JamBase Launches a New Video Archive of 100,000 Streaming Concerts: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Brothers, Grateful Dead & Much More

Peo­ple do not tend to answer the ques­tion, “do you like Phish?” with, “yeah, I guess they’re okay.” Those who like Phish, love Phish, devot­ed­ly and with­out reser­va­tion. And those who don’t like Phish, well….

For the pur­pos­es of main­tain­ing objec­tiv­i­ty, I shall pre­tend to remain agnos­tic on the ques­tion, but I do hap­pen to think this kind of polar­iza­tion is a mark of great­ness, wher­ev­er one lands. Great art pro­vokes. What could be more provoca­tive than awe­some riffs, 20-minute jams, and obscure in-jokes? There is, admit­ted­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant you-had-to-have-been-there qual­i­ty to Phish fan­dom.…

Phish, and The Grate­ful Dead before them, have been instru­men­tal in keep­ing live music—played at length and with abandon—relevant, not only through their con­stant tour­ing but through the num­ber of bands in their orbit who inspire their own devot­ed fol­low­ings. Now the pan­dem­ic has made it impos­si­ble for fans of Phish, the String Cheese Inci­dent, the Dave Matthews Band, Wide­spread Pan­ic, or the Avett Broth­ers to make it out to shows.

To ease their pain, Jam­Base launched a Live Video Archive, a music aggre­ga­tor that allows fans to search 100,000 free stream­ing con­certs on YouTube. “Look­ing to find videos of Phish per­form­ing ‘Har­ry Hood’ in 2013? Enter ‘Har­ry Hood’ in the song fil­ter and you’ll see a list of every ver­sion in our data­base,” Jam­base explains.

“Use the ‘Event Year’ fil­ter to pick 2013. You’ll then see many videos to choose from. Press ‘Play’ to watch in the play­er or press ‘queue’ to start a list of videos that will dis­play in the order you select­ed to view at your leisure.”

Giv­en their audi­ence, JamBase’s cat­a­logue skews heav­i­ly toward jam and jam-adja­cent bands. But you’ll also find a huge archive of per­for­mances, over 14,000 clips, from Seat­tle inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion KEXP. “Per­for­mances from The Barr Broth­ers, Wilco, Jason Isbell and Yo La Ten­go are just a few of the dozens of acts fea­tured in KEXP videos on the JBLVA.”

JamBase’s own home­page is also full of great stuff for fans not only of jams and blue­grass bands but oth­er gen­res as well, from Lucin­da Williams’ grit­ty coun­try folk to Emi­ly King’s acoustic R&B, such as her lat­est sin­gle “See Me,” released in sup­port of Black Lives Mat­ter. These are tough times all around. It can be easy to lose sight of the good things we’re miss­ing as we watch cur­rent events unfold. Let the Jam­Base Live Video Archive remind us of groovy times we had, and will have again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness