Esoteric Reissue is nigh on 75 mins of Jamming!

The Focus 50 Years Anthology 1970-76 boxset has a Live disk, which is 79 mins worth of jamming quite frankly, Eruption 46:47, followed by Birth 11:38 and Improvisations 1&2 / House Of The King 18:00 exactly... not for the feint hearted... 

Fair enough. 

There's a LOT of jamming in space rock, so bands like Space Debris would have a lot. 

Led Zeppelin has a live version of Dazed and Confused that clocks in at 29:18, (off of 'The Song Remains the Same')

Jimi Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile' (not to be confused with Voodoo Child (Slight Return)) is a little over 15 mins, definitely a jam. 

Kinda funny and strange for me, to see things labelled as a "jam" ... we don't say anything like that for Symphonies, or Concertos, but for rock music, it's a "jam".

I have never thought of these as a "jam", and many of them are excellent trip pieces of music, that carry you along really well, so, for me, hearing it called a "jam" makes me feel that it is all just notes and whatever else, and I seriously doubt that a lot of music is just that ... there is a lot of "improvisation" even going way back to India and other places where things are really long, and no one calls a "raga" a jam, for example.

There isn't any of the pieces mentioned, one I do not enjoy ... they are all fantastic, and way better than a "song" ... and this is the kind of stuff I really miss in music these days, as so many bands continue to use the same set of instruments, and the same formats, not to mention sound. And even going back to Miles, and some of the jazz folks from the 50's there were a lot of pieces available, but the recording ability was not there as the LP limited things to 20 minutes or so. It is well known that many of those jazz folks went a long way in their individuality ... which was difficult to put on record, even though the industry turn a blind eye to black music until it was impossible to ignore them in the mid 1960's. (Per Tom Dowd)

I wish we could teach folks to close their eyes and just fly with the music ... no lyrics necessary, and this might be the real issue with these long pieces. Many listeners might get "lost" since they can not figure out what is going on. Close your eyes and don't ask questions and you will soon know what is happening in the music via one of the senses. And, BTW, I learned this from a blind friend we had in the early days of Space Pirate Radio. 

Case closed.

Welcome to PA!  Lots of fun in here! 

Found this online: 

Hi,

Too long, is a bit scary in the way you describe it, because if the supporting band/musicians are capable of carrying it, instead of dropping the soloist off the cliff, then it is fine.

I think that we are considering these "solos" because we do not have the underlying material under it to define it better. I would almost say, for example, that calling a lot of Jon McGlothlin ... just "solo" pretty much suggests the rest of the band is worthless, and this is not the case. Same for Miles, although Miles is much tougher because no one, including his musicians, would know where he is going, and you have to stay with him in one way or another. And telling Miles he can not do this for ten minutes, he would probably kick your buckets and throw you out of the concert hall! And he would promptly do a 20 minute solo.

The problem with "solo" is that the rest of the band is being ignored, and that's not fair. A "jam" is not about a solo, it's about a band getting it on ... and us degenerating this thread to "solo" are hurting the subject. A lot of the psychedelic stuff out of SF (for example) was not designed, or defined as a solo at all ... it was all a part of the whole "trip" and seeing the members of JA saying that he went left, she went right, he went up and he went in another direction ... and it sounded far out ... that you can call a "jam", but defining a jam by the solo ... that's going in the wrong direction. 

BTW, it also show a lack of appreciation for a lot of European guitarists that did long things that can not exactly be considered a "solo" ... these would include Michael Karoli (Can) and John Weinzierl (AD2) and Manuel Gottsching (Ash Ra Tempel/Ashra) and Ax Gernrich (Guru Guru) in the early days, and they were not exactly the only ones. And they were not set to simplistic rock music at all ... although we might think of Manuel as a bit more "mechanical" which started with Ash Ra Tempel 6 (guitar on guitar on guitar and there was no solo since one of them could easily be the support for the other) and he went on his own since then. Even then, by this time RF was doing stuff that ended up thought of as ambient, starting with his first Eno work, while Richard Pinhas was doing the same ... it was about the music and its strength and totality, not about the solo, and I am not sure that RF would consider a lot of things he does a "solo" since they are another element within the piece of music, as if it was a symphony! 

We just don't seem to handle well anything that does not sound like rock'n'roll, and in Europe a lot of the early stuff from the 70's was not exactly rock'n'roll ... go listen to Mother Sky ... that is not a solo! I might even think that Damo's part is a solo, but that really destroys the totality of the piece!

