Live At Myrtle Beach

Performer: Widespread Panic
Engineer: Billy Field; Billy Field
Producer: Widespread Panic; Widespread Panic
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Widespread Panic: John Bell (vocals, guitar); John Hermann (vocals, keyboards); Dave Schools (bass guitar); Domingo Ortiz, Todd Nance, George McConnell. Personnel: George McConnell (vocals, guitar); John Herman (vocals, keyboards); Dave Schools (vocals); Todd Nance (drums); Domingo Ortiz (percussion). Additional personnel: John Keane (guitar). Audio Mixer: John Keane. Recording information: The House Of Blues, Myrtle Beach, SC. Photographers: Thomas Smith; Flournoy Holmes. The members of Widespread Panic seem to have contented themselves with the notion of the band's audience being exactly what it is. Given the records they've issued in the last couple of years, they no longer seem ambitious about growing to reach anyone else. (For one thing, when was the last time the band did a studio recording?) This is too bad, because the world of popular music is almost always one of diminishing returns: if a band has no ambition, many of its own fans will eventually grow tired and look elsewhere for excitement. Live at Myrtle Beach is a rote set by a band that is increasingly becoming rote in its method and expression. If you are a "spreadhead," there may be something here for you in these live versions of songs that have been trotted out before along with a couple of interesting covers -- most notably "Dirty Business," originally done by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. The other cover is Robert Johnson's "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," which is workmanlike and doesn't get to the heights it could on a more inspired set. Ultimately, this is exactly what you'd expect, two discs of Widespread Panic live, doing just what they do without really reaching for more. ~ Thom Jurek

Though they started out in the '80s in Athens, GA, Widespread Panic are as far as can be from what was known then as the "Athens scene" (R.E.M, Let's Active, Pylon, etc.). Instead, they were among the first of a new wave of jam bands picking up the baton of '60s psychedelic warriors like the Grateful Dead. Though their improvisational skills earned them a huge following, WP bore an important difference from peers like Phish; they had a distinctly Southern sound that mixed rock, jazz, and a bit of Dixie, much in the manner of key influences the Allman Brothers and the Dregs.

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