Welcome back to Shecky's Jam Bands. I'm Shecky and I want to start today with a question. What do you get when a bunch of college kids at University of Pennsylvania look around at the jam band world and the rave world and decide, you know what, we're going to live in both of these places at the same time. You get the Disco Biscuits, Philadelphia's transfusion pioneers, one of the most original and relentlessly creative bands in the history of live music. and today we're going all the
way in. The year is 1993, University of Pennsylvania. Guitarist John Gutwillig, who everyone would eventually call the barber, meets bassist Mark Brownstein, who goes by Brownie. They start playing music together. Mostly Grateful Dead and Fish covers at frat houses and house parties. They pick up original drummer Sam Altman, and a rotating cast of others. At various points they call themselves Party Tent and Zex C, which honestly are both
terrible band names. They know this. Then in 1995 keyboardist Aaron Magner joins and something clicks into place. And this is also the year they get their name. And I need to tell you this story. because Mark Brownstein told it to Spin Magazine and said he'd never told it publicly before. The band was headed to the Jersey Shore for a party, all crammed into a car, and one of their friends, totally impromptu, turns to the group and says, hey, you guys, you want to
go find some disco biscuits? And Mark says they all looked at each other and said, boom, that's the name. Now... Here's the wrinkle Brownstein was happy to admit to. He says at the time he didn't even know what disco biscuits meant. His friend was looking for Quaaludes, the 1970s sedative that was slang for disco biscuits back in the day. By the time they named the band, the slang had shifted and disco biscuits had become street
slang for ecstasy instead. So the band's name came from a car full of college kids headed to the Jersey Shore party a friend asking about drugs, and a collective decision that this accidental phrase was too good to pass up. Welcome to the Disco Biscuits. For the first few years, the Biscuits were a solid band in the fish tradition. Good musicians, good shows, growing college following. But in late 1997, something changed that altered the course of not just their career, but an entire
genre. Keyboardist Aaron Magner got a Roland JP -8000 synthesizer, an analog modeling synth that could produce those driving, pulsating electronic sounds associated with trance and EDM music. And he started incorporating it into the live setup. And suddenly, the jam band improvisations, which were already strong, had this completely different dimension underneath them. Electronic, driving repetitive in a hypnotic and almost ritualistic
way. The rhythms came from the rave floor, but they were being played live on real instruments with the spontaneity of jazz. Nobody has done this before, not like this, not this level of commitment. Original drummer Sam Altman described one of their early breakthrough moments a Halloween show in 1997, where they just started playing this groove, this eight -bar loop, and kept going. It was real repetitious, he said, but the music was going places we never imagined it could.
They called the style Trance Fusion, and it wasn't a marketing term. It was genuinely accurate. Trance Structure's jam band improvisation played entirely live, with no samples, no backing tracks. Just four people turning a rock show into something that felt like a rave and a jam session happening simultaneously. The Disco Biscuits basically created a new genre and you could see the impact immediately. Bands like STS -9, which we covered in an earlier episode of the show, came up right
behind them exploring the same space. The crowd that came to the Biscuits shows became one of the most genuinely mixed audiences in live music. One reviewer described it as, The biscuits spoke to all of them. Alright, I'm picking one song to send to you, and I'm going with, Yes, Space Bird made him call. This song is everything the Disco Biscuits are. Ridiculous and brilliant at the same time. It lives in their 2002 album,
Señor Boombox. And the moment it begins, you understand what transfusion actually means in practice. There's a pulsing, almost alien groove at the center of it. Gutwilig's guitar weaves through it all. like something being broadcast from orbit. Magner's synths create this layered swirling atmosphere and underneath it all, Brownstein's bass is just locked in, absolutely merciless. This is either thrilling or baffling, depending
on your familiarity with their catalog. Space Bird, Made in Call is the song that can ease you in. It's got melody, it's got groove, It's got hypnotic electronic quality that is pure biscuits. Press play on a live version and just let it happen. Okay, here's a story I've been building toward. By 2006, the Disco Biscuits had replaced their founding drummer Sam Altman, who left to go to medical school, by holding a two -night sold -out drum -off at the Borgata
Casino in Lenox City. An open audition for a drum chair at a casino. that is very Disco Biscuit's approach to problem solving. They choose Alan Auken and the new lineup was Electric. In April 2007 the band unveiled something entirely new, a performance under an alias called Tractor Beam. The concept was simple and bold. Tractor Beam was the Disco Biscuit's but completely instrumental, no vocals and designed to feel more like a DJ set than a rock show, something closer to a club
experience than a concert. Described by the band as something more akin to a DJ club set, the lights changed, the vibe changed, the approach to improvisation changed. The Mr. Don that night was described as mammoth. Fans who experienced both 1998 original and the 2007 Tractor Beam version called it one of the most meaningful musical experiences they'd had at any show from any band. It wasn't just improvisation. It was
memory made audible. History played live. The band released the full soundboard recording of that Tractor Beam show for free download to celebrate the Jammies nomination. It's on the internet archive right now. Go find it. It's extraordinary. Alright, some things that make the Biscuits generally unique. They scored live films. The Disco Biscuits have improvised live music scores to full films during their shows, including Akira in 1999, Tron in 2015, The Fifth Element in 2023, and
2001 A Space Odyssey in 2024. The entire band watches the film and improvises in real time. No rehearsal, no pre -planned score, just four musicians reacting to Kubrick and Miyazaki live on stage in front of an audience. Mark Brownstein co -founded Headcount. In 2004, bassist Brownie co -founded Headcount with Andy Bernstein, a national non -partisan non -profit with partners with musicians to register voters at concerts.
If you've ever registered to vote at a live music show, there's a real chance head count was behind that table. Camp Bisco started by accident. In May 1999, the band was supposed to play a set at the All Good Music Festival that got cancelled. A dedicated group of fans had already camped
out and dubbed their campsite Camp Bisco. The band took the hint That August they hosted the first official Camp Bisco music festival which grew over nearly two decades into a full -scale event featuring Skrillex, Bass Nectar, STS -9, Pretty Lights, and Gramatik alongside the Biscuits themselves. Last fact that you might find interesting is they actually play songs backwards. They're inverted and dyslexic. approaches to song structure
are genuinely unique in live music. An inverted song begins with its ending, a dyslexic version has its sections scattered across the set, and a fake out is when they jam toward one song and pivot to another. Songs can start one night and finish the next. The Biscuits treat their set lists like puzzles for fans to decode. Here's what I keep on coming back to at the Disco Biscuits.
They've invented something. Transfusion. Jamtronica. Whatever you want to call it, that space where live improvisation meets the relentless forward motion of electronic music. They didn't just exist in it, they built the room. They made it possible for a generation of bands to follow them in that space. They are also one of the most intellectual, playful bands in this world. They invented songs. The dyslexic structures, the fake -outs, the tractor beam alter ego, the
live film scores. These are people who genuinely love the puzzle of music. Who take joy in subverting their expectations and then completely blowing your mind with what comes next. And underneath all of that complexity, there's a groove. A deep bone -rattling dance floor destroying groove that belongs entirely to the Disco Biscuits and no one else. Find Space Bird Mating Call, find the Tractor Bean Chameleon Club Show, and if
they're playing anywhere near you, just go. Just be ready for them to start a song, stop in the middle, play something completely different, and then finish that song three songs later. And it's not a bug, that is the whole point. That's Disco Biscuits. And that's Shecky's Jam Bands. We'll see you next time.