The Californian from Temecula, California • 62

Week of July 8 to July 14, 1994 MUSIC OF NOTE Merry pranksters Jambay trip back to SanDiego beach ml 'fjw t.i? 1 I LMMIM I Illlll I 111 If as Jambay, Tuesday, Winston's, Thursday, Belly Up Tavern. this is what evolved." On Sunday "Twister" played in Boulder, Colorado. The night was especially groovy for proto-and neo-hippys, as Allan Ginsberg celebrated his 70th birthday by appearing in the play with Kesey, the Pranksters and Jambay. "We met Ken Kesey two years ago," recalled Doty. "We were playing in Eugene.Oregon.

We knew he lived nearby so we just called him up. He came to see us and we became good friends." That Kesey connection led to an invitation, two years ago, to open for the Grateful Dead. That show was cancelled due to Jerry Garcia's illness, but Jam-bay got "on the bus," so to speak, and started getting plum bookings. Jambay played the Memorial Day weekend Laguna Seca Festival with Phish and The Gin Blossoms and Blues Traveler, and on July 30 the quartet plays at the annual HORDE music festival at Irvine Meadows. They share the main stage with The Allman Brothers Band, Blues Traveler and Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

Nowadays, the music of ambay is getting much more amplifica- When they started to play together five years ago, Jam-bay was pegged as four free-spirited, neo-hippys who heard the same frequencies as other Deadheads. All four ambay members were discovering the unfettered joys of improvisational jamming as they tossed rock, jazz 4 and psychedelia in their sonic blender. The only problem was that the local-music scene was more into aggression than bliss. And ambay Shelley Doty and Chris Haugen on guitar and vocals, Matthew Butler on drums, Mike Sugar on bass moved to the Pacific Northwest. "We wanted to get on road and explore new territory," said Doty about their migration.

"Basically, we tour constantly from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego. Our home is the road." In their travels, Jambay hooked up with '60s spaceman authorprofessor Ken Kesey, who took the young band under his wing. Kesey, who wrote the 60s psychedelia travelogue, The Electric Koolaid Acid Test," tapped Jambay to back his new play, 'Twister," which is described as a sort of sequel to the Wizard of Oz. It just finished a run at the famed Fil-more in San Francisco. Members of Kesey's Merry Pranksters play the parts of Thor, The Tin Man and Frankenstein.

Kesey plays The Wizard. "It's sort of a virtual reality, audience-participation play," says Doty. "Ken wanted us to participate as the orchestra and ini'l'inff And, like their boogie brethren, Phish, Jambay now maintains an e-mail network that allows fans to communicate on the Jambay-net. They maintain a library of 100 live Jambay concerts that can be accessed and played by e-mail subscribers who are duly tuned in and turned on. This week, Jambay returns to its local roots with a couple of club dates, including a Tuesday show at Winston's in Ocean Beach and a Thursday show at Boingo, Friday and Saturday, SDSU's jirtaiti tion than, say, the days they played at UCSD's Che Cafe or the Triton Pub.

But they still have the same ethic. "Now that bands like Phish are getting more popular, improvisation is getting more and more accepted in music circles," says Doty. "Our fans know that they can't expect to come see a Jambay show and hear the exact same set as our last show or, that we'll play just like we do on our records. Jambay released a self-titled studio album three years ago, and "Live In the Northwest" earlier this year. Like other cottage-industry music enterprises, Jambay sells their CD's at their live shows.

Adrian Belew, Tuesday, The Rash Cafe. The Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. "It's wonderful to come back to our home town," said Doty. But actually, we have home towns all over the West Coast." This week When Danny Elfman debuted the musical concept of his new world order, he did it with the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. As much a performance art troupe as quirky new-wave band, the 10-pius member re- Open Air Theater.

CI Li) Emmylou Harris, Friday, Summer Pops Site..