We played at a festival with my band Sulphat'Ketamine nearly 4 years ago when our current bass player was not available, a friend of ours took his place but we had no time for any rehearsal, so we didn't play any of our songs and did an uninterrupted 131 mn jam instead. We were the last on the bill, starting playing at 7 am. 

https://forum.phish.net/forum/show/1378770734" rel="nofollow - https://forum.phish.net/forum/show/1378770734

All jambands in concert: Phish, Umphrey's McGee, String Cheese Incident, Gov't Mule, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, moe, Goose, Joe Russo's Almost Dead, Ghost Light, Railroad Earth etc.etc.

Trackable concerts on Youtube.

The Flower Kings~Garden Of Dreams from Flower Power on LP is 2-1/2 sides at about 60min long.

 

 

Metanoia is probably one of my favourite PT lps for that reason and doubtless they could have tapped that vein for much more creative juices to flow.. but, alas, they didnt. There were, no doubt, lots of versions and variations of their 'Moonloop' jam (PT's 'Dark Star' if you will ) and maybe some different lengths and forms will surface. SW's always had too itchy feet to settle on anything for long.. guess he had just been listening to 'Can' and wanted to tap into their telepathic way of improvising..

In a similar vein, Acid Mothers Temple just pretty much all their recorded and live output is just long, improvised jams..
 

Itchy feet, eh? Maybe that's why he always performs barefoot.

The album version of "Echoes" has a duration of twenty-three minutes. The "Meddle" sessions began with an experiment that resulted in an opening clang. After a few plinks, David Gilmour's slide guitar gradually enters the mix. Gilmour and Roger Waters harmonise while playing a riff. Subsequently, David Gilmour plays a guitar solo before reprising the same riff for the following ingenious funk-tinged psychedelic rock jam. 

My thoughts exactly 

Thank you for this contribution, I'd never heard of it!  I'm going to use this as a track to jam over (electric guitar).  

One of the Floyd boots I have has a version of "Embryo" that's close to 25 minutes long. They must not have stretched it out that long very often or maybe it was only on one tour, because it's the only boot with a version so long. It's good! Although its length relies less on jamming than on extensive chorus-repetition. But there's jamming too.

In Germany, the Spacelords were founded in the spring of 2008. Their album "Spaceflowers," released in 2020, is simply incredible. From that album, there's a space-rock jam called "Cosmic Trip" that clocks in at 24 and a half minutes.

I Found a Star on the Ground from the Strobo Trip EP is six hours long and the main reason I feel The Flaming Lips belongs on PA. It's actually rerally great:

-and here's the first twelve hours of the twenty four hour long 7 Skies H3 - but I've only listened to snippets myself:

The German instrumental group Eiliff, which was formed in the late 1960s by Rainer Brüninghaus, Houschäng Nejadepour, Detlev Landmann, Herbert J. Kalveram, and Bill Brown, impressed a German jazz-rock audience with two studio albums that featured sophisticated jamming with keyboards, bass, and guitar, along with some ethnic instruments. 

Their self-titled album (1971), which includes extended jams and intricate grooves, has some amazing electric piano and Hammond organ, wild guitar, and saxophone interplay. These guys jam in a very jazzy, hard-rocking style, occasionally incorporating Far Eastern musical elements. 

"Suite" is an outstanding psychedelic jam that combines powerful keyboards, amazing guitars, and incredibly forceful sax sections. There's a lovely raga humming sitar break in the middle of the song, prior to the band plunging back into a wild, disorganised jazzy rock frenzy. It is more than twenty minutes long.

Having been formed in 1968, the eight-piece Danish band Dr. Dopo Jam had a distinctively late 1960s psychedelic hippy vibe. There are meanderings through jazz-rock synthesis since they also had extended jam sessions that were accentuated by the progressive rock dress of the era. This is an enthralling 25-minute "Opening HELLO" suite from their first record, "Entree," released in 1973. They were able to skillfully incorporate multiple styles into their jam.

Düde Dürst was a drummer from Krokodil, an ensemble of krautrockers from Switzerland. His solo album (1971) has two side-long, lengthy instrumental tracks with a variety of moods and hues and a krautrock vibe that comes from lovely kosmische jamming. This features a lot of elements and amazing percussion pieces that are truly progressive. 

"Chemical Harvest" is a magnificent improvisation that begins with soulful and psychedelic jazz notes and then descends into a mysterious darkness with unusual instrumentation and atmospheres reminiscent of mantras. The song's structure is mostly based on an extensive drum set. The atmosphere is cinematic, eerie, and ritualistic. A bright, cheerful jazz-rocky instrumental featuring dancing flutes and sweeping piano melodies closes the performance. This 20-minute-long track is the quintessential early 70s krautrock and a no-brainer recommendation for lovers of unorthodox, freely improvised jam.