Syracuse students caught a glimpse of the future Friday night as three up-and-coming bands graced the stage at Planet 505.

Three variations on the traditional jam band — Roast, Townhall and Psychedelic Breakfast — have been gaining some serious momentum in the past year and infused the crowd at 505, 505 Westcott Ave., with highly-wrought and lustrous sounds.

Roast started off the night with a tight set of latin- and jazz-flavored jams that culminated with the powerfully quirky “Badonkey-Donk.” Despite losing one of their guitarists to a hand injury and their original drummer to a semester abroad, Roast soldiered on admirably and didn’t miss a beat.

Townhall drew a significant crowd of excited fans despite being slapped on the bill less than a week earlier. The band of multi-instrumentalists impressed the crowd not only with their danceable grooves and powerful hooks, but by swapping instruments and lead vocal duties after every song.

Townhall’s music is hard to define. Although they play with a lot of jam bands, they by no means fit into the “jam band” category. The five-instrument virtuoso George Stanford calls Townhall’s style “a little more roll than rock,” but that doesn’t do justice to the depth and diversity of the band’s sound. Mixing elements of reggae, funk, soul and rock, the band has all the ingredients to be a good jam band, but replaces the long songs and noodleing solos with lyrics and tight grooves.

Choosing to feature a lot of new material in Friday night’s set, Townhall played just four songs from their first two albums. The audience at the Planet didn’t mind, getting down to both old songs and new works with equal enthusiasm. Townhall worked the crowd into a final frenzy, ending their set with “Running Man” and “Limousine.”

The last band of the night, Psychedelic Breakfast, was everything a good jam band should be. Their lyrics are weird and often stupid, their jams are very, very long, with incredible solos and a spirit that is nothing but fun.

The marquee players in this ensemble are guitarist Tim Palmieri and drummer Adrian Tramontano. Palmieri’s quick fingers allow Psychedelic Breakfast to accelerate their jams to head-banging speed-metal tempos so fast that crowd members can’t keep up dancing and have to stop and stare in awe. Tramontano is equally fast and provides some serious thunder to Palmieri’s lightning. Without a doubt, this is the heaviest jam band you’ll ever see.

The Psychadelic Breakfast set started off funky, but soon moved to more familiar ground, playing a series of Zappa-esque originals at headache-inducing breakneck speed. Highlights came early and often, but the set closing “Spunk!” featuring an insanely hard-hitting drum solo and the encore of “The Chase” were what affected the audience most.

Mike Lang is a junior in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. E-mail him at [email protected].

Published on February 9, 2003 at 12:00 pm